Know Your Ghosts: The Seven Fantrax Ghost Points Player Types (Part 1)

Not all fantasy points are made equal. Fact. Two players can hand you the exact same fantasy points average and give you two completely different seasons. Understanding how a player scores — not just how much — is the closest thing a Draft Fantasy EPL manager has to a superpower, and today we're introducing (or re-introducing) you to Ghost Points. For more of our analysis, check out our 26/27 Draft Kit and our Pricing Plans.

Check out our 26/27 Draft Kit for all the pre-season information you could ever need. We've got a Live Draft Aide, Draft Rankings, Team Previews, Cheat Sheets, Strategy Articles, Draft 101. Dominate your draft!

Two players, one number, opposite seasons

Here's a riddle from the 25/26 season. Player A averaged 12.0 points per start (PPS). Player B averaged 11.8. On your end-of-season spreadsheet, they're basically the same player. In your actual H2H matchups? They could not have been more different if they tried.

Player A is Igor Thiago. He blanked — scored under six points — in nearly half of his starts (46%), and exploded for 18+ in a quarter of them (24%). Rostering him was a coin flip that occasionally paid out like a slot machine. Player B is Marc Guéhi. He blanked in less than a quarter of his starts, boomed in fewer than 10%, and otherwise handed you a tidy double-digit score and a firm handshake every single week. You could set your watch to the man.

Same PPS average. Completely different fantasy assets. And if you drafted one expecting the other, you spent the season staring at your lineup wondering why your "good pick" kept losing you gameweeks — or never winning them.

Season totals tell you who scored and how much. They don't tell you how; and how is the thing that matters. So we took every single gameweek of 25/26 Fantrax data and asked a simple question: when you strip players down to the shape of their ghost-point production, how many genuinely different types of fantasy footballer are there?

The answer, it turns out, is seven.

Fantrax ghost points: the thirty-second refresher

If you're new here (welcome, pull up a chair): Fantrax ghost points are the points scored in Fantrax Default Scoring (FDS) for recurring actions other than goals, assists, and clean sheets — GACS, for the initiated. We're talking key passes, shots on target, tackles won, interceptions, clearances, blocked shots, aerials won, successful dribbles, and accurate crosses (dispossessions claw a little back, because nothing in life is free).

Ghost points are the reason FDS is the thinking manager's format: a player can put up a matchup-winning score without ever troubling Match of the Day.

And just how big a deal are they? In 25/26, ghost points made up 79% of everything scored by regular starters. Goals win headlines; ghosts win leagues. (Full definitions live in our [Fantasy EPL Glossary].)

How we built the tribes

A quick word on method, then I promise we'll never mention k-means again. We took all 262 outfielders who played 1,200+ minutes in 25/26, converted each player's ghost production into per-90 rates across the nine positive scoring categories, and let a clustering algorithm group players by the shape of their profiles — no positions, no reputations, no help from us whatsoever. Seven groups emerged all on their own. The boundaries are fuzzy in places, as boundaries always are, so each tribe below comes with an honest paragraph about its misfits and edge cases. Goalkeepers are excluded, because their ghost profile is "saves," and we all have better things to do.

The map

Meet the seven tribes of Fantrax EPL, ordered by ghost output:

The stack heights tell one story — The Entertainers generate nearly double the ghost volume of The Goal Hangers — but the colors tell the better one. No two tribes get rich the same way. The Entertainers live on key passes and dribbles. Heading Union barely attempts a forward pass and out-scores half the attacking tribes anyway, on headers and clearances alone. The Goal Hangers' slim little stack is the whole warning: strip away their goals and there's not much left holding the roof up.

And here is every one of the 262 players on one map — GACS points per 90 across the bottom, ghost points per 90 up the side:

The tribes aren't a party trick — they occupy visibly different territory. The Goal Hangers stretch along the bottom axis, hostages to their own finishing. Heading Union stacks up the left wall, all ghost and no glamour. And out alone in the top-right corner, contributing everything everywhere all at once, sit the seven members of the game's smallest and most expensive tribe.

But before we meet them, we need one more idea — the one the Thiago/Guéhi riddle was really about.

Shape: why variance wins gameweeks

Draft EPL is not a points-accumulation game. It's 38 distinct weekly coin flips, and you win each one by outscoring one opponent, once. Your season total is trivia; the distribution of your weekly scores is your record. That's why two players with the same average can be completely different assets — and why every tribe below leads with four numbers instead of one.

We split every start of 25/26 into four bands: a blank (under 6 points — a start that actively costs you), a steady week (6–10, roster filler), a strong week (10–18, pulling its weight), and a boom (18+, a start that can win a matchup all on its own).

Read the extremes. The Goal Hangers have the smallest middle of any tribe — just 14% steady weeks. They don't do quiet sevens; they hand you a blank or they swing a matchup, and they deliver 35% of their entire season output inside boom weeks alone. The Rolls-Royces are their inverse: only 14% of their output comes from booms, because there barely are any. And The Entertainers are the aristocracy for a reason — they pair the lowest blank rate in the game with the highest boom rate. That combination is what a first-round pick is actually buying.

Now, here's the strategic punchline, and it's the lens for everything that follows: in H2H, variance is an asset, not a flaw. The payoff is asymmetric. A blank is bounded — the worst it can do is waste one lineup slot for one week. A boom is not, and a single 25-point start can flip a matchup on its own (ask anyone who ran into Haaland on a hat-trick day). That makes boom rate precious, and boom rate is also scarce: exactly one tribe pairs the lowest blank rate with the highest boom rate, and it has seven members. Floor, meanwhile, is everywhere — entire tribes of it, sitting in the double-digit rounds because the market yawns at players who never make a highlight reel. So no, the shape data is not an argument for drafting the steady tribes earlier. It's the opposite: never pay full price for safety that's being given away, and spend the capital you save on the variance nobody can replace.

Right. Let's meet them all, starting at the top.

The Entertainers

Members: 7 · gPP90: 10.3 · Median start: 12.1 · Blank rate: 25% · Boom rate: 23% · GACS dependency: 29%

Poster boys: Jeremy Doku, Bukayo Saka, Rayan Cherki.

The rarest profile in football, the game's aristocracy, and the ultimate #DribblyBois. Only seven players belong to this tribe, and they combine elite key-pass volume with the one skill almost nobody else monetizes: the dribble. Doku alone banked over 4 points per 90 from take-ons — a full category of income the other 255 players barely touch. The result is the highest floor and the highest ceiling in the game: a 12.1-point median start, booms in nearly a quarter of appearances, and blanks in only one start in four. When an Entertainer has a quiet day in front of goal, the carries and the chances created still pay the rent. What a way to live.

Dead-ball badges: Saka and Cherki add corner duty on top, which is partly why they top even this tribe's charts.

The misfits: Mohammed Kudus is the cautionary tale — all of the tribe's dribble volume, the least of its end product, and the lowest output of the seven. The profile guarantees the floor; the ceiling still needs a functioning attack around it. And mind the tribe's size: when only seven players qualify, there is no waiver-wire version of an Entertainer. You draft one early, or you spend the season watching someone else's.

Heading Union

Members: 27 · gPP90: 9.1 · Median start: 8.8 · Blank rate: 33% · Boom rate: 9% · GACS dependency: 8%

Poster boys: James Tarkowski, Virgil van Dijk, Danny Ballard.

The engine of the Year of the Defender. These centre-backs win everything in the air — 3.5 points per 90 from aerials alone, triple the pool average — and hoover up clearances and blocks besides. A whopping 92% of their output is ghost points, which is precisely why it's so dependable: headers don't have off-days. An 8.8-point median start out of players routinely available in the double-digit rounds was the biggest market inefficiency in the game last season, and Part 2 of this article will put a price on it.

Let me be clear about what that inefficiency means, though — not that Tarkowski suddenly deserves a fourth-round pick. Supply is the whole trick: twenty-seven of these players qualified, the market discounts nearly all of them, and the promoted sides mint new ones every August. The play is never to reach for the Union. It's to let the room's indifference deliver your defense at a discount while your early picks buy the shapes that can't be replaced.

Dead-ball badges: none — these are the players defending the corners, not taking them.

The misfits: Gabriel is the tribe's freak, adding nearly 5 GACS points per 90 from his set-piece goal threat — a Heading Union body with a Goal Hanger's paycheck. Sunderland's Danny Ballard and Bournemouth's James Hill are honest warnings in the opposite direction: their monstrous volume was partly circumstance — Ballard defending a promoted side under siege, Hill riding a career-high defensive workload — and volume built on circumstance doesn't always survive a squad upgrade, a tactical shift, or a transfer to a team that keeps the ball.

The Swiss Army Knives

Members: 34 · gPP90: 8.4 · Median start: 8.2 · Blank rate: 37% · Boom rate: 11% · GACS dependency: 16%

Poster boys: Pedro Porro, Patrick Dorgu, Dominik Szoboszlai.

The tribe this scoring system was built for. Attacking fullbacks and crossing midfielders who contribute something in seven of the eight categories — the only profile with no real weakness. They create like attackers, defend like defenders, and many of them do it all while keeping defender clean-sheet eligibility, which is the cheat code: a Swiss Army Knife defender collects a striker's ghost menu plus six points every shutout. Yes please.

Dead-ball badges: everywhere you look. Eleven of the 34 held corner or free-kick duty — Porro, Trippier, Rice, Garner, Elliot Anderson, Stach and friends — worth roughly an extra point per 90 over their tribe-mates. It's no accident the tribe's top scorers are nearly all takers.

The misfits: Dorgu posted 12.2 ghost points per 90 — Entertainer territory in a fullback's body, and the single most eye-widening profile in the whole dataset. At the other end, Livramento and Jordan Henderson qualify on shape but not on volume; a Swiss Army Knife with no sharp edges is just a spoon. And note the mids in a fullback tribe — Rice, Szoboszlai, Stach — whipped-ball specialists whose profiles are indistinguishable from an overlapping wing-backs.

The Conductors

Members: 44 · gPP90: 7.3 · Median start: 7.2 · Blank rate: 42% · Boom rate: 12% · GACS dependency: 26%

Poster boys: Bruno Fernandes, Florian Wirtz, Phil Foden.

The game's creative middle class — the biggest attacking tribe, the household names, the players your league-mates reach for in rounds two through five. Key passes pay the bills, with enough shot volume and carrying to top up. The catch is in the shape: a 7.2 median start and a 42% blank rate means the typical Conductor is quieter, more often, than his reputation suggests. They are very good players; they are also the tribe the market loves slightly too much, and Part 2 has receipts.

Dead-ball badges: eleven takers, including virtually every elite member — Bruno, Ødegaard, Foden, Wirtz. Duty is close to a prerequisite for the tribe's top tier.

The misfits: Bruno Fernandes barely belongs here — 12.6 ghost points per 90, corner-inflated to near-Entertainer levels; he's a tribe of one wearing a Conductor's shirt. Mo Salah is the sadder story: his profile here, mid-tribe ghost volume propped up by GACS, is what a legend's down year looks like plotted on graph paper. Both are the same lesson from opposite ends — within this tribe, the gap between the penthouse and the lobby is enormous.

The Rolls-Royces

Members: 32 · gPP90: 6.7 · Median start: 6.2 · Blank rate: 48% · Boom rate: 4% · GACS dependency: 6%

Poster boys: William Saliba, Rúben Dias, Micky van de Ven.

Magnificent footballers. Terrible fantasy assets. The Rolls-Royces are the centre-backs at possession-dominant clubs whose real-life excellence is precisely the problem: their teams defend so little that there's nothing left to clear, block, or head away. Same position as Heading Union, two and a half fewer points per 90, and the lowest ceiling in the entire player pool — a 4% boom rate. Ninety-four percent of a small number is, I regret to inform you, a smaller number. Every draft season, name recognition drags these players rounds ahead of their output, and every season somebody in your league pays the badge tax. This section exists so it isn't you.

Dead-ball badges: none, obviously. Rolls-Royces don't do delivery.

The misfits: Guéhi is the tribe's superstar and its best argument — elite clean-sheet GACS and enough ghost floor to post an 11.8 average per start, proof the profile can work when the team defense is elite and the minutes are nailed. Saliba's Arsenal clean-sheet income similarly rescues an otherwise empty stat line. And Tomáš Souček deserves a wave: a midfielder who somehow profiles as a possession centre-back, which might be the least flattering sentence we write all summer.

The Water Carriers

Members: 79 · gPP90: 6.7 · Median start: 6.0 · Blank rate: 49% · Boom rate: 5% · GACS dependency: 15%

Poster boys: Casemiro, Moisés Caicedo, Granit Xhaka.

The largest tribe by a distance — nearly a third of all regular starters — and the game's honest working class. Defensive midfielders and conservative fullbacks who win tackles, make interceptions, and do very little that scores beyond that. A 6-point median with a 5% boom rate makes them roster glue: fine in your last starting slot, never the reason you win a week. They populate every waiver wire in every league, which is exactly why you should almost never draft one early — the replacement is free.

Dead-ball badges: two — and here's the cheat code of the whole article, so lean in. Enzo Le Fée and Youri Tielemans held set-piece duty, and their delivery income more than doubled the tribe's key-pass rate (3.2 points per 90 vs 1.5 for the other 77). A Water Carrier with corners is a Swiss Army Knife the market prices as a Water Carrier. Find one in August and say nothing.

The misfits: Nordi Mukiele — the tribe's top scorer, undrafted in every one of our community leagues, and the single best free player of 25/26. Casemiro at 9.2 ghost per 90 shows the tribe's genuine ceiling. And Timber and Calafiori snuck in with nearly 5 GACS points per 90 each — ball-winning bodies with goal-scoring habits, which is a very pleasant bug.

The Goal Hangers

Members: 39 · gPP90: 5.9 · Median start: 6.0 · Blank rate: 49% · Boom rate: 12% · GACS dependency: 41%

Poster boys: Erling Haaland, Ollie Watkins, Jean-Philippe Mateta.

The tribe your eyes love and your record hates. Strikers and pure finishers whose only above-average ghost category is shots on target — the one ghost stat that's really just a goal that didn't go in. They carry the highest GACS dependency in the game at 41%, which means their weeks live and die on the scoresheet: a 49% blank rate and a 12% boom rate, the purest feast-or-famine shape there is. Remember the cold open — a Goal Hanger and a Water Carrier share the exact same 6.0 median start. One of them occasionally wins your week single-handed. The other never, ever does. That difference is the entire art of rostering this tribe: they're weapons, not foundations.

Dead-ball badges: Gibbs-White and Palmer — set-piece duty is one of the few reliable ghost supplements available to the profile.

The misfits: Haaland breaks the tribe's rules by sheer brute force — his booms are so frequent (32% of starts!) that the blanks stop mattering. Semenyo carries genuine dribble volume, the closest thing to a built-in floor here. Tolu Arokodare is the strangest resident: a target man with the tribe's highest ghost rate and almost none of its goals — a striker's silhouette drawn entirely in aerials. And then there's Cole Palmer. Oh, Cole, you are so exciting! Such talent, such poise — drafted second overall last summer, and clustered here by a season that never got going. Profiles describe what happened; they don't forgive it.

The eighth tribe that isn't: set-piece takers

You may have noticed a pattern rippling through the badges above, and it's worth stating plainly: set-piece duty is not a tribe. It's a bonus any tribe member can carry, and it's worth roughly one extra ghost point per 90, almost entirely through key passes.

In every tribe with takers, the dead-ball crowd out-scores its tribemates by about a point per 90 — the profile keeps its shape, the corners simply pour more into it. But look at where the gap is widest relative to the baseline: The Water Carriers. Le Fée and Tielemans didn't just edge their tribe; they more than doubled its creative income. That's the asymmetry to exploit on draft day. An Entertainer with corners is priced like royalty because everyone can see he's royalty. A Water Carrier with corners is priced like a Water Carrier — and plays like a tribe above his cost.

The rule, then: never evaluate a player's profile without checking the dead-ball takers first. A whistle and a ball on the turf can promote a player half a tribe. (Our Set Piece Takers tracker does this homework for you.)

So what do we do with all this?

That's the taxonomy: seven tribes, seven shapes, one overlay. And none of it is trivia. Every tribe has a distinct blank rate, a distinct boom rate, and a distinct job on your roster — and, this being the part that actually wins leagues, a distinct price. Because here's the teaser for Part 2: last summer, our community leagues paid premium picks for the shapes that are easiest to replace, and let the cheapest reliable production in the game tumble into the double-digit rounds.

The tribe drafted fifth outscored two of the tribes drafted ahead of it, at half the price. Which is not a reason to draft it earlier — it's a reason to draft it exactly there, on purpose, with the money you didn't spend. In Part 2, we put a price tag on every profile: what each tribe cost, what it returned, how often the late-round versions actually hit, and — round by round — which tribe is the value pick at every stage of your 26/27 draft.

Know your ghosts. Then go buy them cheap.

Data: all 25/26 Fantrax Default Scoring gameweeks, outfielders with 1,200+ minutes (n=262). Community ADP from the IGL, DSL, and CommLeague.

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