Virgil
VS
Tarkowski
Virgil Vs Tarkowski: The Better FPL Pick
The call — Virgil or Tarkowski? Across the first six gameweeks, my numbers separate them by less than two points — but one of them costs half a million more. That's the whole dilemma in a sentence. Virgil at £6.5m projects for around 24 points over the opening six; Tarkowski at £6.0m sits just behind on roughly 22. Per pound, the Everton man…
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Start with the fixtures, because neither run is pretty. Liverpool open with NEW (A), NFO (H), IPS (A), FUL (H), BOU (A) and MCI (H) — a tough stretch, no sugar-coating it. But Everton's is worse: CRY (H), BOU (A), MUN (H), TOT (A), IPS (H), HUL (A) is a very tough run for a defence that needs shutouts to pay you. When you're buying a £6.0m defender, you're buying clean sheets — and Tarkowski's schedule gives him fewer realistic chances to bank them.
Virgil also carries the bigger week in him. He's the kind of defender who can turn a routine clean sheet into a double-digit haul with a header from a corner, and Liverpool's back line remains the more reliable shutout machine week to week. Tarkowski gets you steady returns when Everton keep it tight, but his big weeks come around less often.
Ownership tells you how the market has already voted: not quite 2 in 10 managers own Virgil, while Tarkowski is closer to 1 in 10 — so the Everton man is the quieter route if you want to zag. The honest caveat on Virgil is the price: £6.5m is proper money for a defender staring at Newcastle away and Manchester City at home inside six weeks, and that money could fund an upgrade elsewhere.
But here's the thing — my numbers already know those fixtures are hard, and Virgil still comes out on top. A two-point edge plus more clean-sheet security plus more haul potential is worth the extra £0.5m if your budget can stretch.
The call: buy Virgil. If the half-million genuinely unlocks a better midfielder or forward, Tarkowski is a perfectly respectable fallback — but if you're choosing purely between these two, take the Liverpool man and don't look back.