Gameweek 5 was a big old mixed bag here at Full 90 FPL.
I say that… neither of us exactly excelled.
I (Joe) had a bang average week, with 43pts. James had a mini-disaster, with 31pts, and was raging all day Saturday. The star for both of us was probably the expensive Chilwell, who got benched, came on late for a 1pt-er… then didn’t even get that after picking up a stupid yellow. Cheers, Ben!
As I said to James (many times), however, it’s still far, far too early to be panicking. We are five gameweeks in. By the halfway point last season we were both still struggling, and we ended up around the top 1-2% of all FPL managers.
If you had a poor week too, I would really urge you not to worry about it too much. We still have over 85% of the FPL season to come – that’s plenty of time to make even worse mistakes!
(Or turn our fortunes around, of course).
With all that said, let’s crack on with a full round-up of FPL Gameweek 5. We’ll begin with a few general talking points, then review the actual games.
Gameweek 5 Talking Points
These are the two main things on mine and James’ mind coming out of Gameweek 5.
Defences Suck
If you have read our stuff before, you will have seen James bemoan the lack of good defences in FPL. FPL Gameweek 5 was no exception to the trend.
Technically, five teams did keep cleans.
Two of those were Fulham and Bournemouth, who are FPL irrelevant.
The other three were Chelsea, Arsenal, and Newcastle.
The Chelsea defender we all actually own – Chilwell – not only failed to start, but also came on for a yellow. Brilliant.
For Arsenal, Saliba and Gabriel both have fairly high ownership, and congrats if you started them this week. I’m not sure we can take anything away from the game, however – the Everton ‘attack’ is absolutely shocking. They’ve failed to score in 4/5 games now.
For Newcastle, Botman and Trippier (and Pope) were also highly-owned cleans. This was a legit clean sheet against a good team, and Newcastle did look very solid. They did, however, just concede five goals in their previous two games.
Elsewhere? Supposedly good teams – Spurs, Liverpool, and Man City – all conceded one goal against two crap attacking teams (Wolves and Sheffield Utd), and one decent attack (West Ham). Villa conceded one against Palace. Brighton conceded one against Man U.
The long and short of it is that defences are pretty rubbish. We’re going to tackle this in much more detail – and work out what we should actually do about it – later this week. Stay tuned.
Just Get Salah
Salah was a lock in my pre-season team, and I’m glad I stuck with him.
Is he the Salah of old? No. But he’s still the second-most reliable player in the game.
For years, there were two players we could rely on to get 25-30+ goal involvements per season – Salah and Kane. Last season we had three, with Haaland added in. Now that Kane’s auto-winning a title in Bavaria, we’re back down to two.
When there are only two players in the entire game we can rely on to return basically every week… why not just have both?
I know Mo’s expensive, but that’s for a reason. He returns literally every week. Neither he nor Liverpool are even playing that well, and he still has 2 goals and 4 assists.
Budget isn’t particularly important this year anyway, with so many good, cheap midfielders, plus the likes of Wissa and Awoniyi up top. My advice is just to have Salah and Haaland locked into your team all season, and figure out the rest from there.
Match Reports
Right! Enough ruminating – let’s get onto the actual FPL analysis.
Here’s are the FPL takeaways from all 10 matchups in Gameweek 5.
Wolves 1-3 Liverpool
xG: 0.54-2.83
Liverpool clearly aren’t in full-flow, but keep winning anyway, and now have 13/15pts.
Mohammed Salah is undeniable, as noted above. None of the other forwards can be trusted right now, especially with the European games starting.
They also continue to concede, with the clean against Villa looking like even more of an aberration.
Wolves themselves aren’t FPL relevant. Let’s not overlook, however, that their attack might not be as bad as we thought. They’ve scored in 4 of their 5 games now, so simply aren’t a good defensive matchup right now.
Manchester United 1-3 Brighton & Hove Albion
xG: 1.00-1.78
Brighton turned up with six changes to their first-team line up and dominated this game. Man United’s defence is so open. Brighton played through them incredibly easily.
Still, none of Brighton’s fantasy relevant players delivered this week. Mitoma was pretty poor but at least he turned up, eh?! Estupinian was presumably not fit enough to play given the international games.
It’s too early to panic, but perhaps this will be a signal for the rest of the season. With European football due to start soon, Brighton have clearly shown strength in depth.
Man United were okay going forward. Rashford had eight shots but none of them were great opportunities, and he finished the game on 0.69xG (for context, a penalty shot is 0.79xG by itself). He was a little unfortunate that he ran the ball just out and Hojlund’s goal was disallowed.
It’s getting increasingly tempting to bail on Rashford. But that probably depends on the rest of your team.
Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 Sheffield United
xG: 2.10-0.75
Spurs really struggled to break down this United side. Sheffield were good at soaking up the pressure. It was a bit disappointing from Son and Maddison who couldn’t really do much.
Of course, Richarlison came off the bench and made all the difference and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him starting as the 9 for Spurs next week.
If you bought in Son then sure, you can feel a little aggrieved that he didn’t return because he started up front. On the other hand, you can’t feel aggrieved if he doesn’t start up front next week – it was always a risk.
West Ham 1-3 Man City
xG: 0.89 – 3.50
Man City were dominant (though once again failed to keel a clean), and Haaland probably should have had two goals, if not three.
Alvarez was incredible. He basically ran this game for City. I’d still be nervous about bringing him in, between regular Pep Roulette and the European fixtures.
Ward-Prowse returned again… Still don’t believe he is a pick, as he significantly outperforms his xG.
Aston Villa 3-1 Crystal Palace
xG: 2.15-1.10
Aston Villa should have been winning by the second half but Watkins just continued to be Watkins and not-quite-score. Cash also could have had a goal and an assist. Watkins’ only return came from a fantasy assist – he was fouled for a penalty. And, he didn’t get to take the penalty (which he probably would’ve missed anyway).
Diaby was very impressive, and basically playing as striker. He’s lethal on the counter.
Don’t bring Digne in, as Moreno is supposed to be fit now.
For Palace, Eze was great again. Let’s remember to keep an eye on him for when Palace’s fixtures turn.
Newcastle 1-0 Brentford
xG: 1.37 – 0.66
What a boring game to watch.
But, the signs point to Newcastle’s defence hopefully being a good pick in the four next gameweeks, after their ropey form pre-international break.
From an attacking standpoint, there just continue to be far too many options. Wilson scored the pen, but we’ve got no idea who’ll start up top for them going forward.
Brentford were surprisingly poor. They played direct as usual, but the passes just weren’t landing. They were solid defensively though, and we’re definitely not panicking about their attacking assets.
Bournemouth 0 – 0 Chelsea
xG: 1.21 – 1.65
Another thrilling game. Not much to take away from this.
Bournemouth are… fine. They’re not an easy matchup, but not hard either.
Chelsea’s attack continues to be absolutely rubbish. Bin Sterling and Jackson, if you were still holding either of them.
Everton 0 – 1 Arsenal
xG: 0.38 – 1.07
Attack against defence.
We might have hoped for more from Arsenal (and arguably should’ve got more, with Martinelli’s goal being questionably ruled out by VAR). But it’s hard to score against a team just packing everyone behind the ball. Better things should be ahead for the attackers against Spurs next week.
Everton are absolutely awful going forward. They’re easily one of the best defensive fixtures in the league.
Notts Forest 1 – 1 Burnley
xG: 0.71 – 0.81
Well, shout-out to Burnley for not losing! Until further notice they remain one of the best matchups in the league, though – offensively and defensively.
By far the most-owned Forest player is Turner. An exciting 2pts for all of us!
Awoniyi is just great. He returned yet again, this time with an assist. He’s now returned in all five games this season, including against Chelsea, Man U, and Arsenal. He remains amazing value at only 6.6, and generally seems to be fixture-proof, although Man City next week obviously isn’t ideal.
Final Thoughts
That’s all for now.
Again, however badly you did this week, don’t overreact. We’re still incredibly early in the season.
We’ll have another post out in the next couple of days, looking in-depth at what we’re supposed to do with defenders. In the meantime, thanks for reading, everybody!