With all the new rule changes and how Fantasy Premier League has priced defenders, ensuring you get the best budget defenders into your team feels more important than ever.
There are a LOT of £4.5m options to choose from, so let’s break down who the best cheap FPL defenders are in both the £4.5m & £4.0m categories.
The Best £4.5m Defenders in FPL 2025-26
When it comes to £4.5m defenders, separating the good from the bad is no easy job. The best budget defenders get you points regularly while enabling you to spend elsewhere, while the others concede goal after goal just to annoy you and test the limits of your blood pressure. I prefer the good ones.
Ezri Konsa (AVL)
Good ebening.
Aston Villa’s first six fixtures include bre, CRY, eve, sun, FUL, and Konsa’s nailed on for 90 every week, should get some minutes at RB, and plays in a pretty decent defence.
He’s been Villa’s highest-scoring defender for the last two seasons in a row, and I imagine that’ll have become three seasons in a row in about a year’s time. That’s pretty good for a bargain FPL defender.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka and El Hadji Malick Diouf (WHU)
Right off the bat, you’d imagine Wan-Bissaka is West Ham’s standout cheap FPL defender pick, considering his performances last season. But after West Ham signed Kyle Walker-Peters and Diouf, I’m a little skittish on Wan-Bissaka’s minutes. I expect him to continue starting, but I really wouldn’t be surprised if he started playing as the RCB instead of the RWB.
West Ham have good fixtures: sun, nfo, CRY, eve, and both AWB and Diouf have their appeal — AWB for the minutes and CBIT, Diouf for his G+A of 0.40/90 in the Czech League last season. The pair are definitely amongst the best £4.5m defenders in the game.
Destiny Udogie and Micky van de Ven (TOT)
I hope you don’t mind owning a player from the 17th-worst defence in the league last season.
Quite honestly, I’m very bullish on Spurs. I think Thomas Frank is a great coach who will first bolster the defence, and I think Udogie and van de Ven will hugely benefit from this.
Udogie should see an improvement in his attacking data (an npxG+xAG/90 of 0.08) under Frank, and I’d reasonably expect van de Ven to get over some of his injury woes.
Spurs’ fixtures of BUR, BOU, whu, bha, WOL are excellent, but the real question is: how will Spurs mess up another year?
As of the time of writing, Udogie is only 9% owned, making him one of the best differentials heading into the 2025/26 campaign.
Adrien Truffert (BOU)
Have I mentioned Truffert just because his name reminds me of truffle fries? No. It also reminds me of trifles, and maybe I’m hungry. Anyway, Truffert’s scored a couple of goals in pre-season already and is presumably internally seen as Kerkez’s replacement.
His npxG+xAG/90 of 0.18 is pretty great, and Bournemouth were a top-half defence last season. His fixtures aren’t the best, but rotating him with another £4.5m for fixtures of WOL + lee sounds like clean sheets to me.
Jan Paul van Hecke (BHA)
Listen, listen, listen — I know what you’re thinking. What about Maxim de Cuyper??? He had an npxG+xAG/90 of 0.45 last season and has 15 G+A over the last two seasons!!! Firstly, his name isn’t even Maximum de Cuyper. That’s reason to worry.
Secondly, I don’t think he’s nailed on to start the season. It looks fairly likely that he does, but Hinshelwood could play there, and Hürzeler likes to rotate as much as a doped-up hamster on its wheel.
Jan Paul van Hecke, on the other hand, will start every game he’s fit for, play 90 minutes, rack up CBITS (sort of), and do some voodoo to stop the ball going into Brighton’s net (ahahaha, no seriously, I worry about the defence). Ultimately, JPvH is a darn good set-and-forget option until we see how de Cuyper settles in.
The Best £4.0m Defenders in FPL 2025-26
Every team needs a scapegoat of around £4.0m to blame their failures on. I personally use every goal they concede as the sole reason I got a red arrow (there is no skill issue), and life has been brilliant ever since.
Until my £4.0 defenders concede yet another goal and send my rank plunging to the depths of wherever Manchester United are on the Premier League table, at least.
Gabriel Gudmundsson (LEE)
Gabriel Gudmundsson sounds like an oxymoron. How can your name contrast to that extent…? Anyhow, Leeds’ 2024/25 side was statistically one of the strongest the Championship has ever seen, and Gudmundsson is a left-back who’s occasionally played as a left midfielder.
His npxG+xAG/90 of 0.11 isn’t tearing up any bridges, but it does indicate he has some potential to swing in crosses for a fellow budget pick Joel Piroe, who makes an appearance in our Best Budget Forwards in FPL 2025/2026 list.
Gudmundsson will likely be nailed on for the Championship winners, who also had the best defence on xGA (I simply ignore Burnley’s number of raw clean sheets), and he has four pretty okay fixtures in his first six: EVE, ful, wol, BOU. A bargain with potential to be one of the best £4.0m defenders in the game? Sign me up.
Maxime Estėve (BUR)
Ahem, so I definitely did not just say I’m ignoring Burnley, and that is NOT because it suits my agenda here. So let’s just focus on the fact that Burnley conceded 16 goals in an entire Championship season last year (that’s 0.35 goals per 90 minutes).
I also don’t expect Burnley to be anywhere near that good in the Premier League, and I still miss Sean Dyche, but Estève was their Player of the Season and is pretty good for CBIT.
Estève’s not someone you want to start on a weekly basis (especially given just how bad Burnley’s fixtures are), but he’s not the worst option to call upon when need be. He’s an option if you’re looking for a bargain FPL defender.
Reinildo Mandava (SUN)
“Here comes the sun, doo doo doo doo” is what will be ringing around the Stadium of Light as Sunderland barrel toward relegation. In all seriousness, I think Sunderland have had a seriously, seriously impressive transfer window.
While I still think they’re likely to be relegated, I fully expect them to put up one helluva fight. Especially given that Sunderland have recruited heavily, bringing in other top youngsters such as Simon Adringa, who happens to be listed within our Best Budget Midfielders in FPL 2025-2026.
Their first six fixtures are incredible, highlighted here in the best opening fixtures analysed — WHU, bur, BRE, cry, AVL, nfo — and considering some of the rule changes, going for short-term picks is pretty viable. Reinildo is also just a good footballer, and I think he could be amongst the best £4.0 defenders if he gets consistent minutes.
Who Are The Best Budget Defenders This Season?
Considering these £4.5m DEF places are likely rotation spots in your FPL teams, you have two options:
- Go safe. Pick Konsa, pick van Hecke, perhaps Guehi (transfer uncertainty) and Lacroix (good for CBIT). Boring but reliable.
- Or you look to have some fun — pick Diouf, consider Udogie (maybe it’s Destiny), have a dip at the Truffert piece of the pie.
When looking at the £4.0m options, there isn’t much that separates the picks — take a look at who rotates best with your other players and go from there. I’d say Gudmundsson is the best £4.0 DEF in isolation, but there isn’t much that separates all the promoted sides. Other than their impending relegation.
If you’re looking to do your own research into the budget defenders but don’t know where to start, we have put together a list of all the best FPL tools to use ahead of the 25/26 season.
Thanks for reading our article about the best budget defenders in FPL 2025-26.
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