Crafting an FM26 team using real-life stats: League Two

Huw Davies digs into this season's numbers to find the players who can boost your Fantasy Football squad and give your Football Manager save a head start

Huw Davies

This weekend takes us a third of the way into the season, and you know what that means – it’s time to use statistics to highlight the stars of 2025/26 to date. This week: League Two. Next week: League One. The week after that: might dip into the Ekstraklasa (yes, it’ll be the Championship).

This is not a League Two Team of the Season. There’s no attempt here at tactical cohesion, not that there ever is, and the format won’t be kind to quality all-rounders. But let’s have some fun looking at stats stars in 11 different positions, shall we?

And because a certain management sim came out this week, we’re giving our roles an FM26 skin.

Sources used: Opta Analyst, Wyscout, FotMob, fbref

No messing about: give me your best shot-stoppers. I appreciate a fine pass, I appreciate good footwork, but this isn’t Strictly and I don’t want 10s – I want the number one No.1. Step forward, Mathew Hudson.

Hudson tops the League Two charts for goals prevented (total) and goals prevented (rate), helping Oldham to boast the division’s stingiest defence, even though he’s had to make more saves than all but three other keepers. Oldham are 18th, having scored 12 and conceded 12, and the story has been their own woeful finishing and misfortune preventing a rise up the table – yet without Hudson, things could actually be worse.

We’re looking at progressive passes, but also ball-carrying. A ball-playing defender should be comfortable stepping out, stepping up and stepping into the midfield. And in fact there’s somebody who is so good at that, I’m going to redefine this role as ‘ball-carrying defender’, reclaiming BCD as a footballing initialism from the nightmarish ‘Behind Closed Doors’.

Of the half-dozen or so League Two centre-backs with strong stats in each of the three categories listed, Cameron McJannet actually has the lowest completion rate with his progressive passes. Specifically, it’s just 67%, when Swindon’s Will Wright and set-piece monster Mickey Demetriou, of Crewe, are more accurate and also more prolific.

So why have I chosen the Grimsby CB? Because Ali told me to, but I would’ve ignored him if he hadn’t made a very good point. On average, McJannet carries the ball 160m up the pitch. That’s… really far. There’s nobody even close to that figure, and it’s twice the distance – per match, remember – posted by either Wright or Demetriou, whose advantage in the progressive passing stakes is relatively slender. Quoth Ali Maxwell, “What would you prefer: one more progressive pass per game, or 80 yards more progression with carries?” He’s right.

I will also mention Tom Flanagan for Colchester. Among central defenders, he ranks 2nd for progressive distance carried (129m per 90) and 2nd for progressive passes (11.8 per 90), with a middling-to-reasonable completion rate. He can be on the bench.

This one’s all mine. The FM role: no-nonsense defender. The duties: head it, kick it, get in the way. The criteria: aerial duel win rate, clearances per 90 and blocks per 90. Personally I value clearances lower because to an extent even I can do that, whereas contesting an aerial duel with a League Two centre-forward would literally kill me.

I went through the ranks who’ve played (semi-)regularly in central defence this season and filtered out anyone winning fewer than two-thirds of their aerial duels, because I want a no-nonsense defender, not a some-nonsense defender.

My first conclusion was that if you’re thinking of putting a cross into the Chesterfield box, don’t.

My second was that I needed to take all three metrics and rate these players, very scientifically.

OK, those Anthony O’Connor shot-blocking numbers are absurd. The Harrogate defender is perfect for your EFL Fantasy team, with its Dychian scoring system that loves a block and loves a clearance. But O’Connor is one of the best aerially, too, ranked behind only Chesterfield’s twin sentinels, so I’m not worried about those blocks skewing this highly complex calculation. He’s in.

Let’s leave the defending for now – which wing-backs or attacking full-backs are creating the most chances? We’ll consider Opta Analyst’s per-90 ‘ball carries ending in a chance’ as well, to show who’s getting their team up the pitch. Remeao Hutton (Gillingham) and Aaron Nemane (MK Dons) make strong cases, as do Barnet’s wing-backs, but Crawley man Dion Pereira ranks ahead of them all in both categories: 1.94 open-play goalscoring opportunities created per match and 0.97 carries ending in a chance.

I do feel like I’m rewarding cheating by picking a winger masquerading as a wing-back, mind.

Football Manager has adapted to modern coaches employing lopsided formations, so your bog-standard full-back can now be an ‘inside full-back’ or ‘holding full-back’, among other roles. That’s what we’re looking for here, to hypothetically counterbalance Mr Attacking on the opposite side. This guy needs to be comfortable defending against opposition wingers, especially those who cut in. Ground duel success rate is the order of the day, supported by tackles per 90.

Lewis Cass (of Harrogate) and Harrison Holgate (of Fleetwood, despite his name spelling ‘Harrogate’) have very impressive 75-80% success rates in the ground duel, but both boasts are boosted by relative infrequency. So, it’s between Colchester’s Josh Powell and the Bristol Rovers pair of Jack Sparkes and Macauley Southam-Hales, all three posting success rates above 70% while winning at least four ground duels per game.

Powell, ColU’s 20-year-old Nottingham Forest loanee, also puts in more tackles: 2.46 per 90, more than almost any other full-back in League Two. He has recently lost his place in the team, however, so Southam-Hales it is.

With the old ‘ball-winning midfielder’ replaced in the game by several out-of-possession variations on the standard ‘defensive midfielder’ role, I don’t want to discriminate. A ‘screening DM’ would require good interception stats; the ‘pressing DM’, good tackling. Let’s look at the catch-all ‘possession won per 90’ metric instead. That also brings recoveries into play, for those moments when your midfielder picks up a loose ball or intercepts a pass without having to move, rewarding either the effective closing of opposition passing lanes or a particularly magnetic personality.

While this role isn’t about distribution, I will rule out anybody with an open-play pass success rate below 75%, because there’s no point winning the ball only to give it away again.

Let’s not overthink this. Swindon’s Gavin Kilkenny wins the ball back most often and can be relied upon to redistribute it safely… or with a Big Switch.

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This is the first instalment in our three-part look at Stats Stars across the leagues. Join NTT20.COM on a free trial to access all three pieces — plus our full library of subscriber-only podcasts and everything else we publish.

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