We’re inviting you to vote on your favourite Fantasy forwards of 2019/20 as we continue to build our Team of the Season.
We previously asked for your opinion on the stand-out goalkeepers, defenders and midfielders of the season just gone, with those polls remaining open on the sidebar.
Now we run down the nominees in attack, with overall score, points per match and value all factors that entered our thinking.
While midfielders took home gold, silver and bronze in terms of Fantasy Premier League points, four FPL forwards did make the top ten.
There was plenty of value in the £6.0m-£9.0m bracket, too, which aided moves for the more expensive options in defence and midfield.
2018/19 TEAM OF THE SEASON REVIEW – FORWARDS
- Goalkeeper: Alisson
- Defenders: Trent Alexander-Arnold, Andrew Robertson, Matt Doherty
- Midfielders: Sadio Mané, Mohamed Salah, Raheem Sterling, Ryan Fraser, Eden Hazard
- Forwards: Raúl Jiménez, Sergio Aguero
Both of the forwards who made our Team of the Season in 2018/19 are again in the running this time, so we won’t delve too much into their campaigns here.
Suffice to say, the pair had contrasting seasons.
Raul Jimenez bettered his superb debut year as a budget striker, starting 37 of Wolves’ 38 games and finishing only six points off the magic 200-mark.
Sergio Aguero‘s season was littered by injuries, however, with the Argentinean making just 18 starts and six substitute appearances.
Despite that, he finished 2019/20 just one goal and one assist behind Jimenez.
2019/20 CANDIDATES
JAMIE VARDY
The Golden Boot winner and the highest-scoring Fantasy forward of 2019/20, Jamie Vardy plundered 30 attacking returns and 34 bonus points in the season just gone.
The Leicester City forward – whose starting price was a relative bargain £9.0m – was within one point of matching his highest-ever FPL score, too, which was set in the Foxes’ title-winning year of 2015/16.
His overall score was made all the more noteworthy considering that there were nine blanks and three no-shows from Gameweeks 19 to 32+, with a loss of fitness and form plaguing the second half of the campaign.
Four goals from Gameweeks 33+ to 35+ saw him over the line for the Golden Boot but most of the damage was done in the first half of the season.
From Gameweeks 3 to 18, Vardy found the back of the net on 17 occasions and set up a further five goals – a purple patch that conjured up memories of Luis Suarez’s astonishing 2013/14 campaign.
The long-serving striker averaged 8.6 points per match over this run of games, delivering six double-digit hauls and blanking on just three occasions.
From Gameweeks 9 to 18, he didn’t blank once.
A whopping 23 of his 30 attacking returns came against bottom-half clubs, which made him a relatively safe bet for the captaincy in plum fixtures.
PIERRE-EMERICK AUBAMEYANG
Matching his goal tally (22) and his FPL points total (205) from 2018/19, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang again did what he does best – score a hatful of goals without the fanfare or sky-high ownership levels of the premium midfielders.
Perhaps a positional reclassification next season will change the perception of the Gabon international, whose role on the left of Arsenal’s attack was no barrier to him finding the back of the net.
It’s because of his ‘inside-forward’ role under Mikel Arteta that he may be repackaged as an FPL midfielder in 2020/21 and, providing that he stays in the Premier League, his popularity may soar as a result.
Had the Fantasy position change happened in the summer of 2019, then he would have finished the season just gone as the third-highest-scoring FPL asset, ahead of Sadio Mane and Vardy.
Failing to start only one match that he was available for, Aubameyang never went more than three Gameweeks without a return.
Avoiding a blank in the opening seven Gameweeks, the Arsenal forward went on to rack up six double-digit hauls – all of them against bottom-half teams.
DANNY INGS
Danny Ings more than doubled his Premier League goals tally in one fell swoop in 2019/20, finding the back of the net on 22 occasions in a superb campaign for the Southampton striker.
Ings was only one goal away from a share of the Golden Boot, with his missed penalty in Gameweek 37+ proving costly.
The ex-Liverpool forward had started the season at a bargain £6.0m in FPL and even dropped in price in the opening two months, having been benched in half of Southampton’s first six fixtures.
His strike against Spurs in Gameweek 7 kickstarted his campaign and opened the floodgates, with another 12 goals arriving in the following 15 Gameweeks.
Owned by little more than 100,000 Fantasy managers ahead of that meeting with the Lilywhites, Ings finished the season in around 2.4 million squads and had risen in price by £1.6m – by some distance the biggest beginning-to-end price change in the game.
No other forward or indeed midfielder provided better value based on FPL’s points-per-million metric (26.7).
There were only three double-digit hauls over the course of the season but his consistency of returns more than made up for it, along with his league-best bonus points tally of 40.
MARCUS RASHFORD
Jamie Vardy (6.0) was the only FPL forward who averaged more points per match than Marcus Rashford (5.7) in the season just gone.
The Manchester United attacker smashed his previous personal best in FPL by almost 50 points in 2019/20, registering 17 goals, eight assists and 31 bonus points in 31 Premier League appearances.
Most of this came from the left flank, too, and he may be set for reclassification as an FPL midfielder in 2020/21 as a result.
It wasn’t just his returns but the reliability of starts, with Rashford lining up in every single Premier League match bar the seven that he was injured for.
The England international never went more than two appearances without a goal or assist, with five of his run-outs ending with double-digit hauls.
How much a loss (or reduced share) of penalty-taking duties affects him in 2020/21 remains to be seen, with Rashford finding the back of the net on six occasions from the spot last season.
He did win four of the six penalties he converted, however, so would have been given assist points had he not taken the spot-kicks himself.
RAUL JIMENEZ
Raul Jimenez was always going to struggle to emulate his impact in 2018/19, when he racked up 181 points from a starting price of just £5.5m.
While he was never going to offer the same value he provided in his debut Premier League campaign, he did score four more goals and 13 more FPL points this time around.
The Mexican, a bit like Ings, wasn’t too explosive, registering just three double-digit hauls – two of them against Manchester City – over the entirety of 2019/20.
But the points arrived on a regular basis, with his 24 attacking returns coming in 21 different games.
From Gameweeks 8 to 19, he blanked only twice.
Rotation was rarely a worry and no FPL forward started more games or played more minutes than Jimenez last season.
The Mexican started 37 of Wolves’ 38 Premier League fixtures, only being benched in Gameweek 20 when Nuno Espirito Santo’s side faced two matches in the space of 48 hours.
DOMINIC CALVERT-LEWIN
Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s achievements pale in comparison to those of Ings, with the mid-price forwards having both been priced up at £6.0m at the start of the season.
Ten successive blanks in the run-in also left a sour taste in the mouth, with the Everton striker unquestionably one of the biggest Fantasy flops after lockdown ended.
But Calvert-Lewin was a staple of many FPL squads following Carlo Ancelotti’s appointment as Everton manager in December, scoring nine goals and setting up another in the ten Gameweeks following the Italian’s arrival.
Double-digit hauls against Newcastle and Crystal Palace were banked towards the start of 2020, with the Everton striker also bagging a brace against Chelsea under interim boss Duncan Ferguson in December.
Calvert-Lewin’s FPL price had dropped to £5.7m at the point of Marco Silva’s dismissal, so the 23-year-old forward was a real value pick when his form turned for the better.
TAMMY ABRAHAM
The final third of Tammy Abraham‘s campaign was something of a non-event, with the Chelsea striker making only two starts in the final 13 Gameweeks as injury and Olivier Giroud’s form saw him reduced to bit-part player status.
Thirteen goals, five assists and 20 bonus points had arrived from Gameweeks 3 to 25, however, with Abraham starting all but one of Chelsea’s league fixtures over that run.
The first three of those games were Abraham at his best, with the former Swansea City striker registering three successive double-digit hauls against Norwich, Sheffield United and Wolves.
The Blues’ number nine averaged 7.0 points per match from Gameweeks 8 to 15, meanwhile.
Ings (22) was the only FPL forward with a starting price of less than £7.5m who scored more goals than Abraham (15) last season.
SERGIO AGUERO
A total of 132 points was Sergio Aguero‘s lowest score since 2012/13 but there were mitigating circumstances.
Injuries saw him miss 12 league matches altogether, while Pep Guardiola’s rotation reduced him to just 18 starts.
Although 27 forwards registered more minutes than the Argentinean, only six of them scored more goals.
When we examine attacking returns per 90 minutes, Aguero (1.30) was by some distance the pick of the bunch among FPL strikers.
The long-serving Manchester City hitman started 2019/20 with a bang, playing a part in 11 goals in the first seven Gameweeks and not registering a single blank in the process.
Another purple patch arrived at the beginning of 2020, with six goals scored in the space of three Gameweeks – including a hat-trick against Aston Villa in January.
Positional rival Gabriel Jesus recorded exactly the same number of attacking returns as Aguero last season (22) but had over 500 more minutes of pitch-time.
MASON GREENWOOD
We ummed and ahhed about whether to include Mason Greenwood in this poll, given that almost half of his FPL points came after the June restart.
But 10 goals as a £4.5m forward deserves an honourable mention at the very least, especially as he found the back of the net on more occasions than the likes of Roberto Firmino, Callum Wilson and Diogo Jota.
Many Fantasy managers snapped him up for even less money that that, with his price dipping to £4.3m before his late-season purple patch.
Greenwood averaged 6.7 points per match in the final seven Gameweeks, hitting back-to-back double-digit hauls against Brighton and Bournemouth.
It’s important to acknowledge his contributions earlier in the season, too, even if it was merely appearance points as an emergency FPL substitute: the teenager played some part in 31 of United’s 38 games this season.
NOT QUITE MAKING THE CUT
Seven goals in Spurs’ final eight Premier League games almost earned Harry Kane a nomination but as we strive for a balance between the heavy hitters and more budget-friendly assets in this poll, the England striker ultimately didn’t make the cut.
Kane averaged fewer points per match (5.4) than fellow premium assets Vardy, Aguero and Aubameyang and finished a distant sixth among FPL forwards in terms of overall score (158).
A total of 18 goals scored was still a commendable achievement given his injury-enforced absence from Gameweeks 22 to 29, however.
Teemu Pukki‘s early-season accomplishments are fondly remembered but they seem like a distant memory now.
Over half of his 14 attacking returns arrived in the first five Gameweeks, with 25 blanks following in his subsequent 31 appearances.
Chris Wood was perhaps unfortunate to miss out, too.
Fourteen goals from a starting price of £6.5m was excellent but with the cheaper Ings and Calvert-Lewin doing the business and Abraham registering six more attacking returns for a little bit more money, the Kiwi striker was omitted from our final list.
A special mention for Jordan Ayew, too, whose exploits as a budget forward were overshadowed by Greenwood’s late-season returns.
The Palace striker started 37 league games from an initial price of £5.0m, finishing on the same number of FPL points as Aguero – albeit having recorded more than twice as many minutes of pitch-time.
4 years, 1 month ago
First. Top of the world ! Haha