Scout Notes – Gameweek 9 – Monday

Which high performing player is next in line to be 'Jontied' and suffer a season ending injury/appalling form? 😉

Eden Hazard owners - what is the sensible thing to do? Play him, bench him or sell him?

has Granville has his flu jab yet?

Question for Luke - why did Granville drop out this week? 😉

I'm playing 3-5-2 and having just got Vardy in for Sturridge I now have 4M in the bank and I'm not sure where to spend it. It's always tempting to spend money when it's available, but is it currently one of those rare occasions when it makes more sense to keep the money in the bank with so many value options doing well?

For those of us still with wildcards is it better to take advantage of the GW11 fixture turn or hold it to use as an Aguero enabler?

Will Manchester City slow down again when Yaya lost interest?

With today's news about Kolarov participating in 'light running', are people now tempted to keep? Remembering the 'Kolarov bench stat attack' hot-topic, if you have solid backline, it could pay dividends to keep him, thoughts?

Is Ayew worth holding on to, when there are so many other alternatives out there?

Where Do we go with Liverpool, almost nobody has any coverage I feal there could be some points in there side but where?

i, and manyothers always wait to do transfers after midweek games european,internationals etc,
yet you see so many doing early trans even on a saturday{like aguero after 5 goals!} with sun/mon games still to go
is this frustration, to do with price change or any other reason?

Nice to see the selected question been green again. 🙂

We need to break this chain of "chasing" last week's points. I do it every week...Depay, Ayew, Martial, KDB, now maybe the Genie. In past years I was always good at staying ahead of the curve. That's why I kept and captained Hazz this week...only to fail again.

I'm going to start focusing again on the next 3 to 5 fixtures for these players so that I won't be so reactionary!

Will Aguero's recent injury deter the scouts from bringing him back in so quickly?

Do you risk missing the ship before it sails, or ride the storm if you get in early?

Are you tempted to double up City mids?

Pretty simple question for the scouts

What should we all be doing with this money ITB?

if you could own any player for just this week who would it be and would you sell Westwood and play AOA if you had to play 2 from

Cedric (liv)
Huth (CPL)
Francis (TOT)
Prodl (sto)

smooth - aguero > costa. captained san(c)hez while everyone had doubt over his playing time after he played 2 full 90 min for wc qualifiers.

rough - started pelle over berahino.

at one point i had 5 injured players (diouf [> pelle], aguero [>costa], berahino, coutinho, kolarov) and 1 suspended player (dier).
flags were all over the place and i freaked out. i've never taken a hit since playing fpl but this time i had to.
i was also worried that redmond/sanchez may not be included in starting XI.

in the end i'm happy with 71pts (-4). before this gameweek i thought my rank would drop to outside top 100k. happy with all green arrows.

After the stories about Yaya today - does he get enough credit from the media or fans in general?

Is he still a good FPL pick?

Smooth - I was determined to get rid of Sterling since having him since GW1. But Kun injury meant I had to deal with that instead. The rest as they say is history

Quick request - best to stick to what you did do, rather than what you didn't. So for example not so keen on hearing - 'I would have got Bony or Wijnaldum in but instead got such and such a player' .

Expect a call from Doos - from memory he took Sterling out for a hit.

Rough - Hazard(C)

Took a 4 point hit to get Wijnaldum in for Shaqiri. Talked him up as my captain all week, but backed out last minute. Nevertheless, a decent transfer indeed 😀

Rough - transferred out Martial for Pelle BEFORE Aguero broke down in the international break

Smooth - transferred in Bony for Aguero for a hit, the logical transfer I would have made had I waited until the internationals were over and not simply jumped on Pelle's price rise

-4 + 15 = 😎

Of course, it wouldn't be an FPL tale of woe without my then captaining Hazard leaving Bony as VC 🙁

Changed my whole strikeforce this week for a -8 (first hit of the season) went from -

Diouf (0)
Gomis (2)
Aguero (0)

to

Costa (12)
Vardy (13)
Pelle (2)

Picked the wrong captain but came out +17 on the transfers. Didn't quite get a green arrow but now happy with my strike force for the next few Aguero-less weeks.

Simply put I had to take a -8 with the international injuries AFTER I stupidly used my FT early on a luxury Martial > Pelle to catch a price rise.

Most of my H2H opps took no hits, so I was probably going out of LMS as well if it was a low scoring week.

Thankfully I scored 76 and won all my H2H...

Got Bony and Bellerin in for a hit for aguero and Gomez. Thankfully aguero injury forced sterling to stay too!:) 95 points and up to 32k overall. 200 points in last two weeks has revitalised my season with all chips still intact!

Smooth - got cista in place of kun abs captained him...

Smooth - Went for Ayoze over Ighalo, and played him over Mahrez. Nice 10-pointer.

Rough - Hits did not pay off at all. Aguero + Sinclair > Pelle + KdB.

Overall a poor GW with Hazard (c).

Did Aguero>Pelle like most, and captained, not very smooth in the end.

Had only two fit defenders so played my AOA chip. Both defenders scored 0! (Nyom and Francis)

Stuck with Pedro and resisted a hit who scored 3, so it turned out a 4 point hit for KdB would've cost me 2 points so not much more I could have done to improve on a hit-free 47.

Overall a reasonable GW bar lack of captain points.

Smooth has to be Aguero -> Costa (c) rather than Pelle 😎

Smooth: Kolarov and Gomez out for Bellerin and Alderweireld.

Rough: I was getting so sick of the sight of Sterling in my team, I transferred him out before the internationals for Mane. Had I waited and seen my players were dropping like flies, I would have kept him in.

Lessons learnt: Never ever transfer before the internationals.

Smooth - Brought in Costa and KdB for Kun and Ayew for a -4 hit. Gave Costa (24 pts.) the armband and Kdb (5pts.) Total GW points 82 pts.

Last two game weeks points: GW 8 - 110 pts. GW 9 - 82 pts.

Current ranking up to 37,923

Thanks for all your help guys 🙂
Winning all my mini leagues because of you

Smooth: Aguero to Vardy +13

Rough: Mahrez to Hazard (C) (-4 + 2 = -2)

Wait there’s more …

Rough: Westwood to Mane (-4 + 2 = -2)
Rough: Martial to Pelle (-4 + 2 = -2)
Rough: Diouf to Ighalo (-4 + 2 = -2)

I honestly don’t know what I was thinking!

Well I do actually, I made two transfers; 1 x rage transfer which was Pelle because I had planned to get him the week they played chelsea, but thought he’d blank against Chelsea and instead went Diouf. Then the international break hit and I lost the plot!

Unsurprisingly I dropped from just inside 100k to outside 300k

Rough. Had a moment of madness and signed Bertrand instead of Bellerin then stupidly, having worries about Mahrez game time, signed Hazard for a -12. The other option was Martial for Costa who I would have captained. Now stuck I quandary of do I keep or sell the Hazard enigma?

I did Sterling to KDB at the start of the international break. I subsequently took a -8 to remove deadwood (Aguero etc)

18 points down the toilet for my idiocy

Kolarov and Aguero to Bellerin and Costa (-4) was one of the better hits I've taken.

Did Aguero to Pelle, and then against my better instincts, took a hit to get Bellerin in (even though I had 3 playing defenders), but ended up +6 points better off (when taking into account the hit), was pretty stoked with this....ah the small things ;-p

Rough - turned Diouf into Pelle (2) at the start of the international break. Not a disaster in itself but I scraped the funds together by taking a 4 point hit to do Azpilicueta (6) to Bertrand (0).

Aguero and Kolarov getting crocked in the internationals then meant I had to take two more hits to give me a -12 in total.

If I'd waited like a sensible person I could have avoided the Bertrand hit and been 10 points better off.

I also brought in Lukaku (1) as my Aguero replacement and captained Pelle.

Stupid, stupid, stupid

Sterling was my hero! - finally came good and repaid me for weeks of holding him since GW1.

Transfered in Pelle who I captained but happy to hold and think he will come good over the next month or so.

61pts for my gameweek

Finally decided to play my wildcard only because everyone was taking so many hits & this seemed like the perfect time to do so.

Got a massive 105 pts thanks to a few differentials that i picked up, them being Janmaat, Wijnaldum & D.Costa whom i captained.

Rough.
Lost my entire city cover due to international week injuries.
I brought in hazard for Silva.

Smooth.
Sod all. Even my MNF picks in Williams and Ayew failed

Rough

Cedric subbed on 59 mins
Aguero to Pelle (c)
Took a -4 to do Pedro to Hazard for security .....

Rivals with Payet Vardy and Costa now over 70 points behind in my cash MLs

Got KDB his first week. Got Vardy before his 3 big hauls. Got (c)osta and Bellerin this week. Its all been joyful.

Smooth 😎 - I swapped Kolarov -> Janmaat before the injuries struck, to free up a City slot, and Ayew -> De Bruyne at the same time. Had to make it a -8 to do Aguero -> Vardy but it all came off, fortunately.

I also captained Payet 😀

Smooth

Took a 8 point hit this week. Think it's my first 8 point hit ever.

Transferred out Aguero, Pedro and Sagna to get Costa, Mane and Bellerin. Put the armband on Costa as well. If we just look at Costa's points without captaincy, I'm better off by about 14 points after taking the -8 in consideration as well.

Rough - of all the players I could've picked up front in my WC I tried to be clever and went for Sturridge and Pelle (C).

My wildcard team included Vardy and Wijnaldum up until Friday night. The news that Ayew was fit persuaded me to swap Wijnaldum for Ayew. Then there was the news that Kolorov was out for atleast 2 weeks. I wanted to get on the Newcastle fixtures so I dropped him down to Jaanmaat which freed up the cash for me to go Vardy to Pelle. Was happy to go Mane against Pelle but the extra cash made me decide to go with both. Still got 71 points but I'm absolutely sickened. should have been 100+. If only I swapped Kolarov for Bellerin like I was meant to!

Southampton well and truly trolling me this season. Starting GW1 with Mane/Pelle/Cedric, then offloading all three before GW4 due to their terrible start. Bringing Mane and Pelle(c) back for a hit last week for a total of 6 pts, while my ML rivals brought in Bony and Costa. Big red arrow 🙁

Was wrestling with the choice between Gomis and Bojan all last week. Went with Gonis due to being the home fixture and benched Bojan's 9 pointer.

Had C on KDB all week and changed to Pelle after listening to you on Scoutcast (cheers for that btw).

Whole lotta rough

I did captain Wijnaldum in UFPL though. Yay!!

Smooth: Darmain and Depay to Wollscheid and KDB worked nicely.
Rough: Pelle and Mane in for hits and captaining Pelle as I had doubts over Sanchez starting certainly didn't!

Got only 50 with WC. 🙁

smooth - removed the injured aguero and kolarov and replaced them with costa and bellerin for a 4 point hit...decided to stick the armband on costa as well, so the transfers netted me 34 extra points this gameweek, which was pretty pivotal in my 101 point haul this round...jumped from 870k to 216k overall in the end 🙂

Sold Sterling. Bought Agüero. On the Saturday ... 😆

Had 2FT:
Gomez, Kolarov, Aguero, Diouf (0) out
Bellerin, Janmaat, Vardy, Pelle (C) (31) in for -8.

Smooth - Early transferring Pelle in for Gomis forced me into taking -8 to replace Aguero and Kolarov - in came Costa and Bellerin.

Semi-Rough - Ended up captaining Pelle, which, in fact, was the worst possible decision I could have made. Every single one of the other 10 players on the pitch managed 4 points or more. Captained my only blanker.

I have 1 Rough and 1 Smooth:

1 Rough: Captained Hazard and If he would have not come on in the game my captain would have switched to Vardy.

1 Smooth: Aguero + Kolarov --> Costa + Smalling (-4) worked out well.

Overall a green arrow so no complains 🙂

Rough: Martial to Pelle and Aguero was injured right after I did that transfer. Should have been Aguero to Pelle though.

Smooth: Morgan and Kolarov for Bellerin and Monreal. Both with CS, Bellerin with BAPS and assist.

Mixed bag. 4 point hit to take out Pedro (3) for Mane (2), and Aguero (0) for Costa (12).

Took the captaincy off of Costa last minute for De Bruyne (at a cost of 7 points) despite telling everyone I knew that Costa was going to have a big week after his rest.

Was also going to spend another 4 to bring in Bellerin for Targett after looking at his stats, but in the end chickened out (costing 4 points) as I didnt want to take a hit for a defender. Now my backline needs surgery, I missed his points and his price has gone up.

The lesson? Believe in your decisions and stick with them even if they go against convention.

Smooth - saved 4 points with AOA 😎 i feel that is a success
Rough - Losing to Cheeseoid in Balder's competition, first round only 😉

The rough? Sterling out for KDB, Oh and I took a 32 point hit, Sturridge cost me 8 of the points.

The smooth? My defence is set for the future. Does that even count as a smooth?

(C) osta 🙂 also brought in Pelle instead of Bony though....hopefully it proves a better transfer in the long term!

Brought Costa in for Aguero.
Watched Butland keep yet another clean sheet since selling him in my wildcard a few weeks back.

Smooth: wild carded and brought in Bellerin, KDB, Sanchez, and Cabaye for solid returns.

Rough: changing my long term strategy of cheap bench fillers to have a deep squad led to me benching Vardy, Moreno and Butland! Got rid of Sterling on the wildcard too. This disaster meant that my pre-wildcard team would have come out 10 points higher than my score with the new improved team on 48. I'm missing Darren Fletcher already!

Normally I don't like taking hits however...

Coutinho -> Sanchez
- Which I had planned for as Arsenals fixtures are easing and he is almost fixture proof at the moment.

Gomez -> Nyom (
- ACL Injury and I didn't want to loose value with Gomez having a high ownership. -4 at this point I was happy with.

Aguero -> Bony
- Once Aguero's Injury was confirmed need to replace, people seemed to not consider Bony much probably due to form but he is a proven quality striker and given more time in the team he will score goals. Man City's fixtures were also attractive.

Igahlo -> Pelle
- Didn't want 6 million sitting in the bank and Pelle seemed like a good choice due to form/fixtures/popularity etc. Didn't work out in the end but was still a good safety blanket.

12 point hit, probably the largest I've even done and expected to drop some positions. Ended up playing All Out Attack mainly because Kolorov was a definite no go and wanted to guarantee Redmond would play as he was against Newcastle.

Butland
Darmian Williams
Payet De Bruyne Sanchez Redmond Mahrez
Bony Vardy Pelle

93 total points, which meant 81 with the hit and went from 120,522 to 39,999.

Rough: Failed 1 week gamble to sell Sanchez (thinking he would be benched) to buy Hazard (who Mourinho benched for the first time ever).

Smooth: All my players scored, assisted or kept CS except aforementioned Hazard. Faith in Chelsea still payed off as brought in Costa (C). Have gone from +2m rank to 184k in 2 weeks.

Took a -12 to do Kun, Westwood and Kolarov to Bony (C), KdB and Dawson. Also played a AoA with Myhill, Dawson and Azpi.
End result? 94(-12) which rocketted me to 6.7K. 😎

Rough
Had already done Kun to Pelle. Was planning to do Gomez to Van Dijk Saturday morning for a -4, but the confirmation of Kolarov out meant I only had two def playing I had to deal with him, then seeing Hazards price drop I stupidly decided to leave this transfer to next game week and instead on a whim sold Payet for Hazard to take a -8 hit. His injury time goal just added salt to the wound.

40K OR drop followed just as the season was starting to be turned around.

I was on top of my ML, until last week, my ML competitor had pelle coming from the bench replacing mahrez and scoring a whooping 14 pts, I had westwood as the replacement for Mahrez.
If that's not enough, This week I have Butland and Ruddy for GK
My ML competitor have Butland and some 4m gk
First time I benched Butland for Ruddy, Butland got 2 more points on saves
Yesterday Butland got 6 points and my Ruddy got -1.

My defense: Ruddy(new) , dawson(sun), 6, williams(stk), kompany(bor): defense looked awesome initially, kompany was substituted with richards again, total def. score: 6 !!!!
His defense: Butland, Francis, darmian, bellerin: everton and swansea usually score right? total score: 22 !
Now I'm 24 away from the top after being on top with a 10 points gap.

Silky Smooth 🙂 Did Kun > Bony and made him Captain 😀 Finally broke in the top 10K on sat and finished at 12K by Monday . Very Happy !

cap started as sanchez, then kdb, then handed it to pelle
luckily enough still top of m/l as 2nd also did same !

Ben Proffitt had a 101(-4) point game-week, which moved him up from 1,111th to 90th overall, and up to third in the FFS League. He has not yet played any chips or wildcards.

He captained Costa (12*2) and also had double figure returns from Sterling (19), Vardy (13), Ozil (12) and Sanchez (10) as well as 6 pointers from Mitrovic, Alderweireld and Butland.

Rough

quite simple - I sold Sterling

Smooth

I took a hit to get Bellerin (my other defenders scored 3 between them)

Smooth - Took Bony as my Aguero replacement instead of Lukaku

Rough - Benched Butland in favour of Ruddy for the first time in 4 weeka

Rough - Feel a bit hard done by on Cedric's clean sheet

Smooth - continued a good run of transfer decisions by doing Schmeichel + Aguero ----> Begovic + Bony (C) for a -4 hit... would've captained Hazard otherwise

Smooth - Got in Wijnaldum this week for Coutinho. Fourth week in a row that the player I brought in has scored: Bojan, Sturridge, De Bruyne and Wijnaldum.

Also the fourth week in a row that my captain has scored or assisted: Deeney (10), Sturridge (26), De Bryune (30), De Bryune (10)

I went 3-5-2 with Ighalo as my bench player. If I had gone 3-4-3 swapping mahrez for vardy, with wanyama as a bench player I would've done really well. 3-4-3 always works, I should've known.
Let's see how 3-5-2 works with mahrez

Aguero and Yaya --> Bony (C) and De Bruyne. 🙂

Smooth: No hits....the only player to do so.

Rough: brought in Pelle and Lukaku for Gomis and Aguero for a mighty 4 point return.

Rank: up from 3 million to 18k.

Unbelievable...Jeff.

smooth - aguero > costa. captained san(c)hez while everyone had doubt over his playing time after he played 2 full 90 min for wc qualifiers.

rough - started pelle over berahino.

at one point i had 5 injured players (diouf [> pelle], aguero [>costa], berahino, coutinho, kolarov) and 1 suspended player (dier).
flags were all over the place and i freaked out. i've never taken a hit since playing fpl but this time i had to.
i was also worried that redmond/sanchez may not be included in starting XI.

in the end i'm happy with 71pts (-4). before this gameweek i thought my rank would drop to outside top 100k. happy with all green arrows.

SMOOTH!
Stuck with Sterling for 'one last week'. 19 points!
Kolarov -> Bellerin. 10 points.
Sanchez
Begovic
Evans (recovered)
Vardy
Mahrez

Up to around 200K from 400K

All smooth

Clyne (6) -> Suoare (1)
Coutinho (3) -> Tadic (5)
Ritchie (1) -> KDB (5)
Sturridge (0) -> Ayoze Perez (10)
Westwood (2) -> Sanchez (10)
Aguero (0) -> Costa (26)

Net gain ; 41 points. And that IS the net gain as I would have captained Hazard if I hadn't got Costa in. And all my subs got 0 or 1 point.

yay, go me.

Rough - Friday night transferred out Aguero for Sturridge.
Saturday morning resisted the urge to shift Kolarov to Bellerin for -4
Monday evening make the transfer after Bellerins 10 points.
Tuesday Kolarov is declared fit.

Keeping Ozil. Keeping 2 FT because of International break and Bringing Bony and Sanchez in with those FT.

Very good Green Arrow 🙂

Panic WC at 10:00AM on Saturday.

GW8-->9 Highlights included dropping Sterling, Dawson, Butland and Mahrez for KDB, Gabriel, Fabianski and Hazard.

Roll on the next WC!

smooth - made three loans in UFPL...

Aguero > Bony
Kolarov > Monreal
Wilson > Ayoze

needless to say, my ships came in. just wish transfers/loans came off this well all the time.

Rough- Brought in Pelle and captained, Was going to take a hit for Sanchez but chickened out.

Smooth- Unexpected CS with Clyne and Dawson and got a goal out of Redmond and Payet.

Despite 53 pts I still see red arrows

I had Sanchez (c) for his big haul and aguero (c) for his the week after.

Last GW I made 2 early FTs, then had Aguero, Silva, and Kolarov go out injured. Took a -12 to replace them for a useless Lukaku, mediocre KDB, and benched Kompany. Azpillicueta looks a good option again (he was one of my early trades out). And to top it off Naughton was also benched and my Francis sub got 0. So after a -12 I had 2 people not play, Mahrez with 45 minutes, and the 2 early FTs I made both scored more than my replacements.