Fantasy Premier League Rankings: Top Forwards for 2020/21

This article is part of our Fantasy Premier League Rankings series.

The Premier League released its 2020/21 fixture list today, which felt like a perfect time to start releasing our season-long player rankings. I took a different approach this year and will be basing my rankings on our season-long projections, which were revamped over the past few months and will be available on RotoWire. The calculations began with projecting team totals for each statistical category for every game in the upcoming season, with those season team totals then distributed to each player expected to play based on a number of factors including their own per-90 averages, the averages of all players at a specific position for a specific team, their opponent allowed averages and so on.

There is still plenty of human influence over the numbers, as we individually set minutes projections for each player. With that said, an increase in minutes for one player will increase their statistical projections, but we also have to take minutes away from other players, who will see their projected stats drop, to ensure we're not over-projecting available minutes. Updates to the projections will be made often, whether it's for a big transfer (#announceHavertz), injury or obvious playing time situation change. The projections adjustments will obviously change the rankings, though those won't be republished quite as often; just know that they will change, so if you're drafting in three weeks, make sure you check for updated projections and rankings at that time. And, maybe most importantly, I am only projecting and ranking players who are currently in the Premier League. While Kai Havertz and Jadon Sancho are widely expected to join the league in the next month, we will treat them as Bundesliga players until they've officially signed.

With that said, let's jump into the forwards. There were a number of high-profile forward-eligible players in the Premier League's official fantasy game that were moved to the midfield because attacking wingers are generally placed there, so you won't see guys like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Marcus Rashford here, but you will see Michail Antonio, Richarlison and Anthony Martial. Moving from midfield to forward reduces the fantasy-point value of goals from five to four, though forwards earn more toward bonus points with their goals. On the flip side, Aubameyang's goals are now worth slightly more, and he gets one point per clean sheet. 

Goals and assists are still what we're chasing with forwards, which is why Leicester City's Jamie Vardy is at the top of the list this season, as he's projected to score more goals than any other player at the position. Vardy won the 2019/20 Golden Boot with 23 goals, which helped him finish as the highest-scoring forward in the Premier League's official fantasy game. With Leicester City still not employing another reliable goal scorer (or at least one who plays regularly), it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Vardy's on top. His consistent playing time is also a big factor, as guys like Sergio Aguero or Timo Werner may be projected for more goals per minute, but they aren't yet expected to play enough to usurp Vardy.

As mentioned, these are all likely to change a little bit as projections get updated, but I am including each player's projection for minutes, goals, assists, shots on target and chances created, which go into their listed index score. Admittedly, there isn't a ton of deep math that went into the index score, but I believe it provides some more context in terms of how each player stacks up with the others. 

And, as always, if you have any questions, suggestions or feedback, please feel free to leave a comment below, hit me up in our subscriber Discord chat or on Twitter.

Note: all columns are sortable