fantasy premier league wildcard tips GW8 – the FFGeek imaginary wildcard

Fantasy Premier League, imaginary wildcard

Here’s our fantasy premier league wildcard tips GW8 article where I pretend I’m using my wildcard. This is to give you transfer suggestions for the GW8 with more longevity than just 1 gameweek alone.

fantasy premier league wildcard tips GW8 – the FFGeek imaginary wildcard

Note this article was written before Fridays managers press conferences

The idea of this article is to bring together the other articles of the gameweek.

The article is brief as there’s loads of information on individual players in the rankings articles plus others

Defender/GK player rankings

Midfield player rankings

Forward player rankings

Bandwagons and sinking ships

You can also see who the 10 top FPL managers I follow each week have in their team. You can also see which players have the best fixtures in our fixture ease article

There’s also who I’m thinking of in my article early FFGeek team thoughts

The FFGeek imaginary wildcard team

Here’s the team:




Structure

I haven’t gone with a predetermined formation but it’s likely it will be either 3-4-3 or 4-3-3.

Generally I’ve tried to focus on a blend of the stats to get players with a balance between good returns, good underlying stats, consistency and goalscoring odds for the next fixtures.

De Bruyne and Aguero

Although you can never predict Pep I would be surprised if both played this week.  De Bruyne is an injury doubt and as FFGeek contributor Alex Ball has pointed out if he played this week that would weaken Pep’s case for resting him over the International break before GW9.

Aguero played 89 minutes v Zagreb in the Champions League midweek and although there appears to be little correlation between anything previous and Pep’s future selections it’s a fact that’s hard to ignore.  So for this exercise I’m leaving him out.

I haven’t designed the team to have easy pathways for either to come back as well.  It’s more to give you player ideas for transfers.

Goalkeeper 

I’ve gone for Nick Pope here.  In the short term Burnley have reasonably good defensive fixtures.  Of the cheap GKs only Henderson has a better save % and only Henderson has conceded less goals (temporary GK Adrian excluded)

I’ve also gone for the £4.0m GK McGovern of Norwich who is holding the position with Krul and Farhmann both injured.  Roberto at £4.4m is the West Ham GK replacing the injured Fabianski but not as cheap.

Defence

Alexander Arnold for me is the best attacking defender with Lundstram playing as a CM 2nd in a surprisingly resilient Sheffield defence where Henderson has performed well despite his high profile error v Liverpool

Soyuncu and Tomori are additions to their respective defences that were unexpected when the FPL game went live and therefore they are great value.  Leicester have performed well defensively and Chelsea have potential to improve.  They’ve been underperforming their underlying stats which hopefully isn’t all done to Kepa being pretty hopeless and Kante and Rudiger should toughen it up.

Lastly there’s Otamendi.  Although I’ve been reasonably shocked at the chaotic defensive performances of Man City their fixture run and their ability to keep the ball still gives me faith in their defence getting clean sheets.

Midfield

Sterling is one of the premium player in the game for me and a good captain option so he stays.  Despite him not being in my player rankings article I’ve gambled on Mahrez.  If De Bruyne is out then there’s a good chance that Bernardo will become the CM freeing up the RW spot for Mahrez.  Further more assuming Bernardo Silva is banned for the Mendy tweet then Mahrez has virtually an unopposed place as RW.  However applying logic is a dangerous game with Pep and David Silva with no games over the International break and is probably the safer pick at least for GW8.

Mount has been providing returns at a cheap price for a top 4 challenging team playing attacking football.  Yarmolenko has some good returns and good fixtures but is a gamble given that his underlying stats are pretty ordinary.

Cantwell remains the cheap midfielder of choice.

Forwards

I’ve gone for Aubameyang due to his consistency of returns and the fixtures.  He has 1 issue in that this underlying stats really aren’t great and he’s over performed his xG massively.  Now that’s either an issue for you or you just say “He’s Auba and look at those fixtures”.

Picking 2 forwards was difficult and I could have easily gone for any combination of Haller, Pukki, Abraham and Wilson.

Wilson ticks all the boxes at the moment even if the bookies rate him at £2.80 to score v Arsenal in GW8.  He also is an asset who has played in the PL a number of seasons whereas the wildcard team has Mount, Abraham and Cantwell as new entries in attacking positions and Yarmolenko not far off that.

Hard to ignore Abraham with his returns and underlying stats so he’s not gone in.

No Salah

The obvious omission here.  It’s a fixture based decision and one where you would question whether you would captain him over the coming weeks due to those fixtures.  In previous seasons he’s often returned at such a high level that he’s value for money whether you captain him or not.  I think he’s on the edge of that at the moment which means with the fixtures you can argue a case to leave him out.

The  imaginary wildcard team with Salah in

It’s a pretty easy swap.  You take Yarmolenko out Aubameyang out for Salah and Ayew like this




fantasy premier league wildcard tips GW8

The attacking players fixture ease

Just in case you want to check the upcoming fixtures

Defensive players fixture ease

 fantasy premier league wildcard tips GW8

More content

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Other posts

Andrew Whitfield on FPL patience

fixture ease schedule

The bandwagons and sinking ships

Analysing the teams of 10 top FPL managers

Early thoughts on the FFGeek team

Underlying stats form tables

FFGeek captain poll

GW8 defender rankings

FFGeek contributors teams part 1

Rob Reid’s player picks

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