Welcome to a new article from Jordan Sadler based on using your fantasy premier league free hit. Probably the best time to use it would be for a blank week due to FA Cup postponements later in the season but some people may want to use it now for other reasons. The article may also help you for daily or weekly fantasy football choices.
Fantasy Premier League Free Hit – A Free Hit Team For GW11
Just to remind you the free hit chip allows you to make unlimited free transfers for a single gameweek. At the next deadline your squad is returned to how it was at the start of the gameweek. The Free Hit chip can be used once a season, is played when confirming your transfers and can’t be cancelled after it’s confirmed. When playing your Free Hit chip, any saved free transfers will be lost. You will be back to the usual 1 free transfer the following gameweek.
As said above, I will also most likely play my free hit chip during a blank gameweek later in the season.
Here’s the free hit team:
The team value this week is a quite modest £100.2m so you may have some cash spare to upgrade some of these players. It’s a 3-4-3 side this week, with the sub order being Balbuena, Yedlin, Kenedy.
GW11 Fixtures
Here are the fixtures for GW11:
Goalkeeper
Ederson
He’s currently the highest scoring goalkeeper in the game, keeping 7 clean sheets in 10 games, only conceding 3 in that time. With a home fixture versus a struggling Southampton it’s no surprise Manchester City’s clean sheet odds are the best this week. Can’t imagine you’ll get many save points from this game but I think a clean sheet is very likely.
Button
Ederson will play therefore I feel there’s no point in wasting funds on a bench keeper.
Defenders
Alonso
Comfortably the highest scoring defender so far this season and it’s really no surprise when he’s kept 5 clean sheets and scored and provided 6 assists all within 10 games. He’s a huge threat going forward and Chelsea look pretty good defensively as well.
Mendy
Mendy is the defender with the highest points per match in the game with an average of 7.6 points per game he plays, he’s only not above Alonso on points because he’s played three less games. In 7 games he’s had 4 clean sheets and 6 assists which is an outstanding record. As said for Ederson, Manchester City have the best clean sheet odds this week and it wouldn’t surprise me to see an attacking contribution from Mendy this week neither.
Rudiger
Chelsea have the second best clean sheet odds this week therefore I thought doubling up on their defence could prove to be a smart bet. Rudiger isn’t particularly known for his attacking presence but he does have a goal and assist already this season and does post decent underlying stats for a CB of 0.18 xG/90 and 0.08 xA/90 which I’m assuming comes mainly from his aerial threat on corners.
Balbuena
West Ham have a very nice fixture this week at home to Burnley and with Burnley being in such poor form and West Ham seeming to have become more stable at the back, I feel Balbuena is a good cheap first choice option off the bench.
Yedlin
Newcastle may be 19th and still to have won a game but during that time they’ve *only* conceded 14 goals which is the same as Everton and less than Man United, Leicester and West Ham. What’s even more impressive is that half of the 10 games have been against top 6 opposition so to have only conceded 14 shows great defensive organisation. For those reasons, I’ve picked Yedlin as another cheap sub as it wouldn’t surprise me to see a clean sheet this week even against the in form Watford.
Midfielders
Hazard
He’s comfortably been the best player in the league so far this season. He’s already scored 7 goals and got 3 assists in 666 minutes so far this season and his underlying stats of 0.56 xG/90 and 0.48 xA/90 are also very good. Sarri said he may not be able to play the full 90 this week and that they’ll assess him but I’d still back him to return against Palace even if he does only play 45 minutes.
Martial
A bit of a differential this week with Man United have a reasonably tricky fixture away against an in form Bournemouth. However, as much as Bournemouth may be in form, so is Martial. 4 goals and 1 assist in his last 3 games returning 37 points and it could have been even more if he’d put away his very easy 1v1 last game and Pogba hadn’t missed his penalty.
Maddison
After the tragic passing of the Leicester owner you’d have to think that the Leicester players will be really up for their game against Cardiff. Maddison has been struggling a little in recent weeks with providing goal threat since being moved to LAM (and even though his last two have been at CAM, it’s been a similar story) but he still provides excellent xA/90 and a game like Cardiff which Leicester should control, should be the perfect game for us to once again see the best of Maddison.
Richarlison
Only 1 goal and 1 assist in his last 5 gameweeks isn’t a brilliant return from Richarlison but his underlying stats have still been good for a player of his price. Last game he could have easily had a goal and 3 assists but other players missed their easy chances or didn’t pass to him when he was open. I still back Richarlison as one of the best mid-priced midfielders and a home game versus Brighton is a great fixture to show that.
Kenedy
Kenedy hasn’t been particularly great so far this season but the fixture list really hasn’t helped with that. He does however have a decent xG/90 of 0.19 for someone his price and with him having a reasonable fixture and being cheap I felt he was a good third choice option for the bench.
Forwards
Aguero (c)
Other than his hat trick in game week 2 I actually think Aguero’s season has been quite underwhelming from a fantasy perspective. He’s regularly subbed at 65 minutes and he’s only returned goals in 3 of the other 9 games, 4 of which he blanked completely. However, what he does have on his side is lack of competition in regards to premium forwards. He has a great fixture versus Southampton this week and 5 of his 6 goals this season have came at home and all 3 of his assists have came at home. Because of that, he’d also be my captain pick for this week and I’d expect him to be an overwhelming favourite in the polls as well.
Arnautovic
Burnley at home is a great fixture for any forward this week, especially for someone as good as Arnautovic. He missed last week through illness but has now fully recovered. He has posted impressive underlying stats of 0.49 xG/90 and 0.14 xA/90 and has returned 4 goals and 1 assist in 629 minutes this season even with 4 of the 8 games he’s played against top 6 opposition.
Mitrovic
He started the season on fire scoring 4 goals and returning 1 assist in 4 games but since then he’s only scored 1 and assisted 1 in 6. However, a fixture against Huddersfield is a great time to turn that around and his underlying stats are very good at 0.46 xG/90 and 0.05 xA/90 so I think he’s well worth the investment at his price this week.
Hope this helps you if you do decide to do your free hit this week or for some daily fantasy picks. Good luck with gameweek 11.
See also the popular and not so popular transferred players in the bandwagons and sinking ships article plus also who the 10 top managers I follow have in their team. Also who I have or maybe interested in getting in the early thoughts on the FFgeek team article
See the defender and GK player rankings article, midfield player rankings and forwards rankingsarticle
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