Sheep Picks (20)

I quite often snipe at 'The Sheep' element among Fantasy Premier League managers - by which I mean the substantial numbers (possibly, alas, an overall majority) who don't really understand FPL that well, or even follow the EPL that closely, and so make most of their decisions based on an impulsive reaction to last week's results... and/or at the promptings of FPL's own vapid pundit 'The Scout' or the many similarly unimaginative 'influencers' out here on the Internet.... or indeed just following whatever seems to be a popular pick being mentioned a lot in online discussion forums. This often coalesces into a kind of collective hysteria - where the HUGE numbers of managers rushing in to buy a certain player bears no relation to his true worth, his likely points potential over the next handful of games. The player in question might not be at all bad (though often he is); but he is not the irresistible bargain, the must-have asset that so many people seem to think

Hence, I created this occasional series of posts highlighting players I think are dangerously over-owned, are the subject of a sudden and misguided enthusiasm.

And so, as we approach Gameweek 30, I'm going to go out on a limb rather, and query the current popularity (perhaps over-popularity...) of a few admittedly rather good players. I can see the arguments in favour of these guys; and they might work out. But I have serious doubts about whether they'll work out as well as their new adopters fondly hope.

So, first up, then, we have Chelsea's Brazilian forward, Joao Pedro. Now, sure, he's the most 'in form' striker of the moment, has looked superb over the past several weeks. My objection here is primarily that anyone buying him now is woefully late-to-the-party. And indeed, I fear there is a chance that the 'party' may shortly be winding down. If you fancied that Chelsea might benefit from a 'new manager bounce' when Liam Rosenior came onboard in January, and/or were optimistic than the long-awaited return of Cole Palmer might soon have a transformative effect for the team, or were just encouraged by an approaching run of fairly 'soft' fixtures - then that would have been a very smart gamble: the optimum time to bring JP in would have been around Gameweek 22 or Gameweek 23.  The nearly 300,000 FPL managers who've acquired him since last week have been sleeping on his hot streak! And while I do acknowledge he is looking supremely confident at the moment, finishing superbly, playing again with some of that swagger we saw in his debut appearances in the Club World Cup last summer,... his numbers have also been a little flattering - partly because of a lack of competition among the forwards (almost everyone else, Haaland especially, has had a bit of a quiet spell over the last two months), and partly because quite a few things have broken kindly for him (he's gained a few assists for 'winning' rather soft penalty awards; and he was teed up for his hattrick last week by Garnacho selflessly squaring the ball to him rather than shooting himself - when does that ever happen??). Also, he has been exploiting a series of exceptionally inviting fixtures: apart from the recent visits to Arsenal (where, of course, he blanked) and Villa (who looked formidable up until the end of last year, but whose form has now crashed), they've been playing all the bottom-of-the-table clubs since late January. Their next four opponents - pacey Newcastle (though at least they don't 'travel' well, and will probably be preoccupied with the looming second leg of their Barcelona tie), defensively stolid Everton, and utterly terrifying City and United - could prove much tougher. And anyone who piles in for a player who's just scored a hattrick usually ends up disappointed; he's very, very unlikely to get a haul like that again in the next few weeks - maybe not all season. Even worse, a lot of his recent buyers have been ditching Haaland to make way for him. Yes, the big Viking has had a few injury worries and has been misfiring lately, and Joao Pedro has been much the best FPL forward over the past two months; but he is NOT a better prospect than Haaland for the remainder of the season.

Just as there's a heavy element of just chasing last week's points with the renewed rush for Joao Pedro, so too there's been a surge of interest in Ismaila Sarr, after an eye-catching display last time out (he was unlucky not to get a hattrick; although one of his brace was a not particularly well-taken penalty...) - just as there was at this time last year. The surge has been a bit more muted than it might have been (barely 50,000 new purchasers so far, though we're still over three days out from the new gameweek deadline), probably because Palace are facing an imminent Blank Gameweek (and most FPL managers are stretched enough figuring out what to do with all of their City and Arsenal players). I like Sarr, he shows a lot of promise; but he's never been a consistent producer in FPL - has a little hot streak here and there, but never gives regular returns over any extended period. He's provided next-to-nothing so far this season. I think he's likely to be rather less involved in the attack than he often was last year, now that they have players like Strand Larsen (in particular), Nketiah and Pino to call upon. And Palace are struggling at the moment, sliding into the relegation struggle. Their closing run of fixtures isn't great either: fellow relegation battlers Leeds and West Ham in two of their next three games, and City, Liverpool, and Arsenal still to be faced before the end of the season. Acquiring Sarr now seems a very, very odd choice.

And finally, I risk the wrath of THE MANY, I'm sure, because although he's had - by his usual standards - an absolute dog of a season, Virgil Van Dijk still enjoys an idolatrous following. People are presumably getting excited about the fact he's nabbed 3 goals in the last 7 games; but with defenders, that sort of 'form' is almost invariably just a flash-in-the-pan rather than an emerging trend. And even with those, he's been extraordinarily lucky: many goals/assists have been very dubiously awarded this season, and Virgil has probably been the prime beneficiary of this - his 'winner' against Sunderland, in particular, was clearly an own-goal off Diarra! And while he's still occasionally showing glimpses of his old imperious ways, his performance level has fallen off a cliff this year: he has aged out very quickly and is now looking conspicuously too slow for the Premier League. Even on the new 'defensive points', where you'd expect him to be a fairly reliable returner, his tallies have yo-yo'ed up-and-down widly from week to week: he has earned the extra points a respectable 11 or 12 times, but in rather more weeks he has come nowhere near reaching the threshold for doing so. And 9 clean sheets is nothing to get very excited over. It is only these highly fortuitous recent goals that have briefly lifted him back into the top five FPL defenders; but only just, and he isn't likely to stay there. With Liverpool's struggling season and his own patchy form, he just hasn't come anywhere near justifying his price-tag this year, even in his better runs of form. And Liverpool, at the moment, are looking as as bad as they've been all season. Even in that West Ham game, which they somehow managed to win quite comfortably, they were all over the place defensively, and outplayed for much of the game. Yes, Liverpool's run-in doesn't look too bad; they might experience a sharp upturn in performance again as soon as they get Wirtz back (he'd really been starting to make them tick in the last couple of months); and they have currently calamitous Spurs up next. But none of that is really sufficient reason to waste transfers on acquiring an expensive and severely under-performing defender. Over 70,000 people already this week have let sentiment for the old warhorse (or contempt for unravelling Spurs?!) get the better of their judgement.

Not AS BAD as all that....?

I analysed last week why this FPL season seems to have been even more random than usual. And, although I have a few gripes about tinkering with the scoring system by introducing the maddeningly opaque new 'defensive points', most of the reasons for this lie outside the Fantasy game, in the real world of football: VAR decisions getting even worse (largely because the backroom team are now too timid about questioning their on-pitch colleague's original call), the SAOT system foisting more and more hair's-breadth - and increasingly unconvincing - offside calls on us, new defensive systems stifling a lot of creative attacking play, and the new paramountcy of set-piece scoring opportunities leading to all this unseemly wrestling in the penalty area.

And while these shifts have clearly been to the detriment of the game of football, I would say that they haven't necessarily spoiled the game of Fantasy Premier League.

The game has always been vexing, frustrating because of the huge amount of randomness and unpredictability in it. But we have to base our gameplay on identifying the areas where there is some reliable predictability.

Even though there seems to be even more randomness than usual this year, we can still strive to find the rare shoals of predictability occasionally visible amid this sea of chaos.

That has always been the challenge of Fantasy Football. This season... the game just became even more challenging. We should do our best to enjoy that.

A 'successful' FPL team is only a window to the past, not the future

 

A lot of desperate FPL managers seek inspiration from checking out the teams of their mini-league rivals or the current global frontrunners, etc..... and copying them.

That is, of course, CHEATING; and is to be discouraged on moral grounds alone.

But also.... it rarely does much good. As I just pointed out the other week, just about no team is ever 'perfect' anyway; however well we're currently doing, thare are almost inevitably always a few irksome weak spots in our teams that we just don't have enough transfers to deal with.

However, even a team which looks in really good shape, and is enjoying 'success' currently - high rank position, excellent returns in recent weeks - is merely a team which has done well up to now. There is no guarantee that it will continue to do similarly well from here on....

Some players in that prosperous team you examine so enviously have probably been going off the boil in the past few games - or are just about to. New hot streaks of irresistible form may be just emerging, or just about to emerge, in other players. There is no essential reason why a team that did exceptionally well in the last gameweek - or over the last month, or over the season as a whole so far - should do better than any other team in the coming gameweek. (And indeed, this season we seem to have been seeing even more extreme swings of fortune than usual, with good teams having an outstanding return in one gameweek only to collapse to a horrendous result in the next.)

Just COPYING someone else's selections is never a good thing. If you are going to look at other people's teams, at the currently 'most successful' teams, try to analyse why they've done well, why they've done better than you so far. Then - try to assess how well they're likely to do over the next few gameweeks; and see if you can think of how these teams might be improved.

What you should be trying to do is not simply mimic the selections a successful FPL manager has already made, but to anticipate what picks they might make next.

A series of unfortunate events

 

Following on from this early reflection on how my season was going (hypoethetically - since, in fact, the dratted game randomly locked me out of my account right at the start of the new campaign!), I feel I'm about due to offer a 'mid-season' review. In fact, I'm somewhat past due, since I typically - for these purposes - divide the season into three slightly uneven 'thirds': the opening 12 gameweeks, the bleak midwinter run of about 14 gameweeks. and then the final run-in over the last 12 gameweeks. Hence, I usually aim to do an analysis like this in or shortly after Gameweek 26 - but, this year, I was 'busy' with other things....

In that first performance assessment of mine, back around the end of November, I was to a fair extent just 'guessing' at how I might have done, since I hadn't kept a strict record of which players I'd have to chosen to pick when, much less itemised and recorded their weekly points performances. However, since Gameweek 10, I have been 'playing' again more fastidiously, and keeping such a record of my team's results.

And I confess, it hasn't been going all that well. In that opening phase of the season, I was mostly on a slow-but-steady upward track after an epically poor start to the season (if you're down around the 7 or 8 million mark early on, it can take months to claw your way back to a respectable standing!), although I had also been battered by some cruel luck with injuries early on.

In December and January, though, I faltered pretty badly.

I mentioned just the other day how the present FPL season has been a particularly weird, frustrating, and unsatisfying one. One factor I omitted to note in that essay was how often this season the 'sheep picks' have worked out for people. I may have more to say on this soon, about how avoiding the most popular picks and taking a calculated gamble on a slightly less popular option can work both for and against you. This season, at the moment, it is rather dramatically not paying off; at least, not for me.

There was, for example, no particularly convincing argument for why Bruno Fernandes should have been obviously the best and only pick from the Manchester United midfield (though that's the way most people went at the start of the season, mostly out of sentiment) - when he's actually been terribly inconsistent in his FPL returns in recent years (pretty good over the season as a whole, but all of his points coming in two or three intensive 'hot streaks', with devastating fallow spells in between), and seemed set to be played in a much deeper role by Ruben Amorim this year, and was being joined by two potentially prolific 'midfield' goalscorers in Mbeumo and Cunha, who seemed likely to take some of the creative focus away from him. I thought the two forwards-in-disguise looked the better prospects at the start of the season, and (somewhat in defiance of my gut instinct, though it kind of worked out - at first) plumped for Cunha in my initial squad; but he almost immediately got injured. I switched to Mbeumo, but after a lively opening, he was struggling to have the same sort of impact he did last year at Brentford, in a United team who were often a bit of a mess. Bruno, meanwhile, after a bit of a wobbly start, has somehow rediscovered consistency, and is having his best season ever (well, since he first joined United, anyway). And yet... once you've made a decision to go without someone, you often end up remaining without them for a long spell, perhaps forever - because there always seem to be more urgent or more attractive changes to make (Rayan Cherki, Harry Wilson, Enzo Fernandez, Cole Palmer...). And now that he's shot up to 10 million quid, he is getting a little difficult to afford. Basically, I have stuck with Mbeumo throughout (apart from dropping him briefly during AFCON); and.... the jury's still out on whether he'll work out better than Bruno over the second half of the season; they're neck-and-neck at the moment. I am modestly confident that I have made the better choice here (though, in an ideal world, I'd like to have both!); but I did miss out on some very nice hauls from Bruno during the first half of the season.

For similar reasons, I held off on Florian Wirtz, when he finally started to find his feet at Liverpool around mid-December. I've always been a great fan of his, and was optimistic about the impact he might have in the Premier League (though I warned at the start of the season that it might take him a few months to settle in, and he wasn't likely to be a super-prolific goalscorer anyway). I still wasn't convinced about Liverpool's team form (rightly, as it's turned out!), and hence never quite saw Wirtz as a top-five midfield pick - although, perhaps for a while in December and January, he was....

I've been a bit up-and-down with Antoine Semenyo: didn't fancy him at the start of the season, but quickly got on him when he showed such hot early form; ditched him again very promptly when he started blanking; and got him back again promptly when his form again showed an uptick around the beginnng of December. Ah, but then I wasn't confident that he would quickly find his feet at City, or even be an invariable starter (and I'm still not fully confident of that: I suspect we will at least sometimes see a three-way rotation between him, Cherki, and Doku), so I dumped him again when he transferred in January. Of course, I quickly repented of that, when he did indeed turn out to be an invariable starter, and an even more prolific goalscorer for his new club. But damn - that's a lot of transfers to use on one player in just over half a season!!

I was a little slow to get on Harry Wilson too. I recognised his talent, form, potential; but Fulham in general were on a hot streak at that point, and Emile Smith Rowe, who now suddenly looked set to get a regular start as Alex Iwobi & co. were about to depart for AFCON, also seemed very promising - and I initially decided to have a punt on him instead. That didn't seem too bad a choice: he scored a goal in the first game I had him, and played excellently, without producing any more points, in the next couple - before I realised I really needed to be on Wilson.

I failed to get on Phil Foden during his astonishing streak of 55 points inside a fortnight. I refuse to have any regrets about that. Thare were sound reasons for supposing that this was a flash-in-the-pan rather than a sustained upturn in form (as indeed it was), and that it wasn't likely to continue - indeed, that he wasn't likely even to continue to start - for more than 1 or 2 games; although, somehow, he managed to stretch it out to a record-breaking 4 games. It certainly hurt to miss out on those points. But it probably wasn't quite as bad as all that, since the players I held on to instead of introducing him didn't produce too badly either, his output dropped off a cliff again immediately afterwards, and using two transfers to hold him in the squad for such a short spell also undercuts that prodigious return.

Most recently, I've held off on getting Joao Pedro - again, because Chelsea's team form has continued to be erratic, unconvincing; and, in those circumstances, their brief run of 'good' fixtures in January didn't look all that promising. Also, although he's currently playing with supreme confidence, certainly very impressive, he has been very fortunate to pick up so many assists for 'winning' somewhat soft penalties, and also being gifted some goalscoring chances. I like the player, and am trying to figure out a way to get him into my squad (so many transfers needed to deal with injuries at the moment...), but.... the next few fixtures look potentially rather tough; and I don't believe that this recent super-hot streak will continue as hot for the rest of the season. (I think people who have sacrificed Haaland to bring him in may soon regret it.)

And damn, yes, I've missed out on a lot of Gabriel's best returns too. I thought Timber would be the better way to go earlier in the season - not anticipating (who did??) what a crazy hot streak of attacking contributions the big Brazilian would produce. I was for a while doubled-up on him and Timber; but then he got injured, and I didn't bother to bring him back again immediately upon his return, as Arsenal seemed to be potentially suffering a bit of a mid-season wobble. That's looking like it could be yet another perfectly reasonable decision.... that may have gone against me.

And, oh good lord, I've had an absolutely abysmal run with the chips. Twice forced into 'early' use of the Wildcards by an accumulation of injuries and slumps in form, getting a piss-poor return on my first Bench Boost in GW18 (two of my defenders unexpectedly didn't start!), doing only modestly well with my Free Hit (one of my best hauls of the season, but only a middling one overall in an unusually high-scoring gameweek for almost everyone!), plumping for Haaland against Leeds (aaargh!) rather than Haaland against West Ham for my first Triple Captain, and for Timber in the recent Double Gameweek for my second....  Just disaster after disaster!!!

Plenty has gone well for me too: I've stuck with Haaland and Thiago, Rice and Mbeumo, Timber and Tarkowski through most of the season - and they've all produced very nicely for me. Declan Rice has also proven to be a very solid long-term 5th midfield pick. I got on Patrick Dorgu early in his 'hot streak' - unfortunately soon terminated by injury. I swapped out my initial goalkeeper pairing of Henderson and Petrovic for Kelleher and Roefs, and that's been working out pretty well (although Roefs is now injured - damn!). I've also been quite prescient in acquring good value picks like Alex Jimenez and Nico O'Reilly at opportune moments. And I've recently brought Palmer back in - and it's looking (touch wood!) as though I may have chosen just the right time to do that!

But the past couple of months have been very up-and-down for me. Well, a bit more down than up, really! Back in December, I'd just about fought my way back up into the top million. But having missed out on so many fortuitous big hauls (that a lot of FPL managers were lucky enough to benefit from), and having earned next-to-nothing from my chips so far, I have plummeted outside the top 3 million. I'm pretty sure that's my worst position ever at this stage of the season. And I am starting to lose hope that I'll be able to get back into the top million.

In a season as uniquely perverse and cruel as this one, we must find whatever consolation we can. There have been a few bright spots for me, amid all the gloom; not many, but some.

Fortunately, like Captain Scarlet, I am indestructible - in spirit at least, if not in body.

One of the biggest BLIND SPOTS for statisticians

 

I've been a fan of The Purist Football on Youtube for quite a while. He used to produce rather dense video essays, which would only drop very irregularly, perhaps only two or three times a year; but this season he has moved into more frequent positing: still a bit irregular, but usually something - something worthwhile - every few weeks or so.

His latest piece called attention to another of the shortcomings of statistical analysis. This is a topic I've been meaning to do a substantial post of my own on for some time, but I confess I am a bit daunted by the scope of the challenge: there are so many things to be said, few of them good. 

And I confess I hadn't really taken note before of the point The Purist makes here: Most football statistics focus only on 'active contributions', on touches of the ball; they completely overlook the substantial elements of the game which are merely 'passive contributions', off-the-ball work.

Blocking, marking, recovering defensive shape, making decoy runs - these are all vital parts of the game... which stats compilers fail to capture.

This video highlights the particularly pertinent example of Barcelona's Dani Olmo, who is an absolute maestro of the dummy. - an attribute that no conventional statistic even records, let alone attempts to evaulate the potential game impact of. (Often, a great dummy ought to count as an 'assist' - but, of course, it doesn't, because the dummying player avoids making contact with the ball.)

My general attitude to using statistics for FPL purposes is that it should only be done in moderation, and only if you always manage to remain duly mindful of what the statistics are not showing you.

Very few FPL managers, alas, are capable of this. For the majority, it would probably be better to steer clear of statistics altogether.

A little bit of Zen (84)

 

"I didn't want to write history. I wanted to give 90 minutes of joy to people. And I wanted that joy to come not from winning but from being entertained, from witnessing something special. I did all this out of passion."

Arrigo Sacchi

This, for me, is the true essence of football; an essence that Pep and Mikel and their ilk often seem to miss. Sacchi, of course, didn't achieve the sustained success that many of these more modern managers have; but for a few years back around the end of the 1980s, his AC Milan was one of the most beautiful teams ever to play the game, a team that people still swoon to recall nearly four decades later.

I came upon this quotation in 'Inverting the Pyramid', Jonathon Wilson's diverting history of the evolution of football tactics - which I re-read while on holiday in Vietnam this time last year.

Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 29

 

Again, we've seen a fair number unpleasant selection surprises this week; and some up-and-down performances from the big teams.

These weekly 'summaries' have been getting a bit too involved - and excessively time-consuming for me! - so I've been aiming to keep them briefer recently. I made just about zero progress on that resolution for the first few weeks, but.... now I've hit upon a new 'format', which might help: a tabulation of the major types of 'lucky' incidents. 

I will try to resist any extended commentary (although I probably will still indulge in a few diatribes about any particularly egregious penalty or handball incidents).

Red cards awarded: Jacob Ramsey's second yellow card for 'simulation' when he went down in the penalty area was a ridiculous decision from Peter Bankes; the player pretty obviously just slipped over. At the moment VAR has no jurisidiction over second yellow card decisions (although, thankfully, that is going to change for the World Cup). Fortunately, his removal actually seemed to galvanise Newcastle, and may have saved the game for the home team rather than costing them a defeat.

Red cards not awarded: 

Penalties awarded: 

Penalties not awarded: Andoni Iraola was convinced Bournemouth should have had a penalty, when Tavernier lost his footing in the act of shooting. It did appear that Kayode might have caught his Achilles, but the contact was so fleeting (and not clearly visible on any of the TV camera-angles) that I think you can forgive the officials 'missing' this one.

Leeds were aggieved that Luke O'Nien had briefly had both his arms around Struijk's neck at a first-half corner, but the Dutch defender went down very easily, and there wasn't really much in it - a 50/50 sort of call. (Leeds were also unhappy with the penalty awarded against Ampadu, but that one looked straightforward enough: the first contact on his arm was slight and unavoidable, but he did then appear to make a deliberate second movement towards the ball, prodding it away with his elbow.) They might have had another shout at the end, when a corner fell against Dan Ballard's arm; he was in the middle of a ruck of players, and knew nothing about it - but with the mess the Handball Law is in at the moment, we often see these given.

Haaland went down after a collision with Matz Sels. He was 'looking for it', but the goakeeper's challenge was rash, culpable. The only reason referee Darren England didn't give it must be because of Haaland's reputation as a bit of a con artist in these situations; the only reason VAR didn't intervene must be because of their excessive timidity about challenging on-pitch decisions this season, especially for penalties.

At least VAR was doing its job, for once, at Fulham, directing referee Matt Donohue to take a second look, after he'd initially awarded the home side a penalty when Tom Cairney went down in the act of shooting; Castellanos had indeed been innocently in the way of the Fulham player's kick, not making any kind of challenge himself. These days, alas, the VAR team almost never has the courage to question an onfield penalty decision like this.

Tight/dubious offsides: Ollie Watkins appeared to have given Villa the lead for a second time when he supplied an emphatic finish to a lightning quick breakaway - but SAOT ultimately determined that his shoulder had been inifinitesimally closer to the goal-line than the last defender's. This was another instance where there are questions about the reliability of the timing of the SAOT freezeframe, because to the naked eye he had looked well onside - and this was a call that might have turned the course of the match.

Ismaila Sarr might have had a hattrick on Thursday night against Spurs: his opening effort, a solo  breakaway, was eventually ruled out for offside by one of those deeply unconvincing SAOT graphics; everyone in the stadium thought he had looked 'on' by about a foot, but the computerised decision system apparently reckoned his forehead had been 'off'. (But, dear me, that guy should not be on penalties.)

Goals wrongly allowed/disallowed:  

Surprise omissions/early substitutions/injuries:  Robin Roefs has strained a thigh-muscle doing the splits to make a save at the weekend, so was a late omission against Leeds on Tuesday, replaced by his new understudy, January signing Melker Ellborg. Granit Xhaka, only recently back from injury, was also rested - though he came on for the last 35 minutes.

Saliba was suffering with a knock, so Mosquera started in his place; while Brighton were without their defensive stalwart Lewis Dunk.

Liam Rosenior made multiple changes to his Chelsea line-up for the visit to Villa, the most momentous being his dropping of Sanchez in goal (the third most popular pick - after the stupidly over-popular Raya and Dubravka - with an ownership of nearly 14%) in favour of Jorgensen, but Reece James was also switched into midfield, making room for Gusto to get a start at right-back, Fofana came back into defence in place of Tosin, and Garnacho, who had seemed to have fallen from favour, came back in on the wing in place of the suspended Neto.

Eddie Howe was also moved to drop a keeper in apparently dodgy form, replacing Pope (only 4.5% owned in FPL; though that's not an insignificant figure) with Ramsdale for the visit of Manchester United. Woltemade was also missing, the latest victim of a virus doing the rounds. And Carrick replaced Dalot with Mazraoui - presumably just a 'rest'.

Harry Wilson hadn't recovered from the sore ankle he suffered at the weekend, so young Josh King got another chance.

Near misses:  Marcus Tavernier might have had a hattrick against an out-of-sorts Brentford: first, he put a curler just wide early on, then rounded off an incisive break by beating Kelleher with a great sliding effort only to see it hit the foot of the post (and might have won a penalty in this moment too), and late on unleashed an absolute scorcher that smashed against the near-post. Later still, his super cut-back was drilled just wide of the far-post by Kroupi... Nothing broke for the poor guy in that game.

Idrissa Gana Gueye nearly added a late third goal against Burnley on Tuesday night when his fierce dipper from the edge of the box smashed against the crossbar.

City really should have beaten Forest much more comfortably: Semenyo unlieashed a fierce shot inches outside the near-post in the opening minutes, and Haaland had a good deflected effort loop on to the roof of the net early in the second-half.

Kieran Trippier saw his floated cross beat everyone - and come back off the inside of the far post.

Big misses/big saves: Sunderland's stand-in keeper Ellborg made a very good save at the foot of his post from Stach's low free-kick.

Jose Sa probably produced the save of the gameweek on Tuesday night, Rio Ngumoha's cross-shot on to the post; athough Jordan Pickford was running him very close with another worldie, an amazing reaction save in the dying seconds to thwart Lyle Foster's close-range flicked volley.

Ryan Yates got a free header at the near-post from a late corner that could have nicked all three points for Forest against title-chasers City, but he blasted the chance wide of the post.

Raya made a rare boo-boo, passing the ball straight to a Brighton player from the edge of his box after just two minutes; fortunately for him, Gabriel quickly dropped in behind him and was fairly comfortably able to head clear Baleba's feeble attempt at a lob.

The Villa v Chelsea game might well have been even more high-scoring: Martinez managed to block a point-black header from Joao Pedro early on, and short afterwards Jorgensen made a great one-armed stop to deny a fierce drive from Watkins. Garnacho had a great late chance to grab a fifth goal for Chelsea, after being set up by Palmer and Cucurella, but shot tamely at Martinez's legs. And then Tammy Abraham looped a header against the crossbar in the dying moments.

Anthony Gordon snuck in round the back at a corner routine to get an unmarked chance at the far post, but skewed his effort wide. A little later, Aaron Ramsdale pulled off a very good flying save from a fierce dipping shot from Zirkzee that was bound for the top right corner.

Hermansen had to make a good save with his leg from a Josh King effort.

Outstanding goals: Elliot Anderson, of all people, coming up with a pinger from well outside the box.... to hand the title to Arsenal (possibly...)!

Will Osula, only on the field from the 86th minute, nicked a late winner for Newcastle with a delicious curler from just inside the box. Amazingly, he is owned by around 25,000 FPL managers; but I rather doubt if any of them started him.

Outstanding performances: Joao Pedro and Marcus Tavernier both had stupdendous games. But Tavernier, in fact, played the better of the two - yet came away with only 2 FPL points, against Pedro's 19!! Ain't no justice in this game of ours....

Big mistakes: Habib Diarra took an absolutely dreadful penalty for Sunderland on Tuesday night - but Karl Darlow made an even worse mess of saving it. Sometimes, it's just your night....

A dreadful blunder from Leno gifted Summerville the chance to claim all three points late in the game. Alisson had likewise handed Wolves their late win the night before.

Bad luck/good luck: Andre's last-gasp winner against Liverpool needed a huge deflection off a defender to wrong-foot Alisson (and it might be doubted if his initial shot was even on-target, although he has been credited with the goal).

Saka's shot from wide on the right shouldn't have been a problem, but it took a wicked glancing deflection off Baleba; Verbruggen was still behind it, but off-balance - and couldn't stop bouncing into the goal off his heel.

Ezri Konsa nearly put a mishit clearance into his own net in the first-half, and was hugely relieved to see his shinner loop millimentres over the bar. And a rare moment of unselfishness from Garnacho - squaring the ball to Joao Pedro to complete his hattrick, when he might have shot himself - had rather a big impact on the FPL points from the game; if he'd finished the move himself, Palmer would have got the assist, and quite possibly the third bonus point also.... On such small decisions and tiny margins do all our FPL fortunes hang!

FPL weirdness: The usual doubts about the counting of 'saves', 'defensive contributions', etc.... And how on earth did Marcus Tavernier, 'man of the match' by a mile, not even get close to earning 1 bonus ponit??? Something going wrong 'round here....

Unexpected results: Bournemouth v Brentford really should not have ended goalless. Liverpool getting beaten by bottom-of-the-table Wolves might look like a bit of a surprise, but given how ropey their form has been recently, it's not that much of a shock. City being held to a draw by Forest, Chelsea winning so comfortably away from home, 10-man Newcastle squeaking a win against United to end Michael Carrick's winning streak, and Arsenal sneaking another narrow win in a game in which they were largely outplayed.... were all rather more surprising.

Apart from Ellborg (who??) and Andre, the FPL 'Team of the Week' actually looks pretty reasonable, for once. And, after the utter shit-show of the weekend's refereeing, the decision-making has been mostly pretty good - although there have still been a couple of highly dubious offside calls, and a few missed penalty awards,... and a fair old welter of other 'lucky' incidents of various kinds, and a lot of injury absences/rest rotations. The global average is an almost-healthy 54 points (a big jump up after the final game; probably not because a lot of people were on Spurs or Palace players, but because almost everyone had at least one or two auto-subs promoted into their starting line-ups at the end of the gameweek!).  Overall, this one's ended up looking a fairly average 7 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.

Dilemmas of the Week - GW 29 (25/26)

Not too many new injury doubts emerging at the weekend - but the ones we have seen all happen to be to very highly-owned players, so many FPL managers are facing a little bit of a crisis for this vexed Midweek Gameweek.

And with many of the managerial press conferences not happening until Tuesday, we won't have a clear picture of availability and likely line-ups until fairly shortly before the deadline. And, with evening kick-offs, late-breaking news on likely starting elevens - and the FPL deadline itself - will only happen after half the world has gone to bed.

I am trying to streamline these weekly round-ups a bit from last year, restricting myself for the most part to just the injuries etc. affecting players that are likely to have a major significance in FPL; and also, of course, only to new injuries - I figure everyone should be aware of players who've already been ruled out for some time!  

[For some years, I have found the 'Injuries & Bans' summary on Fantasy Football Scout the most reliable resource for this kind of information; although this site, Premier League Injuries, is a very good alternative (often a little quicker to update, I think - though it did go through a bit of a glitchy period for a while last year).  Go check these out for more comprehensive coverage. 

I see the Fantasy Premier League site has added an improved 'Player Availability' page this year (though hidden under 'The Scout' tab?!). That also seems to be reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date, but god knows how it's supposed to be 'organised' - maybe by 'date of injury'? Obviously, arranging it by club and alphabetical order would be more sensible; but the denizens of FPL Towers seem to have a deep aversion to the sensible.]

So, what are the conundrums we face ahead of Gameweek 29?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

Declan Rice came off with a knock 15 minutes before the end against Chelsea on Sunday. Martin Odegaard was also missing (again) for that game, with a knee problem.

Bournemouth striker Evanilson suffered a dead leg against Sunderland on Saturday and has been struggling since.

Vitaly Janelt was a late omission against Burnley, and apparently has a metatarsal injury which will now keep him out for a while. Reiss Nelson, supposedly back from his long injury woes, also missed that match with a calf-strain, and remains doubtful.

Winger Marcus Edwards had to miss Burnley's last match after a training knock.

Joachim Andersen was an unexpected absentee for Fulham at the weekend because of illness; it's not clear if he's yet recovered.

Harry Wilson limped off 20 minutes before the end against Spurs after suffering a knock to his ankle, but Marco Silva seems hopeful he might be OK again for the West Ham game on Wednesday night. 

Joe Rodon, only recently back from injury, felt tightness in his hamstring against City at the week, but scans seem to be all clear, so Daniel Farke is hopeful he will be able to play this midweek.James Justin is also a doubt, after suffering a gashed leg in the weekend game.

The BIGGIE of this gameweek (of the season...) is that Erling Haaland missed the weekend's game against Leeds because of a late training knock, and Pep was initially hesitant to say when he might be back; but now, apparently, things are looking much more promising on that. Still, a yellow-flag is a yellow-flag....

Luke Shaw and Harry Maguire came off early on Sunday against Palace, suffering with a bug. (Just about nobody owns either of them at the moment; but it is worrying that other Manchester United players might suddenly drop out, if there's something going around.)

Jacob Ramsey was also pulled off at half-time against Everton because he was suffering with an illness. He is now reportedly over that problem, though it's not clear how much of training he's been able to attend since the weekend. Nick Woltemade has now been laid low (with the same bug?); and there may be concerns about something running through the Newcastle camp.

Stefan Ortega was another late omission at the weekend, having picked up a calf problem in the European game against Fenerbahce a few days before; not too serious, but he's likely to miss the game against City as well.

Do we have any players who are dropped, or not looking likely to get the starts we hoped for?

Maxence Lacroix has to serve a one-match ban for a 'denial of a goalscoring opportunity' offence at the weekend. Pedro Neto also has to miss a game after earning two yellow cards against Arsenal.

Cristian Romero and Freddie Potts are serving the last games of their long bans this gameweek.

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

I haven't had any Newcastle or Palace players for a while, but I am worried that they are now joining Spurs in pariah territory.

And although Liverpool were ultimately able to come away with a high-scoring win against West Ham last Saturday, they were absolutely bloody awful (especially in the first-half, especially in defence) and scarcely deserved even a point from the game.

Did anyone play so well, you have to consider bringing them in immediately?

Jordan Pickford!!! (I have tended to feel all season that he's a bit too expensive, and that Everton's form isn't quite solid enough to justify him being an FPL goalkeeper pick, but.... he is the best keeper in the league. And he should have got 20 extra points for that save!)

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!

Even more of A LOTTERY than usual?

 

As I have frequently observed in my regular 'Luck-o-Meter' gameweek reviews, this season is shaping up to be one of the lowest-scoring - perhaps even the lowest-scoring - in Fantasy Premier League's 24-year history.

It is also seeing unusually large points spreads within a single gameweek rather often: a significant number of managers being able to attain very high scores despite there being a very low global average.

And it is seeing some remarkable reversals in fortune from week to week (more than in a 'typical' season? it's impossible to check data on that, but it feels as though it might be so...), with many people following a huge high-score with a dismal low.... or vice versa.

All of this is making the game feel MORE RANDOM than usual this year, even more than usual determined by PURE LUCK.

And, for many people, this is making the game seem less satisfying, less FUN this year.

But is this really so??

Well, YES, I rather fear that it is.   [Though I observed a little later that while I fear Premier League football has become rather less attractive this year, these shifts in the game can - to an extent - be seen as intriguing new challenges for FPL managers.]

But what are the factors contributing to this phenomenon?

1)  The opacity of the new 'defensive points'

While there have been a few players who've established an impressive reputation for earning these new points almost every week (far more often, in fact, than we would have thought possible, based on the limited sample data FPL had released on the new metrics from last season), for most players, their 'defensive contributions' tally yo-yo's wildly from one week to the next. It is effectively impossible for the casual watcher to try to check these tallies (since we haven't even been given any detailed definitions or examples of how the various eligible game actions are recognised); and I, for one, have very little confidence in the accuracy or consistency of how this is being done by the official stats-provider. While there are a few dependable 'high defcon' players, and we may be surprised/disappointed when Anderson or Garner or Gabriel or Tarkowski don't return defensive points, for the great majority of players, it is entirely unpredictable whether they will earn - or whether they have earned! - these additional points in any given gameweek. As I pointed out in my criticisms of this unnecessary rule-change at the start of the season, it suffers from the same problems as the vexed Bonus Points System - its allocations are impossible to verify independently, and the results will often seem erratic or unfair; it is essentially just another randomizing element in the game (and we'd like fewer of those, not more).

2) Defences being 'on top'

It is an especially unfortunate coincidence that at the same time as this major adjustment to the scoring system, we also happen to be seeing one of the biggest shifts in tactics in the Premier League in over a decade, with a new emphasis on man-marking proving remarkably successful at stifling most of the forms of attacking play that teams have most relied on in recent years. This has led to far fewer chances from open play for almost every team, and hence greatly reduced points from 'attacking contributions' in FPL. So, not only do we have new less predictable points to factor into our game calculations, we also have far fewer of the traditional, mostly rather more predictable points to balance against them.

3)  Set-piece roulette (or 'WrestleMania'....)

With the suffocating of open attacking play, more and more teams are being forced to follow Arsenal's example and place increasing emphasis on set-piece routines to try to nab crucial goals. While some of these set plays are impressively intricate and clever (and I'm actually quite pleased to see the return of the long-throw this year!), unfortunately, many of them rely excessively on grappling with opponents in the penalty area and trying to mob the keeper on his goal-line. Not only does this make our lovely game unbearably ugly, it adds to the sense of randomness and injustice in the game - both in real-world results and in the FPL points outcomes - because so much now depends on whether the referee and the VAR officials choose to take notice or not of egregious holding offences and other such 'personal fouls' within the penalty area at corners and free-kicks. [We just witnessed a particularly frustrating example this past weekend, when Chelsea should, by rights, have been awarded at least two penalties against Arsenal - but didn't get any.]

4)  The sad absence of many big attacking contributions from midfield

Kevin DeBruyne and Son Hueng-Min, two of the giants of FPL over the past decade, both transferred out of the Premier League at the end of last season. Diogo Jota tragically died at the start of the new season. James Maddison was eliminated by a season-long injury. Mo Salah has suddenly proven largely ineffectual at a painfully rebuilding Liverpool. Florian Wirtz, probably the most exciting of the season's new arrivals, took four months to start finding his form. Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha also had problems settling in at Amorim's floundering Manchester United. Ebere Eze didn't get regular starts after moving to Arsenal. And almost all the other usual top points producers in the midfield category - Palmer, Saka, Odegaard, Foden, Mitoma, Kluivert, Gakpo, Gordon - have missed big chunks of the season through injury and/or just haven't been able to reproduce their best form of recent years. Despite many midfielders being able to pick up substantial additional points for their 'defensive contributions', only Semenyo, Fernandes, Rice, and Wilson have got anywhere near the kind of points totals (70% of the way through the season) we'd usually be hoping to see from at least 6 or 8 players in most previous years. It is far more difficult to predict returns from players who are less consistent in their productivity - but that's what we've often been having to rely on this year.

5)  The sad absence of many big attacking contributions from full-backs

Again, as with midfielders, Trent Alexander-Arnold transferred out of the league, Ben White has mysteriously fallen out of favour at Arsenal, Josko Gvardiol switched back to being more of a central defender than an attacking full-back,... and then picked up a season-ending injury; Matty Cash and Diogo Dalot and Marc Cucurella have so far struggled to make as much of an impact as they did in the previous year or two; Daniel Munoz has also suffered a lengthy spell out, and three of the other most promising attacking full-backs of last year, Antonee Robinson, Rayan Ait-Nouri, and Ola Aina, have missed most of the season. Really, Matheus Nunes and Nico O'Reilly at City and Jurrien Timber at Arsenal (although his contributions have mostly been coming from involvement in set-piece melees rather than through wing play) are the only full-backs to have had much of an impact this year. A top attacking full-back might hope to pick up an 'assist' once in every 3 or 4 games; even an aerial monster like Gabriel isn't likely to nab a goal (or an 'assist') at a set-play more than once every 5 games - and it's much harder to anticipate when those contributions might occur, since they're often happening in messy goalmouth scrambles (where there may often be doubts about the attribution of both goals and assists, as the ball pings around between multiple players; Virgil Van Dijk, in particular, has been extraordinarily lucky to have 2 or 3 goals credited to him which looked more like own-goals off an opposing defender). The pre-eminence of aerially dominant central defenders in the FPL points returns this season (unique, in my memory of the game) again makes it slightly harder to anticipate when and where points are going to come from.

6)  A new overcautiousness in the VAR room

It seems to me that teams of VAR officials have become much more timid about overruling their on-pitch colleague this year - which has been resulting in more, not fewer, egregious errors being made over crucial decisions, and even more uncertainty about whether VAR will intervene and to what effect - a further randomizing factor in our game

7)  And a ton of injuries....

Now, I don't think this season has been worse than some recent ones (certainly not for me, personally; I suffered 55 major injuries in one season a few years back!). I just noted yesterday that, although there has been quite a high number of injuries overall, we had been spared - so far - suffering a cluster of injuries to leading players all within a week or two. But, yes, there have been a lot of injuries (and drop-offs in form) this season. It has been very difficult to keep a settled FPL squad for long, or to save up 'rolled' transfers for a tactical 'mini-Wildcard' rebuild.

So, yes, for this bizarre combination of reasons, it has been a particularly WEIRD FPL season.

I generally say that the game feels like about it's about 70%-80% down to 'luck'; but this year it has often seemed to be more like about 95% 'luck'!!

And that is a bit frustrating.

But we should play the game for engagement rather than 'success'. We should hope to find insight in it, but not justice.

Tomorrow's not an accident, it's AN AMBUSH

 

Compared to a few recent seasons, we have been remarkably fortunate with injuries so far this time. While there have been a lot of injuries cumulatively, and a particularly heavy density of them recently during the gruelling winter months, not many of the most popular FPL selections have been badly affected, and we haven't had multiple players wiped out in the same week.

Well, not until this last week.... Sunderland right-back Nordi Mukiele, one of the most popular 'cheap fifth' defender picks in the game, had already gone missing with a calf injury the previous weekend (immediately after I'd opted to leave him in my Wildcard selection...); and Florian Wirtz, whose ownership had soared since he started to discover better form around mid-December, had reported a back problem in the GW27 warm-up. Then, Erling Haaland - the most popular player in the game by far, with around two-thirds ownership - suddenly failed to show up this last weekend, having apparently suffered a knock late in training. Another popular cheaper defender, Joachim Andersen, went missing with an unspecified 'illness'. And other super-popular picks like Harry Wilson, Declan Rice, and Nico O'Reilly came out of this weekend's games limping, and are now stigmatised by the dreaded maybe-they'll-play-maybe-they-won't  'yellow flag'.

Many FPL managers will own at least three of those players; some 'unlucky' ones might own six or seven.

And to make matters even worse, this heaviest cluster of injuries-to-top-players we've experienced all season happens to come the week before the 5th Round of the FA Cup; this means that the next batch of Premier League fixtures is shunted forward into midweek - giving these injury-doubt players almost no time to shake off their problem. Most of these issues are probably so slight, you wouldn't expect them to affect fitness to play a full week later; but only two or three days later, I fear they are unlikely to be risked... And there's not much time for any more accurate and detailed information on these injury situations to emerge.

We're all flying blind into Gameweek 29, fearing that we might be without some of our key players,.... perhaps several of them.

But most of us will probably just keep our fingers crossed, and hope we don't end up with only 8 or 9 men on the park. There is a fair chance that at least some of these players will be able to turn out after all (Declan Rice is made of titanium, and will happily play through almost any injury short of a broken leg). Because of the FA Cup, these players will then have a further 10 days to recover before the next Premier League fixtures - so, almost certainly will miss no more than one gameweek. They're not players we'd want to let go of, unless we really have to. And, since they've probably increased in price quite nicely while we've had them, we'd take quite a heavy hit in squad value if we went for a quick sell-and-buy-back on any of them. So..... we sit tight, and hope for the best.

But this is WHY it's undesirable - an unacceptable RISK - to use your second Wildcard EARLY. It is not all that uncommon to suffer 5, 6, 7 long-term injuries within one or two gameweeks; if something like that happens, the Wildcard can help to dig you out of the hole.

This 'injury crisis' - potentially damaging though it is - is not Wildcard-worthy. (It's not even transfer-worthy!!)

We always have to be on our guard against possible sudden disasters like this. BAD THINGS do not happen all the time; but they do happen often enough that we need to be constantly vigilant, constantly prepared.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE! AND DON'T FORGET THAT TUESDAY EVENING DEADLINE!!!

Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 28

 

Again, we've seen a fair number unpleasant selection surprises this week; and some up-and-down performances from the big teams.

These weekly 'summaries' have been getting a bit too involved - and excessively time-consuming for me! - so I've been aiming to keep them briefer recently. I made just about zero progress on that resolution for the first few weeks, but.... now I've hit upon a new 'format', which might help: a tabulation of the major types of 'lucky' incidents. 

I will try to resist any extended commentary (although I probably will still indulge in a few diatribes about any particularly egregious penalty or handball incidents).

Red cards awarded: 

Red cards not awarded: Tyler Adams's clumsy challenge on Granit Xhaka, catching his standing leg above the ankle, was very, very close to being a straight red card.

Penalties awarded: Maxence Lacroix was a bit unlucky to concede a penalty to Manchester United, since he did appear to have started holding back Cunha some way outside the box, and to have released him as he entered it. But it was a foul, and a 'denial of a goalscoring opportunity' (that latter determination might be something of a 'grey area' call, since there were other defenders more or less in line, and Cunha was quite far wide of the goal; but he's a pacey player, and good on his left foot, so you would have fancied him to get a shot off with only the keeper to beat; for another player, it might not have been such a promising goalscoring opportunity).

Penalties not awarded: Alex Jimenez clearly shoved Enzo La Fée firmly in the back, sending him sprawling to the ground in the penalty area; neither the referee nor VAR thought there was 'that much' in it???

Oh, OK, the BIG ONE(s) came in the top-of-the-table clash. First, Rice was clearly holding on to Hato at a corner with both arms (and not only pinning him down, but trying to hurl him to one side), and then very blatantly hit the incoming ball with his arm (nearly sending into his own net!). The officials seemed to feel that the first incident somehow excused the second (Rice wasn't 'in control' of himself, because he was so busy wrestling another player??) - and neither were penalty offences?! UTTER NONSENSE. But the one in the second-half was even worse, when Raya almost laid Joao Pedro out cold by thumping him in the side of the head (getting something on the ball is not an absolute defence, even for a keeper, when you make such a dangerous contact with an opponent); again, the officials were so preoccupied with (I would say, wrongly) exonerating Raya that they seemed to completely overlook that Saliba had had the Chelsea forward in a bearhug throughout the incident. So, that's TWO utterly clearcut penalties denied to Chelsea (and, ahem, to Cole Palmer owners in FPL!). Utlimately, such egregious injustice actually works to Arsenal's disfavour as well; because these two outrageous refereeing cock-ups determined the result of this crucial game, unless they now win the title by a wide margin, nobody will feel they really deserved it (not even their own fans).

Tight/dubious offsides: Heartbreaking for Burnley that Flemming's apparent goal to give them a 4-3 lead over visitors Brentford was ruled out (after an intolerable 3-minute delay) for crosser Jaidon Anthony's shoulder having allegedly been an inch too far forward (to the naked eye, he had looked well on; and decisions really shouldn't be made on such unfeasible wafer-thin margins, anyway - this lunacy has to stop).

.

Goals wrongly allowed/disallowed:  More galling injustice for poor Burnley when Ashley Barnes's last-gasp equaliser was ruled out (after 4.5 minutes of deliberation by the VAR team) for a supposed handball. If there had been any contact with Barnes's lower-arm, it was so incredibly slight as to be completely inconsequential; but none of the TV pictures gave a clearcut view of this, so a decision was impossible, and VAR had no business to interfere with the referee's on-pitch award of the goal.

Surprise omissions/early substitutions/injuries:  Tyrone Mings was a late omission from the Friday night game, having picked up a problem in training.

Brentford keeper Caoimhin Kelleher was missing because his wife had just given birth to twins. (This is the kind of 'personal information' which is almost never generally available ahead of time, and can catch out even the best prepared FPL manager.)

Erling Haaland (owned by two-thirds of FPL managers) was a surprise last-minute omission, after allegedly picking up a knock in training late in the week. [Even worse: an awful lot of people - including my personal FPL nemesis - had made him their captain, but high-scoring Hugo Ekitike their vice-captain,... which turned out extremely fortuitously for them. A lot of others had Bruno Fernandes, who also ended up with a big week, as their back-up choice. There just ain't no justice! These folks will protest that they deserve some credit for making a strong vice-captaincy pick; but the fact is that, in this gameweek, either of these two should have been far preferable to Haaland as captain; so, they actually made a really dumb choice - and got away with it through sheer luck. And that is very, very, very galling for everybody else.]

Eddue Howe, not happy with the way things were going in the first-half at St James's, withdrew Ramsey at half-time, and Elanga and Woltemade only 10 minutes into the second-half.

Joachim Andersen was missing for Fulham, due to illness.

Igor Tudor also made a raft of substitutions before the hour mark - but nobody owns any Spurs players any more, so that's of no concern for FPL managers.

In the wake of Lacroix's sending-off, Oliver Glasner withdrew Jorgen Strand Larsen and Brennan Johnson just shy of the hour.

Stefan Ortega was troubled with a calf-strain after Thursday night's game against Fenerbahce, and so Matz Sels was suddenly back in goal for Forest.

Trossard was pulled off for Martinelli after just 55 minutes.

Near misses:  

Big misses/big saves: Dominic Calvert-Lewin was played in behind the City defence by a superb cross from Aaronson, but, with only the keeper to beat, put his effort wide. A little later, Nico O'Reilly was defied by a double-save from Karl Darlow.

Alisson carelessly played the ball to Jarrod Bowen just a few yards out, but the West Ham attacker wasn't able to control the ball and it rebounded off him straight back to the grateful keeper. In the second-half, Gakpo was unmarked as the ball came through to him at the back post, but blazed wide. Alisson pulled off the 'save of the day' to tip over a fierce near-post drive from Crysencio Summerville.

Beto broke away one-on-one with Pope, but smashed his effort against the crossbar (although there was an issue as to whether the ball had gone out of play at the side of the pitch when he first picked it up; I thought not, but this was another instance where, if he had scored, VAR would probably have purported to make this call on a margin of millimetres, when they really had no definite evidence for doing so). And Jordan Pickford produced possibly the 'Save of the Season' to deny Tonali's ferocious 20-yard volley in the dying seconds.

Forest sub Taiwo Awoniyi had a great chance late in the game when ghosting in behind to get on the end of Elliot Anderson's perfectly floated cross...., but, with the whole goal to aim at, he directed his header miles wide.

Outstanding goals: Morgan Gibbs-White produced the pick of the weekend, with an absolute screamer from nearly 25 yards out. Although Alex Iwobi's fizzing side-foot half-volley against Spurs was a very close runner-up.

Outstanding performances: 

Big mistakes: There really wasn't enough power on Ekitike's first strike at goal to have troubled Mads Hermansen at his near-post, but the West Ham keeper somehow completely misread the shot.

Nick Pope fumbled a fairly gentle curler from Dwight McNeil, and then took a long time to recover - allowing Beto to nip in to steal the lead for the visiting team for the second time.

Bad luck/good luck: Thierno Barry got a shove in the back from Lewis Hall as he raced to meet a cross and tumbled to the ground - the ball deflecting into the goal off the back of his thighs as he rolled forwards, entirely without his knowledge: one of the flukiest goals we've seen this season.

Robert Sanchez made one of his all too predictable errors early on against Arsenal, nearly giving the ball away on the edge of his own box - but was just able to make a recovery tackle to wrest the ball back from Gyokeres. Shortly afterwards, Eze very nearly lobbed him from inside his own half - and Sanchez, scrambling back to recover the ball falling just wide of his post, clearly failed to keep it in play, but the assistant was too far away to see the error and failed to award the corner.

FPL weirdness: Antoine Semenyo somehow didn't get close to earning even 1 bonus point - despite scoring the only goal of the game; I've never seen that before.

Cody Gakpo was lucky to be credited with a goal, since his effort looked well off-target, until ricocheting off two West Ham defenders.

The attribution of the first Arsenal goal to Saliba was a little generous; it looked as if his glancing header was going just wide until it hit Hato's shoulder.

Unexpected results: Wolves have been improving in their attacking play under Rob Edwards, but few people would be betting on them to keep a clean sheet - even against a Villa side whose form is starting to nosedive. Bournemouth were lucky to salvage a point against Sunderland, when they should have conceded a penalty early on, and might have been reduced to 10 men. Burnley were absolutely robbed by a couple of atrocious VAR calls going against them. City were incredibly fortunate to claim all the points, and a clean sheet, against a Leeds side who outplayed them for much of the game. Liverpool's result against West Ham flattered them enormously: they were all over the place defensively, and outplayed by their visitors for long stretches of the game. Arsenal's win over Chelsea was hard-won, but felt somewhat unjust, in that it depended so heavily on a couple of appalling missed penalty awards for the visitors.

The FPL 'Team of the Week' after Saturday yet again included no-one that anybody owns, except Ekitike; Bruno Fernandes, Harry Wilson, and William Saliba pushed their way into the selection on Sunday, but it was still fairly light on high-owned players. Although there were quite a large number of goals this week, the global average only just crept up to a still relatively modest 53 points. - which is 'good' by the standards of this miserable season, but still fairly low, really. There was also an unusually large points spread this gameweek, with plenty of managers benefitting from good hauls from Fernandes, Wilson, Ekitike, Van Dijk,... and the entire Arsenal defence; but others suffering disproportionately from being without one or two of that handful of big returners. 

Because Erling Haaland has such a massive ownership in FPL, his unexpected absence alone would have given this week a pretty high 'luck' score; and the impact of his being missing was greatly compounded by two of the most popular vice-captain picks, Ekitike and Fernandes, happening to have very big gameweeks. There were some more enjoyable 'freak events' too: a few spectacular goals, and what will probably be the 'Save of the Season' from Jordan Pickford. All of that, and a string of flakey - at least somewhat unexpected - results would combine to get this gameweek close to a maximum '10' score. And then the atrocious decisions against Burnley and Chelsea would also, on their own, get us to a '10' score!!  So, I'm afraid this is one of the worst Gameweeks we've ever seen; it really ought to be more than a 10 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.

Dilemmas of the Week - GW 28 (25/26)

 

Not too many major new injuries this week, it seems, but.... a fair few minor 'niggles' and uncertainties.

And of course, press conferences on Friday morning (in the UK) won't get widely reported (or at least not written up on the main FPL reference sites like Fantasy Football Scout) until mid- or late afternoon,... which is the middle of the night for folks like me, in East Asia. And dammit, Wolves v Villa is a Friday evening kick-off, so people in my timezone will be struggling to get fully up-to-date... before the extremely inconvenient FPL deadline. If I catch any late-breaking news this evening, I'll endeavour to update here (but, to be honest, I'm more likely to be down the pub!).

I am trying to streamline these weekly round-ups a bit from last year, restricting myself for the most part to just the injuries etc. affecting players that are likely to have a major significance in FPL; and also, of course, only to new injuries - I figure everyone should be aware of players who've already been ruled out for some time!  

[For some years, I have found the 'Injuries & Bans' summary on Fantasy Football Scout the most reliable resource for this kind of information; although this site, Premier League Injuries, is a very good alternative (often a little quicker to update, I think - though it did go through a bit of a glitchy period for a while last year).  Go check these out for more comprehensive coverage. 

I see the Fantasy Premier League site has added an improved 'Player Availability' page this year (though hidden under 'The Scout' tab?!). That also seems to be reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date, but god knows how it's supposed to be 'organised' - maybe by 'date of injury'? Obviously, arranging it by club and alphabetical order would be more sensible; but the denizens of FPL Towers seem to have a deep aversion to the sensible.]

So, what are the conundrums we face ahead of Gameweek 28?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

Bukayo Saka is one of the biggest worries this week, having come off early with a 'knock' in the trouncing of Spurs last week. At least his absence would make room for the impressive Madueke to get more gametime. (And Kai Havertz and Max Dowman are thought to be nearly ready to rejoin the action too. They might also get a look-in on the right side of the forward trio.) Ben White missed last weekend's game owing to an unspecified niggling injury - but he seems to have fallen out of favour as a starter anyway.

Bournemouth's midfield stalwart Lewis Cook felt a problem in his hamstring in trainiing the day before last weekend's game; Iraola hopes it isn't too serious, but it's likely to keep him out this week as well.

Brentford appear to have lost two of their full-back options in quick succession: Michael Kayode missed last week's game with a late training injury, and Aaron HIckey had to come off with a knock in the first-half against Brighton. This might mean that Keane Lewis-Potter, lately more dangerous as an attacker, might have to go back to being a wing-back/full-back.

Carlos Alcaraz was unavailable to face Manchester United on Monday because of a training injury.

Fulham's young Brazilian winger Kevin had to come off with a knock in last week's game against Sunderland, and might be missing for a little while. Antonee Robinson was also a surprise absentee in that game, having apparently suffered an ankle injury late in the previous week's training.

The biggest uncertainty of the week is Florian Wirtz, who's really come into form over the past couple of months or so, and is now owned by 8.5% of managers. He missed last Sunday's game against Forest after straining his back in the warm-up, and remains a doubt; nearly 130,000 have already offloaded him this week.

Lisandro Martinez missed the Monday night trip to Everton with a calf issue, and is expected to be out for at least a couple of weeks. Bryan Mbeumo limped off near the end in that match, but it appears to have been just some cramp, and he's apparently been training again this week.

Jacob Ramsey dropped out of the squad to play Qarabag on Tuesday with a tight hamstring, but apparently scans have revealed nothing seriously amiss, so he might be available again for this weekend.

Sunderland are really in the wars: Nordi Mukiele limped off after just 10 minutes against Fulham last week with a calf-strain, and forwards Romaine Mundle (hamstring) and Brian Brobbey (groin strain) had to withdraw before the end. The little used Dennis Cirkin had also been unavailable because of an injury just before that match.

Do we have any players who are dropped, or not looking likely to get the starts we hoped for?

Wesley Fofana is serving a one-match ban for a second yellow card last week (and is lucky it wasn't more, as his clumsy lunge on James Ward-Prowse was worthy of a straight red).

Ladislav Krejci is also facing a one-match ban for picking up two yellow cards last week (he's rather unlucky, since he appeared to be just clearing the ball upfield because he hadn't heard the referee's whistle, when he earned his second). 

Cristian Romero is now serving the third instalment of a four-game ban (he's had an extra game added on automatically, because his clogging of Casemiro a couple of weeks back was his second red card of the season).

And West Ham's Freddie Potts is serving the second part of a three-game ban.

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

Pep's midfield rotations are getting more and more worrying: last week, Cherki, Foden, and Reijnders were all left on the bench. It makes you wonder how 'safe' any City picks are. Even Semenyo, I fear, might find himself in a three-way rotation with Cherki and Doku, once the latter is fully fit again.

And I'm afraid all Spurs players are avoid-like-the-plague options at the moment, as any 'new manager bounce' with Igor Tudor seems unliekly to be able to slow their death-spiral into the relegation zone.

Did anyone play so well, you have to consider bringing them in immediately?

Bournemouth's 19-year-old Brazilian winger, Rayan, is in sensational form at the moment; but, given his tender years, I doubt if he'll continue to start every week, now that Marcus Tavernier appears to be fit again.

Although he hasn't come up with a return in the last two games, Dango Ouattara is relishing finally getting a regular start at Brentford, and has come into some useful form in the past month or so (although I'd still probably incline towards Kevin Schade, if taking a second attacking asset from Brentford).

Benjamin Sesko and Martin Gyokeres finally seem to have found their scoring boots - although neither can be relied upon as an invariable starter (Gyokeres, perhaps, is very nearly so; although he might face some competition once Havertz is fully fit again; but, unfortunately, Arsenal are notoriously creating very few open-play chances this year, so even their most promising attacking players aren't as attractive for FPL as all that - if people are still sceptical of Saka, Gyokeres shouldn't be getting anywhere near consideration).

And young Nico O'Reilly, of course, produced the performance of the week last time with a fine brace of goals against Newcastle, and now bears the curse of being the gameweek's most transferred-in player (well, nearly - he is, somehow, being narrowly beaten by Virgil Van Dijk at the moment; they're both closing in on half a million new owners). But, as I just noted above, you really can't trust Pep to field any of his midfielders every week, no matter how well they play.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!