fantasy premier league captain tips GW8 – plus transfer poll results

Here’s our fantasy premier league captain tips GW8 article where we look at ways of assessing the best captain pick for the gameweek. We look at the fixtures, the bookies odds, the FPL advice site polls, who the FFGeek contributors are captaining, some stats and the FFGeek choice. We also look at the results of the transfer in and out polls.

fantasy premier league captain tips GW8 – plus transfer poll results

The fixtures

The Bookies Team win odds

3 teams are favourites this week:

Spurs v Cardiff £1.25 – Kane

Man Utd v Newcastle £1.47 – Lukaku

Fulham v Arsenal £1.47 – Lacazette

 The Bookies player odds

Here’s a bookies anytime goal scoring odds up to £2.25 for £1 invested as of Friday afternoon. It assumes the player starts and doesn’t count assist potential

£1.44 – Kane

£1.80 – Lacazette, Aubameyang

£1.95 – Lukaku

£2.05 – Hazard

£2.10 – Vardy, Salah

£2.20 – Son HM

£2.25 – Giroud, Aguero

The FPL advice site Polls

Here’s the FFGeek captain poll:

You can see the full FFGeek captain poll with this link

The FFGeek poll asks who will you captain as does site 2 although just gives you a couple of options. Site 1 asks for the best captain and site 3 is silent on the question.

The FFGeek contributors

Here’s the FFGeek contributors captain picks as it stands. Not many have surfaced with their teams as yet. I’ll fill the rest in once I’ve done the last contributors article

You can see the contributors teams article part 1 here and contributors part 2  

Some stats

This week I’m looking at the 2 poll favourites in Kane and Hazard for the first time

Kane

Here’s Kane’s starts in 17/18 against non top 6 sides at home.

Returns in 8/14 games (57%). It looks a lot better if you can somehow ignore the 4 blanks to start with.  His minutes average when starting was good. It’s worth noting he only came off the bench for 3 games all away

Kane has only played 1 game at home against non top 6 opposition.  That was in the home win v Fulham where Spurs won 3-1.  Kane scored had 4 shots and an xG of 1.17.  An overall excellent day.

The rest of his season so far hasn’t quite been so stellar although he’s still returned in 4 of the 7 games for a PP90 of 6.3.

Injuries to Eriksen and Alli aren’t helpful although the back ups of Son, Lamela and Moura aren’t disasters either

 The Cardiff defence

Only the 1 game away against top 6 opposition was the 1-4 loss to Chelsea.  A 2.51 xG against and 18 shots isn’t great.  At home they’ve lost 2-3 to Arsenal and 0-5 to Man City.

In overall goals against no one has conceded more that their 16.  In overall xG against West Ham, Burnley, Brighton, Huddersfield and Fulham are all worse.

Hazard

Here’s Hazard’s starts in 17/18 against non top 6 sides away. Difficult to translate stats for Hazard to this season given that Conte was such a defensive manager compared to Sarri.

So he returned a goal or assist against 6 of the 11 teams played (55%).

In 18/19 he’s started 2 games away against non top 6 opposition

v Newcastle where he scored from the penalty spot and got 8 FPL points.  He did take 4 shots although 3 were well outside the area with a paltry NPxG of .15 and xA of 0.10.

v West Ham where he blanked in a 0-0 draw for 3 FPL points.  It was another poor performance with 2 low value shots and an xG of 0.07 and an xA of 0.01

Southampton defence at home against top 6 sides in 17/18

In 18/19  they have yet to play a top 6 side at home.  They have only played 1 top 6 side overall.  That was Liverpool away and although they lost 3-0 it was an ok xG conceded of 1.78 and 12 shots.

Overall as a defence they’ve conceded 11 goals which is 11th equal in the league.  In overall x G conceded they are ranked 13th although I would say they have had a relatively good fixture list to date.

Summary

I would be surprised if either Hazard or Kane didn’t start.  Hazard was on the bench mid week and with Spurs having so many injuries and an International Break coming up I would also be very surprised if Kane is rested.

The Bookies have Kane at £1.44 anytime goalscoring odds and Hazard £2.05

The polls are closer than I expected with Kane averaging 45-50% and Hazard around 30%

Both players stats for last season could be better and they’re aren’t many comparable stats for this season with it being so early on.  I think you’d say that generally Hazard is the form player and that Kane is struggling. However Kane was excellent in the 1 comparable home game v Fulham this season whereas Hazard was poor in his 2 comparable games away.

Overall, Hazard has 6 goals and 2 assists at a PP90 of 11.1 helped by his unparalleled ability to hoover up bonus points.  His NP xG at 0.29 and xA of 0.29 would give raw FPL attacking points of 86 over the season.

Overall, Kane has 5 goals and 1 assists at a PP90 of 6.3.   His NP xG at 0.47 and xA of 0.16 would give raw FPL attacking points of 90 over the season.

The Southampton defence looks the stronger of the 2 although both teams have been given batterings by top 6 sides although you could question whether they all were deserved.

Both players have pen duties.

The FFGeek choice

To me if you’ve got Kane to me he’s the logical choice and assuming there’s no change of mind on the transfer of him in that’s what I’ll be doing.   The difference in the bookies odds are quite significant.

The transfer in and out polls

That’s it hope you found it useful.

See also the  bandwagons and sinking ships article early ffgeek team thoughts, 10 top FPL manager analysis article,   fixture ease article,  underlying stats for players up to GW7 and a  review of GW7 in isolation

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