Nottingham Forest FPL: Who To Own, Captain And Avoid

Forest: the value is at the wrong end of the pitch — which suits me fine

Six Forest defenders and a keeper are nailed on, all priced £5.5 or under, and every one of them projects a useful return over the next six. That's the story here. Not the shiny stuff — the stuff that plays 90 minutes and doesn't blank.

Let's deal with the headline act first. Gibbs-White is the best Forest asset our model can find, and it's not close — penalties, free kicks, the lot runs through him. But he's £7.9m, roughly 1 in 10 own him, and Forest's attack sits mid-table (14th of 20) heading into a genuinely nasty run for goals: Villa away, Palace away, Arsenal at home, Brentford away. He's usually good for 4-5 a week and the pens mean he can pop a big one, but at that price you're paying for his best week, not his normal one. I'd rather spend £7.9m where the fixtures aren't actively working against it.

The back end is a different conversation. Forest's defence is also mid-table, but the fixture run for clean sheets is perfectly average — Coventry at home and Ipswich away are the sort of games a shutout actually happens in. And the pricing is the point: Neco Williams at £5.0 takes free kicks and corners on top of the clean-sheet route, which is exactly how a full-back at that price pays for himself. Murillo at £5.5 projects slightly higher and almost nobody owns him — about 2 in 100 — if you want the quiet version. And down at £4.5, Aina and Jair Cunha are both starting every week, which makes them proper enablers: the cheap defender who plays is what buys you a Haaland at the other end.

The honest caveat: this is a mid-table defence, not a great one. You're buying steady 3s and 4s with the odd clean-sheet week, not hauls. That's fine. That's what £4.5-£5.5 is supposed to buy, and most of the league can't offer it with guaranteed minutes attached.

The call: buy Neco Williams at £5.0 — set pieces plus starts plus clean-sheet odds is the best value in this squad. If the budget's tighter, Jair Cunha at £4.5 does the enabler job honestly. Gibbs-White goes on the watchlist until the fixtures turn; don't pay £7.9m to run into Arsenal and Villa.