I’ll start off simply. I am in the minority. I don’t have Chelsea’s nine-goal hero Diego Costa, have never had Diego Costa and, I confess, I don’t actually want Diego Costa.
There. I said it. Feels good to get it off my chest. I’m one of the 33.2% of players (as of writing) who don’t have him. In retrospect, this stems from (my mistake, if you will, of) not backing Costa from the get-go. I was torn, pre-season, between Costa and Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney as my ‘expensive’ forward and I took one look at United’s fixtures and decided. Whoops.
Anyway, the point of this article is about why I don’t think it’s really worth getting Costa in if you are one of the 33.2% who haven’t already. Here are my three key reasons for staying off this particular bandwagon.
Everybody has him
Say I transfer Costa in tomorrow. So what? It won’t catch me up any places. Everybody has him. If I have him, I’ll probably captain him each week too. A waste, as so will everybody else. Lets face it, while his consistency has been incredible, is he always going to be the top-scoring player in your XI? I’d wager most probably not. The only chance for rotation of captaincy comes if you also have one of Sergio Aguero or Daniel Sturridge (when he’s fit again) and even then it’s basically a switch between the two. It is also worth considering his potential failure. If he fails to score, that’s around 67% of players getting next to nothing (most getting next to nothing twice for the captaincy).
He’s no Luis Suarez
Granted, Costa has 54 Fantasy Premier League (FPL) points. But his strike rate of nine goals in the first seven games is unsustainable across the season. For an essential player who I’d want to captain each week I’d want the chance of bonus points and assists as well as goals. This was something that Robin Van Persie in 2012/13 and Luis Suarez in 2013/14 were able to achieve. This season Costa has scored but failed to pick up FPL bonus points on four occasions. His two sets of maximum bonus points were only achieved after scoring a brace and a hat-trick. It is clear that Costa is not one of this season’s bonus point darlings, unless he can score a hat-trick every game. Regarding assists, quite simply he has none. So with only goals in his locker his owners will be relying on a Herculean goal-scoring run this season to justify his price tag and the captaincy.
Too expensive
His current price tag of 11.1 in the FPL game is a lot. If you have the so-called best front three (something like Aguero/Costa/ Southampton’s Graziano Pelle) it costs you in excess of 30.0 in FPL. That’s almost a third of your starting budget and makes investing well in defence and midfield, where the likes of Angel di Maria, Raheem Sterling and other premium players are shining, tough. I’d argue that by having more money available you have far more flexibility to also take advantage of the the more expensive point-scoring defenders such as Leighton Baines and Branislav Ivanovic. Without Costa I can still get three decent strikers, a solid defence and a strong midfield. How many Costa owners can boast quality across the board?
There you go. I hope this generates a bit of discussion. In my view, if you want a big-hitting expensive forward, go for Aguero instead (under 13% ownership). I’ve been Costa-free for seven weeks and counting, am in the top 5% in FPL and have my wildcard intact.
