Dilemmas of the Week - GW23

 

Well, at least we don't seem to have many - well, not that many - new injuries from the penultimate round of Champions League and Europa League games this week. 

Of course, injury news often breaks late, on Friday afternoon or even Saturday morning. So, I'll endeavour to update if anything else important emerges.

Still not much action in the transfer window, although Egyptian forward Omar Marmoush's move from Eintracht Frankfurt to Manchester City has been confirmed, and he is priced in FPL at 7.0 million.  (Villa's Donyell Malen, strangedly unnpriced last week, has now been entered in the FPL rolls at 5.5 million. I'm rather more excited about his possibilities in the game.)  And it looks as though Ipswich are committing to making a serious fight of it in the second half of their season, having brought in Ben Godfrey, Jaden Philogene, and Julio Enciso on loan.

Nevertheless, there's still a week of the window left, and most of the action - if there's going to be some - typically happens very late in the day. Thus, I will still continue to warn - Cassandra-like - that this month (and probably next month too,) is a very bad time to play the 2nd Wildcard. - even though the looming Double Gameweek (for Everton and Liverpool) next week is tempting a lot of people to do so. (It's going to be so much more valuable to drop it before the fairly big DGW at the end of season, if you can hang on to it that long.)

So, what are the conundrums we face ahead of Gameweek 23?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

Arsenal's young full-back Myles Lewis-Skelly missed their game against Zagreb the other night after complaining of some muscle tightness in training. Zinchenko is therefore likely to start at left-back. (Ben White might be available again soon, but not quite yet.)  William Saliba, whose possible absence last week was a very late-breaking 'rumour' on Saturday morning but did indeed miss out, apparently felt a hamstring strain in training; Arteta thinks 'not serious', but he's going to be missing at least this week, and possibly next. (Since the experiment of playing Partey at right-back and Timber in the centre didn't work out at all well last week, I'd expect Timber to stay on the right this time and Kiwior to come in for Saliba.)

Amadou Onana had to come off in the match against Arsenal last week with what looks as though it could be quite a serious hamstring injury.

Brighton's Matt O'Riley missed the last game against Manchester United because of a painful knock on the knee suffered in training, but could be available again now.

Enzo Fernandez and Romeo Lavia likewise missed last week because of last-minute training knocks, but Maresca thinks they should both be OK this week.

Diogo Jota  suffered yet another muscle injury just before the Brentford game, and has now been ruled out for 'weeks'. And Curtis Jones is another who was troubled by 'muscle tightness' and dropped out at half-time in the midweek game against Lille, now seems unlikely to be able to play this weekend.

Ruben Dias and Jeremy Doku also both picked up muscle problems in the midweek defeat to PSG (Dias being withdrawn at half-time; perhaps having been rushed back into first-team starts from his last injury a little too quickly?).

United's Matthijs de Ligt is yet another who had to come off in a European game last night with 'muscle tightness'; might shake it off, but will Amorim want to take the chance - if he's got anyone else fit to play? Noussair Mazraoui was missing from the squad for that one because of a training ground knock (meaning that Dalot had to be switched back to the left flank, and Diallo was withdrawn into the right wing-back role; not ideal for his FPL points prospects); but that was described as only a precautionary rest, so he should be involved again this weekend.

Aaron Ramsdale is struggling with some kind of 'torso injury' (bruised ribs from last weekend's game?), and Juric describes him as a 'doubt'.

Yves Bissouma and Brennan Johnson were ruled out last week, by a training ground knock and a very sore calf respectively, and were missing again against Hoffenheim this week; Bissouma is still a doubt for this weekend, and Johnson now seems likely to miss at least a few weeks. Pape Sarr also missed the midweek game, after suffering a knock in Sunday's game against Everton, and young full-back Djed Spence was complaining of being sore after that game, but both should be OK again now. In better news for Spurs, nothing has been found seriously amiss with Rodrigo Betancur after his mysterious on-pitch collapse in the League Cup game against Liverpool a fortnight ago; he was able to play the full game against Hoffenheim, and is expected to start against Leicester too.

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

What do you know: NO suspensions or loan-agreement exclusions this week - that's a first! Oh, no, wait: too good to be true.... I'd forgotten about West Ham defender Konstantinos Mavropanos picking up two yellow cards against Palace; he'll be serving a one-match ban. With Todibo still struggling with a knock picked up in the City game three weeks ago and Zouma loaned out to the Saudi league, West Ham could be dangerously short of defenders this week, probably having to play Wann-Bissaka at centre-back, and maybe another of their back-up full-backs too, if they stick with a back-three.

Promising teenage fullback Julio Soler, only just signed to Bournemouth from Argentine club Lanus, will be unavailable until some time next month as he's currently representing Argentina iin the South American Under-20 Championship in Brazil. Not likely to be a starter for them any time soon anyway, though, I'd imagine.

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

Alejandro Garnacho has been involved in a lot of transfer speculation this week, so that might be a reason for him to be dropped from the starting lineup against Fulham on Sunday. (He played the full game against Rangers on Thursday night, so might need a little bit of a rest anyway.)

You can usually forgive a goalkeeper one bad game, but André Onana and Lukasz Fabianski had real stinkers last weekend; and they've had a number of flakey moments over the past few games. And since Fabianski doesn't have any obvious edge over Alphonse Areola anyway, I think there's a strong chance the young French keeper might now be getting his start back.

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

Justin Kluivert, obviously! Yet, superb though that display of finishing against Newcastle was, I feel Antoine Semenyo had an arguably equally excellent game. And I already said last week that I had a hunch Dango Ouattara might soon emerge as Bournemouth's most consistent goal prospect, if he continues to start at No. 9; while Dean Huijsen and Illia Zabarnyi in central defence were perhaps even better still. However, since they have Forest and then Liverpool up next (and their bench, at present, entirely filled with reserve and youth team players, so many injuries do they have), I wouldn't be in a great rush to sign any of their players.

Quite a few people also seem to have got very excited about Dominic Calvert-Lewin's brilliant solo goal (though mostly Everton fans, I would imagine; or 'followers of fashion', maybe...). Great though that goal was, given that he's been so woefully inconsistent throughout his career, and particularly in the last couple of seasons or so, it does seem likely that it was just a flash-in-the-pan. It would shake things up quite interestingly in FPL if we were about to see a Moyes revival at Everton. But, apart from their Double Gameweek next week, beginning with a promising home fixture against woeful Leicester, their opponents are pretty tough from now until March.

Phil Foden also had an eye-catching game (though keeper Christian Walton really should have been able to hold the second of his brace), and it's good to see him playing with a broad grin on his face again. However, City still really don't look greatly improved all-around, and are now entering one of the toughest fixture-runs faced by any club in the second half of the season, a sequence of six or seven games where they might really struggle for points. So, I'm going to resist that temptation as well - for now; I may come to regret that.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!

And DON'T FORGET The Boycott; the dratted new 'Assistant Manager' chip should become available shortly after tomorrow's deadline - so, I do urge everyone to please consider quitting the game, or at least refusing to use this silly chip. 

And if you can't bring yourself to do either of those things, sorry competition addicts that you are (I know, it's hard...), please do criticise the Assistant Manager chip as vigorously as possible on any relevant social media channels you use, raise objections to it with any football or media figures you know how to contact, and - if possible - try to find a way to protest about it directly to the FPL hierarchy (and let me know how, if you manage that!).

#QuitFPLinGW23         #DownWithTheNewChip