AFCON - iceberg, or irrelevance?

Every two years the African Cup of Nations tournament in December/January causes a certain amount of disruption for our EPL/FPL season, as a host of African players depart to play for their national teams for up to a month - at a particularly busy time of year in the domestic football calendar. But this year, it's probably not going to have too much of an impact - well, for some Premier League clubs, maybe; but not for FPL managers.

Every four years, we get AFCON coinciding with the Asian Cup; so, we have then sometimes faced the horror of suddenly being without Salah and Son and Mané and Mitoma, etc. The loss of leading players from two continents could be a serious inconvenience. But you just had to remember this speed-bump was coming, and prepare for it - by limiting the number of African (and Asian) players you had in your squad, and by transferring them out before the start of the tournament(s). Really, no big deal - so long as you were aware that the tournaments were happening! Certainly, AFCON on its own, without a simultaneous Asian Cup, was never much to worry about. And it's become even easier to deal with following last year's rule-change allowing us to save up to 5 Free Transfers to use at one time. (So, FPL's further rule-change this year to gift us extra Free Transfers for AFCON in Gameweek 16 is utterly superfluous - an overkind gesture to help out managers who don't know what's going on with the international schedule.)

Moreover, this year, with Mo Salah making no impression at a suddenly struggling Liverpool, Omar Marmoush and Rayan Ait-Nouri no longer getting many minutes at City, and Ola Aina and Yoane Wissa out injured,... there really aren't many popular FPL picks affected this year.

United's Bryan Mbeumo is really the only high-owned FPL asset (currently around 36%) who's going to be departing next week.

Brighton and Everton might struggle a bit without Carlos Baleba and Idriss Gana Gueye to anchor their midfields, but no-one owns players like this in FPL.

Everton will also be without their lively forward Iliman Ndiaye, Brentford without the right side of their attacking trident, Dango Ouattara, and Manchester United are losing Amad Diallo and Noussair Mazraoui (although the latter hasn't been getting many minutes so far this season, and the former hasn't been an invariable starter under Ruben Amorim's ADHD approach to selection).

Fulham may be hard hit by the absence of defensive stalwart Calvin Bassey, veteran creative midfielder Alex Iwobi, and promising new winger Samuel Chukwueze, all in the Nigeria squad (although this should mean more minutes for players like Josh King and Emile Smith Rowe: the interesting impacts for FPL are mainly felt not in the players who disappear, but in the knock-on effects for those still here!).

West Ham will be without both of their currently favoured starting full-backs, El Hadji Diouf and Aaron Wan-Bissaka. And Sunderland might really struggle when they lose full-back Reinildo, central midfielders Noah Sadiki and Chemsdine Talbi, and wingers Simon Adingra and Bertrand Traore (not all of them have been regular starters; but Sadiki is likely to be a big miss for them). Wolves will lose centre-back Emmanuel Agbadou and attacking midfielder Marshall Munetsi. And Palace will be losing one of their top goalscorers, Ismaila Sarr.

But really - almost no-one in FPL is going to own more than Mbeumo + at most 1 or 2 of the others. AFCON is not an issue in FPL this year. (Except insofar as it's likely to have some major impacts on team form and selections, particularly at Sunderland, Fulham, and West Ham, and perhaps Manchester United.)

The extra 'good news' this year is that Ghana somehow failed to qualify for the tournament this time, so Antoine Semenyo (currently the most popular African player in FPL with over 52% ownership) and Mo Kudus (still the third most popular African player, with 16.5% ownership) will not be affected.

Here's a complete list of players involved in AFCON, and the tournament schedule, from AllAboutFPL.

REMEMBER, also, that the gift of extra transfers in Gameweek 16 is not a fixed number, but a top-up to a limit of FIVE. So, to take maximum advantage of that, we need to use up all our existing transfers by Gameweek 15 - this weekend!

As I noted the oher week, if you have multiple transfers available to use up in GW15, that could in effect be a 'mini Free Hit', as you'll have the opportunity to undo those changes straight away in the following gameweek, should you want to. And that gift of extra Free Transfers effectively makes GW16 - or one of the gameweeks immediately following - a 'mini Wildcard' opportunity.