Review of Game Week 7

Best Team 

GW Points: 24
Overall Points: 395
Overall Rank: 40,099

Main Blog Team

GW Points: 29
Overall Points: 314
Overall Rank: 296,355
Transfers used: None used

Game week 7 feels like a distant memory but I wanted to wait until we get a little closer to football resuming after the International break before posting my update. This will give us chance to look forward rather than just focusing on the game week itself. Given the fixtures that were cancelled the game week was a bit of a disaster for me. I had 4 players who did not feature at all during the game week and those that I did, had slightly disappointing results in some ways. In particular, Trippier and Emerson Royal, managed to pick up -1 point between them. Ironically I kept Trippier over Saliba as I thought he had a bigger chance of attacking returns and a clean sheet. Saliba then goes on to score a huge 18 points after a couple of weeks of poor form. This single event pretty much sums up how my season has gone so far with this team. Many of my other teams are performing much better and I hardly invest any time into those teams, they are often made up of players who would have been second choice for my blog team but it’s just the way it goes sometimes.

Here are my thoughts on each player:

Ramsdale: 5 points. Happy with 5 points from Ramsdale, it’s just a shame it looks like he won’t play in the Europa League.

Emerson Royal: -1 point. Awful start in my team, was an enabler to get Kane in. Huge concern now that TAA will do some damage in the last game week of the month and I’m stuck with a defender who has returned nothing across three games so far.

Dalot: Did not play. Happy with Dalot for the time being given his low value and good score so far this season.

Trippier: 0 points. I was hoping Trippier might hit a big score against Bournemouth with a clean sheet and even an assist or a goal. It wasn’t to be. 0 points mean he might not even stay in my team for the weekend. I’m very tempted to swap him for Sterling. 

Cucurella: Did not play. Happy to hold for the time being.

Diaz: Did not play. Happy to hold while he’s starting every game for Liverpool. 

Saka: 7 points. Decent return from Saka, will hold for now but considering moving him on if he doesn’t play in the Europa League in October. 

Mbeumo: 0 points. Needs to be replaced given that Brentford aren’t in Europe.

Salah: Did not play. Happy to hold for the time being.

Haaland: 8 points. Season long pick barring any injuries.

Kane: 10 points. Relieved that Kane got on the scoresheet with 10 points considering I took Jesus out who also scored this week. Still not 100% convinced about having so much budget in my front three but all should get a lot of game time in the Champions League during October.

Player watchlist

I’ve got one transfer left going into the final game week of September. The players on my watchlist are outlined below:

Sterling – top of my list and a transfer I could make by taking out Trippier. He’s the 4th highest point scoring midfielder and should get plenty of game time in the Champions League. 

Lloris/De Gea – I’m not massively convinced by Ramsdale given that I don’t think he will play in the Europa League. Lloris or De Gea might be a better option but both have question marks against them as well at this stage.

De Bruyne – De Bruyne is the highest scoring midfielder, has to be on the watchlist but I can’t see how I can get him into this team.

Cancelo – another player I’d love to have but who is out of reach for this team at the moment. 

Sancho – if Sancho continues to play in the Euro League, he could be a great pick but it’s a big risk.

Jesus – it remains to be seen if he can match Kane and Salah for points with limited time in Europe. I really didn’t want to take him out considering his early season form but I just felt like Kane could get away from him in terms of points with more game time in the Champions League. A situation to monitor though.

Tsimikas – if Robertson is out for a while, Tsimikas is certainly worth considering. 

Plan for game week 8

My plan for the game week is certainly to utilise my final transfer. Given the fixture volume for Chelsea in October, I’m certainly considering bringing in Sterling for this weekend as I see him as a good option for the longer term. Aside from this, if you’ve got more transfers to burn, I’d certainly be looking at players who are likely to feature in the huge volume of double game weeks in Europe during October. Spurs and Chelsea have a decent set of fixtures and there may be some bargain to have at Man Utd, who appear to be fielding a strong team in the Europa League. However, this could have been because their Premier League fixture was cancelled at the weekend so worth approaching this with caution. 

If you’re interested in the fixtures for the clubs involved in Europe, you can check them out here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CJdq5SxZqrb7EXOpEBbCtbF0hDulMoL05ULja_ng5nY/

My other teams

My other teams all suffered a little bit from the fixtures that were cancelled. I’d also used a reasonable number of transfers in most teams so I wasn’t able to make too many changes once fixtures were starting to be postponed. My best team is still performing fairly well and is getting close to the 400 point mark. It’s dropped slightly on the leaderboard but is still in a decent position to push on throughout the rest of the season. 

I’ve got a number of teams that aren’t far behind this team in terms of points but I keep making the same mistake of applying the same logic to all of my teams. As an example, because I thought it made sense to take Saliba and Jesus out, I did the same throughout many other teams. I should remind myself to do the opposite of what my instinct tells me to do in some of my other teams as this will ensure I cover more bases throughout the season. 

I’ve also got a couple of teams that haven’t reached the 300 point mark yet. I’ll probably make some really risky curveball changes in those teams in October to try and play catch up. If this backfires, I’ll probably stop progressing them at some point.

As always, for complete transparency, here are my 10 teams: