In his latest Pro Pundits column, the three-time top 200 finisher Lateriser weighs up the attractiveness of the numerous elegant premium options of the Fantasy Premier League.
The hectic December period is just around the corner. As we approach a phase of the season where there are six game-week deadlines in just over three weeks, I just want to talk about a few things fantasy managers should keep in mind.
If you haven’t seen it before, this image that the Fantasy Football Scout website Legomane regularly created is incredibly useful (click to enlarge):
In the past four weeks of play, Manchester City have improved from an offensive standpoint. In addition, there are also good pairings.
Focus on your most important capital, Kevin De Bruyne (£ 11.8m) it’s worth noting that he’s shooting a lot more this season than he is in 2019/20. In the last four weeks of the game, no midfielder has had more shots in the penalty area than the Belgian. At the moment he only owns less than 25% of the game. He plays alongside two more defensive midfielders and definitely adds to his performance. In my opinion he looks even better than last season.
Looking at his Christmas schedule, it’s worth noting that he’s been completely rested in the Champions League for the past few weeks. That bodes well for his playtime on this month’s compressed schedule. Still, I would be a little wary of his home game against West Brom in Gameweek 13. This game is set between two tougher games (away at Manchester United and Southampton) in a period when Manchester City is playing three out of seven days. In an ideal world, after playing in Southampton in the Carabao Cup, he would rest and play all three Premier League games, but it’s worth thinking about.
De Bruyne is the standout captain option in Gameweek 13 having Bruno Fernandes (£ 10.9m) playing Sheffield United is possibly the next best option. There could also be a case of attacking a Manchester City attacker who is not in the Manchester derby for this home game against West Brom. This may be a case of rethinking on my end because De Bruyne hasn’t really rested on the overloaded Christmas schedule last year, but I just thought it was something to point out.
This is the only benefit of Tottenham Hotspur assets on this congested schedule. One would have to think of both Harry Kane (£ 10.9m) and Son Heung-min (£ 9.6m) will play most if not all of Spurs’ games during this period. The statistics don’t seem to matter to Jose Mourinho’s side at the moment because they’re so clinical. After the game against Liverpool in Gameweek 13, the games also loosen up considerably. For reliable starters, we would have to assume that this is also the case for Bruno Fernandes during this period as Manchester United are relying on him – look what happened when he sat on a bench at West Ham last weekend.
Liverpool’s Gameweek 12-14 games fall within six days. What makes it worse is that they only have a 1.5 day break between Spurs and Palace games. The latter is the dreaded early impetus that Jürgen Klopp spoke about. I think Diogo iotaLiverpool’s (£ 7.0m) promotion continues Mohamed Salah (£ 12.3m) with a low risk but I feel like he’s rested for now and given his upcoming games you have to buy the ticket to win the lottery.
Over the next five weeks, Liverpool will play against Fulham, Palace, Newcastle and West Brom. If your team structure can afford this, I also think that these are good games from a defensive point of view. None of Liverpool’s premium defenders currently owns more than 20%.
Compared to the other teams with premium attackers, Chelsea’s schedule doesn’t look very compressed. And in addition, Hakim Ziyech (£ 8.2m) and Callum Hudson-Odoi (£ 5.7m) are both injured at the moment and excluded until the 16th game week at the earliest. That should do both Timo Werner (£ 9.5m) and Christian Pulisic (£ 8.2m) safer options for this congested schedule.
I would like to express my condolences to Werner owners. Being one myself, I know how frustrating it was to have him, especially considering he had the highest number of big chances (and missed big chances …) of any attacker in the last four weeks of the game. I still think it’s better than no chances, and my plan is to be a little more patient with him, give him an extra game or two, and then reconsider whether he’s doing as much damage to my blood pressure as it is before. Everton’s defensive numbers were pretty bad so I would definitely give him at least Gameweek 12 and then take it from there.
When it comes to Pulisic I think he is one of the best differentials in the game right now, offering £ 10.0m + great batting potential for just over £ 8.0m over the next few weeks. He is currently owned by less than 2% of FPL managers and I think it’s worth throwing the dice when it comes to Americans. It seems to me that Lampard was very careful this time around to bring Pulisic back from injury and his current price makes him well worth the gamble. Chelsea are one of the strongest attacks in the league right now. If Pulisic starts and is injury free, I think he is undervalued.
There are a lot of persistent big hitters in the game right now, so I’m not sure if flipping them will be fruitful.
One change I recently made to my strategy is to pay more attention to target participation. This metric can be found on the Participation tab under the Player Statistics section. While I used to be concerned with the strength of teams and the number of goals they can score, the latest installment of Spurs’ Attackers made me pay more attention to goal participation. Given the way Spurs play, it’s very difficult for them to score without Son or Kane being involved. In order for them to be empty, you want Spurs to be empty – which you cannot rely on. I spoke at length about these big hitters and the state of affairs on The FPL Wire episode this week. It’s always a good listening experience when Tom Freeman comes to us.
It’s been a frustrating season so far and I’m still sitting at an overall rank of 2.97 million. This weekend has been a roller coaster ride for me, as I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast (I needed that joke), but as I write this article here on Wednesday I really have no choice but to process information and make informed decisions. That is really all the game has to offer and you have to move on. I’ll keep it simple this week by selling Sterling for Salah and seeing where that takes me (that’s my intended transfer as of today).
Good luck to the Gameweek guys and thanks for reading!
Become a member and get unrestricted access to our data and articles
Year-round memberships are now available at the price of £ 19.99. Monthly subscriptions also only cost £ 2.99. A FREE trial is now available in December.
Sign up now to receive:
- Draw your transfer strategies with the fully interactive season ticker.
- Get projections for each Premier League player provided by the Rate My Team statistical model.
- Use Rate My Team throughout the season to control your selections and transfers.
- Get access to over 150 exclusive member items throughout the season.
- Analyze our OPTA-based statistics tables specially tailored for Fantasy Football Manager.
- Use our exclusive tool to create custom statistics tables from over 100 OPTA player and team statistics.
- Enjoy our brand new flat track bully feature that allows you to add an opposition filter to your tables.
- View heat maps and expected goal data for each player.
- Use our powerful comparison tool to analyze players directly.
ALREADY A USER? CLICK HERE TO UPDATE YOUR FREE ACCOUNT
NEW TO SCOUT? CLICK HERE TO START A MEMBERSHIP ACCOUNT
