Picks of the Week (9)

DISCLAIMER: I always refuse to identify myself as any sort of FPL 'guru' or 'mentor' or 'expert'. And I have previously on this blog expressed my reluctance to share many details of my own selections, or to make very specific player recommendations.

However, in addition to occasionally critiquing common 'sheep picks' of the moment (not all necessarily outright bad, but ridiculously over-popular selections), I will occasionally try to highlight one or two players who seem not yet to be very widely owned but are starting to look very tempting prospects.

I will generally try to come up with at least 2 options per week - so that it doesn't look like I'm making a sole recommendation. And these suggestions are intended to be simply 'worth thinking about', not at all 'must-haves'. And some weeks, most weeks, I'll have nothing..... In practice, I generally only come up with one of these posts once every month or two.

And yes, indeed, it has been a couple of months since I last did one of these, so - to counterbalance yesterday's dissing of some of the currently most popular picks - I felt I should come up with a few suggestions for Gameweek 30.

Now, this I find ODD.... The standout performance of Gameweek 29 did not come from Ismaila Sarr or Adam Wharton or Bruno Fernandes or Jurrien Timber or James Tarkowski, or even from hattrick-scoring Joao Pedro; no, the best league performance of last week, by a mile, was produced by Bournemouth's Marcus Tavernier. And yet he is thus far being completely overlooked. The transfer market is being dominated by people catching up on players they should have had already; while Marcus, despite his stellar form in the last two games, since his return from injury, is only the 50th most transferred-in player so far this gameweek (putting him behind Viktor Gyokeres, for heaven's sake! why on earth would anyone be buying him, just before Arsenal face a blank gameweek??), with barely 20,000 new managers coming in for him. This is surely further evidence that most FPL managers don't watch games (or don't watch them with any insight and appreciation, anyway); they must be thinking, "How can you say he had a good game when he didn't score any points?" Well, he smashed the woodwork twice, put a delicious curler only inches wide, set up teammates with a few good chances too, and should really have been awarded a penalty; sometimes, the breaks just don't go your way. But the thing with form/quality of play is that while it does not guarantee you will score any FPL points, it does make it more likely that you will. (Whereas having scored a lot of FPL points is not necessarily reflective of someone's overall quality of play; often players can pick up points - even quite a big haul - rather fortuitously, without really playing all that well. This is why you need to watch the games, to understand what's really happening.) With Semenyo and Ouattara having departed, and Kluivert missing most of the season with injury, Tavernier has become Bournemouth's key creative player - and one of their likeliest goalscorers. And the team seem to be on the up again at last, after a serious slump through the middle part of the season. Admittedly, they still have Manchester United, Arsenal, and Manchester City to face in their run-in, but... the rest of their remaining opponents are all pretty beatable. And Tavernier, remarkably, only costs 5.3 million at the moment - making him one of the most tempting midfield prospects under 6 million.

Now, I'm probably a little bit late on this one.... Crysencio Summerville has come into sensational form for West Ham over the past several weeks, and he's already grown his ownership from a negligible 11,500 when he faced Spurs in mid-January to over 370,000 now. Yes, you read that right: he's still owned by less than 3% of FPL managers - despite being the 4th highest scoring mdifielder over the past 8 gameweeks (1 point ahead of Antoine Semenyo!), and costing only 5.7 million pounds. West Ham are the most dramatically improved of the bottom-of-the-table clubs since the turn of the year, and are now looking favourites to save themselves from the drop (very possibly at the expensie of Spurs!). They still have to face City and Arsenal (though at least both at home), but the rest of their run-in doesn't look too daunting. Alas, Summerville has just picked up a knock in Monday's FA Cup win over Brentford; but if that turns out not to be anything serious, Summerville should definitely be in contention for a change-up in that crucial 4th/5th FPL midfield slot.

And here's a slightly left-field suggestion... United's veteran pivot Casemiro is actually one of the most 'in form' midfielders since mid-January, with 2 goals in the last 6 games (and fairly frequent 'defensive points' too). Yet he still costs only 5.6 million pounds in FPL, and is owned by only just over 2.5% of managers. If you're looking to switch up your 'fifth seat', you could do a lot worse. I confess, I had written off the aging Brazilian long ago. He's had a miserable time the last few seasons, with both Ten Hag and Amorim tending to leave enormous gaps in midfield, while failing to find him an effective double-pivot partner - thus leaving far too much ground for his aging legs to cover, and repeatedly making him look like one of the side's weakest links. But now that we have a more sensible and effective tactical system under Carrick, and the youthful Mainoo reinstated alongside him to help with the covering, he's not having to run himself into the ground by half-time every week,.... and his undoubted class has been able to reassert itself. He really has been looking superb over the last few months. The problem, of course, is that you can't take too many players from United, and most people want to have Bruno Fernandes and/or Bryan Mbeumo in their sides even more. But... if you find you can't quite afford both of the Brazilian's more prolific teammates, he's looking a very tempting pick - especially if you're just looking for a short-term replacement for Declan Rice when he faces a blank gameweek soon.

I still rather fancy the recent form of Brenden Aaronson and Harvey Barnes too, but I already gave them a boost back in January. And Everton's suddenly hot again Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall might be worth a thought as well - if they didn't have Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Manchester City coming up in their next six games!!