The Greatest Fantasy Premier League Bargains of All Time
You remember the ritual if you’re old enough. Newspaper spread across the kitchen table, fingers stained with ink, brain whirring through player codes and price lists. You scribbled down Julian Dicks and Juninho, dialled the house phone, and hoped your maths – and your hunches – would carry you through until the next transfer window.
Before chips, templates and triple captains, fantasy football meant literally writing out an XI. It was crude, clunky, brilliant. And yet one thing has never changed: the pure hit of joy when you unearth a bargain that nobody else has seen.
A free-kick taking defender. An out-of-position midfielder masquerading as a striker. A £4.0m keeper racking up clean sheets like a title challenger. That’s the drug.
Since the official Fantasy Premier League game launched in 2002-03, it has grown into a global behemoth with millions of players, wildcards, xG debates and price changes tracked like stock markets. But across almost a quarter of a century, who truly stands out? Who are the players that defined eras, broke the game, or turned casual managers into obsessives?
With the help of resident FPL analyst Thomas Woods and deep data from Fantasy Football Scout, here are the icons – judged on numbers, yes, but also on value, impact and that intangible cult status. Thierry Henry, Frank Lampard, Cristiano Ronaldo: giants of the early years, but always expensive. Mo Salah: an all-time great who has hit 200 points in a season eight times and remains the only player ever to crash through the 300-point barrier – twice.
This list looks elsewhere. It lives where the bargains lurk.
10. Harry Kane, Tottenham, 2014-15 – £5.0m
It’s easy to forget now, but Harry Kane once entered an FPL season as a budget punt. In 2014-15, he sat behind Emmanuel Adebayor and Roberto Soldado in the Tottenham pecking order, priced at just £5.0m and widely viewed as a back-up.
He didn’t score in the Premier League until November, a 90th-minute winner off the bench at Aston Villa. That moment changed everything. Kane forced his way into Mauricio Pochettino’s side and never looked back, ending the campaign with 21 league goals.
Between gameweeks 18 and 25, he went into full-on cheat-code mode: nine goals, four assists, 16 bonus points, 77 points in eight games. Those who jumped early rode a tidal wave. His price climbed from £5.0m to £6.4m, he finished on 191 points, and despite fewer minutes than anyone above him, he still sits 11th on the all-time value list.
From squad filler to era-defining forward, all in one season.
8. Michel Vorm, Swansea, 2011-12 – £4.0m
Michel Vorm’s Premier League debut looked like a horror show at first glance. Four goals conceded away at Manchester City. But buried inside that scoreline was the start of an FPL phenomenon: 11 saves, the most in a single game that season.
Swansea City’s Dutch keeper became a revelation. He didn’t just make saves; he stacked up clean sheets – 14 of them – and finished with the second-highest goalkeeper score behind Joe Hart, who started the game a full £3.0m more expensive.
Vorm’s price climbed to £5.3m, his ownership soared until he was the fourth-most selected player in the entire game, and he swept Swansea’s real-life awards as well. It proved to be his peak year, both on the pitch and in FPL, but what a peak it was.
For £4.0m, he turned a goalkeeper slot into a weapon.
7. Stuart Dallas, Leeds, 2020-21 – £4.5m
Under Marcelo Bielsa, Leeds played chaos football. Under FPL rules, Stuart Dallas turned that chaos into gold.
Listed as a defender, Dallas spent much of 2020-21 operating like an attacking midfielder, popping up all over the pitch and, crucially, still banking clean sheet points. He cost just £4.5m at the start.
The numbers are outrageous for that price: eight goals, 12 clean sheets, three assists, 171 points. He even smashed Manchester City with a famous brace for a 17-point haul.
As Thomas Woods puts it, his versatility was a gift. FPL had him tagged as a defender; Bielsa used him as a roving, box-crashing runner. Managers who trusted the eye test and the price tag were rewarded with one of the great value seasons.
6. Michail Antonio, West Ham, 2019-20 – £7.0m
Michail Antonio is not the most obvious name on a list like this. His 2019-20 season was disrupted by injuries and the coronavirus shutdown. His price actually drifted down. Then football returned, and Antonio detonated.
Classified as a midfielder but deployed up front, he caught fire in July 2020. Seven appearances, eight goals, and one game that still sits in FPL folklore: Norwich 0-4 West Ham.
Antonio scored all four. Twenty-six points in a single gameweek. That haul is the joint-best ever for a player priced under £7.0m, matched only by Cole Palmer, and just three short of Salah’s all-time record.
It wasn’t the longest spell of dominance, but in terms of sheer, explosive impact, few can match that month.
5. John Lundstram, Sheffield United, 2019-20 – £4.0m
“Lord Lundstram” didn’t just become a meme; he became a strategy.
Heading into 2019-20, John Lundstram was a £4.0m defender who barely registered in pre-season planning. He had made only five starts for Sheffield United in the previous campaign. Then FPL’s greatest misclassification took centre stage.
He wasn’t a defender at all. He played as a box-to-box midfielder in Chris Wilder’s side, marauding through the middle while collecting defender points.
Woods spells it out: a £4.0m asset who started games, scored five goals, provided four assists, and chipped in with clean sheets on the way to 144 points. His 21-point, two-goal explosion in gameweek 11 became compulsory viewing.
Starting Lundstram didn’t just earn points; it freed up cash. He turned the traditional £4.0m bench fodder slot into a starting XI lock, allowing managers to pour money into premium stars elsewhere. That’s how legends are made.
4. Riyad Mahrez, Leicester, 2015-16 – £5.5m
Leicester’s title-winning season was a sporting miracle. In FPL terms, it was Riyad Mahrez who broke the game.
Priced at £5.5m, he exploded out of the blocks with 15 points in gameweek one against Sunderland, rewarding the 5.9% of managers who had taken a pre-season punt. That wasn’t a one-off. Mahrez hit double figures in five of the first six gameweeks, amassing 56 points in that spell – one of the hottest starts in FPL history.
By gameweek seven, half the game owned him. The secret was out.
Jamie Vardy’s 15-game run of returns grabbed headlines, but he had started the season £0.5m more expensive. Mahrez, the cheaper option, finished as the overall top scorer with 240 points.
A title for Leicester. A title for anyone who nailed Mahrez from the start.
3. Michu, Swansea, 2012-13 – £6.5m
Some players feel bigger on a fantasy screen than they ever did in real life. Michu was that player.
Arriving at Swansea as a relatively unknown Spaniard, priced at £6.5m, he looked like a curiosity rather than a cornerstone. A few sharp-eyed managers noted his 15-goal season in La Liga and took the risk. On the opening day at QPR, he scored twice.
The bandwagon started rolling and never really stopped. Michu was essentially a striker listed as a midfielder, and he punished that loophole with 18 league goals and 190 FPL points. His price climbed by £2.0m across the campaign.
Woods calls him the biggest one-season wonder in FPL history, and it’s hard to argue. He scored just twice the following year and then left for Napoli. But for that one season, he was everywhere – and in almost everyone’s team.
2. Mohamed Salah, Liverpool, 2024-25 – £12.5m
If this list is about value, how does a premium giant make the cut? By being so relentlessly dominant that even a huge price tag looks cheap.
Mohamed Salah has redefined what an FPL season looks like. Since the game began, 52 players have reached 200 points in a campaign at least once. Salah has done it eight times. Nobody else has ever broken 300 points; he has done it twice.
The pinnacle came in 2024-25: a scarcely believable 344 points, the highest single-season total in FPL history. It followed his “worst” year in the game, a season where he still cruised past 200 points.
Luis Suarez once rattled in 55 attacking returns in 2013-14. Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson have turned full-back into a premium position. But Salah stands alone. He is the one premium you justify at any cost.
In a game built on bargains, he is the exception you always make.
1. Cole Palmer, Chelsea, 2023-24 – £5.0m
To understand why Cole Palmer sits at the top of this list, you have to rewind to how his Chelsea career started: quietly.
He arrived from Manchester City seeking minutes, not headlines. FPL priced him at £5.0m as a midfielder. He didn’t start a league game for Chelsea until gameweek seven. When he first hit double figures, at Burnley in gameweek eight, only 63,575 managers owned him – 0.6% of the game.
Then came Tottenham away in gameweek 12, another double-digit return and a jolt of recognition. Ownership climbed to 4.5%. The eye test matched the numbers. Chelsea might be erratic, but their new playmaker was not.
From there, the surge was relentless. By gameweek 33, more than five million managers owned Palmer. They watched him dismantle Everton with four goals and a 26-point haul, matching Antonio’s under-£7.0m record and sitting just behind Salah’s all-time mark.
He finished the season as the overall top scorer with 244 points. He had started at £5.0m and ended with the biggest price rise in FPL history, jumping £5.5m to cost £10.5m at the start of 2024-25.
Fantasy Football Scout’s verdict is blunt: based on starting price, Cole Palmer in 2023-24 is the best value FPL player ever.
From afterthought to essential, from punt to pillar, he encapsulates everything that keeps managers coming back: spotting the moment, backing the talent, and watching a bargain turn into a monster.
The numbers will keep changing. New names will emerge. But somewhere, right now, another £5.0m wildcard is sitting in the game, waiting to become the next legend.
