Here’s Rob Reid with his FPL gameweek 16 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 16 player picks
You can catch Rob on the FFGeek podcast on our Patreon subscription site as well as a number of other features mentioned at the bottom of this article
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 16 player picks
Banker (picked by the FFG Slack Community) – John Lundstram – SHU (5.1m) – nor/AVL/bha/WAT
There was a lot of love for Spurs assets on the Channel this week, but I’ve opted for Shaun O’ Connors pick of ‘Lord’ John Lundstram. FPL 2019-20 is in danger of becoming The Season of Lundstram as for 15 weeks he truly has been the player of FPL dreams. It seemed almost inconceivable that the 4.0m Blades star would become the find of the season. Fast forward to December and he’s now the most owned player in the game and faces a kind fixture run playing for one of the leaner defences in the league. If you’ve not got him be now, there’s probably an argument that you may be priced out, but if he’s in your team he surely has to be a mainstay over the busy festive period. Bench him at your peril!
Ace – Sadio Mane – LIV (12.2m) – bou
Another highly owned player gets the Ace spot this week for the league leaders visit to Vitality Stadium. Mane continued his great season in midweek with another goal and 2 assists making bringing his season tally to 9 and 6 respectively. He’s facing a Bournemouth team that capitulated to a Mo Salah masterclass this time last year, the difference being that this season it’s the Senegalese star who looks most likely to put The Cherries to the sword with the Egyptian in somewhat indifferent form and managing a niggly injury. The home side are on a bad run having lost their last 4 and things don’t look like getting better any time soon with a trip to Stamford Bridge in GW17 following The Reds visit this week – it’s looking like a difficult December for Howe’s men.
Joker – David Silva – MCI (7.6m) – MAN
At 7.6m, the 8.3% owned City midfielder is a fantastic value route into the creative City midfield. He has 3 assists in his last 2 games, taking his total to 8 for season to which he’s added 3 goals and he’ll be keen to leave a mark in what will be his last Premier League derby at The Ethiad. The Citizens bounced back into form on Tuesday at Burnley after surprisingly being held at St James’ Park in GW14 and won both games against their city rivals last season. The visitors will certainly have their work cut out in this one again and with them not having kept a clean sheet since GW5, Silva and co. will be confident of another comfortable derby victory this week.
Key Fixture Pick – Aston Villa v Leicester (2pm Sunday)
Bookies Odds
Win: Villa 10/3; Draw 3/1; Leicester 3/4
Clean Sheet: Villa 5/1; Leicester 2/1
Selected Anytime Goalscorer Odds: Wesley 21/10; McGinn 7/2; Grealish 11/2; Vardy 8/11; Maddison 13/8; Perez 23/10
While this may not be the biggest game of the weekend, for me it’s a really interesting contest from a fantasy perspective. You’ve got FPL’s form club with great value assets scattered right throughout the squad against an exciting Villa side who are just about to take on probably the kindest fixture run over the festive period. This should be an intriguing watch!
There’s little recent history between the 2 sides, indeed this will be the first time they’ve met since January 2016. Villa’s recent form has been sketchy, they’ve only won 1 and have lost 4 of their last 6 but have faced City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United in this period. The visitors in contrast have won their last 7 matches scoring 21 goals and conceding just 2 in the process, a run which has propelled them to second in the table and conjured up fond memories of that famous title-winning campaign a few seasons back.
Pivotal to this has been Jamie Vardy. His 9 goals in 6 consecutive games have made him a firm favourite in the FPL Captain Polls and he should be heavily backed with the armband again this week. There’s also plenty of attacking options in midfield with Perez, Maddison and Tielemans all good mid-priced options who have scored in fits and starts during this run. They’ve also been the most consistent defensive team of late with 5.1m Soyuncu still looking good value and full-backs Ricardo and Chilwell offering arguably more attacking threat at a higher price. Be sure to keep an eye on the injury status of Chilwell though if you’re thinking of bringing him in this week after he missed GW15 with what is reported to be a minor injury.
For the hosts, 5.9m Jack Grealish has been attracting the plaudits of late – he’s got a goal and an assist in the last 3 games since returning from injury in GW13. John McGinn’s form has tailed off a little of late, but he still likes to get forward and takes plenty of shots and there’s other more differential options in Wesley, Hourihane and El Ghazi (if fit.) In defence, I like the potential of 4.4m options Targett and Guilbert over the next few weeks – there could be some clean sheets across December with a fixture run that reads shu/SOU/NOR/wat/bur from GW17 onwards. Both also like to get forward and could be good for an assist or two as well.
I got 3/3 returns on GW15’s picks but I got my prediction wrong on the United v Spurs game so hopefully I can get this one right. I’m going for a 2-1 win for The Foxes.
That’s all from me for this week on Player Picks folks – best of luck!
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