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 later in the season but a gameweek now with your Man City and Liverpool players against each other could also be an option. The article may also help you for daily or weekly fantasy football choices
Fantasy Premier League free hit – A Free Hit team for GW8
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 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 I said above I will most likely be using it for a blank gameweek later in the season.
Here’s the free hit team:
It’s well within budget at £99.7m so there will likely be spare money to make upgrades if you want to I just quite liked the look of this team.
Here’s the fixtures for GW8:
Goalkeepers
Hart
Hart currently has the most points of any goalkeeper and has made the most saves of all goalkeepers. Burnley are slowly starting to look more like the same team as last season after a rather poor start to the campaign. Defensively they were excellent last season and you don’t get much of a better fixture than Huddersfield at home so Hart get’s my vote. I don’t think the fixtures this week are brilliant for clean sheets therefore I have diversified my defensive investments in my free hit.
Hamer
With Hart fairly certain to play it makes no sense wasting money on a GK who’s going to stay on your bench so £4.0m Hamer it is.
Defenders
Alonso
Chelsea have a good away fixture against a generally quite poor Southampton side. Alonso is always a threat going forward, especially having the likes of Hazard on his side who he links up with quite well. Definitely a good chance of a clean sheet and attacking contribution.
Trippier
Spurs comfortably have the best fixture of the top 6 this coming week, Cardiff at home. Assist and clean sheet last week and it wouldn’t surprise me to see similar this week. With Eriksen currently being out injured he should dominate set pieces.
Shaw
Man United are all over the place at the moment but if there is one consistent player in their side it’s Luke Shaw. Newcastle at home is a very good fixture defensively for United as Newcastle will likely sit deep knowing Benitez and on top of that their main goal threat Rondon is currently out.
Doherty
Good, cheap offensive minded wing back in a strong defensive Wolves team so makes a great bench option versus Palace away.
Wan-Bissaka
Seems to be a bonus magnet and Palace are generally a solid defensively team, at £4.1m (or £4.3m if you’re buying from scratch) he’s an absolute steal and perfect for the bench.
Midfielders
Hazard
Good fixture versus Southampton away. In the form of his life, scoring 6 and assisting 2 in 5 starts and 2 sub appearances. He’s overachieving his underlying stats and has been a little lucky but his underlying stats are very good at 0.57 xG/90 and 0.27 xA/90, plus he seems to never get subbed off either which is good to see.
Moura
As I said earlier, Spurs have the best fixture of the top 6 this week therefore I think investing in 2 attackers is more than worthwhile especially a good value one like Moura. He was unlucky not to score against Huddersfield posting a decent xG that game of 0.68 so hopefully he’ll rectify that this week against Cardiff.
Maddison
Probably Leicester’s key man at the moment, providing good underlying stats at both CAM and LAM. 0.25 xG/90 and 0.2 xA/90 for the Leicester man notching up 3 goals and 2 assists so far for his new club. Everton have conceded 2 in every game on the road so far and Silva’s teams aren’t known for their defensive qualities so I back Maddison to return.
Gudmundsson
Burnley have a great fixture at home versus Huddersfield and with 1 goal and 2 assists in his last 2 games I feel Gudmundsson could be a good option at 5.9. Not brilliant underlying stats at 0.13 xG/90 and 0.17 xA/90 but he seems to be Burnley’s main creative outlet currently and will have a decent share of set pieces.
Westwood
He has a great fixture and he’s in form with 2 assists in his last 2 so at £4.5m he’s the perfect bench player.
Forwards
Kane (C)
At home versus Cardiff and he seems to be just coming in to form so he makes the perfect captain for this gameweek. 3 goals in his last 2 games while posting underlying stats of 1.19 xG/90 and 0.15 xA/90 over those two games, what more could you want.
Lacazette
Arsenal have a decent away fixture versus Fulham. Currently Fulham have the joint worst defensive record in the league, conceding 16 goals in 7 games. 2 goals and 2 assists for Lacazette in his last 4 starts and he provided solid underlying stats versus Watford last week with an xG of 0.84 and xA of 0.54. Therefore I’m backing him to return again against the leaky Fulham defence.
Arnautovic
West Ham have finally come into form these last 3 weeks beating both Everton and United and Arnautovic was absolutely pivotal in the wins. Arnautovic has scored 2 and assisted 1 in his last 2 games and has excellent underlying stats of 0.60 xG/90 and 0.11 xA/90 so I couldn’t not put him in with him playing away at Brighton 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 8.
To get more detail on any player see our underlying stats article
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