PITCHKEEP

PitchKeep Take · The Premier

Romain Esse is a midfielder for Crystal Palace, age 21, £5.0m. The Premier ranks him 383rd overall by splitting Sleeper BPL 2025 (#360, 3.0 points) with the consensus of 2 other boards (327.0). The industry still has him 33 spots ahead of the 2025/26 Sleeper count. The Premier pays that reputation something, not everything. Brand does not outrun a down year, and a down year does not erase a player Crystal Palace still builds around.

The 2025/26 Premier League line is 0 starts and 40 minutes, 0 goals and 0 assists, 3 tackles and 0 CBI. Official FPL scored it at 4 points (1.0 per match). Sleeper's table turned the same counting stats into 3.0. Midfielders get 9 a goal, 6 an assist, and 1 a clean sheet, plus a full tackle/CBI stream. That is why a six who plays every week can outrank a ten-goal winger who sits.

Underlying: 0.0 xG, 0.04 xA, 0.04 xGI. Role at Crystal Palace is the 2026/27 question sitting under the 2025/26 number. 0 starts is a starter. Anything under 25 starts is a rotation warning we already priced. Minutes are the skill that survives a finishing regression. The friendliest board is FPL Price Board at 288; the coldest is FPL 2025/26 Points at 366.

Market: £5.0m, 0.0% owned into the 2026/27 FPL start, 3 boards on the file. Mid-range ownership means the name is known and not fully paid. That is usually where this desk lives — not the 70% tax, not the 0.2% dart. FPL's own EP-next is 1.5. ICT 1.5.

Instruction: he is on the 400, which is already a statement, and he is not a star. Stash in Sleeper if the minutes are real. Do not let a Pitch screenshot make you start him over a Premier top-80. Nearby on The Premier: Mamadou Sarr, Altay Bayındır, Callum Olusesi. Versus The Pitch (Sleeper-only #360), the hybrid moves him down to #383. That move is the third list doing its job.

Age 21 is the other half of a hybrid. The 2025/26 counting line is one season. The Athletic-style youth lean on this desk exists specifically so a Crystal Palace kid does not get stuck behind a 32-year-old who had a nice bonus year. Sleeper still has to see the minutes. 0 starts is the beginning of a case, not the end of one.

How to use the file: The Pitch is the Sleeper-only 400 (he is #360 there). The Premier is the 50/50 with every other board we track. Attack, Midfield, Defence, and Keepers re-rank the same Sleeper table by position. BK Value on this page follows The Premier when you are on the hybrid calculator and The Pitch when you are on the Sleeper calculator. Same curve either way — 12,000 at 1.01. Unranked sources are skipped, never treated as 999, which is why a player missing from Yahoo's XI is not secretly ranked 400th.