Virgil
VS
Rice
Virgil Vs Rice: The Better FPL Pick
The call — Virgil vs Rice: one of these I can settle, the other I can't Let's clear one thing up first: Rice isn't in my player pool right now, so I can't put honest numbers against his name — and I won't pretend otherwise. If you came here for a straight head-to-head, the fair answer is that half of it doesn't exist.…
At £6.5m, Virgil is priced like a premium defender, and just under 2 in 10 managers own him — popular, but nowhere near template. My numbers have him down for around 24 points across the next six gameweeks, which works out at roughly four a game. For a defender, that's respectable rather than exciting, and the reason it's not higher is the schedule.
Liverpool's opening run is genuinely awkward: Newcastle away, Forest at home, Ipswich away, Fulham at home, Bournemouth away, then Manchester City at Anfield. Three tricky away days plus City in the first six is not the fixture list you want when a defender's entire value lives and dies on clean sheets. The home games against Forest, Fulham and Ipswich away are where his returns will come — the rest is a coin flip at best.
The honest other side: Virgil is about as nailed as any player in the game, he plays every minute, and he carries genuine goal threat from set pieces, so he can still nick you a big week even when the clean sheet doesn't come. If you already own him, there's no panic here — the points will arrive, just unevenly.
But if you're weighing up where to spend £6.5m right now, this is the wrong moment to buy in. You'd be paying top defender money to run straight into Liverpool's hardest stretch, when cheaper backlines have kinder starts and Virgil will still be there — likely at the same price — once City is out of the way.
My call: hold him if you've got him, but don't bring him in yet. Wait for the fixtures to turn.