Here’s some early FFGeek team thoughts in this fantasy premier league GW16 article. We look at gameweek 15, some issues facing the team, transfer thoughts and early captain thinking
fantasy premier league GW16 – some early thoughts on the FFGeek team
GW15 PERFORMANCE
GW15 points: 53 (average 44) Gameweek rank 1.28m Overall Rank: 120k (green arrow 22k) Team Value: £103.0m
Here’s the team points:
So a gameweek which seemingly revolved around Hazard and your captain choice. If you had Hazard and he was your captain choice you could have easily got 70 points especially if you were also lucky enough to have Otamendi. If you didn’t have Hazard you could easily end up with 40 points
My team fell in between. I have Hazard but felt with 3 Chelsea players I was exposed enough to them without a captain choice adding to it. Unfortunately with a choice of 3 captains in Hazard, Salah and Kane I managed to pick the only 1 that blanked. Such are the coin toss decisions that govern your ultimate rank.
Returns from 3 attacking players out of 7 which is good but if your captain or defence don’t perform then you consider yourself lucky to get a green arrow. Which I did but only thanks to Otamendi.
So the season has seen 7 green arrows and 7 red. It’s also seen only 4 out of 15 game weeks with a gameweek rank of under 1 million.
Still I keep coming back to the fact that my rank at this stage of the season isn’t a disaster
ISSUES WITH THE TEAM
Just the 1 transfer to use this week and a number of issues to sort out over the coming weeks
The GKs
Elliot was dropped again and Darlow played well I thought so this week I will definitely be bringing in a goalkeeper. I would be surprised if Elliott lasts the week without a price drop but I think as my selling price is £4.1m anyway that shouldn’t matter.
I’ll probably go for Brighton’s Ryan despite the Liverpool drubbing but haven’t reviewed it comprehensively yet.
Davies
Spurs even with their inability to keep clean sheets have an attractive fixture in Stoke at home this week. If Rose plays midweek that has to give Davies a good chance of playing that fixture which would be helpful until I can get round to exiting him
Choupo Moting
Blanked in his last 3 gameweeks and done absolutely nothing in all 3. This should have been his exit point with an away game to Spurs but it won’t be happening unfortunately due to the GK situation. It’s Burnley away after that and then there’s some good fixtures but that’s if he stays in the Stoke team.
Charlie Daniels
2 clean sheets in 4 games and no attacking returns. That’s better than I expected to be honest. After this week it’s 3 brutal games where he could easily be last on my FPL teams bench
Niasse
Calvert Lewin has taken full advantage of Niasse’s suspension and now it seems difficult to imagine he’ll get back in the team, at least in the short term.
Kane
If you can’t captain him what is the point of him? You may have seen my player value evaluation article which showed how poor value Kane is relatively. Now my model isn’t perfect and if you used it strictly then you would have £6m cash in the bank. So then you top it up to provide your captain options. A rough way to do this is points per match. It may surprise you that Kane is 11th in points per match which isn’t great.
There are 2 conundrums for me though.
1 leaving him last to sort out just means the money saved to improve your team isn’t being used effectively
Secondly Kane now has a blank gameweek in GW21 and a double gameweek in GW22.
Stoke (H)
Brighton (H)
Man City (A)
Burnley (A)
Southampton (H)
BGW21 None
DGW22 Swansea (A)
DGW22 West Ham (H)
It definitely needs further thought but it’s hard to not see him as must have for GW22 and depending on form and rotation risk a possible triple captain option.
BGW21 and DGW22
The double gameweek could effect transfer decisions before then. It’s 7 gameweeks away but if for example you wanted 3 players from each team you would be starting fairly close to now depending on how many existing players you have. That would obviously be a foolish strategy as it would mean you would not be fielding a full team in BGW21. Given that both teams have questionable form and West Ham especially very few options it may mean that not much advance planning is needed at all.
Those still holding a wildcard may want to think about keeping it through to just before BGW21 and set your team up for both gameweeks. That depends how may players you want to have though. With West Ham away to Spurs in the 2nd game that could negate any West Ham options which would mean just carrying over a free transfer for DGW22 could effectively give you 3 Spurs players if you already hold Harry Kane
These is just my short initial brain dump. There will be a lot more in the future as we have time to ponder.
TEAM LINEUP BEFORE TRANSFERS
Here’s how the team will look like before any transfers
Assume the GK position is resolved. So actually the lineup doesn’t look too bad. Only the Man City players have tricky fixtures
CAPTAIN THOUGHTS
Could be the same 3 player decision as last week. Prior to recent failures at home Kane would have been the obvious choice.
After seeing how Liverpool killed West Ham on the break Hazard looks attractive .
Salah’s form also looks good against an Everton team that has struggled defensively. However Big Sam will obviously park the bus and it’s just whether it’s too early or not for him to have had an effect. Liverpool put 5 against a deep sitting Brighton but had the advantage of an early set piece goal
I’ve got it at the moment on Salah but the Polls could swing it for me. I’ll be aiming to put up the FFGeek poll on Wednesday night after the UCL matches
GAMEWEEK SATURDAY
Saturday 9th December 11.30 UK time
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