GW Points: 77
Overall Points: 3363
Overall Rank: 609
A disappointing game week, I knew it would be a low overall point scorer but I didn’t want to lose position on the leaderboard but I’ve dropped nearly 100 places and appear to be on a slight downward trend. However, do I regret any decisions that I’ve made in the past few weeks? Absolutely not. If we look at ownership of players within the top 1,000 teams on the leaderboard (people who have made good decisions to get them within the top 1,000 so far this season or those who have been very lucky), my decisions align almost perfectly with the majority of those managers. By this I mean, I own the highest owned players in each position other than one. Basically of the 1,000 who have to make a decision on transfers each week, my thinking aligns with where most are going so despite the drop on the leaderboard, the logic is there but it just hasn’t paid off as we don’t have a crystal ball.
To quickly run through player by player Raya is the highest owned keeper. TAA, Porro and Van Dijk are the highest owned defenders (I’ve got Gvardiol rather than Van Dijk which is my only exception to the rule), Fernandes, Rogers, Palmer, Foden, Kulusevski are the highest owned midfielders, Salah and Watkins are the highest owned strikers. Haaland also has high ownership but he didn’t have a massive game week so it’s largely irrelevant.
Here is my breakdown of each player:
Raya – not a great start in my team but still the right pick at the time.
Gvardiol – did not play and might be worth moving on now.
Porro – expected him to start in the Europa League but with a double game week coming up I think I’d rather lose Gvardiol than Porro.
Alexander-Arnold – season long pick.
Kulusevski – injured so I’ll potentially bring Haaland straight back in for him.
Foden – 9 points wasn’t an awful return from Foden but would have liked a little more against Plymouth.
Rogers – 7 wasn’t a great return from Rogers over a double game week but I’ll keep for another double game week.
Fernandes – happy with Fernandes returns, definitely keeping him.
Palmer – good to see Palmer starting in Europe but not the returns I’d hoped for. I’ll be keeping him for this week though
Watkins – 10 points was OK, not amazing but not terrible from a double game week.
Salah – season long pick.
Player watchlist
Haaland – despite City being out of Europe and having a single game week I’m not sure I’m prepared to risk not having him with his high ownership.
Robertson – Gvardiol is the one I’d want to take out and this leaves me with limited funds, Robertson is the most appealing option with the funds I have given that Liverpool have Southampton in the league. However, I’m also concerned that he might be rested.
Dalot – Dalot in another option to throw in the mix but he’s not overly appealing with Man Utd playing Arsenal.
Plan for game week 27
My watchlist is very short because I’m struggling to see beyond bringing Haaland back in for Kulusevski which leaves me with very little funds to play with. I could keep Gvardiol and drop Foden given the single game week for City but I think Foden has a much bigger point scoring capability. Other than those two I can’t really see a case for taking anyone else out so I’m a little stuck. I’m going to think about it a little further before making a decision but bringing in Haaland and Robertson looks the most logical move to me.