Here’s our FPL wildcard tips GW5 article part 2 where Jordan Sadler shows his wildcard team. There’s also alot of additional information to help you with your wildcard or transfer choice.
FPL wildcard tips GW5 part 2 – Jordan Sadlers wildcard team
Jordan finished with an overall rank of 76k last season
Why am I wildcarding?
So after another average gameweek scoring 48, for my 3rd red arrow in a row (though I am still 96k so can’t complain) I have decided to activate my wildcard. My original plan was to play my wildcard after gameweek 4 but after gameweek 3 I thought I may be able to hold off a few weeks, however, a few things occurred this week which made me go back to my original plan.
My reasons are as follows:
– Mkhitaryan and Bernardo Silva both not starting
– Alonso’s relentless returns
– Walcott’s injury (even if it is minor, he will likely be sold a lot until we’re updated)
– Robertson’s turn of fixtures
In this article I will not only be giving my wildcard team but my thought processes and potential alternatives to help anyone else using their wildcard this week. However, if you don’t feel like the journey then just skip to the bottom to see my wildcard team.
Gameweek 4
I’ll go into more detail about gameweek 4 on the contributors article next week so keep an eye out for that. Long story short: A Cedric off the bench tease due to Mkhitaryan’s 89th minute subbing on and a wrong 50/50 made the gameweek average instead of very good.
The definites
So I had 7 players that were definites. Mendy and Alonso have to be there because of their attacking potential and Wan-Bissaka is a great value at my original buy price of £4.0m. Salah and Aguero are both essential in my opinion due to their ownership and Wilson and Moura are in excellent form and both have good upcoming fixtures.
So this left me with a couple of structural questions:
1) Do I go with two 4.5 GKs to rotate or one premium GK?
2) Do I go with a good 3rd FWD + a cheap 5th MID or good 5th MID + a cheap 3rd FWD?
Assessing Players
Goalkeepers:
So in regards to my question 1 above there were a few options for a premium goalkeeper: Ederson, Alisson, De Gea and Kepa. I ruled Alisson out because of his fixtures and I ruled De Gea out because I don’t trust United one bit currently. So that left me with Kepa and Ederson. As I’d have no way of rotating Kepa for gameweek 7 against Liverpool and with Ederson’s incredibly easy next 3 fixtures it had to be him for premium goalkeepers.
For two £4.5m rotating keepers I wanted to keep Patricio so it would be finding a good pairing for him. I narrowed this down to Begovic, Foster and Hennessey due to their corresponding fixtures with Patricio. As good as Bournemouth look going forward they also don’t look particularly convincing at the back so I ruled Begovic out. My main issue with Patricio is gameweek 6 when he has Man United at Old Trafford so I needed someone who had a good fixture gameweek 6.
Foster has Fulham away and Hennessey has Newcastle at home so Hennessey made more sense. Fabianski is a brilliant keeper and him and Patricio rotate very well but his gameweek 6 fixture is Chelsea so that was why I didn’t consider him. After sorting the rest of my team I had enough money for Ederson and Hamer so that is what I went with. However, I do think I may switch back to rotating £4.5m keepers in the near future.
Defenders:
As I said before, Mendy, Alonso and Wan-Bissaka are definites so that leaves two spots free. Ideally I wanted a premium defender and a cheap defender. If I needed a defender at £4.0m then the obvious choice is Bennett of Wolves as he’s the only other playing defender at that price. However, I had a some money spare so I wanted a £4.4m/£4.5m defender instead which I narrowed down to Cedric, Doherty and Rico.
As I said before, Bournemouth don’t seem brilliant defensively so Rico’s main appeal would be his offensive capability. He put out a 0.83 xA against Chelsea from LWB which is outstanding but looking at his stats from his previous club that doesn’t seem like the norm therefore I put him on my watchlist instead of in my team.
So that left Cedric and Doherty as my two viable options at £4.4m each. In the end I went with Doherty over Cedric for three reasons: better fixtures, Doherty’s average position in a game is regularly the same as the Wolves’ forwards so better attacking potential and Wolves are just a better team than Southampton in my opinion.
Premium defender options for me were Shaw, Trent, Robertson and Luiz for the Chelsea double up. I don’t trust United defensively right now so that ruled Shaw out, Liverpool have really tough fixtures so Trent and Robertson don’t seem worth their value for their next 4 games in my opinion and so that left Luiz for the Chelsea double up.
Midfielders and Forwards:
So the main decisions for me with midfielders and forwards were whether to put Hazard or Mane, my question 2 above and then what budget players to put with Hazard/Mane. I think Hazard is a great option but Mane has been Liverpool’s best offensive player so far (and just won PFA player of the month) and honestly fixtures don’t scare me when it comes to Liverpool’s offence, if anything, they excite me so Mane is who I went with.
The graphic above has all the budget midfielders and forwards that I considered. I looked at their xG/90 and xA/90 alongside their price points to come to a decision. Looking at Ings’ xG/90 (0.71) at 5.6m he’s an absolute steal so a 3rd good forward made more sense to me than a 5th good midfielder as Fraser is the only other competitive alternative at Ings’ price and I already have Wilson so wouldn’t want to double up.
All that was left then was my 4th and 5th midfielders. I could afford one of the more expensive players in the list above as my 4th midfielder so I decided to go with Pedro as even though he does have gametime risk he’s in way better form than Willian so I think Sarri will start him for the near future.
Mkhitaryan’s game time is at serious risk, Pereyra’s underlying stats really aren’t too good and Richarlison is suspended and Walcott is currently out injured so I felt Pedro made the most sense. However, I do think Richarlison will eventually come back in my team for Pedro probably in 2 or 3 weeks time. For my cheap 5th midfielder, going off underlying stats Hughes was the winner by quite a distance never mind how good of a start Watford have had.
The Wildcard Team
So this is the team and for the record my team value is now 101.9. I’m taking some risks doubling up on Chelsea and City defence but hopefully it will pay off. Got a strong and relatively cheap bench as well which I like as I do like to rotate my team based on fixtures (I will be switching Moura to the subs bench for Doherty into the starting 11 for this week I think).
Future transfer plans
I do typically like to make transfer plans for around 4 weeks ahead of me and so unsurprisingly I’ve done the same here. In reality things never work out the way you hope but regardless I still like to be planned and organised in case they ever do. So this is my current plan:
GW6: save
GW7: Pedro > Richarlison (as Pedro has Liverpool that week and I want Richarlison back in if he’s still in good form)
GW8: Ederson > Patricio (as Ederson has Liverpool, Spurs and United in his next 5 games)
GW9: Luiz > Robertson (this is when Liverpool’s fixtures are good again)
I will likely want to bring in Arnautovic after GW9 when his fixtures turn but I will work out how to do that nearer the time.
Hope this article helps you with your difficult decisions and I hope your wildcard is a success if you do use it this week. Good luck for gameweek 5 and lets hope this international break goes very fast!
See also the FFGeek contributors imaginary wildcard teams part 1, 10 top FPL managers article, the underlying stats GW4 article, the early thoughts on the FFGeek team article and thefixture ease article
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