FPL DEFCON Midfielders: 16 with Attacking Returns (GW1–5)

Defensive Contribution (DEFCON) points were meant to reward a type of player Fantasy Premier League used to ignore completely: the midfielder who puts in the defensive work without scoring or assisting. Five gameweeks in, the data shows something more extreme than that — for midfielders, defense and attack in FPL scoring terms are almost mutually exclusive. The players racking up DEFCON points are, with a handful of exceptions, not the same players getting goals and assists.

FPL DEFCON midfielders: only 16 have both so far

I compared the DEFCON points and attacking points (goals × 5 + assists × 3, the standard midfielder scoring) earned through Gameweek 5 by all 104 midfielders with at least 180 minutes. Only 16 have at least one point in both categories.

Those 16 are the box-to-box profiles in FPL terms. The chart shows only those players; names sharing coordinates are listed together beside their point. For the scoring rules and full-season standings, see the FPL DEFCON stats dashboard.

Across all 104 midfielders, the overlap is small: most top attacking midfielders have little or no DEFCON, and most top DEFCON scorers have little attacking output. Of the top 10 midfielders by attacking points, none has more than 2 DEFCON points — most have none at all. Of the top 10 by DEFCON points, only two have scored more than one goal or assist all season. The specialist tables below show the two ends of that divide; the chart isolates the players who contribute in both.

The pure specialists

Top attacking returns, zero (or almost zero) DEFCON:

Player	Team	Price	G	A	Attack pts	DEFCON	xGI	Owned
Groß	BHA	£5.8m	3	4	27	0	2.63	28.2%
Schade	BRE	£6.2m	3	2	21	0	1.84	11.0%
Cherki	MCI	£7.8m	3	2	21	0	2.26	28.3%
Semenyo	MCI	£8.4m	2	3	19	0	1.49	15.5%
Rogers	CHE	£7.7m	3	1	18	0	2.95	40.4%
B.Fernandes	MUN	£11.9m	3	1	18	0	3.88	38.6%
Palmer	CHE	£9.7m	2	2	16	0	2.10	26.0%
Saka	ARS	£9.5m	3	0	15	0	4.20	13.6%

Groß topping this table is worth a caveat: we've already flagged him as an xG/xA overperformer running at roughly 2.7x his underlying numbers. Contrast that with Saka and B.Fernandes, whose xGI (4.20 and 3.88) actually exceeds their attacking returns — the underlying process backs up the points, and neither has a single DEFCON point to show for it either.

Top defensive returns, minimal attack:

Player	Team	Price	DEFCON	Attack pts	Owned	Total pts
Mainoo	MUN	£5.5m	8	3	1.6%	22
Ampadu	LEE	£5.4m	6	3	0.9%	21
Tielemans	MUN	£5.8m	4	0	1.5%	14
Adams	BOU	£5.0m	4	0	0.3%	12
L.Miley	NEW	£5.5m	4	0	0.1%	12

Mainoo leads every midfielder in the game for DEFCON points and has one goal involvement all season. These are the polar opposite of the Groß/Saka type: reliable, repeatable defensive returns (DEFCON is about volume of defensive actions, not finishing quality, so it's a much less fluky stat) with almost no attacking upside attached.

The five who do both

Five of the 16 clear a higher bar on both axes — at least 4 DEFCON points and at least 5 attacking points. All five are cheap, and all but one are barely owned:

Player	Team	Price	DEFCON	Attack pts	G	A	xGI	Owned	Total pts
Janelt	BRE	£5.0m	6	10	2	0	0.97	2.5%	28
Scott	BOU	£6.1m	4	11	1	2	1.06	5.7%	30
M.Sangaré	BRE	£5.6m	6	6	0	2	1.06	10.0%	22
Stach	LEE	£6.0m	6	5	1	0	1.28	2.5%	27
Ndiaye	MCI	£5.8m	4	6	0	2	0.96	6.8%	22

Janelt is the pick of the group: 2nd of all 104 qualifying midfielders for DEFCON points, and top of the whole pool once you weigh defense and attack rank together — no other midfielder in the game combines a top-5 DEFCON return with a top-20 attacking one. He's ever-present at 450 minutes and owned by just 2.5% of managers at a rock-bottom £5.0m — scoring from both ends of the pitch at a price most managers are spending on a pure bench filler.

Scott has the highest total points of the five (30, second in the whole midfielder pool on attacking points among non-specialists) and is the closest thing here to an actual all-rounder rather than a defense-first player who's stolen a couple of goals. Stach, M.Sangaré and Ndiaye round it out — all cheap, all low-owned, all producing from a category most of the template is ignoring entirely.

Why this matters for squad building

FPL's template is built almost entirely from the "pure attack" column — Palmer, Saka, B.Fernandes and Rogers are among the most-owned midfielders in the game. That's rational: attacking returns are worth more per point and every one of those four has the underlying numbers (xGI) to back up big minutes at the top of the season. But it also means the DEFCON scoring category is currently an almost entirely separate, much cheaper pool of points that the template isn't pricing in.

Caveats

• Five gameweeks is a small sample. DEFCON is a per-match threshold stat, so a couple of matches with an unusually high or low actions count can swing a player's season total noticeably at this stage.
• 180+ minutes only. Players who've missed time through rotation or injury (Rice, Rudoni, Wharton and others with real defensive volume but tighter minutes) aren't in this sample.
• DEFCON is brand new for 2025/26, so there's no multi-season baseline to say which of these profiles are stable roles versus early-season noise.

For the current gameweek's DEFCON picture as matches are played, see the live DEFCON tracker; for the full season leaderboard with ownership and position filters, see the DEFCON stats dashboard.