There was a time when fantasy football meant ink on your fingers and numbers in the margin, not chips, algorithms and triple captains. You’d sit at the kitchen table, scribbling out an XI, phoning in the codes for Julian Dicks or Juninho, and hoping your bargain would quietly carry you through until the next transfer window – which was literally a phone call.
The game has grown up. Fantasy Premier League, launched for 2002-03, is now a global machine: millions of managers, mountains of data, instant price changes and the maths done for you. But one thing hasn’t changed at all.
The pure, almost childish thrill of finding a bargain.
Not the obvious heavyweights like Thierry Henry, Frank Lampard or Cristiano Ronaldo, who crushed seasons from the top shelf of the pricing list. Not even Mo Salah, although his numbers are so outrageous he crashes any conversation about FPL greatness. This is about value. The players who broke the game. The mispriced, the misclassified, the misjudged.
With input from resident FPL expert Thomas Woods and deep dives from Fantasy Football Scout, here’s a top 10 of the most iconic fantasy picks in the official game’s history – weighted by stats, warped slightly by sentiment, and fuelled by the memory of those green arrows.
10. Harry Kane, Tottenham, 2014-15 – starting price £5.0m
It’s hard to imagine now, with England’s record goalscorer and a hat-trick of Golden Boots on his CV, but Harry Kane once entered an FPL season as a budget punt.
In 2014-15, he was the back-up. Priced at £5.0m, he sat behind Emmanuel Adebayor and Roberto Soldado in the Tottenham pecking order and didn’t score a league goal until November – a 90th-minute winner off the bench at Aston Villa.
That strike lit the fuse. Kane finished with 21 Premier League goals, forcing his way into Mauricio Pochettino’s side and into almost every serious fantasy squad. Between gameweeks 18 and 25, he ripped the game apart: nine goals, four assists, 16 bonus points, 77 points in eight matches.
Those who jumped early rode a rocket. Kane’s price climbed from £5.0m to £6.4m, he banked 191 points and still ranks 11th on the all-time value list, despite playing fewer minutes than anyone above him. From cheap back-up to season-defining asset, all in one campaign.
8. Michel Vorm, Swansea, 2011-12 – £4.0m
Michel Vorm’s Premier League debut looked like the sort of nightmare you expect from a £4.0m goalkeeper. Four goals conceded at Manchester City. But that wasn’t the real story.
He made 11 saves that day – more than any other keeper managed in a single game all season – and it set the tone. Vorm didn’t just keep Swansea afloat; he turned into a fantasy phenomenon.
He swept the club’s end-of-season awards and quietly became a cult FPL pick: 14 clean sheets, a steady stream of save points, and the second-highest total among goalkeepers, behind Joe Hart – who had started the game at £3.0m more.
Vorm’s price peaked at £5.3m and at one stage he was the fourth-most owned player in the entire game. For both Swansea and FPL managers, it was the season of his life.
7. Stuart Dallas, Leeds, 2020-21 – £4.5m
Under Marcelo Bielsa, Leeds played like chaos in a bottle. For FPL managers, Stuart Dallas was the bit you could actually control.
Listed as a defender at £4.5m, Dallas spent the 2020-21 campaign marauding all over the pitch. He was, in theory, a full-back. In reality, he often lined up as an attacking midfielder, picking up defensive clean sheets while joining attacks with abandon.
He even did it against Manchester City, scoring twice for a 17-point haul that became instant folklore.
“The Northern Ireland international’s versatility played into the hands of FPL managers because, even though he was classified as a defender, he played all over the place for Leeds in 2020-21 – more often than not as an attacking midfielder,” Woods explains.
The final numbers were absurd for his price: eight goals, 12 clean sheets, three assists, 171 points. A £4.5m defender who produced like a mid-price midfielder. That’s not value. That’s daylight robbery.
6. Michail Antonio, West Ham, 2019-20 – £7.0m
Michail Antonio’s 2019-20 season didn’t look like much for a long time. Injuries, inconsistency, a campaign fractured by the coronavirus pandemic. His price even dipped. Classified as a midfielder but used up front, he felt like one of those nearly picks.
Then came the restart. Then came July.
Antonio exploded. Seven league games, eight goals, and one of the most astonishing individual gameweeks the game has seen. Away at Norwich, he scored four times in a 4-0 win, posting a 26-point haul.
That total is the joint-highest ever for a player priced under £7.0m, alongside Cole Palmer, and just three shy of Salah’s overall record for a single gameweek. For one month, Antonio was unstoppable. For those who owned him, it felt like cheating.
5. John Lundstram, Sheffield United, 2019-20 – £4.0m
John Lundstram didn’t just become an FPL bargain. He became an FPL title.
“Lord Lundstram”, as he was christened by managers, started 2019-20 as a £4.0m defender – the sort of player you usually bury on your bench and hope never to need. Except FPL had misclassified him. He wasn’t a fringe full-back; he was a box-to-box midfielder in Chris Wilder’s Sheffield United side.
“A £4m defender is usually the last spot on FPL managers’ benches but Lundstram was misclassified by FPL towers and was actually a box-to-box midfielder,” says Woods.
He scored five goals, added four assists, collected clean sheets and finished on 144 points. His two-goal, 21-point eruption in gameweek 11 became a badge of honour for those who started him.
And there was a secondary effect. Being able to field a £4.0m starter with that output freed up cash to cram stars into the rest of the squad. Lundstram didn’t just score; he reshaped entire teams.
4. Riyad Mahrez, Leicester, 2015-16 – £5.5m
Leicester’s title win in 2015-16 remains one of football’s great miracles. In FPL terms, Riyad Mahrez was the miracle inside the miracle.
Priced at £5.5m, he opened the season with 15 points against Sunderland, rewarding the 5.9% of managers bold enough to back him from the start. That wasn’t a one-off.
He hit double figures in five of the first six gameweeks, racking up 56 points in that opening burst – one of the hottest starts in FPL history. The bandwagon was inevitable. By week seven, Mahrez sat in more than half the teams in the game.
Jamie Vardy’s record-breaking run – a goal or assist in 15 straight matches – rightly grabbed headlines, but he’d started £0.5m more expensive. Mahrez ended the campaign as FPL’s top scorer with 240 points, a ridiculous return for his modest starting price. He was the goldmine at the heart of the fairytale.
3. Michu, Swansea, 2012-13 – £6.5m
Some FPL legends are built on numbers. Michu’s are built on numbers and pure emotion.
The Spaniard arrived at Swansea in 2012 as a relative unknown in England, priced at £6.5m and listed as a midfielder. A few sharp-eyed managers noticed he’d scored 15 goals in La Liga the previous season and took the plunge.
They were rewarded on day one. Michu scored twice at QPR, and from there he became a permanent fixture on the FPL dashboard.
He was, in effect, a £6.5m striker hiding in midfield clothing. He finished 2012-13 with 18 league goals and 190 points, his price swelling by £2.0m across the season as more and more managers scrambled to get him in.
“As Woods says, he is probably the biggest one-season wonder in FPL history. He managed two goals the following season… and then left for Napoli.” The drop-off only adds to the legend. For one year, Michu was everything.
2. Mohamed Salah, Liverpool, 2024-25 – £12.5m
You can try to build a list of FPL greats without a premium player. Then you look at Mohamed Salah’s numbers and give up.
Others at Liverpool have strong cases: Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson, who turned full-backs into must-have assets, and Luis Suarez, whose 2013-14 campaign produced the third-highest score ever and a record 55 attacking returns despite missing the first five games.
But Salah exists on a different plane. Since the game began, 52 players have reached 200 points in a season at least once. Salah has done it eight times. He is the only player to ever break 300 points – and he’s done that twice.
His defining season? 2024-25. Starting at £12.5m, he produced a scarcely believable 344 points, immediately after what was, by his standards, a “down” year – which still cleared 200.
He devoured your budget, but he guaranteed a floor of returns that shaped every serious squad. In a game built on value, Salah is the one premium so relentless he forces his way into a list like this. FPL royalty, with the crown to prove it.
1. Cole Palmer, Chelsea, 2023-24 – £5.0m
To understand Cole Palmer’s place in FPL history, you have to rewind to the start. He wasn’t a superstar. He was a promising Manchester City graduate looking for minutes, moving to a chaotic Chelsea side and slipping into the game at £5.0m as a midfielder.
He didn’t start a league match for Chelsea until gameweek seven. Only 63,575 managers – 0.6% of the game – owned him when he delivered his first double-figure haul at Burnley a week later.
The whispers began. They grew louder after a 12-point return at Tottenham in gameweek 12. Ownership climbed to 4.5%, then surged as managers realised Stamford Bridge’s new signing was more than a rotation risk. He was their main man.
By gameweek 33, over five million managers had him when he scored four times against Everton, delivering a 26-point haul while still costing just £6.1m. It felt like a glitch.
“Based on starting price, Cole Palmer in 2023-24 is the best-ever value player in Fantasy,” concludes Fantasy Football Scout. The numbers back it up: 244 points, the season’s top scorer, and the biggest price rise in FPL history – up £5.5m to £10.5m at the start of 2024-25.
From £5.0m afterthought to the most valuable asset the game has ever seen. In a quarter-century of Fantasy Premier League, no player has stretched the definition of “bargain” quite like Cole Palmer.
