fantasy premier league team selection GW21 – the FFGeek team

Here’s my fantasy premier league team selection GW21 article. As is normal, I review GW20, share my transfer thoughts, captain choice and the lineup dilemmas.

fantasy premier league team selection GW21 – the FFGeek team

Firstly if you’re new to the site my last 3 seasons overall ranks are 36k, 17k and 21k.

Hope those who celebrate it had a nice Christmas and Happy New Year to you.

GW20 review

Here’s the points and the basic stats:

GW20 points: 64 (FPL average 54) Total points 1,159, Gameweek rank 1,656k, Overall Rank: 122k, green arrow 9k, Team Value: £103.4m

On the face of it an ok gameweek with a small green arrow of 9k to an overall rank of 122k.  Pretty dull.  Well it was anything but.  Going into the last 2 games which was City v Sheffield and Liverpool v Wolves I had 9 points total and 5 players to go.   Of those 5 players only Gomez I was absolutely sure would play.  I was down 100k overall rank and fearing that I was getting payback for the good fortune of recent weeks.

Amazingly everything came good and I ended up on 64 points with the previously mentioned small green arrow.

The fine lines of FPL.  If I had £0.1m more I may have done the Mane to Salah swap and the gameweek would have been a very different outcome.

Squad structure

Here’s my latest squad structure.

As you may know I classify players as:

Template:  I classify this as owned by 7 of the 10 top FPL managers I follow.  This is just my definition.  There are many others

Template replacement player:  If I don’t have a template player who my direct replacement is

Bench player:  Some one who is there to fill the bench

Difference maker:  The rest.  These are players you hope to push you forward up the rankings to different degrees vs other active managers

As you can see I have the template pretty covered which is what I like to do after going fairly freestyle to my cost last season.

The template is really only 7 players at the moment which is quite narrow.  I have 5 difference makers meaning 1 template or difference maker will be benched each week

Transfer thoughts

1 free transfer and £1.2m in the bank

I’m carrying over the free transfer this week.  Only Maupay has a difficult fixture but I’ve just bought him and the fixtures are excellent post GW23 so I’m holding him.

Lineup issues

The lineup issues are really to do with the bench order and even then only down to Cantwell vs Rico.  That choice will only be relevant though if a midfielder or forward doesn’t start as I’m playing a 3 man defence.

In the end I went for Cantwell against Palace although it’s a close call.  I expect West Ham to score and with Rico only making 7 key passes in the last 10 games then it seems his attacking ability has blunted somewhat.  The risk with Cantwell is that he doesn’t start and that is quite possible.  He was a sub last week so I’m hoping that’s a positive for starting with the fixture congestion rather than a negative.

Captain thoughts

I haven’t done a captain analysis article yet but it’s incredibly unlikely it will be anyone other than Vardy given that you think he has to start which I don’t think you can guarantee for Mane or De Bruyne.  For that reason again I’ve gone for Jimenez as vice as he was rested v Liverpool and again looks certain to start.

So here’s the lineup

Double gameweek 24 initial thoughts

You maybe aware that West Ham v Liverpool was postponed for the club world cup thingmajig.

The game has been planted into GW24 meaning Liverpool have 2 games away to Wolves and West Ham.  West Ham have 2 games away to Leicester and home to Liverpool

So the preperation starts here.  The interesting thing is that Liverpools fixtures after GW24 are very very good so I intend to have 3 Liverpool players for GW24.  My preference would be Salah, Mane and Alexander Arnold.  I will either try and showhorn them into the existing lineup keeping De Bruyne and Vardy.  Or take De Bruyne out for GW24 only.

The big cavaet is that if Liverpool are giving signs that Mane and Salah are in a premier league job share and won’t ever be on the pitch at the same time then I will rethink.

Here’s how I can shoehorn them in now plus Fabianski with 4 transfers below.  The sight of £4.0m Brandon Williams of Man Utd in the side shows that it’s very tight and unlikely to be available for GW24 but anyway.  BTW I am a believer that anything can happen in a double gameweek and Fabianski will get save points if not clean sheet points.

If you’re thinking why is Gomez is the side now if this is my plan.  Gomez in my mind was a couple of games transfer and GW24 is far enough away.  If I’m feeling particularly bullish I may even use my triple captain.

Excuse the sidetracking,  here’s a rough outline of a team below.  It does mean compromise and as yet I haven’t worked out the week by week path.  Unlike Yaniv for example I’m not sitting around with £106m in team value which means I can just buy anyone.

I’ll review this each week to see how price rises continue to scupper me.  My team value is £103.4m

That’s it enjoy New Years Eve for those who still have it

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Other posts

GW21 captain poll

Fixture Ease GW21

FFGeek contributors GW21 teams part 1

FFGeek contributors GW21 teams part 2

Rob Reid’s GW21 player picks

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