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Welcome to the 2023/24 Fantasy Premier League season, RotoBallers! The FPL game launched on July 5 and all the prices are revealed. Today, we will continue our team previews with Manchester City and work through the EPL teams, looking at what catches our eye as well as their FPL outlooks.
We began our FPL coverage two years ago and are going big for the upcoming 2023/24 campaign. We will have position previews, team previews, and reactions to the most significant transfers in the preseason. Then, during the year, we will bring you our usual Staff Roundtable, weekly rankings, and a new monthly article: the Watchlist.
The first game of the 2023/24 Fantasy Premier League season is August 11 at 3:00 PM ET. Also, look out for the rest of our excellent soccer coverage as the squad gets you all set for every English Premier League and UEFA Champions League with our EPL DFS lineup picks and betting picks.
FPL Team Preview: Manchester City
Manchester City made it back-to-back-to-back title wins last season, winning their fifth crown in six years. That was part of a historic treble as they added the FA Cup and Champions League trophies. Although they have squad depth the rest of the league can only dream about, that doesn't always make it easy to roster their players with rotation a big part of their success. And there are still the FA charges for 115 financial breaches hanging over them.
Last Year's Manchester City Stats
- League Finish: 1st, 89 points
- Most goals: Erling Haaland, 36 goals
- Most assists: Kevin De Bruyne Sterling, 18 assists
- Most FPL Points: Erling Haaland, 272 FPL points
Who is your favorite Manchester City defender for the upcoming FPL campaign?
- No City defender reached 100 points last year and I'm not too enamored with any of them. If I did go with one, Nathan Ake would be my choice. His versatility as a left-back or central defender helps his playing time. At £5.0m, he's the cheapest of their starters and his 3.5 points per game ranked third on the team behind John Stones (£5.5m) and the likely to depart Joao Cancelo (£6.0).
Which Manchester City midfielder is catching your eye?
- Kevin De Bruyne has been the standard bearer for FPL midfielders since joining City but I'm concerned he's starting to slow down physically and City has been protecting him more and more. So I'd rather save £3.0m and go with Phil Foden at £7.5m (with Jack Grealish a close second). Foden's 4.4 points per game ranked 11th among all midfielders last season and he finished tied-17th at the position in total points (142) despite starting just 22 games. De Bruyne's fitness and Ilkay Gundugan's departure certainly leaves the door open to more playing time too.
The Manchester City forward who will be bagging us some FPL points is...?
- As much as I like Julian Alvarez, Erling Haaland is the obvious no-brainer option. He led all of FPL in points (272) and while his £14.0m price tag may put some people off, his 7.8 points per game was 0.9 points more than next-placed Harry Kane. Only Luis Suarez (295 points in the 2013/14 season) has ever accumulated more points in a season than Haaland did last campaign.
What run of fixtures favors Manchester City the most for the 2023/24 FPL season?
- One of the reasons I'll most likely be going with Haaland to begin the season is their opening fixtures. Their opening five games are pretty fantasy friendly and are followed by fixtures against Nottingham Forest and Wolves. They also have a really soft-looking finish to the season with their last eight games not featuring a single opponent to have finished in the top-6 last season.
Erling Haaland's first 5️⃣ #PLFixtures:
🟣 Burnley (A)
⚫️ Newcastle (H)
⚔️ Sheffield United (A)
⚪️ Fulham (H)
⚒️ West Ham (A)How many points will the Norwegian get in 2023/24?#FPL pic.twitter.com/ebHQnctlDX
— Fantasy Premier League (@OfficialFPL) June 15, 2023
How many Manchester City players will you have in your Gameweek 1 squad?
- I'm almost 100% set on Haaland and Foden does appeal so I'll be running two at least. I do want to see how they line up to begin the season and whether or not new signing Mateo Kovačić will just slide straight into the Gundogan role so I may go with a defender or Ederson but I have no doubt I'll have a trio of City players before the first few games are in the books.
What is one bold FPL prediction for any Manchester City player?
- At some point, the FA have to dish out their punishment for City's financial rule-breaking and that could include a transfer embargo (albeit that might seem a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted at this stage of the Summer). One of the benefactors of that should be Rico Lewis, who impressed in limited playing time last season. Lewis finishing the season with 100 points isn't beyond the realms of possibility as a result.
