Here’s our fantasy premier league early draft teams with the most recent version of my team. I talk through the process to getting there and some of the reasoning behind the picks.
fantasy premier league early draft teams – the FFGeek latest
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Here’s my article with my latest draft team plus some rationale behind the process
Here’s the team:
The Process
The early realisation
Prior to the FPL site opening I lived in FPL Utopia where I would start with Salah, Mane, Sterling and Aguero plus a City and Liverpool defender. I realised within the time it took to put the names in the site that this was impossible. So with the no entry sign firmly up at FPL Utopia’s borders it was back to reality and the drawing board
How many designated captains?
I prefer starting my structure with my designated captains going forward. Last season I would normally have 3. This season the pricing made this difficult and 2 appeared to be the maximum given the pricing. You don’t have to have designated captains you can always just pick your team as you want and then pick the one with the balanced squad you will not doubt get as a result. However my experience has told me that going away from the big name premium players as captain picks normally ends in tears. So I prefer to have players who will become my captain in the team as a starting point.
The 4 candidates based on underlying stats, points per match and consistency of returns were, unsurprisingly, the 4 above from FPL Utopia. Salah to me is ahead of Mane so knowing I only had 1 choice left it was between Sterling and Aguero.
So Sterling for me has the advantage in overall better stats and a good rest over the summer. Aguero has penalties and allows a easy change to another premium striker if required.
The penalties for the moment swayed me so Aguero is my 2nd designated captain with Salah.
Interestingly there is a lot of people just going with Salah as captain. They’re led by Yaniv on the FFGeek Slack discussion channel and the theory is that it gives a more balanaced squad which it no doubt does. You start with Salah and then in the few tough games he faces you find an alternative. Last season my captain total was 567. An ok one for the contributors. Salah scored 259 points so 518 as a permanent captain with say another 12 as a triple captain to take him to 530. That means he needs 37 points through the more balanced squad/better options when Salah faces Man City etc to make up the difference. Possible. Definitely. I guess it’s a matter of risk and whether you want the points on the board or think you can get more ultimately the other way. Now Yaniv has finished the last 2 season’s in the top 10k OR so he’s definitely worth listening too but he’s a bolder manager than me.
Anyway 2 designated captains were my team starting point.
What next for Liverpool and Man City players?
Man City and Liverpool were so far ahead of the other teams last season and had such a good set of fixtures (you can see this in my fixture ease article for attacking players and defensive players) that to me 3 of each was a must. For example:
closest other team goals scored: Arsenal with 73 vs Liverpool 89
nearest goals conceded: Chelsea 39 vs Man City 33
closest xG: Man Utd 68 vs Liverpool 79
closest xGA: Chelsea 38 vs Liverpool 29
nearest number of clean sheets: Chelsea 16 vs Man City 20
So I decided to go double defence in both cases. Bernardo or David Silva would have been the only affordable alternative attacking options to double defence and I just wasn’t sure about either. No one was affordable and worthwhile for Liverpool so double defence it was in both cases.
Apart from Laporte who is of questionable value without clean sheets due to his ordinary attacking stats and inability to get bonus the other 3 all have attacking potential. Mendy is a serious watchout though for gametime with Zinchenko and Angelino also LBs and with Mendy having a questionable discipline and injury history.
The good thing for City is we will see them in the Community Shield with what should be their first choice lineup.
So 6 players sorted 5 starters to go
The rest of the players were sorted by their first 6 fixtures
Everton
Everton have a great set of opening fixtures as well as a strong defensive record towards the end of the season. The watchout is Gueye still being in AFCON as I write this as well as attracting interest from PSG. Gueye was 1st in the PL for tackles per game, 9th for interceptions and 6th for fouls. If Zouma doesn’t come back that would also be a massive negative. However Digne’s attacking potential makes him the attraction as well. He was 3rd in FBs for xA 90 for players over 1100 minutes and 19th over all positions. I could have gone for Coleman to save £0.5m and there is a case as Coleman finished better in my last 10 game underlying stats charts but overall Digne seems superior.
Sigurdsson is the perfect midfielder in alot of ways. Regularly plays CAM, has set piece responsibility and penalties. I have seen stuff which could talk of a spread around of pens but I don’t know how reliable it is. Richarlison for me is too expensive and got as far as the Copa America final so is a rest watchout anyway.
So add 2 Everton players in so 3 starters to go.
GW1 CRY (A)
GW2 WAT (H)
GW3 AVL (A)
GW4 WOL (H)
GW5 BOU (A)
GW6 SHU (H)
King
Another penalty taker another player with good opening fixtures. At least the first 2 which are both against promoted sides. I much prefer Wilson but where I am in putting the team together he’s just not feasible at £8.0m.
GW1 SHU (H)
GW2 AVL (A)
GW3 MCI (H)
GW4 LEI (A)
GW5 EVE (H)
GW6 SOU (A)
Redmond
So knowing my bench would cost me £17.5m minimum (£4.0m GK, 2 playing £4.5m players plus the possibility of a non playing £4.5m) then I had £11m left to spend.
I would have liked to have spent £5.5m on Lloris as my GK but that would have meant £5.5m available for a midfielder I would be looking to play every game which is just not an option. I mean Andre Gomes is £5.5m! He scored 1 goal and 2 assists last season which is a joke for £5.5m.
So I decided to settle for a £4.5m GK which extended my midfield budget to £6.5m
That meant a choice between Perez, Redmond, Gross and Brooks.
I didn’t like Leicesters fixtures particularly and didn’t want double Bournemouth attack. Gross I do like and his fixtures are good but in the end it was Redmond who has good fixtures who got the pick. He did finish strongly last season although he’s hardly the most reliable guy
Southampton’s fixtures are:
GW1 BUR (A)
GW2 LIV (H)
GW3 BHA (A)
GW4 MUN (H)
GW5 SHU (A)
GW6 BOU (H)
So 4 good fixtures (arguably 5) and 1 terrible one.
Pope
With £4.5m to spend on a GK the pickings are slim. The only nailed one appears to be Ryan of Brighton. I’m not a fan of their defence. They couldn’t keep a clean sheet (7 in total only Fulham and Huddersfield had less) when all they did under Hughton was defend. How their defence will fare under an attacking manager is even more of a worry.
So for the moment I’ve place held it with Nick Pope of Burnley. He is a good shot stopper and the Burnley defence has improvement potential on it. He’s a 50/50 with Heaton but Heaton seems to be linked away and I think hasn’t signed a new contract. This should be sorted by GW1 but it does make a non playing £4.5m GK a risk as back up unless Heaton leaves .
The promoted teams plus Southampton and Bournemouth should be clearer by GW1 which gives other options. Not that I’m wild on any to be honest
The bench
Dendoncker is a good box to box midfielder and does have points potential. The question is whether he will play in the tougher games or whether they fit in a more defensive player as I believe they did last season. Also the Wolves Europa rotation. I’ve chosen 1 non playing sub so it’s important the other 2 are secure
Hayden should be a fairly safe 2 pointer subject to the odd yellow card. With Rafa gone though he still needs to establish selection again as the CM area is fairly crowded at Newcastle albeit not with quality.
Lastly is Connor Wickham as my non playing person. On podcast number 4 Joe convinced me he’s worth a punt. I don’t expect him to play GW1 but with Beneteke as the only orthodox striker at the club (assuming Batshuayi doesn’t return) then he’s 2nd choice to a pretty poor first choice so he has to have some chance at some stage.
5 playing defenders, really? what about spreading positional risk
This is the voice on my shoulder. I’m only 3 clean sheets down from having a nightmare gameweek each week my team plays which doesn’t seem a great situation. Each week a clean sheet is roughly 50/50 for Liverpool and Man City and less for Everton.
The saving grace is that each defender, apart from Laporte, can get attacking returns which is some sort of hedge but the voice keeps nagging at me.
The inner debate, while I’m watching TV, having dinner, walking the dog etc etc will keep going on in my head until GW1 I expect.
The Sterling alternative
This is the alternative with Sterling instead of Aguero
Basically it means Sterling for Redmond and Aguero to Jota, Deulofeu, Ings or Barnes to fund it
That’s it. Everything is bound to change over time I expect but that’s where I’m at now.
Get additional content in the form of Podcasts, an interactive transfer and points prediction tool, 4 £50 prize leagues for the first 160 joiners and a Slack channel for discussion with members and contributors in our Patreon site. The first $3 monthly payment gets you in the prize leagues and Slack channel for the season.
Here’s 2 FFGeek contributors articles with teams:
FFgeek contributors early drafts 1
Interviews with Andrew Whitfield include a team as well as Rick Porters and Kev from Canada
FFGeek FPL league code
Here’s our FPL league code:
fnqq66
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