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Our resident FPL expert’s latest advice column looks at Manchester United and Brighton players.
The matches are coming thick and fast as we head into December, and that means lots of work keeping up in the Fantasy Premier League – happily, our resident expert is back once more to offer up some hints and tips ahead of the Gameweek 15 deadline.
Before we hand over to him, it’s our duty to let you know that it’s a Saturday morning deadline this time around, and you’ll need to make your moves by 11:00 GMT on 7 December.
Buying Bruno and pondering Pedro
One of the awkward things about midweek matches – apart from the persistent worry that I’ll forget to set my team before the deadline – is that I’m having to write this column in the middle of a gameweek, and there’s every chance that I’m about to recommend you sign someone who immediately gets injured or sent off.
Still, we’ve got to press on, and with the information I actually have access to I’m going to take a look at some specific players from a couple of teams that are causing some heads to be scratched around the FPL – Manchester United and Brighton & Hove Albion.
Ruben Amorim’s arrival, coupled with a 4-0 win over Everton, has started people thinking about their assets again. They’ve got a couple of relatively tricky fixtures coming up – although just how difficult is a Manchester Derby these days? – but there’s a sense of a side that’s been reinvigorated since Erik ten Hag left, and a few players could be interesting options.
Bruno Fernandes is becoming a topic of discussion once more. He’s had three big returns in his last four weeks (before GW14) after a tepid start to the season and at £8.5m could be a premium midfielder on a budget.
The stats look promising, too. Since Ten Hag departed, he’s scored twice from 1.71xG (although the vast majority of that came in one game against Chelsea) and set up four from 0.76xA. That second point is both good and bad – the FPL is more generous with assists than statisticians are, but he’s still overshooting his average scoring rate. That means I want to wait until after the Manchester City game to see if he can keep it up, but if he does then he looks very promising as a buy indeed.
A few people are also pondering a move for Rasmus Højlund after he bagged a brace last week, but I think both he and players like Marcus Rashford, Alejandro Garnacho and Joshua Zirkzee are just too much of a minutes risk right now, and I want to see if Amorim settles on a starting eleven before getting too excited by any of them. All are priced competitively compared to their ceiling, but Fernandes is the only one more or less nailed-on to start every game.
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The one player who really excites me is Amad Diallo. He’s notched 25 points in three matches playing as a right wing-back, is creating chances at a healthy clip, and while I doubt he can maintain an average scoring rate of eight points per game or more, at £5.0m he may have just become one of the best budget enablers in the game. I rate him higher than Morgan Rogers or Emile Smith Rowe on current form.
If the defence tightens up, then Manchester United also have a couple of defenders in the £4.5m range who could be worth investing in, with Lisandro Martínez an interesting option once he’s fully fit. Again, I’m waiting though.
Brighton are another team worth taking a look at. They’re playing well, scoring pretty freely, and five of their next seven games come against teams in the bottom half of the table. I’m not really interested in their defensive assets, but further forward there are some intriguing potential purchases.
João Pedro is perhaps the most obvious one on current form – I discussed him last week and came to the conclusion that Evanilson is perhaps a slightly better bet for a cheap striker just now, but there’s no doubt that Pedro is a solid purchase. His supporting cast is harder to pick between, however.
Kaoru Mitoma has some history in the FPL and although his current points per game rate of 4.4 is underwhelming, his expected goals and assists are trending upwards and he scored well in his last two games before GW14. He’s the next best buy on Brighton’s team, and at £6.5m he could help to enable a move for a premium player elsewhere.
That’s also true of summer signing Giorginio Rutter, who is even cheaper at £5.6m, and he’s scoring at only a slightly slower rate than Mitoma. That puts him in an awkward position where you’re debating between Rutter and players like Diallo, Smith Rowe and Rogers, and it’s hard to clearly state that Rutter is better, but I suspect his ceiling is very high indeed given the number of assists he racked up in the Championship last season – and Brighton’s fixtures are pretty gentle right now.
I don’t recommend making moves specifically to get either Mitoma or Rutter right now, but I do think that if they enable another transaction then they’re absolutely worth considering. If price wasn’t a factor, Mitoma would be the more reliable buy simply because he’s proven and, unlike Rutter, doesn’t tend to get taken off in the second half quite so much.
In short, I’m intrigued by Manchester United but wary, and would be much more keen on Brighton players if they didn’t spread the points around quite so much. Fixture difficulty isn’t, as I’ve said before, the be all and end all. Big players score points against good teams, and players whose form ebbs and flows aren’t reliable scorers just because they face a few newly-promoted sides. The individual matters more than the team.
Captain picks and quick hits
It’s time to toss some coins this week, at least if you’re fortunate enough to own both Bukayo Saka and Mohamed Salah. They’re the players I’ve got right at the top of the captaincy list – and if I was making the same decision, I’d lean very slightly towards Saka, partly because early kick-offs tend to see slightly fewer goals and Liverpool are in the Merseyside Derby early doors on Saturday. It’s a fine line, however, and my track record with captain picks has been uncharacteristically appalling this season…
If, by the time you read this, Erling Haaland has just bagged a bunch of goals against Nottingham Forest, then I think he may enter the equation as well. He’s actually been playing better than his returns suggest for my money and he bagged twice against Feyenoord in an otherwise shocking collapse, and I get the feeling that once he gets his shooting boots back on, he’ll keep them laced up. At anything close to his best, Crystal Palace would have a tough time handling him. Maybe I’m deluding myself at this stage, but I still expect him to snap out of his funk.
Normally, I’d wrap things up by keeping you updated with my example team but as we’re mid-week, there isn’t much benefit to that – sufficed to say that I’m hoping I’ll have a nice haul to show off once we’re back to normal service next week.
Until then, best of luck to all of you, and may all of your captaincy choices prove to be more successful than mine have been so far…
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