Here’s my fantasy premier league article with the FFGeek team for GW3. We look briefly at last week, the transfer thoughts, lineup dilemmas and the captain choice
fantasy premier league – the FFGeek team for GW3
Gameweek 2
I went into a bit more detail in my early thoughts on the FFGeek team article so I won’t go through it again but overall you have to be happy with the start. It has to be seen in the context of 2 rounds in 38 gameweeks though. In the back of my mind I’ve got the Aguero captain 50/50 right and the Mane 50/50 or Aubameyang right (so far) so I know that lady luck and the law of averages will give me a good kicking in the future at sometime.
Here were my points:
GW2 points: 93 (average 60) Total points 185, Gameweek rank 161k, Overall Rank: 27k, green arrow 25k, Team Value: £101.2m
Transfer options
2 free transfers and £0.0m in the bank.
I’d forgotten over the pre-season how difficult I find it to make transfer decisions. The irony was that in my formula driven alternate teams I did in half an hour at around midnight last night. That includes a telling my wife what transfers she should do for her work team. Yet me, I’ve been in a procrastination spiral, for the entire week. I normally force myself to make a decision on Friday but last night I couldn’t.
I wanted an Arsenal player in for a good run of fixtures they have as you can see in my fixture ease article. I did consider Mane out for Aubameynag but getting rid of Mane seemed ridiculous before a home game to Brighton
So then Mkhitaryan, who was one of the players in my bandwagon article this week, became the focus as the only alternative to Aubameyang given Ozil’s subbing and Ramsey’s bench warming. At this stage Richarlison was untouchable as an option so the focus then came on to Bernardo Silva who, to be fair, has produced some fairly mixed stats over his City career. However I just couldn’t get my head around taking out a City player with Wolves away and then Newcastle and Fulham at home next. That seemed crazy. So then queue all manner of ideas to get Mkhitaryan in with Gunnarson out. None were possible without a 4 point hit which I didn’t really want to do. That lead me back to Bernardo Silva vs Mkhitaryan.
So at that impasse I moved on to Charlie Austin as the reactive target. I looked at 3 options. Wilson who I like, has reasonable stats and penalties possibly plus reasonable fixtures plus he’s played 90 minutes twice this season. Long term though I just wasn’t sure about his stats so parked him for the moment.
Ings I thought about alot. He certainly has produced in the 1 and a half games since going to Southampton. His stats as a sub for Liverpool were very very good but hard to translate to Southampton. His 14/15 stats for Burnley were also pretty good and he somehow managed to pick up 20 bonus points which was quite an eye opener. I wasn’t wild about a sideways move to another striker who has 3 others to compete with but he certainly wasn’t a bad option. He will be ineligible to play v Liverpool away in GW6 but that’s an easy to bench game.
However as he was always going to be a sub (albeit one with a likelihood of coming on with anyone from City and Shaw all potential bench warmers) so I just didn’t see the sense in a transfer. I’d rather keep it and leave Austin in for one more week and have more flexibility with 2 transfers next week. Austin hasn’t produced much and his minutes have been awful but he has consistently scored goals backed up by good underlying stats over his career. However this was more about not needing to rather than keeping faith as the minutes are looking dire. I’m not worried about losing value if that’s what you’re thinking btw.
At one stage I just thought about swapping Gunnarson for a £4.5m although the options with longevity at the moment aren’t that apparent.
In the end I decided that Mkhitaryan for Arsenal has produced good stats when against non top 6 opposition. He does have gametime risk and I’m hoping that I don’t see him benched for Lacazette after Bernardo Silva has started for City. I would say as part of a City midfield generally probably has slightly more gametime risk.
So in the end I did the Mkhitaryan in and Bernardo Silva out transfer. I left Austin in so I could carry over 2 transfers for next week. I’m not sure now I’ll be able to watch the Wolves v Man City game live.
Captain thoughts
If you saw my captain article you’ll know that I was going Salah no question
Lineup dilemmas
With an injured Gunnarson (back for GW5 apparently) and a suspended Wan-Bissaka there was only the GK choice and one sub.
Given Patricio was playing Man City that wasn’t a difficult decision so Hamer in if he plays.
The sub question was essentially Shaw vs Austin. In the days of Mourinho past I would have backed him to get a clean sheet against anyone. Those days are looking very shaky but Shaw, if he starts, also has some attacking potential and Mourinho may need to defend not to lose. Although with the supporters that maybe as bad as losing. This may all be irrelevant if Mourinho decides on dropping him or if the injury means he drops out. Valencia is fit apparently so Young could easily start as an LB.
I decided to keep Shaw in the lineup and put Austin on the bench.
The final lineup
That’s it good luck to everyone this week and remember no matter how badly or well you are doing this is only week 3 and ranks should be ignored as they are very volatile at this stage.
Here’s links to some other articles if you’re still undecided
You can see Part 1 of the contributor articles here
You can also see Part 2 of the contributors articles here
Part 3 of the contributor articles
See also top 1k finisher in FPL, TFF and Sky Andrew Ferguson with his GW3 plans as well as Stephen Troops teams in FPL, TFF and Sun Dream Team
There’s also the bandwagons and sinking ships article, plus the fixture ease article and the top 10 FPL managers articles
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