Fullbacks are setting the fantasy pace
Premier League forwards are struggling to turn their role into fantasy points six games into the 2026/27 season. Erling Haaland and João Pedro lead the scoring charts with six and five goals respectively, yet only they appear among the top 20 Fantasy Premier League scorers. That’s an awkward split for managers: the league’s leading scorers are producing, but the players collecting the broadest fantasy returns are doing so from other positions. The gap points to a shift in how teams attack—and how FPL rewards those tactics.
Brighton’s De Cuyper leads the FPL standings with 53 points, built on clean sheets against Arsenal, Coventry, Aston Villa and Sunderland, plus two goals and two assists. Midfielder Groß and defender Tarkowski follow. Haaland and Pedro, despite being the league’s top two scorers, sit on 45 points apiece. Their totals are strong, but they haven’t separated themselves from players who can gather points in more than one way.
The next forward in the rankings is Isak, down at No. 22. He’s the only other striker among the top 30 scorers. For managers tracking football betting or fantasy performance, that imbalance makes the early-season data hard to ignore: defenders and midfielders are collecting points while forwards trail behind. The rankings don’t say that strikers have stopped mattering; they show how narrow the route to a high return can be when goals are the main source of a forward’s points.
De Cuyper’s position reflects a tactical change that FPL scoring may not fully capture. Attacking fullbacks now push high and operate like wingers for long stretches. They can earn clean-sheet points while contributing goals and assists, with bonus points adding to the return. A role once treated as a tactical variation increasingly looks like a standard feature of Premier League attacks. That combination gives a fullback several ways to score well in a given match, even if one part of the contribution doesn’t arrive.
This is more significant than it looks. A player who’s involved in both defending and attacking can benefit from the shape of a match in ways a specialist forward may not. If you’re working in this space, the practical question isn’t simply which player has scored most; it’s whether their role gives them repeated chances to contribute across the scoresheet.
More goals, but fewer than expected
The scoring picture is mixed. Average non-penalty goals per match are higher than in 2025/26, but games are still producing fewer goals than their expected-goals totals suggest. More than half of Premier League teams have scored below expectation so far, according to early-season data. Those measures describe different parts of the same story: scoring has risen on one comparison, while teams are still failing to finish as many chances as the underlying figures imply they might.
That gap may help explain why forwards are taking the hit. Teams are creating chances, but when those chances go unconverted, the striker is the most visible target for blame. A midfielder who supplies a through ball can retain strong underlying numbers even when the move ends without a goal. The forward who misses the chance loses the clearest route to points. Fantasy scoring makes that difference tangible: involvement in a promising move isn’t the same as a return on the scoreboard.
It’s a distinction between creating opportunities and finishing them. The season’s figures suggest that chance creation alone isn’t translating into the returns managers expect from forwards, while players in deeper positions can score through several routes. That doesn’t make a missed chance proof of poor performance; it does mean the fantasy outcome can look harsher for the player expected to finish the move.
Here's the thing: expected goals can describe the quality and volume of chances without guaranteeing what happens next. Similar scoring patterns can leave a forward with little to show for useful movement, while a defender’s clean sheet or an assist still supplies points through a separate route. The gap between performance and fantasy return is part of the problem.
An early table, not a settled verdict
Six gameweeks offer a small sample, and Haaland’s lead in the scoring race is still modest: Pedro is just one goal behind. A slow start for most forwards doesn’t establish a season-long pattern, but it does expose the growing fantasy value of players who combine defensive contributions with attacking threat. The current rankings are a snapshot, not a reliable forecast of where every position will finish.
For now, FPL rankings are capturing a tactical reality: fullbacks can collect across the scoresheet, while forwards depend more heavily on goals. Whether strikers catch up will hinge on teams converting the chances they already create. And yet, a change in finishing could alter the picture quickly. A handful of successful moves can shift individual totals, while the broader question—how often each role gets chances to contribute—will take longer to judge.
What the early returns mean for managers
What this means for you is that position alone won’t tell the whole story. A defender pushing into attacking areas may offer a wider set of ways to earn points, while a forward can remain valuable if the chances keep coming and the finishing improves. Managers should read the standings alongside the scoring context, rather than treating six weeks of totals as a final ranking of player quality.
There’s a limit to what the table can prove. It shows who has accumulated points so far; it doesn’t establish that fullbacks will keep outscoring forwards, or that the current conversion gap will persist. But the early returns do put pressure on a familiar assumption: that the most obvious goal scorer will also be the safest fantasy pick. For now, the numbers say the route to points is broader for some roles—and narrower for most forwards.
Still, the sample is short.