The FPL Digest: David Silva, impressive Cherries and bench fodder

Our Gameweek 4 coverage ends with this regular look back at a player, team and discussion point that attracted our interest in the weekend’s matches.

David Silva continues to excel, while Bournemouth‘s underlying statistics bode well for the six league matches ahead.

We also share our thoughts on squad depth as the fixture schedule gets ever more congested.

The Player

As we mentioned in our Scout Notes over the weekend, Fernandinho (£5.4m) is the only Manchester City midfielder to have started all four of the reigning champions’ Premier League fixtures this season.

The City midfield is even more of an FPL minefield this campaign, despite an extra starting berth having opened up when Kevin De Bruyne (£9.8m) was ruled out for three months with a knee injury ahead of Gameweek 2.

While Sergio Aguero (£11.3m) is the most-owned forward in the game and Benjamin Mendy (£6.4m) has been selected by more than one in three FPL managers, City’s midfield assets are understandably being given the cold shoulder by the Fantasy community with rotation now in operation: not one of their players in this position is owned by more than 9% of managers. Bernardo Silva (£7.6m), the Sky Blues’ most-selected midfield asset, is only the 15th-most-popular midfielder in FPL overall.

While the stock of Riyad Mahrez (£8.8m) and especially Leroy Sane (£9.2m) continues to nosedive, David Silva‘s (£8.5m) popularity has quietly been growing.

The 32-year-old Spaniard has started every league match in which he has been available this season, with Pep Guardiola retrospectively revealing that Silva’s absence from City’s Gameweek 1 squad was down to a leg injury.

Though he emerged from the 2-1 win over Newcastle United on Saturday evening with nothing but appearance points, Silva’s performance is deserving of wider scrutiny from a Fantasy perspective.

“El Mago” had more attempts on goal, shots in the box and penalty box touches than any other player on show at the Etihad – including Aguero and Gabriel Jesus (£10.4m) – while no-one on either side created more chances for their team-mates than Silva.

Eden Hazard (£10.7m) was the only FPL midfielder to have more touches in the opposition area than Silva in Gameweek 4, while no-one in the Spanish playmaker’s position registered more shots from inside the box in the weekend just gone.

Despite making only three appearances this season, just two midfielders – last season’s top FPL scorers in Mohamed Salah and Raheem Sterling – have been more active in the penalty box than Silva in 2018/19.

Silva’s rate of key passes this season – a chance created every 19 minutes – is also better than any FPL midfielder who has made more than one league start.

The consensus that Silva’s ability to unpick stubborn defences would be needed all the more in De Bruyne’s absence has certainly panned out in recent weeks, even if “Merlin” has only the one goal to show for his impressive underlying statistics.

As Silva’s penalty box touch count shows, though, he isn’t been asked to sit as deep as one would expect De Bruyne to: in three Premier League starts this season, Silva already has over a quarter of the penalty box touches that his injured Belgian colleague managed in the whole of 2017/18.

Silva’s own personal goal threat averages are also way up on those recorded in City’s most recent title-winning campaign.

Granted, Silva is as much at risk of rotation as any of Guardiola’s midfielders, even more so when the UEFA Champions League group stage gets underway. We can expect him to start more league matches than not, though, particularly in this run of fixtures in which his artistry is required to help break down sides that are happy to cede possession and attempt to suffocate City’s attack.

At £8.5m, Silva is perhaps available at a price that would mean the odd no-show in the league wouldn’t be too disastrous for his owners – his cheaper cost than Raheem Sterling (£11.0m), for example, meaning that the extra budget could be used to improve a fodder-heavy substitutes’ bench.

Some observers would naturally point to Bernardo’s case, in that a hitherto “nailed” City midfield pick was suddenly dropped to the bench without warning despite impressing. David Silva, though, is outperforming his Portuguese team-mate across the board in terms of underlying goal threat and would appear more likely to return FPL points when he does feature.

An FPL rotation risk he most certainly is – but while De Bruyne remains crocked, Silva is perhaps the only City player with the capacity to match the Belgian’s ingenuity in midfield.

The Team

Though they succumbed to their first league defeat of the season at Stamford Bridge at the weekend, there was plenty of encouragement for Bournemouth and the owners of their FPL assets in their 2-0 reverse to Chelsea.

The Cherries sit top of our Season Ticker for the next six matches – before their fixtures take a turn for the worse from Gameweek 11 onwards – and Eddie Howe’s side would appear to represent excellent value for money from now until the end of October.

Bournemouth arguably merited a point in west London on Saturday, their uncharacteristically solid defensive display highlighted by the fact that Chelsea didn’t have a single “big chance” all match. The Cherries, meanwhile, carved out two clear-cut opportunities of their own: Nathan Ake (£5.0m) and Callum Wilson (£6.2m) both missing from close range with the score at 0-0.

The Cherries’ underlying statistics across the season are heartening: no Premier League club has created more clear-cut chances than Bournemouth this season, with no side outside of the “big six” registering more shots inside the opposition box.

No FPL forward has registered more penalty box touches or attempts from inside the area as Wilson in 2018/19.

Ryan Fraser (£5.6m), meanwhile, has created more big chances than any FPL player this season.

While the south coast side have always been attractive to watch going forward, a question mark has hung over their defence ever since their promotion from the Football League: no top-flight side recorded fewer clean sheets (six) than the Cherries last season.

Their defensive statistics this season are all the more eye-catching as a result.

No side have allowed their opponents fewer big chances than Bournemouth after the first four Gameweeks of this campaign, while Watford are the only team outside of the “big six” to have conceded fewer shots on target.

Bournemouth’s opponents in their next league fixture, Leicester City, sit joint-bottom by way of shots in the box.

While Fraser, Wilson and Josh King (£6.4m) are the more obvious targets, Bournemouth’s defence is worthy of consideration for the next half-dozen matches.

While more expensive than the other Cherries’ stoppers around him, Ake has had more big chances than any FPL defender this season and could quite easily add another attacking return to the goal he scored against Everton in Gameweek 3 – as well as converting those notable underlying defensive numbers into a clean sheet or two.

Steve Cook (£4.6m), who also has a league goal to his name already this season, is another who couples potential defensive returns with a real goal threat from set-pieces.

Diego Rico (£4.5m), in for the injured Charlie Daniels (£4.5m) this weekend, is one to watch too: the Spanish left-back seems set to be heavily involved in dead-ball situations and hit the bar with a free-kick in the EFL Cup match against MK Dons last week.

The Talking Point

With the start of the UEFA Champions League and Europa League group stages now just around the corner and rotation in full swing before we’ve even reached the first international break, the days of owning unplayable bench fodder may now be at an end.

While it is tempting to chase form players such as Marcos Alonso (£6.8m) and Sadio Mane (£9.9m) on a weekly basis and upgrade our premium picks to assuage the fear of missing out on yet more double-digit hauls, Fantasy bosses may soon have to make some “unsexy” transfer moves in order to ensure a full starting XI every week.

Those who have wildcarded will likely have already addressed the issue regarding the non-playing budget members of their squad, but for those hoping to keep this sacred chip in their pocket for a little while longer, as much attention arguably needs to be paid to positions 12-15 as it does the starting XI.

The benchings of Bernardo Silva, Pedro (£6.8m) and Henrikh Mkhitaryan (£7.2m) last weekend, Ben Davies (£5.8m) in Gameweek 3 and Kyle Walker and Raheem Sterling a week before that are portentous signs, especially with the “big six” about to embark on a month-long run of playing two matches a week.

While these players are just as likely to emerge from the bench for an irksome “one-pointer” as remain an unused substitute, provisions have to be made for the latter eventuality.

Surprise injury-related omissions such as Wilfried Zaha‘s (£7.0m) in Gameweek 4 only compound the problem.

The likes of Lee Peltier (£3.9m), Jan Bednarek (£3.9m), Markus Suttner (£4.0m), Aboubakar Kamara (£4.5m) and Collin Quaner (£4.4m) are now luxuries – if that’s the right word – we can’t afford, and while a sideways move (or slight upgrade) to an Aaron Wan-Bissaka (£4.1m) or Raul Jimenez (£5.5m) are somewhat irritating free transfers to make, the lull of the international break seems to be an appropriate time to address these growing concerns. A squad of 12 or 13 playing outfielders may not even be enough in the autumn ahead.

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