fantasy premier league player rankings GW9 – midfielders £7.5m plus

Fantasy Premier League, Player Rankings

Here’s our fantasy premier league player rankings GW9 article for midfielders £7.5m and above . There’s a range of stats plus commentary on each player and their next 6 fixtures. This will help you choose the best transfer for your team

FANTASY PREMIER LEAGUE PLAYER RANKINGS GW9 – MIDFIELDERS £7.5M PLUS

First it’s important to remember that each player is ranked as a transfer target for this week. So while we generally look at fixtures form and underlying stats a player who’s away to Man City is going to be ranked lower than someone home to Huddersfield for example. If possible a transfer should have a good fixture first up.

Firstly there’s a table of stats. Then there’s a bit of brief commentary on each player and their next 6 fixtures.

This is the 2nd player rankings article. I’ve also written a defenders and GKs player rankings article

STATS DEFINITIONS

Fixt Ease: The ease of the mentioned fixture range from an attacking perspective. See our GW9 fixture ease article

 Mins per FPL Pt.  The amount of minutes a player takes to earn an FPL point.  The shorter and obviously lower the number is the better

ATGS – the bookies anytime goalscoring odds for GW9.  I’ve used William Hill

xG and xA per 90 – the expected goals and assists per 90 minutes played from the better than excellent site understat.com. See our underlying stats summary for expected goal information on teams and players.  See also Joseph Crilleys GW8 review with underlying stats part 1 and part 2




THE SCHEDULE

 fantasy premier league player rankings GW9

 Sterling

The Man City AM is in great form and his returns when on the pitch are nothing short of sensational.  It’s now 6 goals and 2 assists in 5 starts and 2 sub appearances.  His underlying stats, while they started slowly, have been nothing short of unbelievable as well, both as a goalscorer and assister in 3 of the last 4 games.

The negatives are firstly that Aguero returning to fitness is the unknown for gametime for all the Man City attacking players.   Either Pep will play a lone striker which will see the 4 midfielders retained or he will play 2 strikers, as he has done earlier this season, and 1 of the midfielders will have to be rested.  Sterlings  early substitution in the Champions league this week has to be a positive sign for starting in GW9 at least.

The other negative is that he is performing at a level way above anything he has shown before.  Is it sustainable?  To be fair he’s got a lot of headroom built in but it’s hard to believe it’s the Sterling that was returning FPL points last season at worst than half his current rate.

Burnley (H)
West Brom (A)
Arsenal (H)
Leicester (A)
Huddersfield (A)
Southampton (H)

D Silva  

The Man City attacking midfielder scored his first goal this season at the weekend to add to his 6 assists already.  He’s also played 90 minutes in 6 of the 8 games and around 75 in the other 2 to show how crucial he is to the team.  Therefore rotation should affect him less than Sterling and Sane.

Similar to Sterling in that he has very good underlying stats and again especially in 3 of the last 4 games.  However he is primarily an assister with very little goal threat. That means you need 2 assists to get into double figure FPL points.

He’s also produced underlying stats at a rate close to twice that historically and again it calls into question sustainability.

Burnley (H)
West Brom (A)
Arsenal (H)
Leicester (A)
Huddersfield (A)
Southampton (H)

Sane

I’ll start with the big risk around Sane.  Should Pep play 2 strikers when Aguero returns the history would show that Sane is the most likely to drop out

4 goals and 3 assists in 4 starts and 3 sub appearances is incredible and I can’t remember seeing someone with the returns for minutes on the pitch that he’s got.

Like Sterling and to a lesser extent Silva the underlying stats he’s producing completely dwarf anything he’s previously shown.  Add to that the returns at the moment per minute then you again have some concern over sustainability.  However like Sterling there’s certainly alot of headroom there given his price.

Burnley (H)
West Brom (A)
Arsenal (H)
Leicester (A)
Huddersfield (A)
Southampton (H)

Sanchez

I’m personally not ready to give up on Sanchez yet.  He’s likely to be fit for the weekend first of alland hopefully rested for the Europa League tonight.  Just the 2 assists although he has only started the 3 games.

Both the recent home games against Brighton and WBA provided good performances and while they only saw an assist in each to me he’s now slowly coming back to his usual form.

There are negatives around this.  Firstly the general negativity around Arsenal has to be affecting him as well as his what seems his desire to leave.  Lastly it’s how things work with Lacazette who is also struggling.

Fixtures are mixed and Man City and Spurs coming up soon don’t help.  The price is the main prohibiter though

Everton (A)
Swansea (H)
Man City (A)
Spurs (H)
Burnley (A)
Huddersfield (H)

De Bruyne

Getting rave reviews from the pundits and a goal and 5 assists is nothing to be sniffed at as well.  He’s also played 90 minutes in 6 of the 8 games which is about as good as it gets with Pep.

There are negatives though.  Firstly he’s the only Man City midfielder who’s underlying stats lag behind those of last season.  He’s also only an assister and offers nothing as a goal threat apart from shots from distance Coutinho and Eriksen style.  Worst of all he’s prone to games where the underlying stats show little output whatsoever.  It’s easy to look at the figures of 1 goal and 5 assists and be impressed but he’s only produced returns in 3 of 8 games and he’s only produced acceptable underlying stats in my mind in 3 of 8 games.  Plus he’s £10m.  To me you’re getting a fantasy inferior D Silva for £1.4m more

Burnley (H)
West Brom (A)
Arsenal (H)
Leicester (A)
Huddersfield (A)
Southampton (H)

Salah

What I like about Salah is that every game he’s started he has turned up and been a threat.  He may miss great chances but every game he has at least had them. There’s no anonymous games that you can get from other more pricey assets.  4 goals and 2 assist’s returning in 4/7 games at an FPL point every 12.8 minutes is midfield leading statistics in pre 17/18 Pep times.

It’s worth noting here that he doesn’t have a history of underperforming his underlying stats.  If anything they make him look like a very good finisher.  So is it just a bad rub of the green so far?

Whats more while his goal threat underlying stats are at higher levels than previous season it’s not ridiculously so and he should be doing better on the creativity side. I think there’s still more to come and his performance pre the Mane sending off against Man City shows he can do it against any team.  He should have also scored against Man Utd.

However these don’t hide the negatives that he should be finishing off  more chances and the next fixture isn’t a great one.




Hazard

How can a guy be so good in the Champions League and so bad in the premier league this season.  To be fair he’s only started 2 games but no returns so far and his underlying stats have been woeful.

However it’s hard to believe that last seasons Hazard has disappeared and has decided to only reappear in the Champions League.  If you’re ever going to roll the dice with him then the next 2 fixtures are it

Watford (H)
Bournemouth (A)
Man Utd (H)
West Brom (A)
Liverpool (A)
Swansea (H)

Mkhitaryan

Where has it all gone wrong.  His last 3 games have been nothing short of terrible and he’s rightly become a substitution favorite of Mourinho departing those last 3 games in the  74, 65 and 62nd minute.

Over the season the stats aren’t too bad and Huddersfield next offers a chance of redemption but even then with Spurs and Chelsea after them do you really want to transfer him in?

Huddersfield (A)
Spurs (H)
Chelsea (A)
Newcastle (H)
Brighton (H)
Watford (A)

Alli

After a good start of 2 goals and an assist in his first 3 games it’s all gone horribly wrong for the Spurs support striker. 1 returning game in his last 5 isn’t going to cut it.  Whats more he’s been very inconsistent only producing acceptable underlying stats in 4 of the 8 games.  Cumulatively though they’re not that dissimilar to last season.  However last season he overperformed his underlying stats.  This season , although early he’s under performing them

2 tricky fixtures next

Liverpool (H)
Man Utd (A)
Crystal Palace (H)
Arsenal (A)
West Brom (H)
Leicester (A)

Eriksen

3 goals and 3 assists in 8 games, returning a goal or assist in 5 of those 8 games is not too shabby at all.  However when you look deeper there’s something terribly wrong.  If I told you that Tom Carroll and Ruben Loftus Cheek, both at £4.5m, had better expected assist stats then you’d think I was having a laugh wouldn’t you?  Well they do. So what is all that about?  You can see from the stat table he’s behind his xA of last season.  To be fair in the last 2 seasons he’s out performed those xA stats.  I guess that’s what having Harry Kane on the end of your chances created does for you.  So you can either just think that he will eventually get back to his last 2 seasons underlying stat levels and who cares anyway when Kane will over reward you

It just all looks like chickens coming home to roost to me

Liverpool (H)
Man Utd (A)
Crystal Palace (H)
Arsenal (A)
West Brom (H)
Leicester (A)

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