This article is part of our Sweeping the Floor series.
There are plenty of important tasks when trying to build a winning daily fantasy soccer lineup, but one big consideration is whether you should try to use a lower-priced player who could outperform their salary and allow you to pay up at other more impactful positions. There is no easy recipe for finding these types of players, and sometimes the ones who end up being the best on a certain slate simply come out of no where.
There have been 48 instances of a starting player costing $4,000 or less scoring at least 10.00 fantasy points in classic slates on DraftKings, though every player on the list with at least 13.00 made the scoresheet. The highest performance of the season came in Gameweek 6 when Burnley's Aaron Lennon had one goal on two shots (one on target), one assist, two crosses, two interceptions, three tackles won and three fouls committed for 23.00 fantasy points at $3,700. Lennon's performance was a pretty significant outlier in relation to his regular output, as his 7.00 floor points in that match were 1.25 more than his overall fantasy points in any of his other three starts this season.
But this column isn't concerned with getting on the scoresheet, so let's give it up for Philip Billing, who not only shares the honor of having the most floor points (12.75) in a match this season among players costing $4,000 or less, but he also has three of the top six scores in that price
There are plenty of important tasks when trying to build a winning daily fantasy soccer lineup, but one big consideration is whether you should try to use a lower-priced player who could outperform their salary and allow you to pay up at other more impactful positions. There is no easy recipe for finding these types of players, and sometimes the ones who end up being the best on a certain slate simply come out of no where.
There have been 48 instances of a starting player costing $4,000 or less scoring at least 10.00 fantasy points in classic slates on DraftKings, though every player on the list with at least 13.00 made the scoresheet. The highest performance of the season came in Gameweek 6 when Burnley's Aaron Lennon had one goal on two shots (one on target), one assist, two crosses, two interceptions, three tackles won and three fouls committed for 23.00 fantasy points at $3,700. Lennon's performance was a pretty significant outlier in relation to his regular output, as his 7.00 floor points in that match were 1.25 more than his overall fantasy points in any of his other three starts this season.
But this column isn't concerned with getting on the scoresheet, so let's give it up for Philip Billing, who not only shares the honor of having the most floor points (12.75) in a match this season among players costing $4,000 or less, but he also has three of the top six scores in that price range. And I don't want to completely ignore the scoresheet because Billing scored a goal in that 12.75-match against Everton back in Gameweek 4, with his total fantasy points being pushed down to 21.25 because of a yellow card; not bad for $3,500.
As discussed in an article published earlier this week, Huddersfield have been a surprisingly strong floor-point-scoring team this season, and we've mainly had the benefit of rostering them at lower salary levels. Billing obviously fits that mold, but he's joined by Chris Lowe, who has scored at least 4.00 floor points in all five of his starts costing $4,000 or less (including three matches with at least 8.25), as well as Erik Durm, who has scored at least 4.50 floor points in his five starts below $4,000 (including three with at least 6.50), and Florent Hadergjonaj, who has two games with at least 7.25 in the price range. Heck, even Terence Kongolo, Rajiv van La Parra, Alex Pritchard and even Laurent Depoitre have scored at least 7.00 floor points without eclipsing $4,000. This isn't to say we need to roster cheap Huddersfield players at any opportunity we can get, but I'll at least point out that there have been 68 times when a Huddersfield player has started on a classic slate this season while being priced at or below $4,000, and 37 times they've scored at least 4.00 floor points.
Huddersfield have had a significantly higher number of these cheaper players make value this season, but we also should remember that since Huddersfield are generally terrible in real life, they are consistently underdogs and therefore have more players who are priced down than teams near the top of the table.
We can also theoretically review teams who have conceded 4.00 fantasy points to these cheaper players, and unsurprisingly the higher end of the spectrum includes the top teams because they face more cheaper players as favorites.
Now, we're not rostering $4,000-and-below players because we think they always have great hidden upside, but we usually just need them to squeak out at least three or four points while, more importantly, allowing us to use the extra salary in other roster spots. All in all, we've had 255 times when a player priced $4,000 or below has scored at least 4.00 fantasy points, including 248 who reached 4.00 without needing a goal or assist (that doesn't necessarily mean they didn't score, just that they didn't need to in order to reach 4.00). This also doesn't include any clean sheet points, which only helps to increase the overall fantasy-point pool (for defenders, of course).
Targeting lower-priced players is a constant consideration in daily fantasy soccer, and for those who really want that full list of how well everyone has done, here it is, sorted from most to fewest floor points:
