Fantasy Premier League: new signings and pre-season stars to buy - including Chelsea & Newcastle players

With pre-season in full flow and plenty of transfer business in the books, the amateur analysts of the internet have been feverishly picking over the performances of the new stars to determine who will perform well in the Fantasy Premier League this season – and because we play too, we can’t resist dipping our toes into that particularly choppy water.

Here are six of the new signings – mostly unfamiliar faces – who have been generating buzz among FPL players. Will they shine and stack up the points? Or will they slump and swiftly find themselves the subject of thousands of transfers? Let’s peer into the crystal ball (and pore over the actual stats, of course) to find out.

João Pedro – Brighton & Hove Albion

11 Championship goals last season, a Football Manager superstar and signed by Brighton for a club record £30m (including all the add-ons, at least) – and priced at just £5.5m. You can see why his penalty goal in a pre-season friendly against Chelsea would raise a few eyebrows.

With most of the other cheap striking options rather unexciting, Pedro looks likely to make an awful lot of teams, even if he doesn’t offer quite the same flexibility as someone like Cameron Archer at £4.5m. He’ll almost certainly play plenty and even if he shares minutes with Evan Ferguson and Denis Undav the fact that he can also play on the wing means he’ll spend more time on the pitch than off. Could easily hit the sweet spot between cheap enabler and actual points-scorer on the weeks you need him to chip in. Worth trying in your early drafts, especially if you think you’ll want three strikers on the field a reasonable amount of the time.

Moussa Diaby – Aston Villa

Villa annihilated their transfer record to sign Diaby for £51.9m, wisely taking our advice on which wide forwards they should buy in the process – and the Frenchman promptly scored on his ‘debut’ during a pre-season friendly against Fulham on Wednesday, latching onto a lofted through ball with lightning speed and lashing the ball into the back of the net.

All of which means there’s some swiftly-building hype for a player who scored nine and assisted eight in his final Bundesliga season at Bayer Leverkusen – and racked up 25 goal contributions in 2021/22, in just 32 games. He overperformed his xG and xA that season but undershot both in the most recent campaign under Xabi Alonso, suggesting a typical return somewhere in the region of 10-11 goals and 9-10 assists in Germany. If those kind of numbers prove about right in Birmingham, he’ll be close to being up there with the FPL’s premium midfield assets – and will only set you back £6.5m, the same price many are interested in Bryan Mbeumo at. Diaby could easily pass 150 points and would be a bargain if he does.

Mark Flekken - Brentford

Signed by Brentford to replace David Raya, a situation made slightly awkward by the fact that the Bees haven’t managed to sell the Spaniard just yet – although Bayern Munich’s interest means it’s more likely to happen than not. Flekken is priced at £4.5m, always the ideal price for a good goalie, his numbers at Freiburg for the last two seasons since establishing himself as a starter have been pretty impressive.

His save percentage is 74%, which should ensure quite a few bonus points given that Brentford concede quite a lot of shots, and he kept a very healthy number of clean sheets while playing in Germany. Assuming Raya does leave, he’ll be the undisputed number one at a club where he should notch up a decent number of points. He’ll be our starting ‘keeper if Raya moves on. Another quick word on Brentford before we move on – Mbeumo has been playing wide right of a front free so far in pre-season, with Yoane Wissa at number nine. Which doesn’t make Mbeumo a bad shout by any means given that he’ll take penalties in Ivan Toney’s absence, but maybe takes the shine off what otherwise looked like a seriously good buy.

Harvey Barnes – Newcastle United

Another £6.5m midfielder and another who will make a lot of teams at that price point. He racked up 13 goals in Leicester City’s relegation campaign and has never registered fewer than 14 goal contributions in a full Premier League season. Now he’s at a Champions League-level team, there’s every reason to think he can crank those numbers up a little.

His last two seasons provided 138 and 137 points respectively, so we know what his level is – and we know that he’s pretty good value for his price point. The question is whether the extra points that typically come from playing in a better team will be offset by the increased chance of being rotated in a team battling in Europe as well – and remember that Swedish striker Alexander Isak played in Barnes’ position at times last year. Newcastle have a tricky start, so maybe one to wait on and watch, especially with Diaby and Mbeumo both options for the same price.

Christopher Nkunku & Nicolas Jackson – Chelsea

Chelsea have put four past Brighton already this pre-season and drawn 1-1 with Newcastle – you can debate how much worth can be placed on friendlies, of course, but they do look a fair bit better under Mauricio Pochettino. In particular, brand new forwards Nkunku and Jackson have both got themselves on the scoresheet and looked distinctly handy in the process.

Both are down as forwards – Nkunku is priced at £7.5m and Jackson at £7.0m. Nkunku has notched up 36 goals and 17 assists over the last two seasons for RB Leipzig, which would make him very nicely priced indeed if he can replicate those numbers at his new club, although it’s worth noting that he’s been playing in a relatively unfamiliar number ten role so far, rather than as part of the front line. That could inhibit his potential returns.

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Jackson, by comparison, only has one meaningful season of stats behind him at Villarreal, and he scored 12 goals and added four assists in his 26 La Liga matches last year. Those are very nice numbers indeed, and would make him a brilliant pick-up at £7.0m if he continues in that vein. It’s worth keeping an eye, however, on Chelsea’s transfer business – they have been linked with other strikers, and if he does become a rotation player then his value goes down quite a bit, even at such a competitive price range. He’s no Erling Haaland, but he could be a real star of the show if he becomes a nailed-on starter.