Sunderland
Stadium of Light
Sunderland FPL: Who To Own, Captain And Avoid
The call — Sunderland: buy the back, ignore the front Our model has Sunderland as the third-meanest defence in the league — and their most valuable player over the next six is a £4.9m centre-half. That tells you everything about which end of this team your money should go.
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One squad, picked before a ball was kicked and run for six gameweeks on three transfers — no hits taken. Scored on FPL’s own results.
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The value here sits entirely at the back. Ballard tops our list, Roefs and Mukiele sit just behind him, and Reinildo at £4.5m is the sort of enabler this column exists for: starts every week, nobody owns him — fewer than 1 in 10 managers, rounding generously — and he plays in a defence our projections rate among the stingiest around. Clean-sheet points are the whole pitch, and Sunderland are set up to deliver them.
Now the honest bit. The run starts with Arsenal at the Stadium of Light and City at the Etihad, which is nobody's idea of a clean-sheet festival. The favourable stretch arrives after that — Brighton and Leeds at home, Bournemouth and Coventry away — so if you're buying in, you're buying for gameweeks three through six, not this weekend. Ride out the ugly opening or time the entry; either works, just don't bail after two blanks against the two hardest teams in the country.
The attack is where I'd save you money. Our model ranks Sunderland's attack 17th of 20, the attacking fixtures are genuinely tough, and yet Brobbey is somehow the most-owned player at the club — roughly 1 in 10 have him. He starts, fine, but he's priced for goals a 17th-ranked attack against this run won't reliably produce. Nearly £6m for that is romance, not value. If you must have a Sunderland midfielder, Le Fée is the one — he's on corners, free-kicks and shares penalties, which is the only reliable route to points in a blunt attack — but the model still prefers three defenders and the keeper ahead of him, and so do I.
The call: buy Ballard at £4.9m as a genuine starter in your back four, or Reinildo at £4.5m if he's funding a premium elsewhere. Roefs is a tidy £5.0m keeper if you need one. Bench them for the first two, start them from Brighton onwards. And leave Brobbey where he is — in other people's teams, blanking.