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:
RNK | OVERALL | PTS | LAIRD | MOSINSKI | PITNER | RADUNE |
1 | Leighton Baines | 76 | Seamus Coleman | Leighton Baines | Seamus Coleman | Branislav Ivanovic |
2 | Seamus Coleman | 74 | Leighton Baines | Branislav Ivanovic | Gary Cahill | Leighton Baines |
3 | Pablo Zabaleta | 66 | Pablo Zabaleta | Martin Skrtel | Leighton Baines | Seamus Coleman |
4 | Per Mertesacker | 60 | Gary Cahill | Pablo Zabaleta | Per Mertesacker | Gary Cahill |
5 | Branislav Ivanovic | 56 | Per Meresacker | Seamus Coleman | Laurent Koscielny | Pablo Zabaleta |
6 | Vincent Kompany | 55 | Vincent Kompany | John Terry | Vincent Kompany | Vincent Kompany |
T7 | Martin Skrtel | 53 | Luke Shaw | Per Mertesacker | Pablo Zabaleta | Laurent Koscielny |
T7 | Laurent Koscielny | 53 | Mathieu Debuchy | Laurent Koscielny | Luke Shaw | Per Mertesacker |
T7 | Gary Cahill | 53 | Martin Skrtel | Mathieu Debuchy | Martin Skrtel | Cesar Azpilicueta |
10 | Luke Shaw | 46 | John Terry | Luke Shaw | John Terry | Martin Skrtel |
11 | John Terry | 37 | Laurent Koscielny | Vincent Kompany | Mathieu Debuchy | Aleksander Kolarov |
12 | Mathieu Debuchy | 35 | Branislav Ivanovic | Jan Vertonghen | Jan Vertonghen | Martin Demichelis |
13 | Jan Vertonghen | 28 | Dejan Lovren | Aleksander Kolarov | Branislav Ivanovic | Luke Shaw |
14 | Aleksander Kolarov | 24 | Steven Caulker | Jose Enrique | Phil Jones | Kyle Walker |
T15 | Steven Caulker | 12 | Aleksander Kolarov | Felipe Luis | Ryan Shawcross | Jan Vertonghen |
T15 | Kyle Walker | 12 | Felipe Luis | Steven Caulker | Kyle Walker | Kieran Gibbs |
T15 | Cesar Azpilicueta | 12 | Jan Vertonghen | Dejan Lovren | Joel Ward | Phil Jagielka |
T15 | Dejan Lovren | 12 | Joel Ward | Jose Fonte | Phil Jagielka | Sylvain Distin |
19 | Felipe Luis | 11 | John Stones | Joel Ward | Curtis Davies | Daniel Agger |
20 | Joel Ward | 9 | Curtis Davies | Phil Jones | Geoff Cameron | Glen Johnson |