Cheapest 2019/20 FPL Players – 5 Unknown Stories

Written by Jack A. Goodwin (He has lovely hair)

A retired England Futsal International, Gareth Southgate’s Godson, Deaf Goalkeepers and a 4-year old model competition winner! The lowest value players of FPL go under the microscope this week as we delve in to the unknown world of the bench fodder of Fantasy Football.

A word of warning – these are not recommended player picks for FPL 19/20… There’s enough of those posts!

This is Part 2 of 2  – you can check out the first five picks here

1. Vincent Janssen – Tottenham – Fwd – £4.5 – TSB 1.3%

In the 2015-16 Eredivisie season, little Vincent won the Dutch Football Talent of the Year and was the Golden Boot winner with 27 goals for AZ. Now, of course this will have the “big lads” looking at him, sure enough none other that Spurs snapped him up for a mere £17 million.

Fast forward 3 years and Janssen has gone from £7.5 in the FPL down to £4.5, scored 2 goals in just 4 appearances for Spurs and looks set to watch the Harry Kane show for the foreseeable future.

Rumor has it that he is so confident that he will not play for Spurs, he experiments with not taking shin pads to training and the occasional doctors note (dicky throat, again).

However, that new Anderlecht manager Vincent Kompany may be very close to ending Vincent’s misery if papers are to be believed.

ED: Since the time of writing Vincent Jannsen has left Tottenham to join Mexican top-flight side Monterrey for a reported £6.3m. This makes absolutely no difference to this posting though as we are not encouraging you to pick any of these players. This also means Jack’s link with Anderlecht was a load of balls.

2. Martin Kelly – Crystal Palace – Def – £4.0 – TSB 23.4%

Now Martin has one of the most embarrassing England International statistics there is. He has the shortest ever England international career. He played 2 minutes and 39 seconds in a friendly against Norway back in 2012 and was an unused member of the Euro 2012 squad.

At 29 years old, Martin will likely never play for England again which must be hella heartbreaking. With 13 appearances for Palace last season, I can’t quite get my head around the 23.4% of managers bringing him in to their teams at the moment, maybe they all absolutely LOVED his own goal last season against Leicester they see potential?

3. Ben Johnson – West Ham – Def – £4.0 – TSB 1.1%

Much like Frederick Woodman, Ben has been fairly fortunate in his upbringing.

The nephew of Paul Parker and Ledley King’s cousin, Ben has been at West Ham since he was 7 and made his Premier League debut against Man City in Feb 2019. He has next to no chance of playing this season with 4 wing-backs in front of him in the pecking order.

Absolutely no reason to be picking this guy, the tiny 67kg (thanks, Google) chap will likely be in auto-teams only, flinching at anyone who makes a fist near him.

4. Maarten Stekelenburg – Everton – GK – £4.0 – TSB 5.3%

1982 was fun, wasn’t it? Eye of the Tiger was No.1 worldwide and 6ft 6 Maarten entered the world (he of course was slightly smaller at that time). Stekelenburg is deaf in one ear. Let that sentence settle in for a moment. Stekelenburg, a footballer, is deaf in one ear. Surely opposing teams should exploit this? Surely? I’m not sure how, or even perhaps why, but this needs exploiting before Maarten retires back to Haarlem (the Dutch – not so ghetto – version of its US counterpart). Upon signing a contract extension last season, Maarten openly admitted that he’s fine with not playing due to Pickford being No.1 – quite ballsy really.

5. Mason Greenwood – Manchester United – GK – £4.5 – TSB 4.1%

Mason was making headlines (somewhere, apparently) at the age of 4 …winning a modelling competition and bagging the prize of a £50 shopping voucher which, at 4, is well over 300 Freddo bars.

(Ed. This really annoys me. At current prices looking at the FII (Freddo Inflation Index) £50 would only buy you about 166 Freddo bars at their current price of 30p…. 30 PENCE FOR A FREDDO??? WORLD HAS GONE BONKERS)

For those young’uns reading, Mason is the current Fortnite champion in the Manchester United squad. Mason is the only true player on this list who is expected to make some contribution to their respective squad this coming season. Ole has already stated that he will be played and is expecting goals from the young forward…he’s 17! Last rant, how the hell is Mason (a fairly known Manchester United player) not verified on Twitter with 55K followers but there’s Kayne Ramsay strutting around Southampton with his blue tick?!

Written by Jack A. Goodwin -Follow him on Twitter @JackAGoodwin

Allow me for one moment to put one foot firmly on the desk like a cool substitute geography teacher with a ponytail: hey kids, let’s talk about Fantasy Football. I am an alternative FPL writer, looking for hidden tales behind the most obscure players, dark humour in the game and the creative storytelling to the most mundane of GameWeeks!

As a lifelong football fan (Man United), I am excited to be able to share my writing passion with the always opinionated fantasy community. I have played the official FPL game for over 7 years, running leagues throughout the offices of my day job. Sure, I don’t finish too well, but it’s the taking part that counts, right? I’m only a man.

I hope in some twisted way that my articles will make you question your decisions, alter your teams irrationally and perhaps ask yourself why on earth you listened to this man!

Class dismissed.

FINALLY…

Check out the Bang Average Fantasy Football Podcast featuring FantasyGaffer, MikeP and FantasyYIRMA as each week they look into both FPL and DRAFT formats of the game.