fantasy premier league teams GW9 – some early thoughts on the FFGeek team

Fantasy Premier League, ffgeek teams

Here’s our fantasy premier league teams GW9 article where we give our early thoughts on the FFGeek team for GW9. We look back at gameweek 8 and give our thoughts on the gameweek ahead including potential transfers and captain choice.

fantasy premier league teams GW9 – 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 8

GW8 points: 32 (FPL average 36) Total points 438, Gameweek rank 4,560k, Overall Rank: 804k, red arrow 214k, Team Value: £101.2m

Here’s the points:




fantasy premier league teams GW9

So a pretty disastrous gameweek going back a massive 214k OR for an 804k overall rank.  I have to remind myself that OR is pretty misleading at this stage.  As I said in my 10 top FPL managers article their OR spread is 170k to 1,061k.  That’s pretty much 900k difference in OR but only 35 points difference.  Every single point is roughly 25k OR.  So I’m not panicking yet.

A bit of a deep dive on my team 

The Liverpool defence

Nothing hurt this weekend more than losing the double Liverpool clean sheet.  An xG against of 0.10 and only conceding 2 shots should be a nailed on clean sheet but an Adrian error for a pretty tame Maddison shot killed that in the 80th minute.

Liverpool are 2nd in xG conceded and 4th on shots per game against.  They’ve averaged less that 1 goal per game against in xG and in 4 games have got less than 1 goal xG against.  Alisson coming back soon should be a massive boost as his ability off the line should help mitigate the damage being done currently by the high line defence and the fullbacks being pushed up so far.

The worry though is how far the defence is behind last season.  19/20 xGA per game 0.93 18/19 0.77.  19/20 shots per game against 9.6.   18/19 8.1

Then there’s the fixtures.  The next 5 aren’t great

GW9 MUN (A)
GW10 TOT (H)
GW11 AVL (A)
GW12 MCI (H)
GW13 CRY (A)

From an attacking point of view both Alexander Arnold and Robertson are holding up against last seasons underlying stats which is positive.

At the moment I’m still intending to hold and hope Alisson proves the difference.  He was last seasons top save % GK and is a great sweeper keeper.

Man City defence 

Hopefully Stones is back after the International Break which more importantly will hopefully mean that Fernadinho can get back to CDM and start fouling everything that moves before they can get anywhere near the CBs.  Rodri just isn’t doing it.  City wouldn’t be in the Laportless mess they are now if Rodri had not dilly dallied when Trossard (I think it was) broke the press and left Laporte to foul him incurring the injury he has.

I’m still worried though after the shambolic nature of the last 2 games and my thinking that possession alone would do the job has been completely wrong.

Pope, Tomori, Soyuncu and Cantwell

All seem good value and not worried about any of them.  The possible problems with Norwich though could mean Cantwell becomes bench only meaning I end up with a 5 man defence every game which is not where I want to be

Salah

Salah v Leicester was 5 shots 3 key passes and an xG of 0.95 and an xA of 0.21 vs Leicester.  Nothing wrong with that except the blank that followed.

Here’s his 19/20 comparison vs 18/19.  xG 0.64 vs 0.60 and 0.18 vs 0.29 so he is worse off.  Shots and key pass wise it’s 3.3 vs 3.6 and 2.0 vs 1.8.  So not too different.

Again the fixtures coming up aren’t helpful and will probably remove him as a captain option.  As a non captain option he’s pretty questionable given the price.

Still needs to be confirmed as fit.

Sterling and De Bruyne

It was a very disappointing game v Wolves for Sterling.  His underlying stats are better than last season though for xG/xA and shots per game.  He is susceptible to the odd stinker though.  The question is whether De Bruyne can be your City captain which again questions Sterling as a non captain option.  De Bruyne, hopefully fit, is playing out of his mind and although shot volumes are the similar to last season they are way better quality and for me he is a definite captain option which I really didn’t think was the case coming into the season.  However I didn’t think he would double his historic xG average.

Abraham

Only Aguero has a better xG90 than Abraham.  Going now where (except to the subs bench every 76 minutes which is the only negative)

Pukki, Dendoncker and Greenwood

The low shot counts and xG for Pukki are getting more and more familiar so he’s the only player I unequivocally could see going out of my team apart from the bench of Dendoncker and Greenwood.

So what does the deep dive tell me

So as the saying goes the deeper you dive the murkier the water becomes.  I don’t know if that actually is a saying but it sounded good anyway.

On the above I could make a case for wildcarding or I could make a case for rolling over the free transfer depending on how I wanted to interpret the stats.  This week Wilson or Mount due to fixtures would be attractive but they aren’t feasible without a -4 to get just the 1 in which isn’t attractive to me.

The last 2 times I’ve wildcarded I did it on a Friday as I couldn’t decide whether to do it or not.  This feels similar but if I had to bet on what I was going to do I think it will be to carry the free and see where that gets me next week.

Transfer thoughts

1 free transfer and £0.4m in the bank

I think I covered this above so probably carrying over the free transfer but don’t rule out a Friday night (and I don’t mean tomorrow) wildcard.

Captain thoughts

At the moment I’m looking at Sterling at Crystal Palace although that could be a low scoring game so Abraham vs Newcastle also looks an option.  The captain poll will be interesting although I will do this later next week.

The team pre any transfers




fantasy premier league teams GW9

So you can see the 5 man backline where 2 have no attacking potential which isn’t ideal.  I’m reluctant to double up on Norwich even with the fixture.

More to think about.

That’s it. Hope you had a good gameweek.

Other posts

You can also see Rob Reid’s wildcard article as well as Keith and Costas’s , also Kris O’s wildcard drafts and Ben and Kev’s wildcard drafts

Also Rick Porters cutting through the FPL noise

Analysing 10 top FPL managers

More content

Geek note: If you join our Patreon site you will get access to an FPL contributor tracker team which combines the contributors individual teams each week to show their favourite players, transfers and captains. It will always be completed on a Friday/Saturday in a normal gameweek. There will also be a spreadsheet of each managers teams, transfers and captains so you can drill down further.

You also get:

Weekly podcasts with the Geek and the other contributors

Joe’s interactive transfer planner and points projection tool

FFGeek private leagues

Access to the FFGeek Slack channel for discussion with the contributors and members

$2 and $3 tiers per calendar month. No commitment beyond 1 month

FFGeek league codes:

fantasy premier league:  fnqq66

Sky Sports fantasy football:  fantasyfootball.skysports.com/leagues/join with PIN 8426114

Telegraph fantasy football:  passcode 8693.  PIN code 8000919.  The telegraph have also offered a prize of £100 to the winner.

Telegraph fantasy football European Super League:   League PIN: 8186902  League Passcode: 2113

Sun Dream Team:

Classic League PIN:  SGDKX9Y3

H2H PIN:  SGFU3CR9

Social Media

For more fantasy premier league teams GW9 Follow   FFGeek on twitter and facebook and instagram for article updates and news

You may also like to read one of these too: