In this article, we will look at the best midfielders to pick for your Fantasy Premier League team in the Gameweek 5 of the 2025/26 season.
Let’s dive in and look at our watchlist. Here are the midfielders to pick from, with our comments and ratings of each.
Read more about GW5 in our guide: FPL Gameweek 5: Tips, Captain, Transfer Targets & Team Selection
Midfielders watchlist for GW5 and beyond
Antoine Semenyo (BOU, 7.5) — High attacking volume (xGI/90 ≈ 0.72), excellent form (form ≈ 7.0, PPG ≈ 9.0), and great upcoming fixtures (avg diff ~2.53). Very involved in final third play. Rating: 9/10
Mohamed Salah (LIV, 14.5) — Still elite in reliability (xGI/90 ≈ 0.40), consistent points (PPG ≈ 6.2), and steady form. Slight overperformance (xGI diff ≈ +1.40). Rating: 8.5/10
Cole Palmer (CHE, 10.4) — Small sample, xGI/90 ≈ 0.67, but low recent output (form ≈ 2.3). Needs more involvement. Rating: 8/10
Bruno Fernandes (MUN, 9.0) — High creative and goal involvement (xGI/90 ≈ 0.71), but also significantly underperforming (xGI diff ≈ −1.82). Form lower than expected. Rating: 7.5/10
Moises Caicedo (CHE, 5.6) — Minimal attacking output (xGI/90 ≈ 0.14), but excellent form (≈ 8.0). Strong defensive numbers (defensive_contrib/90 ≈ 14.75). Mostly a deep-lying role. Rating: 7/10
Bryan Mbeumo (MUN, 8.1) — Solid underlying numbers (xGI/90 ≈ 0.74), but heavily underperforming (xGI diff ≈ −1.95). Still very promising if output normalizes. Rating: 6.5/10
Jack Grealish (EVE, 6.8) — Solid offensive metrics (xGI/90 ≈ 0.63), notable overperformance (xGI diff ≈ +2.01), and form is up. Rating: 6/10
Anthony (BUR, 5.5) — Decent attacking threat (xGI/90 ≈ 0.53) with stable PPG (≈ 6.0). Not explosive, but efficient. Rating: 5.5/10
Enzo Fernández (CHE, 6.6) — More attacking involvement than expected from a deeper role (xGI/90 ≈ 0.61), with strong form (≈ 8.7). Could regress slightly, but current returns are impressive. Rating: 4.0/10
Over/Underperformers among Midfielders before GW5
Tips for picking the best midfielders for your FPL team
1. If you pick a premium midfielder, make sure he is also a good captaincy option.
- Usually, if you pick 10m+ player, you want him to be a captaincy contender in gameweeks to come
2. Do not overlook talimans
- Also, consider midfielders who are talismans for their teams – that are heavily involved in almost every goal of their team (for example, Mbeumo for Brentford last season)
3. Consider probabilities when picking midfielders in FPL.
- Let bookies any time goalscorer odds to help you with that. You can find them here: Premier League Goalscoring Odds.
4. Defensive contributions will change things
- Players like Bruno Fernandes, who also has good attacking potential and a lot of defensive contributions, will have so many routes to points that you should not ignore them
- 5.5m midfielders (Anderson, Caicedo, Baleba) will offer stable points through this season. Do not expect hauls, but slow and steady wins the race. If you cannot afford to actively manage your FPL team, these are players you want to consider. But realize, they will not be the top-scoring players in the game. For example, Caicedo would score 140 points last season with DEFCONs – which is pretty solid for 5.5m, it could equal the output of other 6.5m – 7m attacking midfieders.
- So, potentially, over the long run, 5.5m MIDs good at DEFCONs could be better picks than 6.5m attacking midfielders = because you know, who the 5.5m MIDs good at DEFCONs are (Caicedo, Anderson), while you cannot really predict which 6.5 midfielder will do well. I like that certainty.
5. Play formation with at least 4 midfielders
- Each year, we calculate the top-scoring combination of players within the budget. Over the last 6 years, best team of each year has at least 4 midfielders. Midfield is the place where the points are most concentrated.
- Read more here: What is the best formation for FPL?
6. Have realistic expectations from your midfielders and patience
- Usually, the top-scoring midfielders can get around 200-240 points per season (on some occasions even more, but this is the realistic expectation from premium FPL midfielders like Salah or Palmer) – that is 5.2 – 6.3 points per match – So you should expect 1 attacking returns in every 1 games on average (for 3 matches it could be 1-1-1 for example, or 1-0-2, or 0-0-3 etc).
- Good mid-priced FPL midfielders (usually 7.5m – 9m range) can get approximately 160-190 points per season, so expect around 4.2 – 5 points per match on average. So you should expect 2 attacking returns in every 3-4 games on average.
- Good cheaper midfielders (6m – 7.5m range) can get around 130-160 points per season = 3.4 – 5 points per match – on average 1 attacking return every 2nd-3rd game.
- Budget midfielders can get around 115-130 points per season = 3 – 3.4 points per match
- Players best at defensive contributions can get you points from defensive contribution in around 50% of matches, which is an extra 2 points every second game, which is an extra 38 points per season (equivalent of 7.6 goals for a midfielder, and 9.5 goals for forwards)
- The points of midfielders and forwards usually came in waves or in clusters – so the run of “form” can be followed with a run of blanks.
FPL midfielders with stable points output in the previous 3 seasons
Read more in our article: Best long-term FPL picks for 2025/26 season
