Let’s quickly look back at the 2024/25 season of Fantasy Premier League , review it, and learn from mistakes in order to improve our FPL skills in the next season.
That’s why in this article, we will look at the best FPL team from the 2024/25 season – the top-scoring combination of players respecting the budget and other constraints.
Basically, the team (a zombie team) you would have picked at the start of the season and scored the maximum number of points possible.
The best (top-scoring) FPL team in 2024/25
First, some math introduction to this problem.
From a mathematical point of view, Fantasy Premier League is an optimization task.
We have our cost function (points scored by a combination of 11 players), and constraints (budget constraint, formation constraints, teams’ constraints).
Our goal is, of course, to maximize the value of our cost function – to maximize the points scored by our FPL team respecting the constraints.
So, let’s look at which combination of 11 players within the budget scored the most points last season.
- We used a genetic algorithm to find a solution.
- We were looking for 11 players in any eligible formation within the budget of 82.5 million – so the bench is 4-4.5-4.5-4.5.
- We used prices from the beginning of the 2025/25 season.
- We did not consider any substitutions and transfers.
- Only one player was captain for the whole season
So, no transfers, no substitutions, and no captaincy changes for this team.
Here is the top-scoring combination of players, the best FPL team of the 2024/25 season:
- Pickford (5m);
- Alexander Arnold (7m), Gvardiol (6m), Milenkovič (4.5m)
- Salah (C) (12.5m), Palmer (10.5m), Bowen (7.5m), Mbeumo (7m)
- Isak (8.5m), Wissa (6m), Wood (6m)
If you have picked this team at the beginning of the season, you would get 2531 points at the end of the season without transfers, without subs, and with Salah captain every gameweek.
For example, the winner of FPL 24/25 scored 2 810 points which only shows how impotant transfers are.
Lessons learned
The most important knowledge from the top-scoring team:
- It shows how underpriced players were previous season
- The 3-4-3 formation was the best formation – heavy midfield and attack, value up-front, defenders were not doing great
- It was a season of budget forwards like Wood, Wissa, Cunha
Before the start of the season, we could have predicted (to some extent) that Salah, TAA, Palmer, Bowen, Mbeumo were going to be great picks for our FPL teams.
But it was unlikely that we would have successfully predicted that Milenkovič or Wissa were going to have such an outstanding season.
The lesson learned here is: pick 5 or 6 “safe-heaven” players before the start of the season. And then, built a team around them during the season, when cheap options emerge.
The best FPL team calculated from points per game
And at the end, let’s look at the optimal team calculated from points per game instead of total points scored.
This will allow us to eliminate injuries from our equation.
Here is the best team from points per match (only for players with a minimum of 10 starts):
- Kelleher (4,5m);
- Alexander Arnold (7m), Gvardiol (6m), Gabriel (6m)
- Salah (C) (12.5m), Palmer (10.5m), Bowen (7.5m), Mbeumo (7m)
- Isak (8.5m), Cunha (6.5m), Wood (6m)
Output: 70.4 points per match (including captaincy points) = 2675 expected points per 38 games
The best FPL team with new prices
Now, let’s try something different.
The team above was the best team for the last season.
But what about this season? Let’s change players’ prices to new prices from the 2025/26 season.
How will the best team change? Which players will keep their place despite different price tags?
Here is the best team with new prices:
- Pickford (5.5m);
- Gvardiol (6m), Milenkovič (5.5m), Munoz (5.5m)
- Salah (C) (14.5m), Mbeumo (8m), Luis Diaz (8m), J. Murphy (6.5m)
- Bowen (8m), Wissa (7.5m), Wood (7.5m)
Lessons learned
The total number of points of this FPL team with the new team is only 2442 points (89 points less than the team above with previous season prices).
- Pamer’s funds are spread to the whole team
- Big value at midfield and in attack in mid-priced players
- Pickford, Gvardiol, Milenkovič, Salah, Mbeumo, Bowen, Wissa, Wood kept their place despite price rises
The best FPL team calculated from points per game (+new prices)
And at the end, let’s look at the optimal team calculated from points per game instead of total points scored.
This will allow us to eliminate injuries from our equation.
Here is the best team with new prices:
- Kelleher (4,5m);
- Milenkovič (5.5m), Gvardiol (6m), Gabriel (6m)
- Salah (C) (12.5m), Mbeumo (8m), Cunha (8m), Amad (6.5m)
- Bowen (8m), Wissa (7.5m), Wood (7.5m)
Output: 68.1 points per match (including captaincy points) = 2588 expected points per 38 games
The best FPL team from previous seasons
We did similar optimization at the end of 2022/23, 2021/22, 2020/21, and 2018/19 seasons as well, so feel free to compare the best FPL teams and conclusions from those optimizations:
