38 Gameweeks Later

This article will fixate on the trends that mattered and dictated every day of our lives for the past nine months that was the 2025/26 Premier League season; defenders & the rise of the five at the back, long throws and set pieces, poverty forwards and gems of the season. 38 Gameweeks Later: the 2025/26 season recap.

The final whistle has sounded on another Premier League season and with it comes the end of nine months of chaos, drama and shifting fortunes. Arsenal sits atop English football once again, surviving the twists and turns of a campaign that didn't have many challengers to stand alone at the summit.

Meanwhile, at the foot of the table, relegation no longer arrives like a possibility, but as inevitability itself - like the morning town bell ringing in 1400s Bohemia; cold, precise, inescapable, probably depressing. West Ham, Burnley and Wolves' stories have been written, judgement already passed, and all that remains is the slightly humiliating walk through the city centre - heads down, kits still on, trying not to look too closely at the shop windows reflecting everything they hoped this season wouldn't become.

More importantly, and somehow, even more dramatically, for the Fantrax degenerates among us; refreshing lineups, rage-dropping players, and inventing fun and exciting excuses for those bathroom trips to escape the family to set lineups - the final whistle means something else entirely. The battles have been fought, the dust has settled and across the world managers are now standing atop their own imaginary podiums, proudly lifting fake trophies with the confidence of real champions... knowing full well they carry an embarrassingly real amount of emotional weight.

Now that we've all hopefully been reacquainted with our families and remembered what they look like, let’s kick off 38 Gameweeks Later: the 2025/26 season recap.

5 At The Back Supremacy

Starting off with the trend that slowly ruminated into our discussions every week; everyone’s favorite lineup invention, the five defenders of doom, otherwise known as 5ATB - or simply known as “woke”, to some. 

Ever since the tweak to defenders scoring, this strategy quietly started creeping into discussion as they weren’t punished as harshly for conceding the first goal, as balance was brought back to the force! However, what we didn't expect, was to see a massive surge in set-piece goals in 2025/26 compared to the previous season, with non-penalty dead-ball goals rising from roughly 20.6% to 25.4% of total goals scored, aaccounting for 0.73 goals per game. Quite simply, set-pieces are arguably the easiest and quickest way to get the ball close to goal which disproportionally benefits our burly defenders. Again, we hate it because it isn't entertaining or "ethical ball", but unfortunately the logic checks out.

The average number of completed passes in the 2023-24 season was 941 passes per game (both teams) which further reduced to 893 in the 2024-25 and was down yet again to 874 in 2025-26. What does this all mean for our defenders? More direct, over the top play with less build up coupled with a huge rise in long throws (3.9 per game in 2025/26 compared to 1.5 in 2024/25), corners and being able to get your most physical players (defenders) in the opponent's penalty area quickly.

You're probably assuming this should lead to a significant increase in aerials for defenders and you'd be correct, from 2024/25 we had 5068 aerials by all defenders compared to this season with a whopping 6364, a 26% increase. Notably goal scoring was also down across the league, this season we saw exactly 1045 goals scored across the 380 matches, which averages to 2.75 goals per game compared to last season's 1246 goals scored, a record-breaking 3.28 goals per game. The fallout of this was a 15% increase in total clean sheets, from 695 in 2024/25 to 798 in 2025/26, and for those at home doing quick math, that's 4170 points juiced up to 4788 fantasy points.

This shift in playstyle went hand in hand with hoarding midfield assets (my favorite), maybe grabbing one high quality forward, or simply waiting until the 6th+ (or even later for the bold among us) and hope you find someone else on the wire due to injury or outplaying the initial starter. I had personally coined this as the poverty forward strategy, as I have been (sometimes not so) happily trotting out the Danny Welbeck’s, Evanilson’s, Raul’s and Mathys Tel’s of the world like I was assembling aTemu Avengers squad.

Despite not running this through Databricks in a more intelligent way here’s a quick numbers breakdown of points by position for 2025/26 default scoring, filtered for players with 50%+ starts and 7+ PPS: 

While the midfielder and forward positions both edge out defenders in PP90, defenders have the highest median PPS. This matters because medians will tell you what the "normal" player is doing versus what a handful of elite outliers are doing. This suggests that midfielders and forwards can be comparatively top-heavy and that the typical defender is giving you more weekly value and that the there's less of a tier break from the 10th rated defender to the 25th compared with that same breakdown of the other two positions.

Full transparency, I played a back five in at least one of my six leagues every single week this season, the embarrassing part is that I actually verified this. And listen, it’s not the sexiest idea we’ve collectively ever had, and quite frankly it's entirely the opposite but it makes sense. It’s the fantasy equivalent of the guy who plays golf the ‘right’ way, laying up and utilizing course management, using a long iron instead of driver on a tight fairway. No flair, no fun, no chaos, just pars and two putts.  

Boring. Functional. Borderline offensive. 

The reality is that you can always find a handful of defenders on the wire with varying degrees of upside that someone in the Discord has convinced you of believing in within even the deepest and most competitive leagues. The forward pool was shallower than usual, and it became evident early on to many that instead of playing a barely warm body as your forward 2 and 3 and hoping to crack 6+ points with an attacking return, that you might want to think about playing a defender with a reliable floor instead. Play the plus matchups, and by that I mean target the bottom half of the league or those in poor form, and you’ll be fine until you’re not. 

Remember, you only have to start one forward. 

38 Gameweeks Later: The Hidden Gems

Then there are The Hidden Gems. If you were lucky enough, you snagged these six lads early and happily turned either a late round pick or waiver wire snag into a set and forget asset, meanwhile your opponents pulled their hair out at your luck of finding these waiver wire war crimes. 

Igor Thiago 

Brentford’s striker and resident pen merchant, this man was drafted on average in round 12 and wound up being the overall 4th highest scoring player. At cost and just in general, that’s a wild return on investment and I’m really just jealous I didn’t land him anywhere because that would have turned my poverty forward strategy into an even more inflated ego. Granted, as you can see with a GACS% of 46% and 22 goals, of which 9 were penalties, if he didn’t score, you weren’t sitting pretty. He had some proper bust games against teams you’d have expected him to feast against (Leeds, Wolves and Spurs), with a particularly a barren spell over the congested festive period. This was, however, his first year as a regular starter at Brentford, so I’d expect him to build on this years’ success and be a fringe 1st rounder next season. A good player to be mindful of and learn from, as many managers weren't too keen on him, or Brentford as a whole, but considering what Wissa did the season before, he was well worth punting on with a bit more draft captial.

James Hill & Marcos Senesi

James ‘the Mountain’ Hill & Marcos Senesi, I’ve decided to pair them up because, well, that part is rather obvious isn’t it? And yes, I am coining that as Hill’s nickname now and forever more. These two were immense under Andoni Iraola this season; Hill was a community darling, incredibly since the new year he scored in single digits only four times, the first instance occurring on March 20th. A little more than 2.5 months of absurd consistency and solid scores from someone who wasn’t even drafted according to Fantrax data. Hill finished with 12.5 PPS, 4th highest among defenders behind Dorgu, Reece James, and Gabriel, off the back of only 22 starts and 296.5 points. That's an insane return on your investment of at most, a few FAAB depending on when you bought him in.

Senesi had a much longer campaign, starting in 37 games and finishing an absurd 16th overall in FPts with 398.25 points given his ADP of 223; for those keeping score at home, this is an average of Round 19, and he was only drafted in 58% of leagues. Unfortunately, with his contract ending this summer, Senesi will be leaving Bournemouth with strong rumors of potentially staying in the Premier League, and hopefully he does, but with Iraola leaving I would not be placing bets on snagging a starting Cherries CB and finding a set and forget asset next season.

Anton Stach

Anton Stach, you absolute stud of a man. I should compose ballads about you, the likes of which would be sung by bards for a thousand years. While owning 78% of Leeds' set pieces per appearance, Stach finished the season 5th in PPS by midfielders, trailing just the likes of Bruno, Doku, Saka and Cherki (filtering out those with less than 50% of starts). That is extremely good company to keep especially as a Leeds player.

The man was so massively consistent, even in a game where he got injured early he still got you 8. I feel awful that he was injured again at the end of the year, but it was a complete joy to be able to watch his numbers go brrr and with Leeds staying up, it’ll never have to end. I’d expect to see him drafted in the 2nd or 3rd round next year, most likely right before it's my turn on the board.

James Garner

Hopefully you landed James Garner and didn’t drop him at the first sign of trouble like I did. You can imagine seeing him finish as13th (!!!) overall in FPts with 404.75 points and an ADP of 256 was salt in my wounds. Garner finished the season as the 14th best midfielder by PPS, while boasting a GACS% reliance of just 19%, it's not a sexy play but when a heavy ghosting player who dominates set pieces (64% of Everton's, 156 total set pieces taken)* is your MID3/4, you're going to win a lot of matchups.

Casemiro 

He can't keep getting away with this - and finally, he won't. Casemiro, the £350k-a-week United midfielder is set to leave United this summer but not before finishing the season as the overall 27th highest scoring player with 350 points and an ADP of 271 while being drafted in just 17% of leagues. I've long said (complained) that his best years are behind him and for the most part, that's true, and something that Fantrax scoring metrics don't quite capture yet, but he kept delivering, by scoring 9 goals and tallying another 4 fantasy assists. Under Amorim, he averaged a pedestrian 8.7 PPG, but once Michael Carrick took the reins, Casemiro excelled with 12.3 PPG. This reflects a shift in role, from being tasked with covering a box-to-box role, he instead operated as a holding pivot with licence to attack. Not sure why you'd ever want a Casemiro at this stage as a box-to-box but hey, that's Amorim for you.

Player of the Season

Bruno Fernandes 

I won't spend too much time talking about the man who won many leagues for managers this year, but he deserves his flowers here, becoming the new assist king in the Prem and tallying 9 goals to go with it. He won me a league and in another definitely contributed to me taking second behind the manager who had him! If you didn't win your league with him, please look within and reevaluate your decisions. The man was extremely consistent while having a huge ceiling, scoring 644 points while tallying 136 key passes, eclipsing the second best player, Dominik Szoboszlai, by a full 58 key passes. Truly insane. We don't talk about WAR much as a community, but he also nearly doubled the next highest there too, generating 4.03 WAR versus Haaland's 2.20. A clear 1.1 target for many in drafts next season.

Transfer of the Season

Pascal Gross

If you saw the words 'transfer of the season' and thought anything other than Pascal Gross, shame on you. This is a Pascal Gross fan club and for good reason, a GACS% reliance of 24% and PPS of 12.4? To boot, a bit unlucky to not have an extra couple of goals and assists to that tally. In his 15 starts, he also racked up 58 total set pieces and a ridiculous 63% ownership of set pieces per appearance. Gross was far and away the best winter transfer we've seen since Bruno arrived in Manchester in Jan 2020.

Best & Worst Performances of the Season

A little fun to remember these two for different reasons, hopefully no one actually started Esteve in that train wreck, but if you did, you deserved what you got.

• Jurrien Timber: GW2 Home to Leeds 45 points, 12 GPts, 2 goals, 1 AT

• Maxime Esteve: GW6 Away to City -14.25 with TWO own goals and a whopping 5 goals against

Streamiums

I'm loosely defining premium streamers as those with 13 starts or less (35%). Important to note, I apologize to no one if you're not in agreement with the numbers that I arbitrarily put together.

Taiwo Awoniyi: Highlighted with the 30-point brace on May 4th (May the Fourth be with you, anyone!?), Awoniyi was almost entirely useless in his other two starts but you've got to shout out the 30 burgers and that date when you can.

Rayan Ait-Nouri: Manchester City's Algerian left back was touted and hyped up as a late round sleeper during draft season, but injuries and the emergence of Nico O'Reilly derailed any hope of a strong season. However, RAN finished the season with 12 starts and right around 11 PPS with some attacking threat, with 6 games topping 14 points or more. Despite the usual ownership price tag of a Man City player, he was somewhat available as owners gave up on him several times this season, which oddly makes for an excellent streamer. He's a talented player who can churn out points so here's hoping he has a healthy 2026/27 season.

Rio Ngumoha: The youngster finished with only 5 starts with 2 of them topping 12 points, highlighted by a 20.75-point match against Fulham on April 11th. Not quite the return we expected or hoped for compared to the hype BUT, like everything else, I will choose to go ahead and blame that on Arne Slot's irrational love for Cody Gakpo and that he was likely busy taking some form of standardized test. We do have HIGH hopes for this 17-year-old though, hopefully Slot plays him more next season, he could drastically outperform wherever his ADP lands.

Touch Grass Time

We all need a break. Or do we? Mock season anyone? World Cup Fantasy!? Be on the lookout for World Cup Fantasy and the Draft Kit is right around the corner. The cycle never ends if you're a degenerate who constantly looks for another thing to obsess over. Enjoy the offseason while you can - only 88 days until next season!

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