Team of the Season – Michu

When Michu struck a hugely impressive brace in Swansea’s 5-0 opening day drubbing of QPR, it set the tone for the season. The rangy summer capture from Rayo Vallecano was to become one of the major success stories, perhaps even the signing of the 2012-13 campaign, while the R’s humiliation was just the beginning of their misery.

Michu hit the ground running. His two goals at Loftus Road were swiftly followed up by consecutive strikes in a win over West Ham and a 2-2 draw with Sunderland. Swansea had arrived in the top flight and shown enough talent and intent to vanquish any talk of relegation and in Michu, they had a genuine goal threat who had them looking up at the European spots, rather than down at the Championship trapdoor.

In fairness, while the Premier League was taken by surprise, us Fantasy managers did have some inkling that Michael Laudrup had pulled off a genuine coup. Our pre-season Scout Report acknowledged that Michu returned 15 goals and three assists for Rayo Vallecano, making him the top scoring midfielder in Spain’s top division before the Swans made their move.

Understandably, however, many Fantasy managers had reserved judgment, with few expecting the early season explosion that was to spark a frenzy of Fantasy transfer activity: Michu earned almost 400,000 new Fantasy Premier League (FPL) owners by Gameweek 4, leading to an extraordinary price rise from 6.5 to 7.4. By Gameweek 30, that cost was to hit the 8.5 mark, as Michu maintained his form, scoring six goals in a stunning December period.

The Statistics

Michu ended his first campaign in the Premier League with an 18-goal haul, complemented by three assists. Significantly, however, 13 of those goals arrived by the turn of the year as the Swans hitman stalled and Swansea’s slick football stuttered from February right through until Easter. Indeed, having delivered four double-figure returns prior to the December 8, Michu was to repeat that feat just once in 2013 – a devastating 18-point tally that, ironically, saw him punish QPR once again.

With 15 bonus points coming his way, Michu ended the FPL season ranked sixth amongst the midfielders, ending the Sky Sports season in fifth spot. Significantly, however, his prominent role in his first term were typified by staggering ownership figures, as Michu ended the season in almost 37% of FPL squads and over 33% of Sky Sports XI’s.

The Prospects

While Michu’s impact in his first season was remarkable, Fantasy managers will rightly go into the new campaign with reservations. Having struggled over the second half of the season, Michu was no longer a surprise package for the opposition, who perhaps worked to check his impact and attacking threat having heeded the warning sounded by his early spree of goals. The Spaniard will surely suffer from that next term – he’ll be a marked man from the get go.

More significantly, we can sure expect Michu’s role to change with a striker arriving at the Liberty to share the goalscoring burden. Laudrup was quick to make his intentions clear as we approached the season climax, outlining that he could no longer look to Michu to provide a similar goal haul in the next campaign:

“Without him [Michu] we would have been struggling, he’s been so important, goals are important. We cannot think that he will repeat that. We’re talking about an offensive midfielder who can play up front, but scoring more than 20 goals is not normal…we cannot put so much pressure on one player’s shoulders.”

With Chelsea’s Romelu Lukaku purported to be a target and even Stoke’s Kenwyne Jones previously on Laudrup’s list of candidates, it looks likely that we’ll see Michu revert to an attacking midfield role rather than be pushed to lead the line. That is undoubtedly the Spaniard’s favoured position and one that is unlikely to limit his potential output. It was a role that Michu occupied in the early season, during which time he demonstrated an unerring ability to arrive from deep to offer a cutting edge.

However, should Laudrup succeed in finding another attacking player who can threaten the 20-goal mark, we can safely assume, as Laudrup himself states, that Michu will struggle to repeat this season’s goal tally.

These doubts are compounded by an unhealthy ability to accrue yellow cards and, of course, the inevitable price hike across the Fantasy games.

We can surely expect Michu to demand a fee of around 9.0 in the FPL game should he remain classified a midfielder. At that price and with a lofty reputation to live up to, it seems unlikely that Michu will tempt early investment unless Swansea are granted a easy opening to the campaign or the Spaniard can again prove his worth with another August flurry.