The Fantasy Premier league team has introduced a new FPL points system called ‘Defensive Contributions‘ for the upcoming 2025/26 season. This change completely transforms how we judge and choose defensive players, potentially making solid, reliable center-backs as valuable as attacking full-backs in Fantasy Premier League for the first time ever.
In the past seasons of FPL players always went for the more attacking options in defence and midfield. You would always pick a player like Trent Alexander Arnold over a player like Virgil Van Dijk as the points system favoured attacking output over defensive actions such as blocks and interceptions. Even in midfield you would go for an attacking midfielder like Saka over Rice. Seeing the low selection rates of these players, the Fantasy Team has decided to switch things up by adding this new rule.
How does it work?
According to the Fantasy Premier League website any defender who reaches a combined total of 10 clearances, blocks, interceptions and tackles (CBIT) in a match will score two FPL points. This will apply to all outfield players not just your defensive assets.
For Forwards and Midfielders the metric will include recoveries as well CBIRT, Which includes clearances, blocks, interceptions, recoveries, and tackles. They will need to make 12 of these total actions to earn 2 extra points.
Thanks to a graphic (featured image above) from FPL website we can have a look as to who would have benefited from this points system last year.
Change the Meta?
Here is the team of the season from last year, as you can see even though we have 2 CBs, Gvardiol often operates as an attacker often venturing forward and grabbing goals or assists. Now the new change would see the top 3 defenders in FPL last season with DC points added :-
Milenkovic goes to the top with 171 points an increase of 26 points.
Murillo goes second with 168 points an increase of a massive 38 points.
Van Dijk is in third with 165 points an increase of 22 points.
A player like Trent Alexander Arnold would have only benefited by an increase of 6 DC points.
Will this rule affect the template for next season? Many experts are bringing in Van Dijk and Tarkowski as their premium defenders instead of more attacking players such as Frimpong or Gvardiol. Keeping their defence light with these high DC defenders and going for a 3-5-2 formation. Spreading their money into buying explosive midfielders and defenders. This graphic from FPL Harry shows the template team of the FPL experts.
