fantasy premier league teams GW18 – some early thoughts on the FFGeek team

Fantasy Premier League, ffgeek teams

Here’s our fantasy premier league teams GW18 article where we give our early thoughts on the FFGeek team for GW18. We look back at gameweek 17 and give our thoughts on the gameweek ahead including potential transfers and captain choice.

fantasy premier league teams GW18 – some early thoughts on the FFGeek team

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

Gameweek 17 review

GW17 points: 72 (FPL average 56) Total points 958 , Gameweek rank 1,014k, Overall Rank: 434k, green arrow 145k, Team Value: £102.9m

Here’s the points:




fantasy premier league teams GW18

72 points and a good 145k green arrow to 434k overall. Weirdly exactly the same size as the red arrow of last week

A good gameweek helped hugely by De Bruyne’s 19 points and ,less so as everyone owns him, Lundstrams 11.  Incredibly there were 5 other returners in Vardy, Jimenez, Mane, Alexander Arnold and Pope.  However none of those 5 got a bonus point between them.  7 returners is pretty rare but in undoubtedly using up your good fortune you’d like to have a some icing on the cake courtesy of bonus points.

De Bruyne is interesting because unlike most people I’ve never been totally sold on him as an FPL asset.  This season though he’s really got his goalscoring act togther.  His shot volume is way up on previous seasons and his xG is nearly double his historic levels.  He’s scored 7 goals against his City maximum return of 8 in a season.  I’m not convinced about how much the 19 points were down to his positional and the formation change this week although Guardiola certainly talked about it.  City attack with a front 5 anyway.  Watching it he just appeared more central.  The goals were just incredible strikes.

My FPL team structure

I’m going to try and include this each week.

If it’s the first time you’ve seen it here’s how I classify each player:

Template player: 7 of the 10 top 10 FPL managers I follow have him in their team. I use the 10 managers as a proxy for serious FPL managers who will finish in the top 100k or so. People have different interpretations of template. Andrew Whitfield tends to do it on overall ownership. There’s no true definition and it’s an interpretive word.

Template replacement player: the player you choose to go head to head against a template player with.

Bench player: A player who will for the most part be on your bench. Sometimes there are bench rotaters but I won’t muddy the waters

Difference maker: these are the rest and the players who can move you forward or back. I don’t call them differentials as this implies an ownership threshold which I don’t use

Here’s my squad using these categories

PlayerCategory
PopeDifference Maker
ButtonBench
Alexander ArnoldTemplate
SoyuncuTemplate
LundstramTemplate
KellyDifference Maker
RicoBench
AlliTemplate replacement (Son)
De BruyneTemplate
ManeTemplate
CantwellBench
HaydenBench
AbrahamDifference Maker
JimenezDifference Maker
VardyTemplate

So 2 of my difference makers got small returns and Alli/Son both blanked

Transfer thoughts

1 free transfer and £1.8m in the bank.

This week is different than others due to the postponement of Liverpool v West Ham.  The transfer decision has to balance the short term needs of getting players on the pitch who can return vs the fundamentals of your squad.

Ideally I’d like to keep Cantwell and Hayden off the pitch for short term reasons.  Long term I can live with Hayden but Cantwell’s hokey kokey with the first time lineup isn’t ideal by any stretch.  Still is Cantwell’s 1 point sub appearance risk that much worse than Hayden’s 1 point yellow card risk.

So for me the player to get rid of is Hayden.  At the moment my thoughts are to get, most likely Grealish or his team mate El Ghazi.  Both have decent stats and fixtures.

Grealish seems to be going up in price tonight according to FPL statistics but Hayden doesn’t look like he’s going down so I will still be able to afford him tomorrow just.

I haven’t ruled out the Jimenez to Rashford transfer although it seems a bit daft to transfer out someone who’s playing Norwich next and having just been burned with Aubameyang I’m not keen.  I could do the same for Abraham but I still have faith in him and don’t see a particular need to transfer him out apart from the fixture if I think I need Rashford.  The only thing that could force my hand is if Rashford is a massive captain poll favourite. I’ve seen 1 poll which has a 3 way split between Rashford, Son and De Bruyne though.

Captain thoughts

I’m going to put up a captain poll tomorrow but at the moment I’m really not sure who I’m going to pick

Lineup

Assuming I do the Hayden to Grealish transfer the choice is between Soyuncu and Cantwell.  If I did the Rashford transfer the choice would be between Hayden and Soyuncu

Here’s the team pre any transfers:




That’s it. Hope you had a good gameweek

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