Sunderland
Stadium of Light
Sunderland FPL: Who To Own, Captain And Avoid
The call — Sunderland: the table with no nailed players Run your eye down the "Who to own" table and clock the last column: not one Sunderland player is nailed. Not the keeper, not the captain-material midfielder, not the striker. Four starts here, three there. That's the whole story before we get to a single fixture.
What has not being with FFIQ cost you this season?
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.
Your name and your FPL team name. That is all it takes, and we will have your answer before you have finished reading this sentence.
↓ Start here — your name, then your team.
No FPL password, ever. We only read what FPL already publishes.
Now the fixtures. Sunderland's attack sits among the league's bluntest — 17th of 20 in our projections — and it's about to run into a genuinely rough stretch: Brighton at home, Bournemouth away, Leeds, Coventry away, then Chelsea and a trip to Villa Park. A blunt attack plus a tough run is not a combination you pay for.
Our model's preferred route in is Brobbey up top, with Xhaka and Le Fée just behind. Fine picks in a vacuum — Le Fée in particular touches everything dead-ball shaped, sharing penalties with Diarra and taking free kicks and corners, which is the only reliable attacking currency at a club that doesn't score much. Hardly anyone owns any of them; Brobbey's in about one team in twenty. But every one of them has been left out at least once already, and I've watched too many mid-price punts get subbed off on 60 to pay 5.5–5.7 for a maybe.
The actual value here sits at the other end. The defence is mid-table — 11th — with an average run for clean sheets, which is more than the attack can say. Ballard at 4.9 is the honest option: cheapest route into the back line among the regular starters, projected a tidy return over the six. Roefs at the same price is the same logic in gloves. Mukiele carries the biggest projection on the page but has started fewer games than anyone in the conversation — that's a price tag on what he might do, not what he's actually doing. Deadpan translation: he's the shiny one, and you know how I feel about shiny.
What changes the call? A settled team sheet. If Ballard or Roefs strings five straight starts together, they graduate from enabler to genuine bargain.
The call: leave the Sunderland attack alone for this run. If you want one body, make it Ballard at 4.9 as your cheap fifth defender — and stop there.