“It’s like a new signing” is the age old cliché trotted out by managers after a player, out injured for a long time, returns to a team. Quite often, if the injuries are bad, the players never quite reach the peak that they had once attained but sometimes a player can return and it seems as if they’d never left (think Bullard – before he got injured again). It remains to be seen what happens with Everton’s Mikel Arteta after a massive period of nearly a year out with a cruciate knee ligament problem. One things for certain though – Moyes will treat his return like a new signing…
Moyes, for once, has an Everton team which is something resembling a squad. Often in the past the Scot was the charge of a mismatch of gifted players and hardworking grafters filling in various positions. However these days he’s got more options with Arteta’s previous position out wide being contended for alongside Steven Pienaar, Leon Osman and Dmitrie Bila… Bilya.. er Billy.
The perverse blessing for the Spaniard has been Marouine Fellaini’s injury which has seen Arteta return to fill the central position in Everton’s midfield. Unfortunately for Fellaini this replacement looks like being for the remainder of the season after it was confirmed that the Belgian will be out for 6 months. With Pienaar and Billy/Osman on the wings and Tim Cahill (when fit) and now Arteta in the centre, Everton’s midfield is looking incredibly attacking. Whether Moyes remains playing this system, or relocates Neville or Heitinga into midfield remains to be seen. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how Moyes shuffles the pack.
From a fantasy football perspective Arteta was always one of those great differentials in the mid-priced midfield bracket. A rival to Tim Cahill, Ashley Young and once upon a time, Cesc Fabregas, he was a consistent point scorer offering returns from set piece taking and penalties. At 8.1 million, after a long injury lay off, I personally am struggling to see value in investing in him. It was always a headscratcher than FPL valued him so highly when, even at the start of the season, everyone knew he’d be out for half the season.
The wise move would then look to be holding back on investing on him this campaign, unless he has a late season resurgence to coincide with Everton’s kind run of fixtures from gameweek 29 onwards. We can however hope that he gets revalued to a more manageable amount for the start of next season. With a pre-season behind him and a slightly lower price, if Mikel Arteta can get back to playing like he was before his injury, he looks a cert for my team.