An exciting weekend ahead in Fantasy Premier League with a number of tasty-looking fixtures on the menu. As ever, Fantasy Football Scout is here to help you with those all important transfer and captaincy decisions. And, as Gameweek 6 served to remind us, vice-captain and bench order too. 

Transfers and Team News

Top of most people’s shopping list are Chelsea players. The Blues begin an enviable run of six matches in a row rated at just two on the FDR and, as discussed on the Scoutcast, they currently sit top of this site’s Fixture Ticker. 

Tammy Abraham and Mason Mount are the first and third most transferred-in players ahead of the 11:30 BST deadline. At the time of writing over 1million managers have signed the Chelsea duo. The pair are also included in the Scout Picks for Gameweek 7. 

And with good reason too. Using the data available to FFS Members, TheFantasyFreÆK highlighted their potential in his Gameweek 6 review:

Chelsea’s attack continues to impress, with Lampard’s men now standing second only to Man City for the highest xG (expected goals scored) over the past four Gameweeks. The main beneficiaries in terms of output in the coming weeks are likely to be Tammy Abraham and Mason Mount. The former is averaging at least 2 big chances per game over the past two Gameweeks, while the latter is not only averaging 1 big chance per game over the same period, but also stands as Chelsea’s top chance creator this season.

So while the attack looks in good shape, is it worth investing in their defence? 

This was a question posed to our FPL panel, particularly with budget £4.5m defender Fikayo Tomori in mind. The response was mixed. The Blues are without a clean sheet this season, so for FPL Heisenberg it’s a no-go:

I’m avoiding the Chelsea defence personally, as they are shipping too many goals for my liking.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom, Joe pointed out that Chelsea’s underlying statistics show promise:

It is also worth noting that their 31 shots conceded over the last four matches is the third-best in the league. If they can translate those promising figures into actual clean sheets then Tomori is a strong value option indeed.

It was a sentiment shared by Az on the Scoutcast:

Tomori at £4.5m is gamble that doesn’t really have much of a downside.

Elsewhere, Neale revealed in his round-up of the latest Team News that another budget player could be handed an opportunity to impress this Gameweek.

Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer confirmed that both Martial and Rashford are unlikely to feature on Monday night, potentially paving the way for £4.4m forward Mason Greenwood to make his first Premier League start:

[Greenwood] might be [starting], because he’s proven when he’s been on the pitch in the last two games he’s started against Astana and Rochdale, when you get him in the box, he’s dangerous.

Rotation’s Alter Ego provided us with the latest team news in his usual team-by-team breakdown.

Captain Conundrum

Abraham joins a number of contenders all vying for the armband. Salah currently leads the way with just over 26% of the votes cast by FFS users. In addition, Sterling, Son, and Aguero are all attracting significant attention. 

The problem this season is selecting the right one. As Joe whimsically observed, referencing a famous line of Eric Morecambe’s:

I am playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. I am captaining all the right captains, but not necessarily in the right Gameweek.

The FPL General has been suffering too. He opened his opinion piece this week with the line:

Can we remove the captaincy aspect of Fantasy Premier League now, please?

This is all in marked contrast to last season when David went 17 Gameweeks in a row without a captain fail. In fact, he did so well at picking his captain that he ended up with more captain points than the overall winner, Adam Levy.

In both Captain Sensible and the Captaincy Video, David brought us his usual in-depth research assessing not only the form of the popular captain picks but also the quality of their respective opposition. 

Aguero was considered unlucky to have only scored once against Watford, David felt he could have scored two hat-tricks. But his recent form isn’t just about one match, as David highlighted: 

Of the 19 shots in the box Aguero has registered in his last four matches, only six of them were recorded against the Hornets (31.6%).

For those considering Sterling, an unused substitute in that 8-0 win over Watford, the Englishman played just 73 minutes in the League Cup in midweek, scoring and assisting.

Although if there is a downside to captaining a Manchester City player, it’s that despite conceding nine ‘big chances’, Everton’s defence has not been as porous as we might like: 

Only upcoming opponents Manchester City (28) have conceded fewer goal attempts than the Toffees (30)

Meanwhile Salah’s opponents Sheffield United could be considered slightly lucky to have only conceded six goals. According to the expected goals stats they should have conceded seven.  

Abraham, who has had more shots on target than Aguero and ranks second best for big chances, faces a Brighton side that is difficult to assess. “I don’t know which Brighton is going to turn up” admitted Seagulls-fan Joe. 

They’ve kept clean sheets at goal-shy Watford and Newcastle. However, their only road trip at a top-six side so far resulted in a 4-0 defeat at the hands of Manchester City.

In Case You Missed It

Unai Emery confirmed that despite letting Pepe take a penalty in Gameweek 6, Aubameyang remains the first-choice penalty taker. 

Norwich City have performed much better at home this season than they have on the road. 

And is the template settled already? Valar(Keith) began an interesting discussion in a popular hot topic. 

Before we leave the Premier League and head to Scandinavia, managers this week have been asking themselves, what if? 

What if you hadn’t changed your team since Gameweek 1, how many points would you have? Curiously, Greyhead discovered in his latest look at The Great and The Good, that only four of this elite bunch have actually made a positive impact with their transfer dealings.

The award for best retort of the week goes to Az. With Joe lamenting his woeful captaincy picks this season, as he discovered – using Fusen’s FPL Statistico – that he would have been nearly 50 points better off if he’d captained his vice-captain instead, Az remarked:

If my aunt had nuts, Joe, she’d be my Uncle.

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

For a full update on all FFS Mini-Leagues and Community Tournaments, please click here. 

Since publishing the article, there has been a midweek round of fixtures in Sweden. The latest from Meltens and Goktug is as follows:

A large number of managers deployed a chip in Gameweek 25. In the top 1,000 there were 130 “Park the bus” (all defenders get double points), 98 “Attack! Attack!” (all strikers get double points), 42 “Two Captains” and 8 wildcards. 

Daniel Sebestyen was one of the managers deploying the powerful “Park the bus” and he got an excellent score of 116. Clean sheets from all his defenders helped, and Lars Krogh Gersson even slotted home a penalty contributing an incredible 28-point return! 

Daniel overtakes Henrik Mäkitalo again and is now ranked second overall, just 11 points behind the top-ranked manager.

Henrik played a well-timed mini-Wildcard, as all three players he took out didn’t play a minute, while the ones he got in got him a total of 19 points. Third place still belongs to Simon Eriksson, who is seventh overall just 5 points behind Henrik now.

We were also given an update by Clouseau on the latest goings on in the Scout Fantasy League. I’ll probably have more to say about this entertaining and hard-fought competition once I’m doing a bit better in it! 

For those interested in the Head-to-Head Leagues, the main page can be linked to here. A link has also been added to the ‘Scout Leagues’ section on the home page.

Registration remains open for the Pundit’s Play-Off Community Tournament. The deadline for entry is Monday 30 September.

Best of luck with Gameweek 7!