The Defence

When picking defenders it is hard to look beyond Leighton Baines of Everton. His points to pounds ratio means that he is more valuable than all the midfield player and most of the strikers, especially the top ones. Basically he is too good to overlook with his goals from free kicks and penalties and his assists. The one word of caution is what impact will the change of manager from Moyes to Martinez have on his performance. It's worth a gamble though, so Baines is in.

You need 5 defenders. That is one third of the squad. If you were to spend one third of the budget, that would be approximately £33m. That is an average of £6.6m per player. Baines is £7.5 which reduces the average for the remaining 4 to £6.3, which in defender terms is pretty good, especially as defenders on the whole give a better return on investment than Midfield players. In general it is the defenders from the top teams that give the best value. I don't want more than one defender from any ones team because I don't want to use up a whole team's allocation of 3 on defence, and when a team does have a bad day the impact will be multiplied. As I already have an Arsenal goalkeeper I am excluding any Arsenal defenders. That leaves Chelsea, Man City, Man Utd, and Spurs.

For Chelsea, Ivanovic stands out as the best value. There is a question mark as to whether Mourinho will allow him the same freedom to get forward, but that more cautious approach may mean fewer goals conceded. He's in.

The same goes for Zabaleta at Man City. He's in.

At Man Utd, Vidic did not score well last season because of injury. If he stays fit this season he will score more highly than Evra and Rafael. He's in.

For Spurs, Vertongen and Walker give similar returns but there is a doubt over Vertongen at the start of the season, so Walker is in.

So my 5 defenders are Baines, Ivanovic, Zabaleta, Vidic and Walker. The total cost is £32m thus saving £1m to use elsewhere.

But if money gets tight, one of them may have to be sacrificed for a cheaper model. One option that I considered, and may return to, is to start with an Aston Villa defender because they have two games in the first week and that could mean extra points. But as those games are against Arsenal and Chelsea I decided against it.