Miraculously, players infected with a contagious dose of “International-itis” are making full recoveries. Is anyone really surprised? Flags have been removed for the likes of Manchester United’s Anthony Martial, Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and Crystal Palace’s Wilfried Zaha. However there are the odd exceptions.
It has been confirmed that Manchester City’s Benjamin Mendy is out for 10 to 12 weeks and Tottenham’s Kieran Trippier is also facing a spell on the sidelines. Fantasy managers have sold the pair en masse – the defenders have departed from over 700k FPL teams at the time of writing.
The most popular Black Friday purchases are Manchester City’s Aymeric Laporte and Liverpool duo Andrew Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold. Each one has been snapped up by over 150k new managers.
A popular choice on the site, Everton’s Lucas Digne is only the tenth most transferred in defender this week with a little over 50k new owners. This includes Joe and Az. Will they be disappointed? Or will the 2.6% owned defender prove a canny differential?
For a run down of all the latest team news Neale (aka Skonto Rigga) has put together this handy article. To further help us with our transfer decisions Neale has researched player rotation over the festive schedule last year. As we enter this famously hectic period are there any players we can rely upon to start?
The latest ‘Frisking the Fixtures’ article points to a favourable swing for Manchester United. After six goals in the last five gameweeks, the potential of Anthony Martial was discussed on this week’s Scoutcast (see 15 minutes 50 seconds), and was the subject of an excellent Hot Topic by TheFantasyFreÆK. According to the bookies’ odds article posted by circusmonkey, Martial is expected to score 7.5 points this gameweek.
The third most transferred in player this round – after Wolves’s Jiménez and Everton’s Richarlison – the Frenchman has overtaken Paul Pogba as the most owned United outfield player. It will be interesting to see which of the two takes the next penalty. United have been awarded five penalties so far this season; Pogba has taken four of them missing two, while Martial converted their most recent penalty when Pogba missed out through injury.
Bookies odds were also the subject of another community article – Expected Clean Sheets by WesMantooth. An appreciation of odds as a predictive tool, the article highlighted the good work done by G-Whizz each week with his look at clean sheet odds. This week Wolves come out on top with a 58% chance of a shut-out.
Greyhead returned with his weekly look at The Great and The Good, reflecting on the moves made by this select band of managers in Gameweek 12. Mark’s hit spree continued as he took his quota of West Ham players up to three. Fabianski and Balbuena joining Marko Arnautovic in his side.
Unsurprisingly Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah was the popular captain choice for his side’s home match against Fulham. However a much trickier choice presents itself this week. The Captain Sensible article weighs up the pros and cons of armband candidates Richarlison, Salah, and Aguero. While Joe and Neale also discuss the captaincy options in this 20 minute video.
Joe continued his excellent ‘Meet the Manager’ series interviewing financial services expert Marc Rubinstein. Discover how Marc applies risk management techniques to FPL management, an approach which has garnered three top five thousand finishes.
David followed up his insightful work from last week on where teams concede the most chances from. Part two examines the defensive weaknesses of the remaining ten teams – Leicester to Wolves – and Part three consolidates and digs deeper into the players most likely to benefit over the next six gameweeks. It’s thrown up a few expected and some unexpected names, and has certainly provided food for thought.
Neale continued David’s comparison articles from last week, examining the performances of Marcos Alonso and Mohamed Salah. Over the International Break, this series of members articles has also taken a look at Raheem Sterling, Sergio Aguero and Harry Kane. The purpose is to compare their current season with their best ever season to gauge how well they are performing and if they are providing value for money.
A selection of players who clearly haven’t provided value for money this season were the subject of an article by Tacalabala. He looked back on the traps many of us have fallen into – promising players who blanked as soon as they entered our teams.
To view all our discussions please visit our Hot Topics page, and if you’ve got some analysis, scout reports or features brewing, be sure to visit our Community section to submit your article.
If you’re a member and are yet to get to grips with the custom statistics tables, you can view this movie for an explanation of how they work. Also, remember to tag them so that people can find the tables with ease.
COMMUNITY TOURNAMENTS
While the draw for the first round of the FFS Cup 2018/19 has taken place, fantasy managers have until 10.30am on Monday November 26 to enter their teams for the Members Cup. Details on how to enter can be found here.
Both tournaments have £300 in prizes on offer.
The FFS Manager Melee gets underway this week with the seeding round. When ‘Arry Met Sarri won the best photo competition and have been entered into pot 1.
The second FFS Charity Cup took place last weekend in Watford. A huge thank you to former Career Hall of Fame number one Peter Kouwenberg (aka MyPrettyPony) for organising everything from the venue to the format of the tournament and the post match drinks in the pub.
There were some keenly contested matches and amongst some fairly average finishing (my xG stats were impressive, my total of 0 goals less so) there were moments of sublime teamwork. At least that’s how I like to remember it.
Nearly £700 has been raised for our chosen charity – the Campaign Against Living Miserably. CALM is dedicated to preventing male suicide, the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45 in the UK. It would be great to push total closer to £1,000 – donations can still be made via our JustGiving page.
If you are running a community tournament and would like the latest scores included in future Community Round-Ups, please email us a summary of the current leaders and a link to your league, spreadsheet or head-to-head competition at geoff@fantasyfootballscout.co.uk
