So the international break is over, and you’ve hit that big red button to throw your team into a car wash, and remove all the scud from your windscreen and shit from your wheels; you’re finally removing that annoying that bit of KdB that’s so far back, he might as well be in your boot. You want all the shiny in-form players to shoot you up the rankings, allowing you to mock your mini-league counterparts for your ingeniousness and their cautiousness.

As with any team trying to fit in every premium player under the sun, money needs to be saved somewhere: the easiest place to do this is in defence. Now, with so many people clamouring to bring in the new and improved – to bring in the still baller – eugh – with so many people transferring in Marcos Alonso, defences around the country have shot up in price.

For this reason, the premium spot will not be looked at here, we all know who they are and the good options for that spot. In terms of saving money, one premium defender seems to be the way to go, and after looking at the fixtures for the next 10 GWs, I think I have found the optimal selection to save funds in defence without compromising on the difficulty of fixtures and balance of your squad, and that defence is:

Cedric – Naughton – Maguire – Mee – PREMIUM

Costing a total of £19.1m (excluding premium of your choosing), these players rotate perfectly together for the 2nd and 3rd defender spots; don’t believe me? Have a look for yourself:

Barring the piss-poor attempt at photoshopping these together – not my forte – these players rotate perfectly together up until GW14. That’s 10 fucking GWs of not having to worry about your defenders facing any of the big teams (barring your premium, but he’s never going to be benched anyway, regardless of fixture, is he?).

By bringing these players in on your wildcard (hits for defenders are not advised), and by rotating them thusly, these are the fixtures your defence would face for the next 10 weeks (using Alonsoas example of premium, his fixture will be placed last each week – Home games capitalised – colours correspond to players’ colour above):

GW4: WAT – CRY – lei (NEWbonus for 4th)

GW5: hud – cry – ARS

GW6: WAT – HUD – stoke

GW7: bou – stoke – MAN CITY (whu bonus for 4th)

GW8: HUD – WBA – palace (NEW – WHU bonus for 4th/5th)

GW9: swa – WBA – WAT

GW10: bha – NEW – bou

GW11: BHA – BUR – MAN UTD (Soton bonus for 4th)

GW12: bur – SWA – wba

GW13: BOU – whu – LIV

That’s a pretty darn good run (Average FDR = 1.7 for the rotating players – NOT THE PREMIUM), with room for 4th defenders on occasion as well. Looking at the pic above, unless you want to play a 4th defender in weeks not labelled, they would be up against one of the top 6. This rotation allows you to completely avoid the top teams (again, barring your premium) AND save money to be spread around the rest of your team. If you wanted to save more money, you could switch Maguire to Simpson and save 0.6m, but Maguire is likely to outscore his defensive counterpart so this move is illadvised unless funds are required.

If I was playing my WC this week, this would be the tactic I would use, taking Alonso as the example, this formation results in (out of the 30 teams faced over 10 weeks) only 4 occurrences of playing the top 6, all of which are due to Chelsea’s fixtures. Not a bad looking set up is it?

Want to save even more money, and maybe take a risk whilst doing so? Stokes’ fixtures fit nicely into this rotation as well, so Wimmer (priced so shitly at 4.4m a mere week ago) could be a viable alternative. He fits into this rotation instead of any of the players (barring Naughton), but Stoke’s fixtures match-up best when replacing him with Sotons’ Cedric, saving another 0.6m if you were so inclined to go down this path. The risk involves the uncertainty of his starting spot in the next few GW’s, but after spending £15m on him, you would think they will be looking to intergrate him into the team quite quickly.

A quick look at the premium players FDR shows that in the next 10 GWs (until GW14):

Man City & Evertons’ FDR = 29

Chelsea, United, Liverpool & Arsenals’ FDR = 31

As such, any premium is a viable option as they’ll likely be starting every game for you, and no teams’ fixtures are miles better than the others.

So, if you’re looking to go cheap with your WC defence, this is the 4-man rotation strategy for you.

If you want more shit like this then follow me on twitter @FPL_2SS.