Two players whose early-season performances have been overshadowed by the displays of team-mates on the opposite flank were the headline-grabbers on Monday evening at the Vitality Stadium, while there was a late winner from a fit-again Fantasy favourite of 2017/18.
David Brooks (£5.0m) and Patrick van Aanholt (£5.5m) are understandably much less popular Fantasy Premier League options than their respective team-mates Ryan Fraser (£5.9m) and Aaron Wan-Bissaka (£4.3m), but the differential pair came away from the final match of Gameweek 7 with a goal apiece on a frustrating night for their more widely owned colleagues.
Junior Stanislas (£6.0m), the vogue Bournemouth midfield option of last season, came off the bench to score the game’s winning goal from the penalty spot, a source of frustration for owners of Joshua King and Callum Wilson (both £6.3m) for different reasons – more of which we’ll discuss in the article below.
Wilfried Zaha (£7.0m), meanwhile, delivered an attacking return for the fourth away match on the spin.
Our final Scout Notes instalment of Gameweek 7 takes a look at the goals, assists, stand-out players and FPL talking points from a watchable encounter on the south coast.
Bournemouth 2-1 Crystal Palace
- Goals: David Brooks (£5.0m), Junior Stanislas (£6.0m) | Patrick van Aanholt (£5.5m),
- Assists: Callum Wilson (£6.3m), Jefferson Lerma (£4.5m) | Wilfried Zaha (£7.0m)
For those jumping on the Ryan Fraser bandwagon after his 18-point haul in Gameweek 5, the past two matches have been something of a let-down.
The Scottish international emerged from his side’s 2-1 victory over Crystal Palace with his lowest score of the season, a stoppage-time yellow card he picked up for time-wasting compounding the misery for his FPL owners by ultimately costing him a consolation bonus point.
The short-termists and knee-jerkers may desert the pint-sized midfielder after back-to-back blanks, but there were plenty of positives in Fraser’s performance on Monday evening to suggest further attacking returns may not be too far away.
Fraser should definitely have had at least one assist, with Callum Wilson spurning the “big chance” presented to him by his diminutive team-mate late in the match.
Fraser could, indeed, have feasibly emerged from the fixture with three assists to his name, having provided two inch-perfect crosses for centre-backs Nathan Ake (£5.0m) and Steve Cook (£4.6m) in the first half.
The Bournemouth winger made twice as many key passes as any other player on the pitch yesterday evening and only David Silva (£8.5m) has created more chances than Fraser in FPL this season. No player in any position can match Fraser’s total of seven big chances created, meanwhile.
Though he has found the net on three occasions already this season, goals probably aren’t going to be arriving as frequently in the long-term as assists: Fraser didn’t register a single shot on goal or penalty box touch at the Vitality on Monday, and indeed those three aforementioned league strikes in 2018/19 have come from just four efforts on target.
David Brooks, indeed, has registered exactly the same number of shots on goal and attempts from inside the box as Fraser this season, and the summer signing from Sheffield United got a long-overdue first attacking return of 2018/19 with a curling strike in the fourth minute of the match.
It had been coming: Brooks sat second-bottom of the expected goal involvement (xGI) delta rankings among FPL midfielders prior to Gameweek 7, having been forecast to play a part in 1.79 goals.
Owned by 0.1% of FPL managers before kick-off, Brooks may well experience a minor surge in popularity given his goal and budget price tag, but there has to be a degree of caution around the young midfielder, particularly given the return to fitness of Junior Stanislas.
Brooks has already been the fall-guy once this season as Eddie Howe changed shape for the visit to Stamford Bridge, and indeed the Welsh international was hooked on 57 minutes against Palace last night (despite his goal) as his manager attempted to combat their visitors’ increasing dominance in the game.
Nevertheless, Brooks is clearly a favourite of Howe’s and the Cherries boss paid tribute to the 21-year-old winger after the match, suggesting the player has plenty of goals in him:
He’s got outstanding technical qualities and I believe he’s a goalscorer in waiting – his finishing’s improving and it was a really good team move.
He’s started really well in his time with us and the potential of his performances are huge. I’m very excited by what he could be in the future.
I felt he deserved to start the season, he was magnificent in the last friendly against Marseille and he’s stayed in on merit. He’s not been overawed by the Premier League.
Wilson provided the assist (his fifth of the season; a high among FPL forwards) for Brooks’ goal, but his owners might have been left feeling a little short-changed when the Cherries’ striker wasted that aforementioned big chance provided to him by Fraser and then watched on as Stanislas converted an 86th-minute penalty to win the match for the hosts.
Wilson missed from the spot in Gameweek 1 but with new first-choice penalty-taker Joshua King having been substituted only minutes before the spot-kick award, the 17.8% of FPL managers who own Wilson had their hopes of a first goal since Gameweek 2 dashed when Stanislas assumed responsibility.
Needless to say, the situation would have irked King’s owners even more, having seen the Norwegian international fail to register a single shot in his 83 minutes on the pitch.
Howe acknowledged that there are several claimants to the role of chief penalty-taker after the match:
We’ve got a number of penalty takers. Joshua King would probably say he has the right to take them as he’s taken the last few very well, but that’s a decision we have to make.
Stanislas collected three bonus points for his winning goal (despite having only had three touches of the ball) and Howe paid tribute to his returning winger after the match:
It was a tough moment for him, coming onto the pitch and being given a penalty without touching the ball. Without really feeling that you’re in the match, it’s not an easy thing to do to get the composure to finish it off, but he took it really well. It’s been a long journey back from injury for him so I’m very pleased.
Howe had made two changes to his starting XI, with Simon Francis (£4.4m) and Lewis Cook (£4.8m) replacing Diego Rico (£4.5m) and Andrew Surman (£4.8m).
Rico had been a doubt for this match with a hamstring injury, though was fit enough – along with the returning Dan Gosling (£4.9m) – to take his place among the Bournemouth substitutes last night. Charlie Daniels (£4.3m), however, missed out again, so Adam Smith (£4.5m) moved over to left-back.
Roy Hodgson made only one change, meanwhile, with Max Meyer (£5.7m) making his first league start of the season at the expense of Cheikhou Kouyate (£4.8m) and putting in a tidy performance in the centre of midfield.
The Palace boss had this to say about his new German midfielder after the match:
I thought he did well. He got on the ball in the first half, and especially in the second half when we had the lion’s share of possession, were creating opportunities and playing very much in their half of the field, and so he did exactly what we wanted him to do.
He tired towards the end as did the other two players that I took off, but that’s because they put a lot of work in. It was a high-tempo, high-intensity game today.
Wilfried Zaha once again lined up on the left of a front three in Hodgson’s 4-3-3 system and his performance was a mix of perspiration, (very) occasional inspiration and frequent frustration at his team-mates’ inability to either give him possession or make intelligent runs around him.
The Palace talisman’s only effort on goal came from outside Bournemouth’s box, but the Ivorian midfielder did at least keep up his record of having delivered an attacking return in every away league match this season by providing the assist for Patrick van Aanholt’s offside-looking equaliser.
The Dutch left-back, who scored five goals in the final ten Gameweeks of 2017/18, got off the mark for this season in typically spectacular fashion, rifling a shot on his weaker right foot past Asmir Begovic (£4.5m) in the Bournemouth goal.
Van Aanholt has now sailed past Wan-Bissaka for total FPL points this season (35 to 29) and bests his fellow full-back for underlying attacking statistics (eight shots to Wan-Bissaka’s one, 15 penalty box touches to Wan-Bissaka’s four).
The budget right-back is unsurprisingly still offering the better value for money, however, returning 6.7 points per million spent to van Aanholt’s 6.4.
Mamadou Sakho (£5.0m) was the guilty party for Bournemouth’s penalty, catching Jefferson Lerma (£4.5m) with an elbow in the Palace box.
Hodgson was magnanimous about the penalty award:
When the ball is put into a crowded area and suddenly the referee blows his whistle, from our position on the bench we haven’t got a clue what’s gone on.
You have to have a TV screen and look at it in slow motion, and I think that Mamadou Sakho has got no intention to elbow the player or use it to stop him getting to the ball because he wouldn’t have got there as they wouldn’t have scored from the actual cross itself.
But I can’t deny that having seen it on the TV that Mamadou does catch the player, and as a result, the referee is quite entitled to give a penalty.
Andros Townsend‘s (£5.8m) excellent performance and brace of goals in the 3-0 Carabao Cup win over West Brom last week counted for little as he produced a listless display against the Cherries, with Jordan Ayew (£5.9m) also ineffectual as the spearhead of the Palace attack.
Whether that prompts a rethink from Hodgson regarding personnel or shape up top remains to be seen, with Zaha a possible option to move back to a central position where he began the season.
Bournemouth XI (4-4-2): Begovic; Francis, S. Cook, Ake, A. Smith; Brooks (Gosling 57′), L. Cook, Lerma, Fraser; Wilson, King (Stanislas 84′)
Crystal Palace XI (4-3-3): Hennessey; Wan-Bissaka, Sakho, Tomkins, Van Aanholt; McArthur (Schlupp 77′), Milivojevic, Meyer (Kouyate 84′); Townsend, Ayew (Sorloth 82)’, Zaha
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