Sheep Picks (1)

 

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.

And so, I thought I'd create an occasional series of posts highlighting players I think are deangerously over-owned, are the subject of a sudden and misguided enthusiasm.

It seems natural to kick off with Everton defender Michael Keane, whose pre-season ownership was nearly 200,000 - a surprising amount for such a nothing player - and swelled by a further 25,000 after Gameweek 1.

Now, Keane is a decent defender, with a side that kept a lot of clean sheets last year. However, Everton still look very much like a lower-end-of-the-table side, and last season's defensive performance might have been a bit of a freak event which they'll probably struggle to recreate this year. And he's a central defender, and they almost never offer such good returns as attacking full-backs, so you want to be wary of ever picking one... unless they pick up more bonus points than average because they get on the ball a lot and step up into central midfield to spray progressive passes around, or they're monsters in the air who pick up an above-average number of goals or assists by winning headers from corners and free-kicks, or they keep a large number of clean sheets. Keane is not any of those things.

Well, his owners will object, he's just a bench-warmer, because he only costs 4.0 million. Yes, but even from a bench-warmer, you want to be confident that they will be regular starters for the whole season, and they offer you a signifcant chance, at least occasionally, of more than just appearance points (I think you ought to aim for being able to pick up at least 3.5-4 points per game on average from your bench players, because you will need to draw on them from time to time; quite often, indeed, you'll need to have them auto-subbed in because of an unexpected dropout among your first eleven).

The problem with Keane is that his form and favour at Everton have fallen off a cliff since 2022. Over the last two seasons, despite numerous injury crises at the club in defence, he's barely scraped together 20 Premier League appearances, many of those only as a substitute. He has fallen to the status of an emergency back-up player, and will obviously lose his start to the brilliant youngster Jarrad Branthwaite as soon as he's fit again - probably in just a few weeks. [Well, Branthwaite didn't return until GW6, and immediately suffered a re-injury, thereby unexpectedly extending Keane's run in the first team. And then, after already picking up a headed goal early in the season against Bournemouth, he scored a stunning late goal against Ipswich in Gameweek 8. Did that make me feel foolish for dissing his selection here? Absolutely not! That strike against Ipswich was a one-in-a-million occurrence; it might well be 'Goal of the Season', should certainly be in the frame - but Keane has never been known as a frequent goalscorer, and he's unlikely to produce anything like that again in his entire remaining career. It is more noteworthy that in the spell before Branthwaite's fleeting return, he had been part of a defence that let in 14 goals in 5 games, and notched a meagre 9 pts for himself - less than 2 pts per game.]

Even if you did fancy Keane as a short-term prospect until Branthwaite returns (and you really can't afford to assign valuable transfers in advance to something as trivial as replacing a defender - who tend to be fairly low-value members of your squad, even if they're regular starters, let alone bench back-up), he's got Spurs, Bournemouth and Villa up next, which is not at all a promising fixture-run for a defender to be facing.

There are plenty of other back-up defender options available at 4.0 million: the dependable Belgian international Wout Faes at Leicester, or the very attack-minded England Under-21 player Taylor Harwood-Bellis at Southampton, for example. Even with promoted sides who are likely to be often leaky in defence (and probably won't avoid immediate relegation, I'm afraid), they at least offer the prospect of being invariable starters for the whole season - which is the minimum you need from a bench player. Keane does not give you that.

PS: When Branthwaite suffered a recurrence of his muscle injury in his first game back, Keane was immediately restored to the starting line-up... and Everton kept a surprise clean sheet (their first of the season!) against an out-of-sorts Newcastle; and Keane's ownership began to surge again! The following week he scored a worldie of a goal in the dying minutes of the game against Ipswich - and The Sheep went CRAZY for him!!  (They love a defender who scores!!! They don't seem to realise that even 'good goalscorers', by the standards of defenders, almost never manage more than 3 or 4 in a season [or more than 1 in a game, or 2 in successive games...]; they seem to expect the guy to start doing it nearly every week....). Over 500,00 managers piled in for him over the next two weeks, His run in the first team extended to 4 games (though it was pretty obvious that this was because Sean Dyche wanted to ease Branthwaite back in more slowly this time, rather than because Keane had establlished a claim to priority); and people kept buying him - apparently in anticipation of him keeping a clean-sheet (and perhaps scoring another goal?!) against struggling Southampton. The promoted side aren't nearly as bad as people think, and took that game 1-0. The following week Branthwaite was back again, Keane benched - where he's likely to remain for the rest of the season (apart from an occasional game here or there when Branthwaite or Tarkowski pick up a knock or suffer a suspension). But his price has now surged to 4.3 million. That is another major problem with these misguided, over-valued picks; when their FPL managers lose confidence in them - which often happens as suddenly as the initial enthusiasm for them swelled - they can crash in price and bleed away precious squad value.

If you see Keane in someone's squad, it's a pretty strong sign that they don't know what they're doing in this game.