Already forgotten what happened in gameweek 9? I thought so. Check out our review to remind yourself.
Before we get onto it though, I want to do a bit of wildcard chat.
Is now the right time to wildcard?
A lot of us had this gameweek 8/9 fixture swing in mind for wildcarding. Personally, I can’t see myself pulling the trigger, and right now having the decision to make feels more like a burden than anything else.
Wildcarding last week seemed to work out well for most, but there were some bad picks in there. Yes, I’m talking about you Bowen.
I normally back fixtures over form, but this year it’s harder to make that argument because of the amount of players we can afford in top teams. If you want to have a go on the fixtures I don’t blame you, but I’m just not there yet. And with the City vs Arsenal game now postponed, I am most likely to wildcard there.
Reviewing Gameweek 8
Turning first to the most interesting game…
Spurs 6-2 Leicester
Son’s hat trick off the bench proves three things to us:
1) This game is difficult. Most people expected Son to be benched so weren’t interested, which I still think is the correct decision.
2) In draft, you can target players playing Leicester for one week because their defence is shit. In normal fantasy this is too difficult as you only get one transfer per week, but we should definitely target captaincy against Leicester.
3) Brendan Rogers is trying to get fired. He basically told his team to leave Son one on one in defence.
After one good performance, Son is now the tenth best scoring midfielder. I’m still not sure he is straight into our teams. We only have one good performance against the worst defence in the league. Ward has now conceded 22 times off 43 shots, so when Son shot from outside the box he basically knew if it was on target it was going in. However, despite all this, Son now makes it onto the watchlist.
In terms of other lessons, Perisic got benched before he got clean sheet points – I think this sort of thing will happen all year, so I’m not interested. Kane is Kane, and he Kaned – he’s still good. Disappointing he didn’t explode this week, but c’est la vie. Kulusevski was good again but I’m not convinced he offers value right now – he’s just not delivering enough in comparison to cheaper assets.
And despite everything Maddison is good. He was key to Leicester attack, and even though I hate their defence I don’t think he’s a bad option. It will be interesting to see if he can perform in these upcoming easy fixtures.
Brentford 0 – Arsenal 3
I don’t want to make this too much of a PL and not FPL piece with these next two games, but god Arsenal were good weren’t they? I think this performance just reinforced the consistency we should expect from Arsenal assets.
Jesus’s attacking return came at the perfect time. Viera makes me nervous about Odegaard’s minutes, but Martin’s on the chopping block for me anyway.
West Ham 0 – Everton 1
I think its time to re-assess Everton. If things carry on like this there is a serious danger that they stay up. They have only conceded 6 goals. That’s the same as Man City and Liverpool, the latter of course in one less game. Lampard has actually made them quite sound defensively. They’re now probably worth considering as cheap defensive assets. At the time of writing Patterson is injured, and Coady is too expensive at 4.8, but players like Tarkowski at 4.4 are worth considering.
It is still worth noting that these players are unlikely to explode as they’re awful in attack. They’re also not going to always deliver. Whilst they have only conceded 6 goals, they have conceded in 5 of 7 games. So, don’t expect much.
It is also worth noting that they are hugely overperforming their expected goals conceded by 5 goals. So, maybe this doesn’t last but its worth considering in a couple of weeks when their fixtures get better.
I don’t have anything to say about West Ham that I haven’t already said. Lacklustre in attack, and okay defensively.
The Rest
The other games were less interesting from an FPL perspective, so we’ll whip through them in a table:
| Wolves – 0 | Man City – 3 |
| Wolves attack bad.
Wolves defence good. | Akanji at right back was disappointing for Cancelo owners, who might have hoped he got pushed out right and played a bit more attacking. Otherwise you knew everything: Haaland and KDB are excellent. Foden and Cancelo are okay. |
| Aston Villa – 1 | Southampton – 0 |
| Both these teams are generally lacking in terms of FPL options. Villa defence looked okay.
| |
| Nottingham Forest – 2 | Fulham – 3 |
| Forest defense is bad. No attacking options. | Mitro didn’t score which was a big surprise. Not convinced by anyone else is this team.
Defensively bad.
|
| Newcastle – 1 | Bournemouth – 1 |
| Slighlty nervy that they aren’t winning games, particularly against the shower of shit that is Bournemouth. But generally, we know the defence is solid.
If Isak wasn’t reportedly injured whilst on international duty he’d be worth a shout. | Bad. Bad. Bad.
That people are talking about Solanke is peak international break behaviour (see below). |
#FPL Twitter chat about Solanke is mad.
There are 50 outfield players with better xG per 90 than him for under 6mn. If you look at xGI there are even more as his xA is 0.01 for the season.
— Full 90 FPL (@full90fpl) September 23, 2022
What Am I Thinking?
Odegaard is injured, so he has to go.
Zaha was my intial go to, because I can afford him and get Kev back to Salah next week. But I might go for Maddison, because of the great fixture run.
I still have the wildcard to get Salah back… but yes, I do realise this is not in line with the FPL advice I gave last week in the preview. That’s the ever-changing nature of Fantasy Premier League!