Best FPL DEFCON Defenders: Who to Pick and Who Was Best Last Season

Last season, one Fantasy Premier League defender made 52 points from defensive contributions alone, more than some forwards scored all season. Six defenders made at least 36. One year on, half of them have dropped out of the FPL picture, and one has started the season better than anyone.

So what happened to last season's DEFCON kings, and who are the best DEFCON defenders to pick now? All numbers are after Gameweek 5 of 2026/27.

What DEFCON is

Since last season, FPL pays 2 points for defensive work. For a defender it counts clearances, blocks, interceptions and tackles: reach 10 in one match and you get the two points. Nine gets you nothing. Midfielders and forwards need 12, and ball recoveries count for them too.

Two points is half a clean sheet, but unlike a clean sheet it doesn't depend on the result: your team can lose 3–0 and you still get it. Over a season, the best DEFCON defenders turned that into a points floor that cheap defenders never used to have. (For a refresher on all the scoring rules, see the DEFCON stats dashboard.)

Which clubs produce DEFCON

DEFCON isn't spread evenly. Counting every match in which an outfield player hit the threshold last season (a "haul"), club by club:

Most DEFCON hauls, 2025/26		Fewest
Everton	103	Aston Villa	32
Bournemouth	97	Manchester City	49
Burnley	87	Chelsea	52
Crystal Palace	85	Arsenal	55

The clubs at the bottom are the ones that keep the ball. If you have the ball, you can't tackle or intercept anyone. The clubs at the top spend long spells defending their own box.

Does more possession mean less DEFCON?

Yes, and strongly. Plot each club's average possession against its DEFCON hauls and the line slopes down: every extra percentage point of possession is worth about 2.3 fewer hauls over a season (correlation −0.76).

Manchester City had the most of the ball (61%) and one of the lowest DEFCON counts. Burnley had the least (42%) and were third for DEFCON.

A few clubs break the pattern, and they're the interesting ones:

• Bournemouth had the ball half the time, which predicts around 70 hauls. They made 97, because they press high and win the ball back all over the pitch.
• Everton beat the line by almost 20. Liverpool sat above it too, with Van Dijk alone hitting the threshold 16 times.
• Aston Villa are the strangest case: mid-table possession, but only 32 hauls, the fewest in the league by far.

So possession tells you about the team. For the player, the better guide is simpler: how often has he actually reached ten?

Last season's top six DEFCON defenders

Ranked by DEFCON points in 2025/26:

Marcos Senesi was first by a distance: 26 hauls in 37 games, 70% of the time, for 52 points, almost a third of his 175.

Three of these six are now out of the FPL picture. Burnley and West Ham went down: Mavropanos is playing in the Championship and Estève has left for RB Leipzig. Senesi moved from Bournemouth to Spurs and hasn't played since the opening game. Here's how the other three are doing.

Tarkowski kept everything

Same club, same role, and an even better start. James Tarkowski has 43 points from five games: a goal, an assist, three clean sheets, seven bonus points, and three DEFCON hauls on top. He's the top-scoring defender in the game, and DEFCON is now only the bonus layer.

Lacroix: more defending at Chelsea, not less

Maxence Lacroix moved from Crystal Palace to Chelsea, one of the lowest DEFCON clubs last season with 58% of the ball. You'd expect his numbers to drop. They went up: from 10.8 to 11.6 defensive actions per 90, with three hauls in four full games.

The reason is that this Chelsea is a different team. Their possession has fallen from 57.7% to 47.4%, the biggest drop in the league. Less of the ball for Chelsea means more defending for Lacroix.

Andersen lost his place

Joachim Andersen is still at Fulham but has started only two of five games, with 3 points and no DEFCON yet. So of last season's top six, only Tarkowski and Lacroix are reliable picks right now.

This season's DEFCON leaders

The top five defenders after five gameweeks, by matches at the threshold, with total points to split the ties:

Player	Club	DEFCON games	Last season	Points
Murillo	Nottingham Forest	4 of 5	10 of 25	23
Silva	Bournemouth	4 of 5	not in PL	13
Tarkowski	Everton	3 of 5	22 of 37	43
Hall	Newcastle	3 of 5	5 of 30	31
Muharemović	Leeds	3 of 5	not in PL	27

It's a new list. Tarkowski is the only one left from last season's top six (Lacroix is also on three DEFCON games, but has 13 points). Silva and Muharemović weren't in the Premier League last season, and there are two big risers: Murillo hit DEFCON in 10 of 25 games last season, Lewis Hall in just 5 of 30.

One warning: five games is a small sample. Fourteen defenders are level on three, and the gap between three and two is one match.

Who changed their possession this season

Lacroix's story points to something bigger: possession changes, and DEFCON follows it.

Club	2025/26	2026/27 (GW1–5)	Change
Brighton	54.0%	64.7%	+10.7
Tottenham	50.4%	60.4%	+10.0
Manchester Utd	51.9%	59.8%	+7.9
Aston Villa	53.7%	45.9%	−7.8
Chelsea	57.7%	47.4%	−10.3

The link still holds after five games, though it's weaker on a small sample (correlation −0.45, or −0.62 without Hull). Arsenal and Brighton, near the top for possession, have just four hauls each. Newly promoted Hull are the odd one out: 32% possession, the lowest in the league, but only six hauls.

So if you're picking a defender for DEFCON, check two things: does he reach ten on his own, and is his team spending less time on the ball than before? Chelsea's and Villa's defenders are the ones to watch. Spurs', Brighton's and United's should find it harder.

Can you predict DEFCON?

Better than most things in FPL. Goals are rare and random; ten defensive actions is a habit.

Our model looks at how often each defender has reached ten in games where he played at least an hour, gives recent games more weight, and multiplies by his chance of playing 60 minutes. For Tarkowski in Gameweek 6 (Hull v Everton), that's about a 58% chance of the two points.

It doesn't use possession directly, but because recent games count most, a defender whose team has changed style shows it in his numbers within a few weeks.

Best predicted DEFCON defenders, GW6–10

The defenders our model expects to earn the most DEFCON points over the next five gameweeks:

Tarkowski leads, then Van Dijk and Lacroix. Then come three cheap ones: Murillo at Forest, James Hill at Bournemouth and Chris Richards at Crystal Palace, all £5.5m or less and owned by around 2% of managers or fewer. Hill is starting every game for Bournemouth, five from five, at ten defensive actions per 90.

DEFCON isn't everything

Before you fill your defence with DEFCON picks, one warning. After five games, Chris Richards has exactly the same DEFCON record as Tarkowski: three games over ten, six points. Tarkowski has 43 points. Richards has 14.

The difference is everything else. Everton have kept three clean sheets. Palace have kept one, lost four of their five games and conceded eleven goals: that's −5 for Richards from goals conceded, and no goals, assists or bonus.

They even played each other in Gameweek 1. Richards made 16 defensive actions and got his two points; Tarkowski made nine and missed out. But Everton won 2–0, and Tarkowski still outscored him, 6 points to 3.

Last season told the same story:

Defender, 2025/26	DEFCON points	Clean sheets	Total points
Gabriel (Arsenal)	22	18	209, 1st among defenders
Richards (Crystal Palace)	26	11	128, 20th
Estève (Burnley)	38	3	85, 63rd

Estève made more DEFCON points than Van Dijk, but finished on 85. The top-scoring defender, Gabriel, made only 22; eighteen clean sheets did the rest.

How to use DEFCON

DEFCON is a floor, not a ceiling. Two points stops a cheap defender from blanking, but the big totals still come from clean sheets, goals and bonus, and those come from playing in a good team. Use it as a tiebreaker, not the reason to buy a defender on its own.

The best picks tick both boxes: a defender who reaches ten on his own, in a team that keeps clean sheets. Right now that's Tarkowski, with Van Dijk not far behind. If you want a cheap one, Murillo and Hill have the DEFCON; check their fixtures in our fixture difficulty ratings for the clean sheets.

Conclusion: clean sheets first, DEFCON second

So is DEFCON the main thing, or sugar on top? Last season's numbers for every defender with 1,800+ minutes (76 players) give a clear answer:

2025/26 defenders	DEFCON	Clean sheets
Share of all their points	14%	28%
Typical defender (median)	14 pts	32 pts
Average for the top 20	24 pts	45 pts
Correlation with total points	0.45	0.85

Clean sheets matter about twice as much, and they decide who finishes top. Gabriel was the best defender in the game with 22 DEFCON points; Nico O'Reilly finished seventh with just 2.

But DEFCON is more than decoration. It separates defenders with similar clean sheets: Senesi, Tarkowski, Truffert and Lacroix all made 44 points from clean sheets, and DEFCON put them 3rd, 5th, 6th and 8th. Across every pair of defenders with similar clean-sheet points but a gap of 10+ DEFCON points, the one with more DEFCON scored more overall 82% of the time. And it's barely linked to clean sheets (correlation 0.12), which is why the best picks have both.

So: pick the team for clean sheets first, then use DEFCON to choose between its defenders, or between two similar options. Don't buy a DEFCON defender from a team that leaks goals.

For DEFCON as it happens on match day, see the live DEFCON tracker. To see how your own defence measures up, try Rate My Team.

Sources: 2025/26 per-match data from the public FPL API (via the vaastav/Fantasy-Premier-League archive); 2026/27 from the FPL API after GW5; possession from StatMuse. A haul is a match at the DEFCON threshold (10 for defenders, 12 for midfielders and forwards). Predictions from our model, computed 1 October 2026; prices and ownership move daily.