4 Players who are past their FPL best.

Fantasy Premier League

Here’s an article from Ulmar where we look at 4 players who are past their FPL best

4 Players who are past their FPL best.




Players will always have peaks and troughs in their career.  Here we look at 4 players who are definitely in the trough phase. We look at how the downfall happened and the chance they have to play again. We think it is possible, because if there are people out there playing the powerball lottery and winning, then, we can see these players at their best again.

De Gea

De Gea won the Man Utd player of the season award in 2016 for the 3rd year in a row.  He was the 2nd player after Ronaldo to win it 3 times and the first to win it 3 times in consecutive years.  He then won it in 2018 becoming the first player to win it 4 times.

2018 was his best FPL season with 172 points and 18 clean sheets.  In that season he had the best save % of any goalkeeper at 80.7%.  He then followed with a disastrous 7 clean sheet season in 18/19 with 120 points but made a reasonable 13 clean sheet 143 point recovery in 19/20.

However this season it’s very different.  After 9 games played  he’s on 21 points with 2 clean sheets.  If that was to continue he would have less than 90 points for the season.  He is also 19th in save % at 53.8% and 17th in saves made so far this season.

He is currently injured and will do well to keep Dean Henderson out of the side in the future.  We therefore see little hope in a return to the peaks




Gylfi Sigurdsson

It was only 2018/19 that Sigurdsson totalled 182 points with 36 starts and 2 as sub scoring 13 goals and 6 assists.

19/20 was a totally different experience with 28 starts and 7 as sub for a points total roughly half of the previous season at 95.  New manager Ancelotti has also not favoured him and he has only 4 games plus 5 as sub culminating in being an unused sub in the 0-1 loss to Leeds.  As yet he has only got above 2 FPL points in 1 of those 9 games and only has the 1 assist to date.

Once the perfect FPL midfielder playing as a CAM with set pieces and penalties Ancelotti used his when he did as a CM.

The days as an FPL force are way behind him and Ancelotti’s view of him as a Central Midfielder when he does play wouldn’t produce significant FPL points anyway.

Paul Pogba

Injured for a significant part of the 19/20 season when he only started 13 games in the Premier League plus 3 as sub he amassed a paltry 51 points at 3.1 points per game and scored only 1 goal plus 4 assists.

This season he’s started 4 games plus 3 as sub and was not in the squad for the last 2 games supposedly with fitness issues.  This again has seen him play in the deeper CM role and only has 11 FPL points with no goals or assists at a points per match of 1.6.

He seems a long way off the 18/19 Paul Pogba when he amassed 179 points at 5.1 Points per Match. with 13 goals and 10 assists being 1 of the few players who achieved the double double of 10 + goals and 10 + assists.  Amazingly he still talks of playing for Real Madrid but his performances seem a long way from that

All is not lost for Paul Pogba.  A more advanced position in a team that looks to do more than just play counter attack football could see him return to his best.  It’s just whether either of those things will happen



Alexandre Lacazette

Lacazette joined Arsenal after the 2016/17 season with French Club Lyon where he scored 37 goals in 45 appearances in all competitions.

The 18/19 season was his most successful in FPL with 166 points from 27 starts and 8 sub appearances saw 13 goals and 12 assists at 4.7 points per match.

That diminished in the 19/20 season where 22 starts plus 8 as a sub saw a points per match of 3.9.

This season started well with 3 goals in 3 starts but since then it has all gone horribly wrong.  He’s only started 3 games since been a sub in 2 and not got off the bench in 2 others.  Against Wolves in GW10 he managed just 9 minutes and before that in GW9 v Leeds he failed to get off the bench.

The problem with Arsenal at the moment is the sacrifice Arteta has made to the attack to shore up the defence and the fact that the ousting of Ozil has been particularly detrimental to Lacazette whom he had a good football relationship with.  It’s hard to see Lacazette bouncing back and the game v Wolves in GW10 where Aubameyang played as a CF could be the start of the end

 

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