Why I’m bringing KDB back and considering captaining him for Gameweek 10

Andy is the face of Let’s Talk FPL, one of the leading Fantasy YouTube channels and has been a big part of the Scoutcast over a number of years. He has two top 10k finishes and an additional three inside the top 20k over nine years.

Fantasy Premier League (FPL) is an easy game. Simply pick the players who’ll score the most points each week.

That’s all well and good until Gameweek 9 has ended and you’ve scored 25 points in total…..yes, total!

It’s not the best way to start this series of articles, the only promising element is it’s unlikely I’ll have a worse Gameweek all season, at least that’s what I’m telling myself.

This is usually the part where I’d write about the previous week in more detail but there’s very little to write home about. Only two of my players managed to do better than blanking with Fikayo Tomori (£4.7m) and Raheem Sterling (£12.1m) picking up a massive five points each. Every other player got between one to two points, except for Issa Diop (£4.5m) who contributed with a cheeky zero.

I’ve already begun wiping away the memory of the previous Gameweek and am entirely focussed on Gameweek 10.

I’m sitting on two free transfers and a miserly sum of £0.1m in the bank. High Team Value isn’t something I’m blessed with and my team currently looks like this.

Decisions can often feel tougher after a poor Gameweek so I’m trying to go back to basics. Transferring Son Heung-min (£9.7m) into my team in Gameweek 8 knowing that Kevin De Bruyne (£10.1m) would likely only be out for one week, and that Son would have a long trip during the international break was a mistake. There’s no overthinking needed here, the Belgian must come straight back into my team. I’m blocking out the fact Son just scored a brace against a poor Red Star Belgrade side.

Poor team value makes this decision a little trickier. Deciding to bring de Bruyne in is easy, funding the move, not so much. I need to find £0.2m.

The main choices I think I have with this team are:

• Mohamed Salah (£12.4m) to Sadio Mané (£11.8m)
• Mason Mount (£6.8m) to Callum Hudson-Odoi (£6.0m)
• Teemu Pukki (£7.0m) to a cheaper forward
• One of Çaglar Söyüncü (£4.7m), Diop, or Tomori to Diego Rico (£4.2m)

With Lukasz Fabianski (£5.0m) sidelined until 2020 I don’t have as much faith in Diop, but a home fixture against Sheffield United isn’t one I want to miss.

I feel I’m at peace with potentially owning Mané instead of Salah at some point this season, but it feels too sideways right now. The Senegalese international has looked fantastic for Liverpool over a long period of time, but the underlying statistics are still looking good for the Egyptian and let’s not forget his 259+ points for the last two seasons.

Mount to Hudson-Odoi feels like the sexiest move of the lot. Hudson-Odoi may not be Eden Hazard (yet) but he’s exciting to watch. Chelsea have looked on fire all season when it comes to scoring goals, beating Liverpool for the number of shots inside the box.

That being said it’s Pukki who I’m looking to transfer out to fund de Bruyne. There’s no getting away from the fact he’s blanked five times in the last six Gameweeks, that’s inexcusable for any player.

He might be cheap, but I paid £7.1m, have already lost £0.1m and I’m not confident in returns over the next few weeks with statistically one of the best defences in the league up next in Manchester United.

Looking over the last four Gameweeks, it’s grim reading as a Pukki owner.

As for captaincy, it has to be a Manchester City player this week. For me, it’s between de Bruyne and Sterling and I’m finding it hard to split them.

Sterling has just come off the back of a Champions League hat-trick but played the full 90 minutes. De Bruyne has been electric all season, especially at home and played fewer minutes in midweek.

There’s a lot of good reasons to opt for de Bruyne. He has more double-digit hauls (all coming at home) and more points overall and was unlucky not to score more in Gameweek 9.

That being said I’m stubborn. Sterling has been in since Gameweek 1 and has been one of my go-to captains. With Benjamin Mendy (£5.9m) slowly getting up to speed I’m hoping he’ll allow Sterling to come more central. He may not have scored as many points as de Bruyne but he’s not creating that many fewer chances and is shooting in the box a lot more, and he’s likely where my captaincy will end up.

What did Albert Einstein say? “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”. I’m certainly expectant of Raheem Sterling. Insane? Maybe.

Andy is the face of Let’s Talk FPL, one of the leading Fantasy YouTube channels and has been a big part of the Scoutcast over a number of years. He has two top 10k finishes and an additional three inside the top 20k over nine years.