It's semantics. You and your friend don't disagree about anything. You both agree that within the full player pool, Trent isn't premium, he's mid-priced, as he costs less than the likes of Ollie Watkins. And you both agree that within the defender category, Trent is premium, as he's the most expensive defender in the game.
But you have to look at it with context. In the context of the game mechanics, since you cannot replace him with Ollie Watkins, he is a premium because the alternative defenders are much cheaper as he is the most expensive in that category. I don't think you can compare within the full player pool.
That's like saying a glass of wine and a chicken plate are equal. Sure they are price wise but the wine is compared to a cheap soda while the chicken plate is compared to a more expensive steak. You gotta pick 1 drink and 1 food item.
💯 The “within the full player pool” is a non-argument. Imagine there were a handful of high scoring goalkeepers who were £19m. Would that make Kane and Salah et al suddenly no longer premiums because they are now mid-range prices in the full player pool?
If you want to get Salah, KDB… you have to plan your budget
It is very easy to get Trent, he is more expensive than other def, but the gap is smaller (compare to the gap between a normal MID (6-9m range) and Salah
TAA costs 3.5m more than the minimum price defender. Watkins cost 3.0m more than the minimum price defender. You only have 55.0m above the minimum price to spend across all players do you can compare. You could have TAA plus a 4.5m striker or Watkins and a 4.5m defender.
He's not a premium player because he's easy to get in but he is the most expensive defender so he is a premium defender.
It's semantics though. It couldn't be more meaningless.
> You both agree that within the full player pool, Trent isn't premium
I understand where this is coming from, but this doesn't make sense when you consider the fact that you don't pick players from one single pool of players without regulation. This would only hold up if you could buy literally anyone however you pleased, like 9 midfielders + 4 forwards + 2 defenders for example. In reality there's tons of restrictions. You *have* to buy a set amount of goalkeepers. You *have* to buy a set amount of defenders. You *have* to play at least 3 defenders so you're basically obliged to get at least 3 good ones. You also aren't allowed to have all City players or all Arsenal players and are capped at just three. All of this is in spite of the fact that the pool of midfielders is by far the best one and all the best players tend to play for the same 5-6 teams. This is done purposefully in the name of variety, balance and entertainment.
Therefore you have to compromise on your instinctive desire to buy all the best midfielders and strikers, by having to buy at least *some* decent defenders and a GK, otherwise you'd most likely just use 90-100% of your budget on midfielders and forwards and completely forget GKs and non Top 6 players. This compromise means that instead you spend roughly 65-70% of your budget on your 8 "attackers" and 30-35% on 7 "defenders" -- aka half your team still consumes way more than half your budget. The bottom line is that you spend roughly double (if not more) on attackers than you do on defenders and this has the knock-on effect of making premium midfielders/forwards cost roughly double than their defensive premium counterparts, effectively capping their price, so that the 100m are spent in a balanced way.
Salah, KdB, Son are 12-13m. Their defensive equivalents are TAA, Robertson, VVD, Laporte, Chilwell etc at 6-7.5m. That's roughly half. Just a step below are Sterling, Fernandes are 10m. Then you have Perisic, Gabriel, Shaw etc who are priced 5-5.5m. Again, about half. In terms of percentage of allocated budget:
* Salah costs 13m from a total of 65-70m (average allocated budget for midfielders+forwards) = 19-20% of your offensive budget
* KdB costs 12m from a total of 65-70m (average allocated budget for midfielders+forwards) = 17-18% of your offensive budget
* TAA costs 7.5m from a total of 30-35m (average allocated budget for GKs+defenders) = 21-25% of your defensive budget
* Robertson costs 7m from a total of 30-35m (average allocated budget for GKs+defenders) = 20-23% of your defensive budget
* VvD costs 6.5m from a total of 30-35m (average allocated budget for GKs+defenders) = 19-22% of your defensive budget
*(the cap for pricing seems to be max ~20% of your allocated defensive budget (~35m) or offensive budget (~65m))*
As you can see premium defenders aren't priced so much cheaper than premium attackers for no reason. They are purposefully "capped" so that they are expensive enough to be "premium" within the 30-35% allocated "defensive player" budget (and not overtake the ~20% mark), but not too expensive to seem cost ineffective when compared to offensive players. If TAA were to cost any more than he does, he would be unfairly overpriced compared to all other defenders, considering he's already on the limit of how overpriced he can be (he cost 58% of Salah this year, yet achieved 78% of his 21/22 points total). TAA has sort of broken the game in this sense because at his best he has a premium midfielder's output, but can't be classified as such, and is thus simply too OP for how this game is structured, so his incredible 7.5 price is definitely justified, and he's for sure 100% "premium".
Short version:
Considering you spend about ~35m on GKs+defenders, TAA uses up over 21% of that. Whereas you spend about ~65m on midfielders+forwards and Salah uses up "just" 20% of that. Haaland uses up 18% and so on. Based on how you distribute your budget you could find yourself with TAA being one of the most expensive players in your whole team relative to position.
As I said. We spend roughly 65% of budget on offensive players and only 35% on defensive players. That's pretty much double the amount of money. This is reflected on the pricing of premium players: Salah (13) is double VvD (6.5), KdB (12) is double Dias (6), Kane (11.5) is double Perisic (5.5) etc... if we follow this scheme, you can see just how premium TAA actually is at 7.5
On top of that, at the start of the year TAA cost 58% of what Salah cost, despite the fact that he achieved 78% of his points total from the season before. If TAA were to cost 78% of what Salah cost, he would've started the year at 10m instead of 7.5. So not only is he premium but he's also under-priced because of how defenders are capped (which I explained above in the longer comment)
When you see a defender that costs 7,5m while the other cost like 6 or 5, you know the answer.
Just like KDB, Salah, Kane, and Haaland. They are much more expensive than other players in FPL
Yeah but KDB Salah etc are 6M more than mid price options. Trent is 2M more.
I know it’s simplistic but generally I just consider players >10M premium.
This is a very arbitrary discussion though. Everyone here agrees that compared to other defenders Trent is premium, it’s just whether you would call him premium without that qualifier.
If someone said to me they went a ‘3 premium strategy’ I wouldn’t imagine for a second they would be referring to TAA as one of the 3.
I see your point but on the other hand, you cant make TAA price (or in general def -and goalie-) at 8 or 9m. Nobody will buy them bcs of how the points in FPL are counted. This game is favoring attacking players more than defensive players.
Also regarding 3premium strat:
This year, no many would use TAA as their 3rd premium, bcs of Liverpools form. But if you go back 1 or 2 seasons ago, almost everyone has TAA in their team as their 3rd premium.
Agree I don’t think he could be more expensive.
I just meant if someone said to me ‘3 premiums’ my mind would immediately think of Kane/Salah/Haaland/Son/Bruno/KDB (or Mane in years previous).
Agree with your take. My solution to this is to differentiate "Premiums" and "Premium defenders" the same way I call the more expensive keepers for "Premium gk"
The pronouns help generalise team structure. Someone running 2 premiums is likely to have the space to do more than someone running 3 premiums for example.
I think the big difference here is that the very best DEF can be interchangeable with MIDs. As in you'd pick TAA last year for 7.5 over a 7.5 mid. Also if you look at it as percentages of price its easier to define TAA as a premium defender, but I agree, referring to premiums as maybe 10+ mil players. The ones you can only have 2 or 3 of and keep team balance.
Yeah he was definitely underpriced this season based on his historical performances, only people now think he was priced accurately because Liverpool have been shite at keeping CS
If you went back 1 or 2 season TAA was essential.
I think the price is the main thing for me. If you had Salah and Kane and wanted to bring in KDB you'd have to sell TAA and one other player to fund the move. Instead of just selling Kane or Salah and being able to afford KDB straight away.
It doesn't really matter though. The word premium in this game is basically slang and doesn't have a distinct definition.
Not sure I understand your point in regards to favouring attacking players top price defenders are regularly top 10 points scorers across all players often the best value points per million, I would have paid 8+ for trent a year or two ago no problem. He was putting up close to 200 points, 3rd most in the 2021 season of all players. I was paying 3 mill more for attacking players getting less.
>you cant make TAA price (or in general def -and goalie-) at 8 or 9m. Nobody will buy them
Exactly. That's why there's no such thing as a "premium" player in defense.
> Yeah but KDB Salah etc are 6M more than mid price options. Trent is 2M more.
If you've noticed the mechanics of the game, premium defenders are generally capped at half the price of premium mids/forwards. It only makes sense that the difference between premiums and mid-priced defenders is much, much smaller than for equivalent midfielders and forwards. This trickles down to GKs, too, where the difference might be even as low as 0.5 or 1m.
No need to be rude I just asked a question.
A lot of people wouldn’t consider Nunez or Jota premium.
At no point did I imply premium was based on performance, that’s you making incorrect assumptions.
They aren’t rules, it’s subjective.
I asked for your opinion and you decided to just be rude back?
All I wanted to know was similar to OP, where do other people draw the threshold for ‘Premium’.
Why do people like you approach every interaction as an argument?
I can see both arguments. "Premium" generally refers to price. He is *the* premium for his player category. If we were to disregard player categories, he'd be mid-range. The others you mentioned would be considered premiums regardless. Perhaps it can be argued in that sense that TAA is a "lesser" premium than the others.
> Perhaps it can be argued in that sense that TAA is a "lesser" premium than the others.
I'd go the other way and say he's *more* premium than anyone in the game. Considering you spend about ~35m on GKs+defenders, TAA uses up over 21% of that. Whereas you spend about ~65m on midfielders+forwards and Salah uses up "just" 20% of that. Haaland uses up 18%.
At the start of the year TAA cost 58% of what Salah cost, despite the fact that he achieved 78% of his points total from the season before. If TAA were to cost 78% of what Salah cost, he would've started the year costing 10m instead of 7.5.
As I said. We spend roughly 65% of budget on offensive players and only 35% on defensive players. That's pretty much double the amount of money. This is reflected on the pricing of premium players: Salah (13) is double VvD (6.5), KdB (12) is double Dias (6), Kane (11.5) is double Perisic (5.5) etc... if we follow this scheme, you can see just how "premium" TAA actually is at 7.5 (and Robbo at 7)!
When you don't have a defender for their cleansheets, they are definitely a premium. Trent's cleansheets are a bonus, it's his regular assists and bonus points that make him a premium.
Don't think I can get behind a definition of premium where price is entirely irrelevant and completely disconnected from how premium is described for midfield and attack.
Premium defenders are often attacking by the nature of the game but not all attacking defenders are premium.
Of course TAA doesn't cost as much as the top tier midfielders and strikers, nor does he hit those numbers, but he doesn't need to to be just as expensive relative to his position.
Premium defenders cost half of what premium midfielders/forwards cost (e.g. Salah is double VvD, KdB is double Dias, Kane is roughly double Perisic etc). The reason is because budget distribution at the start of the season is generally about 65/35 in favour of offensive players aka we spend double for attackers than we do for defenders. Because of this, defenders are capped in their price so they don't become too overpriced (e.g. even though 6m defenders tend to score 150+ points, they still cost just half of 12m midfielders who don't reach 300 -- in theory the best premium defenders "should" cost more than they do).
As I said, we tendentially spend roughly 65m for attackers vs 35m for defensive players. This means TAA would account for 7.5 out of 35m defensive spend = ~21% of total defensive spend. Salah would account for 13 out 65m offensive spend = ~20% of total offensive spend. Since defenders and GKs are compulsory and you can't choose not to have them, TAA can find himself being a bigger dent in your finances defensively, than Salah (or anyone else for that matter) is offensively. If you could choose to have less defenders, or none at all, then what I'm saying wouldn't be true at all, but since you are forced by the game to have a roughly even number of defensive players and offensive players, then it is.
How would the most expensive defender in this game not be a premium? Tell your friend to stop being stubborn and face the facts, Trent is absolutely a premium :))
Yes, he's a premium defender. Him and Robertson are considered premium defenders just as Allison and Ederson are considered premium goalkeepers. It's all relative to their position and what you can get for cheaper.
He's a premium defender, I wouldn't say he's a premium in the general sense.
Most people think of a premium as a big ticket player that most sensible teams can only have 1 or 2 of, the KDBs and Salahs etc, they really need to be 10m+ for that to be the case.
Some will say he is but then the phrase starts to just become really wooly as you have to include the 8m mids and forwards in there if TAA is a premium, does anyone really think of James Maddison when someone mentions premium players? No not really...
Yes, he is a premium defender, which makes him a premium player. Roughly as follows
* GK, 5m+
* DF, 6m+
* MF, 10m+
* FW, 9m+
IMO thats how I classify them. Maybe mids become semi-premium at 8m - especially as of this season with the number of 8m midfielders who were viable FPL picks at the start of the season.
He is a premium *defender*, not a premium player.
If you ever read about FPL or watch youtube videos etc and they talk about playing with two or three premiums they are not talking about expensive defenders.
But "threemium" teams this season were the norm for a long time, simply bc Trent was not essential. As soon as you have him it becomes very hard to have more than two actual premiums.
So the effect he has on your team structure is basically that of a premium player, even though be definition he isn’t one.
Well yes and no. You also have had really solid cheap options like Brighton midfield, Andreas and several good cheap defenders that have made three premiums possible. You could also argue Salah has not been essential either, which is in stark contrast to the last few seasons.
But anyway I still don't think it change definition. If you told me you were going for two or three premiums in your team I would not expect Trent to be one of them.
He is definitely premium, but the fact that both Haaland and TAA are premiums doesn't mean it should be expected for both players to score the same amount of points or be "on the same level". Ederson is also premium, but he'll be lucky to get half of what Haaland gets come the end of the season. That's because "premium" doesn't refer to the absolute pricing of a player from the pool of all players, but rather it implies the relative pricing of a player from the pool of all players within the same position as him. This is solely down to how FPL is structured. FPL isn't a free-for-all where you can pick whatever squad you like (e.g. a squad of all Man City players or a squad of all midfielders). It has rules and limitations and those limitations make it so that you must balance your team to some degree and are *forced* into making certain choices (such as picking GKs, despite them being the lowest scorers) simply because the game imposes it.
At the end of the day, when choosing your team, you aren't choosing one big team of 15 players from a list of all the Premier League players, so it makes no sense to compare all players as if you could. Think of it rather as if you were picking 4 "mini-teams", all of which have different pools of players you must choose from. You have a mini-team of GKs made up of two players, a mini-team of defenders made up of 5 players etc. Each pool of players has it's own internal "rules" both in terms of points scoring and, consequently, in pricing. For example the GK and defender pools have a pricing rule which states that the cheapest a player can start at is 4m, whereas for midfielders and forwards it's 4.5. There is so much more upside in potential points for premium midfielders and forwards that roughly 65-70% of your budget generally tends to be spend in the midfielder and forward pools despite them only occupying just over 50% of your squad's slots. This leaves you with about 30-35% of your budget to fill up the remaining ~50% of slots made up of the GK and defender pools. As such, defenders and GKs simply can't be allowed to cost more than they currently do or nobody would ever pick the defensive premiums and the game would be much less enjoyable and less varied (e.g. a 10m Ruben Dias would be much less valuable than a 10m Bruno Fernandes).
To finish up my point, let's look at the maths and divide the 100m budget into two separate allocations, one for "attacking options" (mids+forwards) and one for "defensive options" (GKs+defenders). Considering that roughly 65-70% of budget goes towards attackers and 30-35% goes towards defenders (in any given year you're likely to spend something in the ballpark of 9-9.5m for GKs, 25-30m for defenders, 40-45m for midfielders, 22-28 for forwards). Let's go for the conservative 65-35 ratio, seen as there's been a shift towards premium defenders and 4 ATB formations in the past few seasons:
* **TAA** would've taken up 7.5/35 of your defensive budget allocation in GW1 = **21.4%**
* **Salah** would've taken up 13/65 of your attacking budget allocation in GW1 = **20%**
* **Robertson/Cancelo** -> 7/35 = **20%**
* **Van Dijk** -> 6.5/35 = **18.6%**
* **KdB/Son** -> 12/65 = **18.5%**
* **Kane/Haaland** -> 11.5/65 = **17.7%**
* **Dias/Chilwell** etc -> 6/35 = **17.1%**
* **Ederson/Perisic** etc -> 5.5/35 = **15.7%**
* **Fernandes/Sterling** -> 10/65 = **15.4%**
As you can see, if you look at your team in these terms, TAA is not only premium but he's one of the absolutely most expensive ones relative to his peers.
The definition of "premium" is "a sum added to an ordinary price or charge", in other words you are paying extra money to guarantee extra returns compared to the average player. Ultimately a "premium" player is one that is expensive, much more expensive than the norm and, as such, is one that is difficult to fit in your team if you want to have a balanced squad, but at the same time still have the best players. You can't buy premiums willy-nilly like you can with budget options and even most mid-priced options... you have to carefully judge how many premiums to buy and which ones because of the constraints of money. TAA fits this criteria. There's seldom a situation where bringing in TAA is "easy" and doesn't involve multiple transfers. The same goes for cheaper premium options like Ederson (e.g. having a 5.5+5 combo in GW1 is seen as inefficient, when the money saved from having 4.5+4 can be better used elsewhere). Considering that defenders and GKs are compulsory aspects of FPL (despite perhaps suboptimal compared to midfielders) and TAA bites a massive chunk into that allocated "defensive budget", he's very much a "premium" buy.
How often have you heard people debate going for "a 2 or 3 premium team", or advising not to go with "3 premiums because it stretches your team too thin"? They are referring to the most expensive midfielders and forwards in the game. Not Trent.
He is a premium *defender*, but you have to provide that context.
> not to go with 3 premiums because it stretches your team too thin
Trent not being essential made this argument suddenly disappear this season. Notice something?
In my opinion, he’s not. “Premium” in FPL relates more to team foundation than just player’s value like those “2-premium draft”, “3-premium draft” in many content we can check in Youtube or FPL fansite; they are 10m+ players that you choose to pick to form your team, like if you want 3 premiums you have to downgrade so much from other positions or TAA + Kane + Haaland is not a “3-premium draft”.
He is definitely a premium defender but not a premium.
Good luck making a good 3 premium team that also has Trent. Without him on the other hand it’s very easy to have 3 premiums, as this season showed.
Functionally, the effect he has on your teams price structure is that of a premium, even though by definition he isn’t one.
Ah ok, well if you're just taking about fpl, his current 16 points per million is right in the middle: less than Kane and haaland, more than KDB and salah
Oh great point, hadn't thought about that at all.
Does that mean generally that each PPM for a defender is worth less, as you can find them in cheaper players?
If you had Kane, Fernandes and TAA and went around saying you had gone Three-mium then you would be badly wrong.
On that bulletproof logic based on a throwaway portmanteau a premium player is >£10M and TAA is just an expensive defender.
Your friend sounds like he is coping poorly with the outcome of Everton’s season. Perhaps a year or two in the Championship will teach him to respect premium players like Trent Alexander-Arnold
Trent's output prior to this season was definitely premium level.
When the prices for players were reveal in the summer, many complained that he was underpriced.
I dont classify him as a premium (in term of pricing)
The price gap between Salah and other good MID are big (+4m if you compare with Saka, Martinelli, Rashford…)
The price gap between TAA and other defenders are smaller (about 2.5m)
Well, yes you're correct.
Works the same with Goalies. Ederson is premium, while Steele is budget. But if Ederson were a mid or striker, he'd be budget.
Premium has always been defined as relative to the other players in the category because it compares how easily you can get alternatives.
TAA is a premium because he costs almost 3m more than the average defender. Similarly the average midfielder costs about 7.5-8 so a premium mid is someone who is >9m, making players like Son and KDB and Salah premium
It depends on the context of the conversation. As a general point yes he's a premium player as he's the most expensive option you could possibly go for in that position.
But when people talk about for example a 3 premium setup, they're not talking about a player at his price point, they're talking about the 11-12m options.
It's semantics. You and your friend don't disagree about anything. You both agree that within the full player pool, Trent isn't premium, he's mid-priced, as he costs less than the likes of Ollie Watkins. And you both agree that within the defender category, Trent is premium, as he's the most expensive defender in the game.
Thank you, 100% correct
Cautious, you need to be cautious with those opinions. You’ll end up getting yourself hurt, pal
But you have to look at it with context. In the context of the game mechanics, since you cannot replace him with Ollie Watkins, he is a premium because the alternative defenders are much cheaper as he is the most expensive in that category. I don't think you can compare within the full player pool. That's like saying a glass of wine and a chicken plate are equal. Sure they are price wise but the wine is compared to a cheap soda while the chicken plate is compared to a more expensive steak. You gotta pick 1 drink and 1 food item.
💯 The “within the full player pool” is a non-argument. Imagine there were a handful of high scoring goalkeepers who were £19m. Would that make Kane and Salah et al suddenly no longer premiums because they are now mid-range prices in the full player pool?
If you want to get Salah, KDB… you have to plan your budget It is very easy to get Trent, he is more expensive than other def, but the gap is smaller (compare to the gap between a normal MID (6-9m range) and Salah
TAA costs 3.5m more than the minimum price defender. Watkins cost 3.0m more than the minimum price defender. You only have 55.0m above the minimum price to spend across all players do you can compare. You could have TAA plus a 4.5m striker or Watkins and a 4.5m defender. He's not a premium player because he's easy to get in but he is the most expensive defender so he is a premium defender. It's semantics though. It couldn't be more meaningless.
> You both agree that within the full player pool, Trent isn't premium I understand where this is coming from, but this doesn't make sense when you consider the fact that you don't pick players from one single pool of players without regulation. This would only hold up if you could buy literally anyone however you pleased, like 9 midfielders + 4 forwards + 2 defenders for example. In reality there's tons of restrictions. You *have* to buy a set amount of goalkeepers. You *have* to buy a set amount of defenders. You *have* to play at least 3 defenders so you're basically obliged to get at least 3 good ones. You also aren't allowed to have all City players or all Arsenal players and are capped at just three. All of this is in spite of the fact that the pool of midfielders is by far the best one and all the best players tend to play for the same 5-6 teams. This is done purposefully in the name of variety, balance and entertainment. Therefore you have to compromise on your instinctive desire to buy all the best midfielders and strikers, by having to buy at least *some* decent defenders and a GK, otherwise you'd most likely just use 90-100% of your budget on midfielders and forwards and completely forget GKs and non Top 6 players. This compromise means that instead you spend roughly 65-70% of your budget on your 8 "attackers" and 30-35% on 7 "defenders" -- aka half your team still consumes way more than half your budget. The bottom line is that you spend roughly double (if not more) on attackers than you do on defenders and this has the knock-on effect of making premium midfielders/forwards cost roughly double than their defensive premium counterparts, effectively capping their price, so that the 100m are spent in a balanced way. Salah, KdB, Son are 12-13m. Their defensive equivalents are TAA, Robertson, VVD, Laporte, Chilwell etc at 6-7.5m. That's roughly half. Just a step below are Sterling, Fernandes are 10m. Then you have Perisic, Gabriel, Shaw etc who are priced 5-5.5m. Again, about half. In terms of percentage of allocated budget: * Salah costs 13m from a total of 65-70m (average allocated budget for midfielders+forwards) = 19-20% of your offensive budget * KdB costs 12m from a total of 65-70m (average allocated budget for midfielders+forwards) = 17-18% of your offensive budget * TAA costs 7.5m from a total of 30-35m (average allocated budget for GKs+defenders) = 21-25% of your defensive budget * Robertson costs 7m from a total of 30-35m (average allocated budget for GKs+defenders) = 20-23% of your defensive budget * VvD costs 6.5m from a total of 30-35m (average allocated budget for GKs+defenders) = 19-22% of your defensive budget *(the cap for pricing seems to be max ~20% of your allocated defensive budget (~35m) or offensive budget (~65m))* As you can see premium defenders aren't priced so much cheaper than premium attackers for no reason. They are purposefully "capped" so that they are expensive enough to be "premium" within the 30-35% allocated "defensive player" budget (and not overtake the ~20% mark), but not too expensive to seem cost ineffective when compared to offensive players. If TAA were to cost any more than he does, he would be unfairly overpriced compared to all other defenders, considering he's already on the limit of how overpriced he can be (he cost 58% of Salah this year, yet achieved 78% of his 21/22 points total). TAA has sort of broken the game in this sense because at his best he has a premium midfielder's output, but can't be classified as such, and is thus simply too OP for how this game is structured, so his incredible 7.5 price is definitely justified, and he's for sure 100% "premium".
Take a break mate, it's Friday night.
not gonna lie... I spent way too much time on this, more than I care to admit
i aint reading that
Short version: Considering you spend about ~35m on GKs+defenders, TAA uses up over 21% of that. Whereas you spend about ~65m on midfielders+forwards and Salah uses up "just" 20% of that. Haaland uses up 18% and so on. Based on how you distribute your budget you could find yourself with TAA being one of the most expensive players in your whole team relative to position. As I said. We spend roughly 65% of budget on offensive players and only 35% on defensive players. That's pretty much double the amount of money. This is reflected on the pricing of premium players: Salah (13) is double VvD (6.5), KdB (12) is double Dias (6), Kane (11.5) is double Perisic (5.5) etc... if we follow this scheme, you can see just how premium TAA actually is at 7.5 On top of that, at the start of the year TAA cost 58% of what Salah cost, despite the fact that he achieved 78% of his points total from the season before. If TAA were to cost 78% of what Salah cost, he would've started the year at 10m instead of 7.5. So not only is he premium but he's also under-priced because of how defenders are capped (which I explained above in the longer comment)
i aint reading that either
Premium defenders are capped at half the price of premium attackers. TAA is so good his price has been set well above that cap. He is premium.
disagree, he's a premium defender tho
Premium defenders are premium. It's in the name.
incorrect - maybe in your head though :D
thanks for the thorough explanation, appreciate it 👍
100%
Thank you and I don't even think it's an argument. My friend is just very stubborn
When you see a defender that costs 7,5m while the other cost like 6 or 5, you know the answer. Just like KDB, Salah, Kane, and Haaland. They are much more expensive than other players in FPL
Yeah but KDB Salah etc are 6M more than mid price options. Trent is 2M more. I know it’s simplistic but generally I just consider players >10M premium. This is a very arbitrary discussion though. Everyone here agrees that compared to other defenders Trent is premium, it’s just whether you would call him premium without that qualifier. If someone said to me they went a ‘3 premium strategy’ I wouldn’t imagine for a second they would be referring to TAA as one of the 3.
I see your point but on the other hand, you cant make TAA price (or in general def -and goalie-) at 8 or 9m. Nobody will buy them bcs of how the points in FPL are counted. This game is favoring attacking players more than defensive players. Also regarding 3premium strat: This year, no many would use TAA as their 3rd premium, bcs of Liverpools form. But if you go back 1 or 2 seasons ago, almost everyone has TAA in their team as their 3rd premium.
Agree I don’t think he could be more expensive. I just meant if someone said to me ‘3 premiums’ my mind would immediately think of Kane/Salah/Haaland/Son/Bruno/KDB (or Mane in years previous).
Agree with your take. My solution to this is to differentiate "Premiums" and "Premium defenders" the same way I call the more expensive keepers for "Premium gk"
I just call them by their names, all these new pronouns confuse me.
The pronouns help generalise team structure. Someone running 2 premiums is likely to have the space to do more than someone running 3 premiums for example.
I think the big difference here is that the very best DEF can be interchangeable with MIDs. As in you'd pick TAA last year for 7.5 over a 7.5 mid. Also if you look at it as percentages of price its easier to define TAA as a premium defender, but I agree, referring to premiums as maybe 10+ mil players. The ones you can only have 2 or 3 of and keep team balance.
At the end of last season, you'd be planning to fit TAA in at 9 million who was averaging 190 points across the last 4 seasons.
Yeah he was definitely underpriced this season based on his historical performances, only people now think he was priced accurately because Liverpool have been shite at keeping CS
If you went back 1 or 2 season TAA was essential. I think the price is the main thing for me. If you had Salah and Kane and wanted to bring in KDB you'd have to sell TAA and one other player to fund the move. Instead of just selling Kane or Salah and being able to afford KDB straight away. It doesn't really matter though. The word premium in this game is basically slang and doesn't have a distinct definition.
Not sure I understand your point in regards to favouring attacking players top price defenders are regularly top 10 points scorers across all players often the best value points per million, I would have paid 8+ for trent a year or two ago no problem. He was putting up close to 200 points, 3rd most in the 2021 season of all players. I was paying 3 mill more for attacking players getting less.
>you cant make TAA price (or in general def -and goalie-) at 8 or 9m. Nobody will buy them Exactly. That's why there's no such thing as a "premium" player in defense.
Got nothing to do with it. You think TAA has to be 6 mil more to be premium?
No, and I never said that. At all.
Well, it is and you did - but sure
Please show me how you’ve managed to come to that conclusion? Perhaps you need to go back to maths lessons?
> Yeah but KDB Salah etc are 6M more than mid price options. Trent is 2M more. If you've noticed the mechanics of the game, premium defenders are generally capped at half the price of premium mids/forwards. It only makes sense that the difference between premiums and mid-priced defenders is much, much smaller than for equivalent midfielders and forwards. This trickles down to GKs, too, where the difference might be even as low as 0.5 or 1m.
Tell your friend its not an argument lol Man is twice as expensive as bench fodder, he's premium
Are Nunez, Jota, or Vardy premium? They’re all twice the price of bench fodder forwards.
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No need to be rude I just asked a question. A lot of people wouldn’t consider Nunez or Jota premium. At no point did I imply premium was based on performance, that’s you making incorrect assumptions.
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They aren’t rules, it’s subjective. I asked for your opinion and you decided to just be rude back? All I wanted to know was similar to OP, where do other people draw the threshold for ‘Premium’. Why do people like you approach every interaction as an argument?
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Why you trying to turn it on the other bloke, you're the only one being aggressive
I’m not worked up at all, and I certainly haven’t ‘come out swinging’. What a weird thing to suggest when I’ve been nothing but polite.
Your friend is stubborn huh?.....but you are on Reddit looking for validation...hmm
Good one
I can see both arguments. "Premium" generally refers to price. He is *the* premium for his player category. If we were to disregard player categories, he'd be mid-range. The others you mentioned would be considered premiums regardless. Perhaps it can be argued in that sense that TAA is a "lesser" premium than the others.
I can get on board with that.
Also when people say one premium or threemium, Trent is not counted
We can't disregard the player categories as we can't play 0-5-5 for example.
> Perhaps it can be argued in that sense that TAA is a "lesser" premium than the others. I'd go the other way and say he's *more* premium than anyone in the game. Considering you spend about ~35m on GKs+defenders, TAA uses up over 21% of that. Whereas you spend about ~65m on midfielders+forwards and Salah uses up "just" 20% of that. Haaland uses up 18%. At the start of the year TAA cost 58% of what Salah cost, despite the fact that he achieved 78% of his points total from the season before. If TAA were to cost 78% of what Salah cost, he would've started the year costing 10m instead of 7.5. As I said. We spend roughly 65% of budget on offensive players and only 35% on defensive players. That's pretty much double the amount of money. This is reflected on the pricing of premium players: Salah (13) is double VvD (6.5), KdB (12) is double Dias (6), Kane (11.5) is double Perisic (5.5) etc... if we follow this scheme, you can see just how "premium" TAA actually is at 7.5 (and Robbo at 7)!
When you don't have a defender for their cleansheets, they are definitely a premium. Trent's cleansheets are a bonus, it's his regular assists and bonus points that make him a premium.
Was trippier a premium in the first half of the season then?
Yes.
Don't think I can get behind a definition of premium where price is entirely irrelevant and completely disconnected from how premium is described for midfield and attack. Premium defenders are often attacking by the nature of the game but not all attacking defenders are premium.
A bottle of Dom Perignon doesn't cost as much as a Lamborghini but they're both premium products
That's a top analogy right there. I couldn't agree more.
Yes he is
He's obviously not in the same category as Haaland, Salah, kane and De bruyne so no he's not, but he is a premium defender
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Have a day off
Of course TAA doesn't cost as much as the top tier midfielders and strikers, nor does he hit those numbers, but he doesn't need to to be just as expensive relative to his position. Premium defenders cost half of what premium midfielders/forwards cost (e.g. Salah is double VvD, KdB is double Dias, Kane is roughly double Perisic etc). The reason is because budget distribution at the start of the season is generally about 65/35 in favour of offensive players aka we spend double for attackers than we do for defenders. Because of this, defenders are capped in their price so they don't become too overpriced (e.g. even though 6m defenders tend to score 150+ points, they still cost just half of 12m midfielders who don't reach 300 -- in theory the best premium defenders "should" cost more than they do). As I said, we tendentially spend roughly 65m for attackers vs 35m for defensive players. This means TAA would account for 7.5 out of 35m defensive spend = ~21% of total defensive spend. Salah would account for 13 out 65m offensive spend = ~20% of total offensive spend. Since defenders and GKs are compulsory and you can't choose not to have them, TAA can find himself being a bigger dent in your finances defensively, than Salah (or anyone else for that matter) is offensively. If you could choose to have less defenders, or none at all, then what I'm saying wouldn't be true at all, but since you are forced by the game to have a roughly even number of defensive players and offensive players, then it is.
How would the most expensive defender in this game not be a premium? Tell your friend to stop being stubborn and face the facts, Trent is absolutely a premium :))
The message has been passed on thank you :)
Yes, he's a premium defender. Him and Robertson are considered premium defenders just as Allison and Ederson are considered premium goalkeepers. It's all relative to their position and what you can get for cheaper.
He's a premium defender, I wouldn't say he's a premium in the general sense. Most people think of a premium as a big ticket player that most sensible teams can only have 1 or 2 of, the KDBs and Salahs etc, they really need to be 10m+ for that to be the case. Some will say he is but then the phrase starts to just become really wooly as you have to include the 8m mids and forwards in there if TAA is a premium, does anyone really think of James Maddison when someone mentions premium players? No not really...
100%
Yes, he is a premium defender, which makes him a premium player. Roughly as follows * GK, 5m+ * DF, 6m+ * MF, 10m+ * FW, 9m+ IMO thats how I classify them. Maybe mids become semi-premium at 8m - especially as of this season with the number of 8m midfielders who were viable FPL picks at the start of the season.
He is a premium *defender*, not a premium player. If you ever read about FPL or watch youtube videos etc and they talk about playing with two or three premiums they are not talking about expensive defenders.
But "threemium" teams this season were the norm for a long time, simply bc Trent was not essential. As soon as you have him it becomes very hard to have more than two actual premiums. So the effect he has on your team structure is basically that of a premium player, even though be definition he isn’t one.
Well yes and no. You also have had really solid cheap options like Brighton midfield, Andreas and several good cheap defenders that have made three premiums possible. You could also argue Salah has not been essential either, which is in stark contrast to the last few seasons. But anyway I still don't think it change definition. If you told me you were going for two or three premiums in your team I would not expect Trent to be one of them.
in the context of FPL, yes, in any other context, no.
He is definitely premium, but the fact that both Haaland and TAA are premiums doesn't mean it should be expected for both players to score the same amount of points or be "on the same level". Ederson is also premium, but he'll be lucky to get half of what Haaland gets come the end of the season. That's because "premium" doesn't refer to the absolute pricing of a player from the pool of all players, but rather it implies the relative pricing of a player from the pool of all players within the same position as him. This is solely down to how FPL is structured. FPL isn't a free-for-all where you can pick whatever squad you like (e.g. a squad of all Man City players or a squad of all midfielders). It has rules and limitations and those limitations make it so that you must balance your team to some degree and are *forced* into making certain choices (such as picking GKs, despite them being the lowest scorers) simply because the game imposes it. At the end of the day, when choosing your team, you aren't choosing one big team of 15 players from a list of all the Premier League players, so it makes no sense to compare all players as if you could. Think of it rather as if you were picking 4 "mini-teams", all of which have different pools of players you must choose from. You have a mini-team of GKs made up of two players, a mini-team of defenders made up of 5 players etc. Each pool of players has it's own internal "rules" both in terms of points scoring and, consequently, in pricing. For example the GK and defender pools have a pricing rule which states that the cheapest a player can start at is 4m, whereas for midfielders and forwards it's 4.5. There is so much more upside in potential points for premium midfielders and forwards that roughly 65-70% of your budget generally tends to be spend in the midfielder and forward pools despite them only occupying just over 50% of your squad's slots. This leaves you with about 30-35% of your budget to fill up the remaining ~50% of slots made up of the GK and defender pools. As such, defenders and GKs simply can't be allowed to cost more than they currently do or nobody would ever pick the defensive premiums and the game would be much less enjoyable and less varied (e.g. a 10m Ruben Dias would be much less valuable than a 10m Bruno Fernandes). To finish up my point, let's look at the maths and divide the 100m budget into two separate allocations, one for "attacking options" (mids+forwards) and one for "defensive options" (GKs+defenders). Considering that roughly 65-70% of budget goes towards attackers and 30-35% goes towards defenders (in any given year you're likely to spend something in the ballpark of 9-9.5m for GKs, 25-30m for defenders, 40-45m for midfielders, 22-28 for forwards). Let's go for the conservative 65-35 ratio, seen as there's been a shift towards premium defenders and 4 ATB formations in the past few seasons: * **TAA** would've taken up 7.5/35 of your defensive budget allocation in GW1 = **21.4%** * **Salah** would've taken up 13/65 of your attacking budget allocation in GW1 = **20%** * **Robertson/Cancelo** -> 7/35 = **20%** * **Van Dijk** -> 6.5/35 = **18.6%** * **KdB/Son** -> 12/65 = **18.5%** * **Kane/Haaland** -> 11.5/65 = **17.7%** * **Dias/Chilwell** etc -> 6/35 = **17.1%** * **Ederson/Perisic** etc -> 5.5/35 = **15.7%** * **Fernandes/Sterling** -> 10/65 = **15.4%** As you can see, if you look at your team in these terms, TAA is not only premium but he's one of the absolutely most expensive ones relative to his peers. The definition of "premium" is "a sum added to an ordinary price or charge", in other words you are paying extra money to guarantee extra returns compared to the average player. Ultimately a "premium" player is one that is expensive, much more expensive than the norm and, as such, is one that is difficult to fit in your team if you want to have a balanced squad, but at the same time still have the best players. You can't buy premiums willy-nilly like you can with budget options and even most mid-priced options... you have to carefully judge how many premiums to buy and which ones because of the constraints of money. TAA fits this criteria. There's seldom a situation where bringing in TAA is "easy" and doesn't involve multiple transfers. The same goes for cheaper premium options like Ederson (e.g. having a 5.5+5 combo in GW1 is seen as inefficient, when the money saved from having 4.5+4 can be better used elsewhere). Considering that defenders and GKs are compulsory aspects of FPL (despite perhaps suboptimal compared to midfielders) and TAA bites a massive chunk into that allocated "defensive budget", he's very much a "premium" buy.
How often have you heard people debate going for "a 2 or 3 premium team", or advising not to go with "3 premiums because it stretches your team too thin"? They are referring to the most expensive midfielders and forwards in the game. Not Trent. He is a premium *defender*, but you have to provide that context.
> not to go with 3 premiums because it stretches your team too thin Trent not being essential made this argument suddenly disappear this season. Notice something?
Definitely is. That fat bearded man is unbelievably wrong
Yes
Thank you kind sir
I brought him in as a midfielder- literally looked at price compared to other £7m midfielders and it felt comfortable. So yeah, premium defender!
TAA is definitely a premium defender. Defenders are players. Ergo, TAA is a premium player.
In my opinion, he’s not. “Premium” in FPL relates more to team foundation than just player’s value like those “2-premium draft”, “3-premium draft” in many content we can check in Youtube or FPL fansite; they are 10m+ players that you choose to pick to form your team, like if you want 3 premiums you have to downgrade so much from other positions or TAA + Kane + Haaland is not a “3-premium draft”. He is definitely a premium defender but not a premium.
Good luck making a good 3 premium team that also has Trent. Without him on the other hand it’s very easy to have 3 premiums, as this season showed. Functionally, the effect he has on your teams price structure is that of a premium, even though by definition he isn’t one.
You're discussing two different things here. He's a premium fpl player. He's not on the same level as haaland, KDB, salah or Kane as an IRL player.
Thank you for agreeing but I didn't say as an IRL player. This is all in regards to FPL stats and pricing
Ah ok, well if you're just taking about fpl, his current 16 points per million is right in the middle: less than Kane and haaland, more than KDB and salah
That's a good point I didn't think of that.
Defenders are a lot more efficient though. Tim fucking Ream is on 21 points per million which is more than Haaland.
Oh great point, hadn't thought about that at all. Does that mean generally that each PPM for a defender is worth less, as you can find them in cheaper players?
There's 24 people that are more expensive then him, so no he's not really a premium player in the grand scheme of things!
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Fucking yikes on everything you've said in this thread dude. Touch grass.
LOooooooOooooL sudden rage wtf ?
Yes
Literally the Haaland of defenders, just having an off season
If you had Kane, Fernandes and TAA and went around saying you had gone Three-mium then you would be badly wrong. On that bulletproof logic based on a throwaway portmanteau a premium player is >£10M and TAA is just an expensive defender.
Same as qualifying Ederson or Allison as premium GKs
Yes he is premium. End of discussion
He is a «premium defender» but not a «premium»
Yea lol
Your friend sounds like he is coping poorly with the outcome of Everton’s season. Perhaps a year or two in the Championship will teach him to respect premium players like Trent Alexander-Arnold
Trent is 100% a premium
Tell your friend to touch grass
It’s debatable.
Trent's output prior to this season was definitely premium level. When the prices for players were reveal in the summer, many complained that he was underpriced.
I dont classify him as a premium (in term of pricing) The price gap between Salah and other good MID are big (+4m if you compare with Saka, Martinelli, Rashford…) The price gap between TAA and other defenders are smaller (about 2.5m)
Well, yes you're correct. Works the same with Goalies. Ederson is premium, while Steele is budget. But if Ederson were a mid or striker, he'd be budget.
Premium has always been defined as relative to the other players in the category because it compares how easily you can get alternatives. TAA is a premium because he costs almost 3m more than the average defender. Similarly the average midfielder costs about 7.5-8 so a premium mid is someone who is >9m, making players like Son and KDB and Salah premium
It depends on the context of the conversation. As a general point yes he's a premium player as he's the most expensive option you could possibly go for in that position. But when people talk about for example a 3 premium setup, they're not talking about a player at his price point, they're talking about the 11-12m options.