Here’s Rob Reid with his FPL gameweek 10 player picks to help you decide on transfers for your team. Rob has finished 3 of the last 5 seasons in the top 0.5% of FPL managers.
Rob Reid with his FPL gameweek 10 player picks
You can follow Rob on twitter here. You can also see Rob’s team plans and other FFGeek contributors here
Hi everyone and welcome to Player Picks!
After the success of the previous 2 seasons, Player Picks is back again for 2019-2020 with a fairly similar format. I’ve decided to pare back the stats from previous weeks picks so that they will just include an average for the season – hopefully this should make the article a little bit simpler. Otherwise I’ll be sticking to the same format of a Banker, Ace and Joker as I’ve followed in previous years.
As a reminder, the Banker is predominantly a fixture-based pick where I follow them for 4 weeks and average the score over that period. The Ace is a 1 week pick who I think will do well and would make an appealing Captain choice. The Joker is a differential pick with less than 10% ownership who I think might do well that week. For reference, the overall 2018-19 picks averaged as follows: Banker 5.22, Ace 6.11, Joker 4.92. Hopefully (with some help as you’ll see below) we can beat that this season. I’ll start to look at the 2019-20 averages a bit later in the season when there is more data.
This season I’m also going to add a ‘Key Fixture’ analysis to Player Picks. This is where I’ll pick one fixture for the gameweek in question which I think FPL managers should consider covering in their squad. I’ll look at previous meetings, bookies odds and form in this – it might be a fixture where we already have a Player Pick, it might not! There will still also be Twitter polls where the FFG Twitter Community have an opportunity to select players, but also new for this season is a contribution from the FFG Slack Channel where Patreon users will have chance to directly contribute to the weekly picks through the Player Picks forum. So without further ado, let’s get on with this weeks Picks!
FPL gameweek 10 player Picks
Banker – Jamie Vardy LEI (9.1) – sou/cry/ARS/bri
Ranked second for Form in the Official FPL Statistics, this looks like a good time to own Jamie Vardy. He’s got 3 goals in his last 3 games, taking his total to 6 goals and an assist for the season and is one of the most gametime secure players in the game. The worry I guess is that 3 of The Foxes next four fixtures are away from home, but my thought on this is that this shouldn’t be a problem for Vardy who has traditionally been more successful in games where his side are more likely to counter-attack. I guess the only problem is his rising price seeing as there does seem to be a lot of options in between 6.5 and 8m. With City and Liverpool options still heavily favoured in midfield, is there room in the budget for the Leicester star?
Ace – Sergio Aguero MCI (12.2) – AVL
Speaking of strikers, a certain Sergio Aguero has to be very high on the list of captain picks for GW10. He still leads the way in the xG department this season and this week has a home fixture against the team who top the charts for overall shots conceded. Historically, Aguero seems to like playing The Villains as well – 6 goals in 5 appearances, though of course he’s not played against them for 3 seasons so I’d certainly query the relevance of this. There is of course the usual concern regarding gametime, though what his midweek UCL appearance was good for Kun was form – another 2 goals bagged. If I owned Aguero, there’s not doubt I’d be captaining him this week, though it would of course still be with a few nerves when the City team-sheet is announced at 1130am on Saturday!
Joker (as picked by the FFG Slack Community) – Raul Jimenez WOL (7.1) – new
It’s a hat-trick of strikers on Picks this week and thank you to Leo, Marek Bialous and contributor Yaniv for their suggestion of Jimenez, who just sneaks into the Joker spot by virtue of sitting at 9.9% ownership at the time of writing this article on Thursday lunchtime! Last season’s budget favourite seems to be hitting some form again with a goal and 2 assists in his last 2 games. He is another player sitting on a good incoming run of fixtures and we all know what he capable of after a debut FPL season where he bagged 13 goals and 10 assists. The question mark this week is how a Thursday evening trip to Slovakia will affect Wolves prospects on Sunday against an opponent who have looked pretty stuffy and well-organised in the last 2 weeks.
Key Fixture Pick – Southampton v Leicester (8pm Friday)
Bookies Odds:
Win: Southampton 2/1; Leicester 13/10; Draw 12/5
Clean Sheet: Southampton 3/1; Leicster 15/8
Selected Anytime Goalscorer Odds: Danny Ings 6/4; Shane Long 11/4; Jamie Vardy 11/10; Youri Tielemans 7/2; James Maddison 7/2
I’ve gone a bit left-field for this week’s fixture pick and opted for the Friday night game at St Mary’s. It may not seem the obvious choice, with City’s fixture against Villa and Spurs visit to Anfield probably attracting most of this week’s attention, but there are some good reasons why FPL managers should scout the fixture that is the curtain-raiser for GW10. First of all, visitors Leicester have a number of assets that are firmly on our radar at the moment with a favourable fixture run until the festive period and some players in good form. Secondly, we should also be keeping an eye on the home side – they too have a good fixture run coming up once they’ve got a visit to City in GW11 out the way. And the third reason is that the 2 players who currently top the form table in FPL both feature up front in this match.
Historically this clash has been fairly evenly matched of late with the last 3 seasons throwing up 2 wins each and 2 draws with no obvious home or away bias. In terms of recent form, The Foxes are currently in much better shape – 3 wins in the last 4 have taken them to 3rd in the league and they have the 3rd best defensive record after Liverpool and Sheffield United with only 8 goals conceded. In contrast, the Saints are struggling in 17th and haven’t won in the league since a GW5 victory at Brammall Lane.
Starting with the home side, the main attraction is FPL’s top ranked player for Form – Danny Ings. He has 3 goals and 7 bonus points in his last 3 games at a price of just 5.9m. The key with Ings is if he can stay injury-free. He talked candidly on the radio last week about the amount of conditioning work he put in over the summer and time will tell if this will pay off, but if he stays fit he could be a great budget attraction from GW12 onwards. Otherwise, it’s fairly lean pickings for The Saints with their cheaper defensive players possibly the better options. Goalkeeper Gunn at 4.5 and defenders Bednarek (4.5) and Yoshida (4.4) are the best value picks here with most of the rest of the squad priced a little high in my opinion.
Leicester certainly have a form striker of their own though you’ll need to find another 3.2m to pick up Jamie Vardy, this week’s Banker pick. There’s also good options in midfield with 7.2m Maddison the highest owned. I’d probably favour spending a bit less however and picking up Tielemans for 6.4m or Barnes for 5.9m, though I’d be wary of Barnes’ gametime security. In defence, 6.2 Ricardo Pereira has 2 goals this season and is heavily favoured by Joe’s Projection Model. Soyuncu is the more budget friendly option at 4.7, although be aware that (a bit like Liverpool) although the Foxes aren’t conceding many they are still finding clean sheets hard to come by with only 2 so far this campaign.
This looks an intriguing fixture to me and I think could be a fairly close game. I’m predicting a 2-1 win for the away side.
That’s all from me for this week on Player Picks folks – best of luck!
Other posts
FFGeek contributors teams GW10 part 1
FPL captain and transfer polls for GW10
Defender and GK player rankings
FFGeek contributors teams GW10 part 2
The FFGeek imaginary wildcard team
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