Aleksandar Mitrovic‘s (£6.7m) excellent underlying attacking statistics finally translated into Fantasy returns but it could have been so much better for the Serbian forward’s owners at Craven Cottage on Saturday afternoon.
Mitrovic left it late to avoid a ninth blank in 11 starts but the mid-price forward converted a Ryan Sessegnon (£6.0m) through-ball in the 90th minute following a Fulham swift breakaway to register his eighth goal of the season – his first since Gameweek 13.
As usual, the former Newcastle striker dominated the penalty box touch and shot counts, with all five of his efforts (four of which were headers) coming from inside the Huddersfield area. At the time of writing, no FPL forward can match either statistic over the last six Gameweeks.
Mitrovic ought to have bagged a second goal, though, or at least had the opportunity to do so.
A handball from Chris Lowe (£4.4m) in the Huddersfield box had presented the Cottagers with a glorious chance of opening the scoring on 80 minutes, but an insistent Aboubakar Kamara (£4.4m) – who had forced the error from the German defender – refused to allow the club’s designated penalty taker, Mitrovic, to wrestle the ball from him.
Kamara’s miss from the spot only incensed Fulham fans and Mitrovic owners further, with Claudio Ranieri incandescent in his post-match press conference:
When the man thinks only of himself it’s not right. He didn’t respect me, the club, his teammates, the crowd, he take the penalty, the ball, ‘I want to shoot’. Don’t listen to reason, he wants to shoot.
It’s Mitrovic [who is the first-choice penalty taker] but he [Kamara] scored the last penalty and he thought, ‘ah I am the man’.
He doesn’t understand the reason [why people are angry]. For him, everything is fine in the match. It’s unbelievable. It’s the first time in my life.
Asked if Kamara. a popular budget forward option among Fantasy managers, could be dropped from the first-team squad as punishment, Ranieri said:
Could be, I think first of all of the club and the squad. If I think it is good for the squad he can play, if I think it’s not good for the squad I take out. Now I have to see the Arsenal match and then decide.
This was a second clean sheet in three matches for Fulham, but there will seldom be easier shut-outs than yesterday, with Huddersfield again proving they are sorely lacking a cutting edge in attack. For all their dominance in possession, the Terriers never really tested Sergio Rico (£4.4m) in the Fulham goal with any one of their five shots on target.
Fulham lined up in a 3-4-3 again but there were system changes throughout the match as Ranieri attempted to shake his troops from a fairly uninspiring display.
The Italian manager discussed his half-time substitutions, one of which was enforced as Alfie Mawson (£4.8m) picked up a knee injury, and the moving of Tom Cairney (£4.7m) from a wide role to central midfield:
I wanted to make two changes but at the end Mawson was injured. I had to wait to put Sessegnon and I put him on the last ten minutes because I can take risk.
I believe until the end because the first half was very difficult for us because we knew they pressed a lot in front because they are the third team in the league who press so high. We lost a lot of balls.
In the second half with Cairney in the centre of midfield we found the solution and we played better and we created so many chances to score goals.
Joe Bryan (£4.8m) impressed in the left wing-back role, firing over four crosses and creating a “big chance” for Mitrovic.
Calum Chambers (£4.2m), who continued “out of position” in central midfield, will be unavailable for the match against parent club Arsenal on New Year’s Day, meanwhile.
Huddersfield Town XI (3-5-1-1 ): Lossl; Jorgensen, Schindler, Kongolo; Durm, Billing, Hadergjonaj, Hogg, Lowe; Pritchard (Kachunga 65′); Mounie (Depoitre 65′).
Brighton and Hove Albion 1-0 Everton
Goal: Jurgen Locadia (£5.3m)
Assist: None
Such is FPL and football in general, an Everton team who scored five goals in their last Premier League away fixture three days earlier couldn’t find their way past a Brighton side who hadn’t kept a clean sheet in nine matches.
The Seagulls rode their luck at times with the visitors twice striking the woodwork, while there was an element of fortune about Jurgen Locadia‘s (£5.3m) winner too: the Dutchman turning in a loose ball that had bobbled into his path via an unwitting touch by Andre Gomes (£5.4m).
FPL managers now know which £4.0m-rated goalkeeper Chris Hughton prefers in the absence of Mathew Ryan (£4.5m), as David Button (£4.0m) got the nod over Jason Steele (£4.0m) between the sticks.
After a slightly shaky start, Button went on to have a fine match in goal and returned nine points to reward those gambling on his budget appeal from the off.
Richarlison (£7.0m) was desperately unlucky not to score with one effort that Button brilliantly tipped onto the post, while Button had also reacted well to keep out the Brazilian’s strike from a narrow angle in the first half.
Chris Hughton praised his stand-in custodian after full-time:
For all David Button’s experience it is not easy for a keeper to just step in. Mat Ryan has been good for us. Button was excellent today. You train as hard as he does, when you step into a match you’re going to play well.
Lewis Dunk (£4.5m) and Shane Duffy (£4.6m) were, perhaps significantly, partnered together for the first time since Gameweek 15 and Hughton highlighted how crucial their partnership is at centre-back to Brighton’s clean sheet prospects:
It’s important because they know each other very well, and that’s not taking anything away from Leon Balogun, who’s played well in the last few games for us.
But they’re a partnership that know each other very well, and they had to deal with a fair bit of pressure towards the end of the game.
The Brighton boss also heralded Locadia’s versatility:
Jurgen’s flexibility is important for us, one thing he has is a lot of scope in the way he plays.
We’ve used 4-3-3 more often of late than in the past and Jurgen is one who’s used to the system from his previous club. He can play on either flank or down the middle, we’ve always felt he was an important member of the squad.
Sometimes circumstances around the squad, such as the form of other players, can make it more difficult for him, but to us he’s always been important to the team.
Locadia has two goals in as many matches but with Brighton sitting bottom of our Season Ticker for the next three Gameweeks and the budget FPL forward effectively playing out of position wide on the left, there likely will be little interest in him for now.
Florin Andone (£5.0m), who forced a fine reflex save out of Jordan Pickford (£5.0m), continues to share pitch-time with Glenn Murray (£6.4m) and is a long way from our budget forward radar.
Lucas Digne (£5.2m) was the most-bought FPL defender of Gameweek 20 but couldn’t follow up his 17-point haul from Boxing Day, though created two chances and had as many shots on goal to keep his impressive underlying stats ticking over.
Everton sit top of our Season Ticker for the next six Gameweeks and Digne’s appeal is only set to increase as a result, though this was another match without a clean sheet (their seventh in a row) for the Toffees.
Marco Silva stuck with a 3-4-3 for this match and there must be worries about Gylfi Sigurdsson‘s (£7.3m) rotation risk if he is to persist with a wing-back system.
The Iceland international was the fall guy here and it could be that Silva continues to perm two from three of Sigurdsson, Andre Gomes (£5.4m) and Idrissa Gueye (£4.8m) in central midfield.
This defeat may force a rethink from Silva, though, and even if not, Sigurdsson could potentially be deployed in one of the front three positions anyway – Theo Walcott (£6.1m) certainly looks vulnerable based on current form.
Sigurdsson came on a substitute and almost grabbed an assist when his free-kick was headed onto the bar by Kurt Zouma (£5.0m).
With the turnaround time between Everton’s games being particularly unkind this Christmas, Silva warned of not having sufficient time to prepare for the visit of Leicester:
It is important to be strong again and ready for the next match in three days.
We don’t have time to prepare in the normal way but that is the schedule and we have to put in our players’ minds how important the next game is.
Everton XI (3-4-3): Pickford; Keane, Zouma, Mina (Sigurdsson 65′); Coleman, Gomes (Calvert-Lewin 72′), Gueye, Digne; Bernard (Niasse 80′), Walcott, Richarlison.
Leicester City 0-1 Cardiff City
Goal: Victor Camarasa (£4.6m)
Assist: Bobby Reid (£5.2m)
After successive wins over Chelsea and Manchester City, it was almost inevitable that Leicester would slip up against a team without a victory on the road in 2018/19 and who had scored fewer goals away from home than any other top-flight side going into Gameweek 20.
Claude Puel had said fatigue was a factor going into this fixture and he won’t be the last manager to use tiredness as an excuse for a defeat over the festive period.
Jamie Vardy (£8.9m) was substituted midway through the second half of this defeat and was one of the players namechecked in Puel’s post-match press conference.
The Leicester boss said:
They were tired, Marc (Albrighton) and Jamie also, in their control, with their touches.
It’s normal, we tried to find solution and to push with fresh players giving their best. It’s a normal thing to try to find the good clinical edge.
I manage my team about what I see. Jamie was in difficulty, he was tired. It’s normal. He has played almost all the last games, with full minutes.
For Jamie or for other players, they have tiredness in this busy period.
It was an underwhelming afternoon for Vardy’s owners (of which there were over 100,000 more of going into this Gameweek), with the Leicester striker being denied by Neil Etheridge (£4.5m) with his only real clear sight of goal.
The frustration was compounded when Leicester were awarded a spot-kick just seven minutes after his departure, with James Maddison (£6.8m) drawing a save from Etheridge – his third stop from 12 yards this season – and being denied a tap-in on the rebound by a last-ditch Sol Bamba (£4.5m) tackle.
It was one of those days for Maddison and his owners too, with the summer signing from Norwich missing from the spot, being denied an assist when creating that aforementioned “big chance” for Vardy and seeing a first-half free-kick parried away by Etheridge.
While Vardy had three goals and an assist in five starts before this game, the Leicester striker has a fractious relationship with his manager and the Foxes’ patient, possession-based approach under Puel doesn’t seem to get the best out of his abilities.
Vardy had indeed previously mentioned that Puel’s style of play doesn’t suit him and it was no surprise that he was more of a threat against Manchester City and Chelsea, given that the Foxes adopted a more direct, counter-attacking approach against the “big six” sides.
This was a second successive clean sheet for Cardiff and in truth, Etheridge’s seven saves were fairly comfortable in nature.
Bamba and Greg Cunningham (£4.2m) were particularly impressive at the back and owners of Spurs assets might be slightly concerned going into the New Year’s Day meeting with the Bluebirds given their mini-resurgence at the back.
Warnock was asked what his side’s defensive improvement had been down to and said:
I think we’re better organised really.
West Ham would have been a different story if the penalty had gone in. I think we were a bit too negative against Watford.
And then when we changed the system at Palace it worked well and today it was great to get a clean sheet against a team like Leicester that have done so late.
As a manager you live and die by your decisions, and we needed fresh legs because they gave me everything at Palace.
It was just who to leave out and who to bring in. All credit to the lads, I thought today we deserved to win. I thought it was our best performance because we were playing a team who were flying, with the last two results they had.
To compete with them and limit them, and if we’d been more precise in the final third we could have scored two or three.
For the owners of Harry Kane (£12.6m), Son Heung-min (£8.8m) et al, though, it should be said that Cardiff have conceded more attempts on goal and shots in the box than any Premier League team over the last two Gameweeks, despite their successive shut-outs.
How much energy two rearguard efforts in four days has sapped also remains to be seen.
Victor Camarasa (£4.6m) demonstrated the problem with his bench fodder status with his third attacking return in four Gameweeks; just under 66% of his owners benched the Cardiff midfielder this weekend.
Camarasa’s superb strike from distance won the game for Cardiff late in the match and the classy Spaniard had three attempts on goal in all, lining up again as a “number ten” behind the fit-again Callum Paterson (£5.1m).
Camarasa has corner-taking duties at Cardiff and is on penalties, too, with Warnock saying that he is encouraging the on-loan playmaker to chance his arm more:
Víctor needed to come to a club like ours. He needed to be loved and welcomed, and he’s such a super boy.
He does that regularly, but his free-kick was poor today and he shot into the stands just before. I keep telling him: ‘Keep shooting – I’ll never shout at you.’
Assists: Gerard Deulofeu (£5.5m) | Matt Ritchie (£5.8m)
Javi Gracia defended his decision to make six changes for the visit of Newcastle on Saturday, with the Hornets having to rely on a late header from substitute Abdoulaye Doucoure (£5.9m) to spare their blushes.
The Watford boss said:
I have to choose different players in this moment because we are playing every three or four days. I have to give the chances for all of my players. I have said many times that all my players deserve the chance to play as they work very well.
We are a good squad – not only a good team. If I don’t do it in this moment, when can I do it? It was the moment to change the players as some of them needed a rest. I have to prepare for all the games. Now you see the result you can say that [I should not have made the changes], but I don’t agree.
Doucoure, Jose Holebas (£4.8m) and Troy Deeney (£5.8m) – three of the six most-owned Watford assets in FPL – were among the players to drop out of the Watford starting XI, with Isaac Success (£4.6m) recalled alongside Gerard Deulofeu (£5.5m) in attack.
Success and Deulofeu registered seven attempts on goal between them but it was the introduction of Deeney and Doucoure early in the second half that provided the physical presence and drive so badly lacking before then: a one-on-one chance for Deulofeu that Martin Dubravka (£5.0m) got a leg to was the only clear opportunity that the Hornets had.
Deulofeu switched to the wing upon Deeney taking to the field and it was his cross that was met by Doucoure’s head on 81 minutes to level the scores up.
It was another classic Newcastle away-day performance after their hammering at Anfield, with the Magpies content to soak up a lot of pressure in their 3-4-2-1/5-2-2-1 and hit their hosts on the break.
Salomon Rondon (£5.8m) was restored to the Newcastle starting XI after his rest on Merseyside and was a real handful for the Watford backline, nodding in a Matt Ritchie (£5.8m) cross to give United the lead and having two efforts chalked off for offside.
Benitez said of his Venezuelan striker:
He’s doing well so we have to think he will be OK.
For us, every player is important because you have to make substitutions in different games. You need fresh legs and you need the quality of everyone.
I think if we make passes and crosses we will score some goals so hopefully we can do the same for him and for the other strikers.
Kenedy (£4.8m) was omitted from the match-day squad after some poor displays, with his manager confirming there wasn’t an injury:
It’s a technical decision. I think the other players were training well and I wanted to give them a chance.
Federico Fernandez (£4.4m) picked up a hip injury and had to be substituted at half-time, meanwhile.
Because I’m top of my mini league and have been all season but in the last few weeks they have closed the gap from 80 to 8pts so time to make some changes. I didn’t have Salah or Pogba before
No not yet. Happy to wait and see. Plenty of good subs next week. eg Robertson and lingard and masuaku. Not necessary to kneejerk. If he misses next week then FA Cup so he may only miss one league game. I will hold and see.
