The best 2024/25 Fantasy Premier League bargain buys - including Chelsea & Man Utd stars

With the new Fantasy Premier League season up and running, fantasy managers across the globe can finally start planning their new teams and, more importantly, coming up with some excellent pun team names.

Throughout the season, our resident FPL expert Matthew Gregory – who finished 1,693 in the world last season – will be offering weekly advice columns to help you maximise your points total and boss your mini-leagues, but today we’ve asked him to cast his eye over the prices of every player in the game and pick out some standout bargains ahead of the new season.

The chances are that we won’t have a Cole Palmer this season, but there will still be plenty of cheap players who pick up some huge points totals and make it easier to afford the superstar players like Mohamed Salah and Erling Haaland. Picking the right budget players early can make a massive difference to your chances and help you to build your team value – and these are some of the best early bets you can make.

Christopher Nkunku - £6.5m

The Chelsea forward endured an injury-interrupted debut season at Stamford Bridge but is believed to be fully fit and raring to go under new head coach Enzo Maresca – and for FPL fans, he presents a tempting gamble given that he is not only quite cheap but also down as a midfielder, despite the fact that he may well play plenty of games up front.

The Frenchman scored 36 goals and racked up 17 assists over the last two seasons he spent in Leipzig and would have been worth a huge points haul in 2021/22 in particular. If he can recapture that sort of form and get regular gametime, then £6.5m will be a comically low price point. The question, of course, is whether he has that form and whether (and where) Maresca will play him. If Chelsea sign another big-name striker, then Nkunku may well find his minutes restricted. Keep an eye on their friendlies and see how involved he is, but the ceiling here is huge.

Hwang Hee-Chan - £6.5m

Arriving at the same price point, Hwang is the safer bet but perhaps has a lower top end – but all the signs suggest that the Wolverhampton Wanderers man can still be more than worth his price over the course of the season.

Ideally, you want you mid-price midfielders to be pushing towards 4.5 points per gameweek – last year, across the 29 weeks he was able to play, Hwang hit 4.31, and there are no real reasons to believe he will drop off. His team-mate Pedro Neto is another midfielder worth looking at. The Portuguese winger missed a lot of matches last year but averaged out at 4.3 and could be on for a move to a bigger club, which may well help him by surrounding him with stronger players. The only bad news for both men is that Wolves have an absolutely horrible run of fixtures at the start of the season, and that may make it better to hold off and wait. The same applies to Matheus Cunha, also priced at £6.5m.

Joachim Andersen - £4.5m

There has been a definite uptick in the prices of high-scoring defenders this season, with players like William Saliba and Gabriel up at £6.0m. It’s pretty hard to get close to an ideal points per gameweek at such a high price (with defender, 3.5 per gameweek is excellent), so that means picking out the right defenders at £4.5m will be essential.

If Crystal Palace can maintain their late-season form from last season, then Andersen – who has passed 120 points in two of the last three years – is likely to be a must-have. Palace kept clean sheets in four of their last seven games and look likely to be a tough nut to crack again. Marc Guéhi is at the same price, but has a weaker track record and is less of a threat from set pieces, even if Andersen doesn’t score bucketloads.

Dominic Calvert-Lewin - £6.0m

A very tempting gambler’s option here. Calvert-Lewin’s long battles with injuries meant that his days as a stellar FPL player seemed to be well behind him, but he enjoyed a bit of a mini-renaissance at Everton towards the end of the last season and is cheap enough that there’s a lot of potential for him to be a great option once more.

He picked up 101 points last year despite not scoring a single goal between October and April. He finished with four goals and an assist in his last seven games and will likely remain as Everton’s penalty taker if he stays at the club – and there have been some rumours linking him with a transfer, which could be bad news if he goes elsewhere to be second choice again. Everton also have some fairly gentle early fixtures, so he could be worth a punt before Cunha comes into the equation.

João Pedro - £5.5m

Probably the best reason not to pick Calvert-Lewin is that Brighton & Hove Albion’s record signing is even cheaper – and while his first season, which saw him start 19 games and score nine times, was patchy rather than spectacular, he may well play more this campaign and could well be on penalties again too.

If he can get up towards his expected goals and assists, both of which he undershot last season, and carry that level of goalscoring over 25 or 30 starts, then he could easily pass 150 points, which would make him one of the best budget enablers in the game.

Taylor Harwood-Bellis - £4.0m

If picking out good £4.5m defenders is important, then finding a cheaper defender who will actually pick up points is often even bigger as it enables so much further upfield. Jarrad Branthwaite was the breakout £4.0m man last year and of the options available to players this time out, new permanent Southampton signing Harwood-Bellis is probably the most tempting.

He bagged two goals and three assists in 40 Championship games last season and will almost certainly play every match he’s available for – and while the Saints didn’t have the tightest defence in the second tier but did keep 14 clean sheets if you include the play-offs, so there’s potential for six-pointers on the occasion your budget man comes off the bench. Leicester City’s Wout Faes is another £4.0m option who will play every week if he stays, and Ipswich Town’s Leif Davis is an intriguing bet at £4.5m. It’s hard to imagine Ipswich keeping many clean sheets but he did bag 20 goal involvements last season and 17 the year before that, mostly in the form of assists.

Takehiro Tomiyasu - £5.0m

With the rest of Arsenal’s regular back four at £6.0m or more, the Japanese full-back is a definite option if the Gunners don’t sign a left-back before the end of the transfer window. He won the starting job towards the end of last year and if he keeps it then he’s slightly underpriced and very much worth including.

This might be one to wait on until you’re sure he’ll start and play past the first of September, but don’t forget about him when running the rule over the more expensive defensive options. His weak haul of 70 points last season belies the fact that he picked most of them up late on, and if his form was multiplied over the year then he’d have been a shoe-in for every team.

Marcus Rashford - £7.0m

Well, here’s the real roll of the dice. Rashford struggled badly last year but racked up over 200 points the year before and has passed 170 points twice more in the past. A fully fit and firing Rashford is worth at least £9.0m, and here he is at two whole million pounds less. If the real Marcus stands back up, he will quickly become an auto-include.

Will that actually happen? Heaven knows. If he fires in pre-season, then it’s definitely worth a punt – but even if you understandably hold off for your starting squad, then sign him fast if there is any evidence that he’s finding touch and confidence. His price could easily explode.