Teams To Avoid — The Toughest Upcoming Fixtures

Six clubs, one shared problem: nobody in this group is set up to keep clean sheets over the opening six.

The read is unusually consistent. Hull, Ipswich, Coventry, Bournemouth, Fulham and Sunderland all carry a very tough clean-sheet outlook across gameweeks 1–6, which means the cheap-defender shortcuts many managers reach for at this price point are the weakest part of the board. Hull are worst placed of the lot, with a tough attacking run too: Manchester United at home, then Coventry, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Newcastle and Everton. Coventry face Arsenal and Manchester City inside the first three.

Where the model does see value, it sees it through attack. Bournemouth top this group: Rayan at £6.5m is the standout, with our projections putting him around 26 points over the six — comfortably the best return of anyone here — despite a run that includes Manchester City away and Liverpool and Chelsea late on. Only 3.6% own him. Behind him, Truffert at £5.5m is the rare defender the model still likes, and he's ranked ahead of the more popular Kroupi Jr (£7.5m, 13.8% owned) even though the price tag suggests otherwise — that's deliberate, not an oversight.

Sunderland are the next-best source. Mukiele (£5.5m, 8.2%) and Xhaka (£5.5m, 6.4%) both project in the low twenties across an average attacking run: Ipswich, Fulham, Brentford, Arsenal, City, Brighton. Roefs at £5.0m is the keeper option, but with clean sheets looking scarce, he's the least appealing of the three. At Fulham, Leno tops the list at £4.5m ahead of Iwobi (£5.5m) — a nudge that the cheap keeper slot has real value even when shutouts look hard to come by.

The nuance: "average attacking outlook" is not a green light, it's an absence of a red one. Sunderland and Fulham are projected to score points because of who takes their chances, not because the fixtures invite it. And note the ownership trap — Diop (21.3%) and van Ewijk (17.0%) are the two most-owned names in this evidence, both £4.0m defenders at clubs with a very tough clean-sheet run. Popularity here is doing the work that projections won't.

FPL VERDICT: Buy Rayan (£6.5m) — best projection in the group, low ownership, and priced to be a fixture-proof hold. Watch Mukiele and Xhaka as £5.5m fillers if you need Sunderland exposure. Avoid the £4.0m Ipswich and Coventry defenders entirely; the crowd is buying clean sheets these fixtures won't deliver.