Here’s Rob Reid with his FPL gameweek 11 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 11 player picks
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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 11 player picks
Banker – Anthony Martial (MAN) 7.6m – bou/BHA/shu/AVL
Bouncing back from a frustrating early season injury, Martial netted his 3rd goal in 4 starts this season against Norwich in GW10 bringing him firmly back onto FPL managers radars. Sure, the Frenchman does have a bit of a patchy FPL track record with his returns tending to be quite streaky but there’s no doubt he can produce explosive runs of form as well. And if you’re going to bring him in, now is as good a time as ever with United settling into a nice pod of 4 fixtures before Spurs visit Old Trafford in GW15. This week’s opponents Bournemouth have looked more stubborn to break down this season and haven’t conceded in the last 2 gameweeks. Knowing Eddie Howe’s tactics though, I’d be surprised if this continues and I can certainly see Martial’s pace giving The Cherries some difficulty this week.
Ace – Raheem Sterling (MCI) 12.1m – SOU
Manchester City face Southampton for the second time this week on Saturday and the odds and form suggest this should be another easy win for Guardiola’s side. They ran out comfortable 3-1 winners in the Carabao Cup in midweek and it would be a brave punter who would bet against the struggling Saints to do any better than that reverse. 5 of City’s 6 leading FPL points scorers didn’t play any minutes in midweek and of these I’ve picked out Raheem Sterling for a big haul this week. He’ll be hoping to add to his tally of 7 goals and 1 assist against the defence that capitulated so spectacularly in GW10, and will no doubt be heavily backed as an FPL captain this week.
Joker – Neal Maupay (BRI) 6.0m – NOR
For a one week punt, I don’t think you can go far wrong with rolling the dice on 1.3% owned Maupay of Brighton. The Seagulls certainly look a more creative outfit under Graham Potter and Maupay has settled into life in the top flight well. He has 4 goals so far this season with 2 of these in the last 4 games and he’s also on penalties. Aaron Connolly does offer an even cheaper option, but I suspect is less gametime secure with some rumours circulating that he may share minutes with summer signing Leandro Trossard. I’d therefore favour spending a bit more on Maupay, but do be aware that Brighton have tough fixtures from GW12-15. For this week though, the visit of struggling and defensively fragile Norwich City could mean a nice haul for the Frenchman.
Key Fixture Pick – Everton v Spurs (Sunday 430pm)
Bookies Odds:
Win: Everton 17/10; Spurs 6/4; Draw 5/2
Clean Sheet: Everton 11/4; Spurs 5/2
Selected Anytime Goalscorer Odds: Richarlison 21/10; Calvert-Lewin 21/10; Sigurdsson 14/5; Kane 10/11; Son 23/10
My predictions regarding last week’s key fixture pick (Southampton vs Leicester) may have been a couple of goals out (!) but the one thing I did get right was that it certainly an intriguing match! I’ve decided this week to once again go for a slightly less obvious fixture. Most managers I’m sure will adequately cover the City and Liverpool matches, games which both promise a boon of FPL goodness. Everton vs Spurs however will be less covered judging by % ownership statistics, but that doesn’t mean to say that we shouldn’t monitor this fixture carefully.
Both teams have had stuttering starts to the season that are somewhat similar – both have only won 1 of their last 5 league matches and both sit in the wrong half of the table with Everton just 2 points and Spurs 4 points ahead of 18th placed Southampton. And both sides are starting to have serious questions asked about their manager and personnel. Could this be the match that gets one of these sides kick-started onto a good run?
The visitors have certainly held the advantage in the last few seasons, indeed The Toffees have not beaten Spurs since December 2012. The last 6 matches have led to 2 draws and 4 Spurs victories with a goal tally of 7-19. Harry Kane has been a key figure in this with a brace in his last 4 matches against the home side; a brace in this game would make him the first Premier League player to score twice in 5 consecutive fixtures against a particular club.
We’ll look at the visitors first and it’s the aforementioned Kane who is the standout option. His ownership is relatively low at 16.6% and Spurs fixtures look good in the long term with only 3 of their next 13 against one of their Big 6 rivals. Kane does have 6 goals and 1 assist this season at a current price of 10.8m, but the problem has been the lack of big returns – just the one double digit haul back in GW1. Surely at some point he’s going to start firing in 2 or 3 goal hauls? Son is of course the other main option from the attacking players. The 9.6m midfielder has just 2 goals and 4 assists to his name however, you’d be wanting more at that price. Defensively, the big draw is their 4.4m goalkeeping option Gazzaniga. The Argentinian stopper was outstanding last week, producing 12 saves and bagging a full set of bonus points. He could be a nice way to free up some extra funds at the back.
For the home side, you’d think that they have to start racking up some points soon or they will be in some serious trouble. They have a horrible GW14-18 fixture run coming where they face 4 of the Big 6 and visit the King Power across a tough 5 GW period. Before this though, they have games against Southampton and Norwich in GW12 & 13 – a good result on Sunday could be the shot in the arm they need to get them on a good run going into Christmas. Lucas Digne is still their highest owned player at 19% but he’s flattered to deceive since a good first 4 GWs, racking up a frustrating -1 with an own goal in GW10. The Everton defence does actually have more clean sheets this season than their Merseyside rivals would you believe, but it would be a brave FPL manager who brings in one of their back-line this week, they look pretty overpriced at present.
Moving forward, it’s been a frustrating start to the season for The Toffees’ attacking assets. Richarlison (7.9m) and Sigurdsson (7.5m) both have good FPL previous, but need to do better than 2 goals/3 assists and 1 goal/1 assist respectively at their price point. Striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin at 5.8m could be one to watch with 3 goals so far, though his minutes have been erratic and there are cheaper options who are performing better at the moment such as Ayew at Palace and Connolly at Brighton. Must do better I think is the take home message for Everton.
With such low ownership statistics, both sides are worth monitoring for differentials I reckon – especially Spurs, who have that nice steady fixture run going towards the New Year. And for this week’s prediction, again I must do better – I was only an aggregate of 1-7 out on last week’s score though at least I did get the winning side correct! I’m going for 1-1 draw for this week.
That’s all from me for this week on Player Picks folks – best of luck!
Other posts
FFGeek contributors show their teams part 1
GW11 captain and transfer poll
FFGeek contributors show their GW11 teams part 2
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