fantasy premier league teams GW26 – some early thoughts on the FFGeek team

Here’s our fantasy premier league teams GW26 article where I give my early thoughts on the FFGeek team for GW26. I look back at gameweek 25 and give my thoughts on the gameweek ahead including potential transfers and captain choice.

fantasy premier league teams GW26 – 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 25 review

GW25 points: 56 (FPL average 47) Total points 1,458 Gameweek rank 2,290k, Overall Rank: 78k, red arrow 6k, Team Value: £103.8m

Here’s the points:

Well that was a week when it could have been alot worse than the 6k red arrow to 78k overall rank.  If you only have 2 players who returned in your team and don’t get a massive red arrow then you’ve got to have considered yourself every lucky.  Obviously it helps mitigate the damage when your captain scores 16 points x 2 =32 points that’s for sure.

The attacking players

Of the attacking players Grealish took 5 shots and made 5 key pass so he at least did his bit.  Vardy also pulled his weight despite a blank although it was only 1 shot and 1 key pass they were both quite high value.  Calvert Lewin took 3 shots totalling a respectable xG.

The disappointments were Maupay who was on the bench and didn’t get off it.  Potter is a born tinkerer so whether it meant anything who knows although his replacement Glenn Murray did score.  De Bruyne I can excuse due to the sending off didn’t produce much.

However the biggest disappointment was the transfer in of Martial.  I explained in my team selection article that there was no perfect replacement for Mane and Martial certainly did his best to prove that.  No shots and 1 very low value key pass was his poor afternoon.  While I only saw the highlights I was quite shocked at new transfer Bruno Fernandes contribution.  5 shots, none in the box with an average xG value per shot of 0.03.  He makes James Maddison look like he has a an advanced degree in shot selection.  I was hoping he would help the creativity in the team.  He just seemed to shot without any regard for trying to create something instead.  And he played a decent portion of the game in the double pivot.  However it is just 1 game so hopefully there’s more to come

Defender summary

Defensively despite their only being 1 clean sheet 4 of the 6 defences had an xG conceded of less than 1 goal.  The exceptions being Bournemouth (of course) and Southampton vs Liverpool.

Lundstram on the bench again for the 3rd consecutive game probably spells the end of him.

My FPL team structure

Again apologies to regular readers for the definition preamble.

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

Template player: 7 of the 10 top 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 what is an FPL template. There’s no true definition though.

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:

Vardy slipped out of the template status due to him only being owned by 6 of the 10 FPL managers.  As I said in the article my definition of template is specific for my purposes.  You may have your own.

Looking ahead to DGW24

1 free transfers and £4.3m in the bank.

The 2 players who are of a concern from a gametime perspective are Maupay and Lundstram.  Both of who didn’t start as I mentioned above

My 2 thoughts prior to this gameweek were either to get in 1 of the Liverpool players in Firmino or Robertson and or get in Danny Ings.  Both teams have a great run of fixtures.

So this week I will either replace Maupay with Firmino or take a -4 point deduction to sort out both problems by getting in Ings for Maupay and Robertson for Lundstram.

Captain

Probably Salah but the Polls maybe an influence

Lineup issues

I’ll need to decide if Lundstram stays whether I risk starting him especially as the alternatives aren’t great.  Apart from that it’s a pretty useless bench and the order probably won’t be that relevant.

Here’s a lineup pre transfers

Either Maupay will be Firmino or Maupay will be Ings and Lundstram Robertson -4

I hope you had a good gameweek

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