I’m in a bit of a quandary on how how to do game review articles but such were the nature of last nights games that I thought I’d just freestyle this fantasy premier league gameweek 37 review article.
fantasy premier league gameweek 37 review – Arsenal and Man City
Arsenal 2 Sunderland 0
I think firstly you can’t treat last night as too significant considering how terrible Sunderland are but the recent games certainly have some interesting happenings.
Alexis Sanchez
In recent weeks I’ve commented on Sigurdssons one man mission to keep Swansea in the premier league. Well the last few games have shown that Sanchez and Ozil have taken on a 2 men mission to get Arsenal into the top 4. It maybe too late although it will go to the wire. Both players have returned a goal or assist in the last 3 games with Sanchez getting double figure FPL point hauls in all 3 games
It raises the question of whether some players are above short term fluctuations in returns and underlying stats. At least in certain situations. It wasn’t so long ago I was reading some stuff where people were actually saying Sanchez shouldn’t be in FPL managers DGW36/37 team. I totally understood the reasoning. He was parked on the left and his returns and underlying stats were very questionable. However, Sanchez is world class and he can score big at anytime. I have known the pain of not owning him this season for short periods but to not have him in a double double gameweek for Arsenal was certainly too risky for my blood.
Do we learn anything from this?
The problem with the premier league is that there are a number of these players who you could squeeze into that category of so world class that they are above short term fluctuations. So if you transpose my theory to other teams you then should you have owned for DGW37 say, Hazard for Chelsea, Aguero for Man City, and Kane for Spurs. These are world class players in the top teams with DGWs. Well maybe you should? I owned 2. Aguero had fitness issues and at that stage was owned by a small proportion of managers and there was the highly owned Jesus as cheaper cover. So you could possibly taken a view on the downside risk of Aguero. Or is that just making excuses?
So what’s my point? I think that there are times to ignore stats and cover the potential downside. Sanchez with 2 consecutive double gameweeks is a good example. Avoiding big rank drops can as important as looking to improve your rank. That doesn’t mean that you need you get every captain favourite every week. Otherwise you never improve your overall team or you just take massive amounts of hits to do it. I’ve taken a view on big captain favourites a few times and ignored them. I was probably only burnt a couple of times. It’s a tricky balance though and there’s no magic formula. Often it comes down to 50/50 decisions.
Out of interest you’ll see in my top 10 FPL managers interim article that he’s in 9/10 teams and captain in 7 of them.
Ozil
Just the assist but created a record 12 chances. Here’s a suawka tweet
Again in the last 3 he’s returned a goal or assist although as a very general rule assists are less likely to get bonus points so there were no double figure FPL points in that. Last night he got all 3 bonus points for the insane number of chances he did create.
Ozil (10 assists 8 goals) has been disappointing in that, although he’s created chances at a similar level to the 2 players I’m going to mention next, he hasn’t got the assists to show for it. There are 2 similar players in De Bruyne (19 assists 6 goals), and Eriksen (18 assists 8 goals) where they rely on creating chances and getting assists more than shooting and scoring. All 3 dominate set pieces too. While De Bruyne has Aguero and Jesus and Eriksen Kane to finish things off. Ozil doesn’t have a settled striker which has been to his detriment.
Now De Bruyne is 5th top Midfield point scorer and Eriksen 3rd so there’s nothing to say they can’t rack up the points. They tend to have quite a high volume of returns so you can see the points ticking over as well.
Man City 3 WBA 1
Firstly this wasn’t quite the siege that The Arsenal game but WBA were certainly under the kosh.
Here’s the pass and position map for Man City
Jesus
A goal and an assist last night. I’ve been a little cautious about him due to easy opposition and recent ordinary shot volumes but he did everything right last night. Although this showed he played to the right he seemed to pop up centrally and his goal was a tap in practically on the goal line.
Aguero
Just the assist for the Yaya goal. For a guy who leads the shooting stats for strikers he was overshadowed by Jesus last night. Not sure that means anything although he looks to me like he drops deeper more often but if he’s still here next season it will be worth monitoring
De Bruyne
Created a stack of chances and was rewarded with a goal and an assist. Wasn’t much of a shot threat but he , like Eriksen, has a powerful shot from outside the box and this is where he scored from
Sane
Blanked. Was an attacking threat to some degree although seems to get in positions in the inside left channel with a narrow target to shoot at. Still can only get better after a pretty successful first season
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