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 GW12
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. Just like Geek I will most likely play my free hit chip during a blank gameweek later in the season.
Last week my free hit team scored 84 which was 32 points above the average gameweek score.
Here’s the free hit team for this week:
The team value this week is high at £102.4m so you may need to downgrade one or two players to fit it within your budget. Some obvious choices are Mendy to Laporte, Alonso to Luiz, Van Dijk to Trent/Gomez/Lovren (whoever you feel will play). The team is intended to be a 3-4-3 with Camarasa, Kiko and Bennett as the subs but it could be played as a 4-3-3 or a 4-5-2 as Camarasa, Diangana, Kiko and Success can all easily be swapped out with each other.
GW12 Fixtures
Here are the fixtures for GW12:
Goalkeepers
Fabianski
Fabianski in my opinion is one of the best non top 6 goalkeepers in the league alongside Dubravka and Patricio. He has a great fixture this week playing away at Huddersfield and has good clean sheet odds of 6/4. He’s made the 2nd most saves in the league so far this year and is joint 2nd on bonus for goalkeepers with 6.
Hamer
Fabianski will play therefore I feel there’s no point in wasting funds on a bench keeper.
Defenders
Alonso
As was said last week, he’s comfortably the highest scoring defender so far this season and it’s really no surprise when he’s kept 5 clean sheets, scored and provided 7 assists all within 11 games. He’s a huge threat going forward and Chelsea look pretty good defensively as well.
Mendy
Mendy is second in the league for points per match only behind Alonso. In 8 games he’s had 4 clean sheets and 6 assists which is a great record. Man City do have a tougher game this week at home versus Man United but City haven’t lost or drawn at home all season and have only conceded 3 in their 6 games at home so I think there is a decent chance of a clean sheet or attacking return.
Van Dijk
This may seem like an interesting choice but I’ve gone with Van Dijk purely because I’m really not sure who will play out of Gomez, Lovren and Trent so would rather not risk any of them. Liverpool have only conceded 1 goal at home since February and have the best clean sheet odds of everyone this week. Van Dijk is a serious threat in the opposition box off corners and has hit the post twice already this season. On another day he could have even had a hat trick against Arsenal if it wasn’t for the woodwork and 2 good saves from Leno.
Kiko Femenia
I’ve gone with Kiko as he’s a cheap playing bench option. Watford have a good fixture versus Southampton away and so Kiko makes a great first substitute after some good defensive performances from Watford the last 3 weeks only conceding 1 goal.
Bennett
Just a cheap bench filler, he has a tough fixture against Arsenal away but he’s the cheapest playing defender in the game so felt it was better to be safe than sorry. He would be my third choice substitute.
Midfielders
Salah (c)
The perfect fixture this week for Salah vs a defensively dreadful Fulham at home. Blanked again last week but his underlying stats overall are still excellent at 0.66 xG/90 and 0.35 xA/90. He’s always a goal threat and lately he seems to be a bit more creative as well, providing chances for players. He’s always the most advanced player for Liverpool and a constant outlet. I’d expect Liverpool to put out quite an attacking line up this week and I’m confident that he will be one of the players to benefit from that.
Hazard
As said last week he’s comfortably been the best player in the league so far this season. He’s already scored 7 goals and got 4 assists in 692 minutes so far this season and his underlying stats of 0.53 xG/90 and 0.52 xA/90 are excellent. He played midweek for the first time this season, presumably to get him back to full match fitness for the weekend after his injury. He only played 62 minutes so I’d definitely expect him to start against Everton.
Mane
Just like for Salah, Mane couldn’t ask for a better fixture this week. He’s got decent underlying stats of 0.38 xG/90 and 0.13 xA/90 and has already scored 6 goals in the league this season. I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t return this game and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if that return was a good double figure return.
Diangana
A little bit of a left field option here but I think he’s actually good enough to be a starter from what I saw last week vs Burnley. He’s played every game since Yarmolenko got injured and seems to have fought off Antonio for the spot at RW. He got an assist vs Burnley and posted solid underlying stats of 0.05 xG and 0.43 xA and with a great fixture like Huddersfield I can honestly see him returning again, especially with him playing alongside great players like Anderson and Arnautovic.
Camarasa
He has a good fixture vs Brighton this week and seems to be one of Cardiff’s best players this season. He’s nailed in the line up and has scored once and assisted once this season so at £4.5m is great value. He’d be my second substitute after Kiko Feminia.
Forwards
Aguero
Finally for the first time in 7 weeks Aguero wasn’t substituted for Jesus and finally for the first time since gameweek 2 Aguero returned a double figure score. 7 goals and 6 assists in 801 minutes is an excellent return from the forward returning in 7 of his 11 gameweeks. He’s returned in every single home game so far this season and 6 of his goals and all of his assists have came at home. Man United is never an easy fixture but with Aguero’s record at home so far I can’t see anything but him returning once again.
Arnautovic
12 points for Arnautovic last week vs Burnley and now he has another nice game vs Huddersfield away. He has posted impressive underlying stats this season of 0.53 xG/90 and 0.18 xA/90 and has returned 5 goals and 2 assists in 719 minutes this season even with 4 of the 9 games he’s played against top 6 opposition.
Success
Success has been posting excellent underlying stats so far this season at 0.49 xG/90 and 0.32 xA/90, incredible for someone who’s only £4.6m. The concern for Success is of course his place in the starting line up when he has Deeney, Gray and Deulofeu all to compete with. It looks like he’s managed to make himself first choice for now alongside Deulofeu so hopefully that’ll be the case this week as he’s an excellent player for his value. Worst case if it isn’t Kiko comes on in his place who really isn’t much worse of an option.
Hope this helps you if you do decide to do your free hit this week or for some daily/weekly fantasy picks. Good luck with gameweek 12.
Other articles for player suggestions
See the FFGeek contributors teams article art 1.
Also, Yaniv’s (8K OR last season) and my imaginary wildcard teams also the popular and not so popular forwards 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
Also see who Andrew Ferguson has in his team. He finished 715 OR last season. Paul Williams who finished 412 last season has some differential suggestions in his article
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