Here are our defender picks for week 21.

If you read out last post about keepers you should already know that we’ve been talking a bit about rotating for home players. That’s a lot easier to do for Keepers, but you can apply the same idea to defenders as well. If you’ve decided to play 4-5 defenders each game, this will be much harder and may not be applicable at all. BUT, if you saw Cully’s recent article about Home Keeper Points, you can see that that is an advantage when at home. In the coming weeks, we’ll post a new chart that highlights the remaining home games for each team.

But for now, keep reading to see out defender picks.

Defenders

Our main recommendation for your defense this week is to have a plan to get Colorado and New England defenders in for next week. We’ve already stocked up on some for 2 reasons. New England has a pretty good-looking home game this week (vs Houston) and both teams have a double game week next week. Just remember that Colorado has a bye this week.

There are two New England players that we like. The obvious one is Jose Goncalves (16.2% @ $6.4m); he’s a solid central defender with a good record of getting bonus points. He’s not gotten quite as many recently, but he still has the potential. The other defender we like it Chris Tierney (3.4% @ $5.0m). If you have not kept up with his stats recently, he’s been getting a lot of key passes and crosses, and has been taking corners. He’s a nice offensive differential threat and could pay off.

Speaking of cheap attacking defenders, we’d be overlooking a great pick if we did not mention Sheanon Williams (6.1% @ $5.1m). Williams is a winger who has been getting forward more and linking up well with Philly’s attacking players. A goal and a few assists allowed him to score double-digit points three weeks in a row (13, 12, 11). With a series of home games coming up, it could happen again.

A couple of popular players you might want to be careful of this week are Michel Garbini Pereira and Omar Gonzalez. Michel has not been getting his normal attacking numbers recently and LA still has to prove itself before play a defender on an away game (especially against Portland).

We’re going to close with the big names this week. SKC has a home game against Toronto this week, and it’s a match that looks good for Aurélien Collin (perhaps they will keep a CS this tie). The last few weeks left many managers with feelins of anger against Montreal. So we have no problem recommending Jamison Olave for New York’s game against Montreal. Olave has great bonus numbers and a clean sheet could see him was a massive score.

Final thoughts

• Don’t forget about cheap attacking defenders

• You may be able to get some bargain Colorado defenders soon

• Never captain Olave

That’s all I got. I’d love to hear your feedback, plans, and insights.

These are our picks, if you think there should be more names on this list, please leave a comment or come to r/FantasyMLS and comment on the post. You can also leave a message on our Facebook page or you can find us on Twitter @FantasyMLSTips. Keep checking back for more updates through the week for other positions. Good Luck!