FPL BlackBox co-host Az discusses two players who could help propel him into the top 100k in the run-in.
It was quite painful being mocked by Mark on FPL BlackBox for my Gameweek 31 “Mildcard”. The pain was eased a bit by a good score and a ninth green arrow in 11 weeks to propel me up to just outside the top 100k at the time of writing.
In truth, I didn’t want to build a team of players that I knew most in my situation would be turning to, but I found it very difficult to look elsewhere given the form and future potential of players such as Kelechi Iheanacho (£6.1m), Diogo Jota (£7.0m) and Jesse Lingard (£6.6m).
In the same way that I don’t advocate using Effective Ownership to ignore differential options, I’m also not a fan of using it to try and be too “clever” and avoid players who are undoubtedly strong options, just to be a bit different.
With the template in place, my attention between now and the end of the season will be to try and identify which players in my team are not pulling their weight and if better options can emerge that may not have seemed so credible a week ago.
The big question marks for me are with Bruno Fernandes (£11.6m) and, of course, Sergio Reguilón (£5.6m). With two free transfers, I am considering my options. With the news that José Mourinho has departed Tottenham Hotspur, it will be very interesting to see how Spurs will adapt and see out the season. It’s hard to comment on potential replacements for Harry Kane (£11.4m) at the moment without knowing the severity of his injury, though, so I will not be focusing too much on that until I hear more.
If Kane is out for a while with yet another ankle injury, Son Heung-min (£9.5m) may be asked to lead the line – which means I’m slightly less keen to lose him now. Fernandes, with just two attacking returns in his last seven games, is becoming more and more of an issue – and a potential way to roll the dice and back against a very highly owned player (57.2%).
Regulión can be a good option on his day and Spurs do have some attractive-looking fixtures after the break, but I wouldn’t have thought that they would suddenly become a more defensively solid unit with Mourinho departing. He remains first on my chopping block.
Below I’ve explored the players that are currently top of my “wish list” to replace Regulion and Fernandes.
Ricardo Pereira (£5.9m, 0.9% ownership)
