2014-15 Premier League Preseason Rankings: Top Defenders

2014-15 Premier League Preseason Rankings: Top Defenders

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

For our 2014-15 Premier League rankings, we polled four of our writers to come up with a composite list for the upcoming year. We broke it down by position, listing our top-20 forwards, midfielders, defenders and top-10 goalkeepers.

Points were assigned to each player based on their ranking by each writer: 10 points for a first place vote, nine points for a second place vote, eight points for a third place vote and so on.

Chelsea's Thibaut Courtois is the top choice in our Goalkeeper Rankings and Everton's Leighton Baines checks in at the top spot for defenders.

The tricky part about ranking defensive players is that their stats are so volatile year-in and year-out. Players on top teams accumulate more clean sheets but goals and assists are still important.

With that said, here's what we think about this year's defensive crop:

RNKOVERALLPTSLAIRDMOSINSKIPITNERRADUNE
1 Leighton Baines76 Seamus Coleman Leighton Baines Seamus Coleman Branislav Ivanovic
2 Seamus Coleman74 Leighton Baines Branislav Ivanovic Gary Cahill Leighton Baines
3 Pablo Zabaleta66 Pablo Zabaleta Martin Skrtel Leighton Baines Seamus Coleman
4 Per Mertesacker60 Gary Cahill Pablo Zabaleta Per Mertesacker Gary Cahill
5 Branislav Ivanovic56 Per Meresacker Seamus Coleman Laurent Koscielny Pablo Zabaleta
6 Vincent Kompany55 Vincent Kompany John Terry Vincent Kompany Vincent Kompany
T7 Martin Skrtel53 Luke Shaw Per Mertesacker Pablo Zabaleta Laurent Koscielny
T7 Laurent Koscielny53 Mathieu Debuchy Laurent Koscielny Luke Shaw Per Mertesacker
T7 Gary Cahill53 Martin Skrtel Mathieu Debuchy Martin Skrtel Cesar Azpilicueta
10 Luke Shaw46 John Terry Luke Shaw John Terry Martin Skrtel
11 John Terry37 Laurent Koscielny Vincent Kompany Mathieu Debuchy Aleksander Kolarov
12 Mathieu Debuchy35 Branislav Ivanovic Jan Vertonghen Jan Vertonghen Martin Demichelis
13 Jan Vertonghen28 Dejan Lovren Aleksander Kolarov Branislav Ivanovic Luke Shaw
14 Aleksander Kolarov24 Steven Caulker Jose Enrique Phil Jones Kyle Walker
T15 Steven Caulker12 Aleksander Kolarov Felipe Luis Ryan Shawcross Jan Vertonghen
T15 Kyle Walker12 Felipe Luis Steven Caulker Kyle Walker Kieran Gibbs
T15 Cesar Azpilicueta12 Jan Vertonghen Dejan Lovren Joel Ward Phil Jagielka
T15 Dejan Lovren12 Joel Ward Jose Fonte Phil Jagielka Sylvain Distin
19 Felipe Luis11 John Stones Joel Ward Curtis Davies Daniel Agger
20 Joel Ward9 Curtis Davies Phil Jones Geoff Cameron Glen Johnson

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew M. Laird
Andrew is a former RotoWire contributor. He was the 2017 and 2018 FSWA Soccer Writer of the Year. He is a nine-time FSWA award finalist, including twice for Football Writer of the Year.
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