Our whistle-stop tour around Sunday’s Premier League matches starts with Manchester United’s Triple Gameweek 35 opener – and an injury update on Harry Maguire (£5.5m).
We’ll have more detailed Scout Notes on all four matches on Monday.
ASTON VILLA 1-3 MANCHESTER UNITED
There were points all round for Manchester United’s five most-owned attacking assets in part one of their Gameweek 35 triple-header.
The Red Devils came from a goal down to beat Aston Villa 3-1 on Sunday afternoon, with Bruno Fernandes (£11.5m), Mason Greenwood (£7.2m), Marcus Rashford (£9.6m), Edinson Cavani (£8.0m) and Paul Pogba (£7.6m) each registering an attacking return apiece.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka (£5.7m) claimed the assist for Greenwood’s goal but it was an otherwise forgettable day for owners of United’s defenders, who once again came unstuck against a side outside of the top ten.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s troops have played 18 matches against teams currently in the bottom half and have kept just five clean sheets.
And the loss of a shut-out was compounded by an injury concern for Fantasy managers who have Harry Maguire (£5.5m) in their squads.
The stopper hobbled off in the final quarter of an hour to end his remarkable run of never missing a Premier League minute for United.
His manager ruled him out of Tuesday’s game and said after full-time:
We have a final to look forward to. Hopefully, it will be with Harry Maguire, I don’t know. We’ve got to check him. It might be a few weeks, it might be a couple of days, who knows.
Hopefully, he won’t be too bad but I’m not a doctor and we’ve got to check him and scan him tomorrow. It was his ankle, lower leg, I think the boy landed on top of him, so he twisted his ankle and got a knock.
I don’t know how bad it is. Maybe he’s available for Thursday I don’t know, I will tell you more on Tuesday night when I next see you all.
On rotation, he added:
The boys who played Thursday and today will not play 90 minutes for sure.
The sports scientists will do their job. They will sit down on Tuesday and see who is ready.
It was a miserable day for owners of Ollie Watkins (£6.5m), too, with the Villa man sent off for two bookable offences and now set to miss his side’s second Double Gameweek 35 fixture against Everton on Thursday.
Bertrand Traore (£5.8m) had earlier broken the deadlock for Villa to claim his tenth attacking return of 2020/21.
WEST HAM UNITED 0-1 EVERTON
A goal for Dominic Calvert-Lewin (£7.5m) and an eighth away clean sheet of the season for Everton’s Jekyll-and-Hyde backline saw the Toffees’ Double Gameweek 35 off to a satisfying start.
Only Manchester City have kept more shut-outs and conceded fewer goals than Everton on the road this season, with Carlo Ancelotti’s men conceding at a rate of less than a goal per game on their travels.
Contrast this with their form at Goodison Park, where they have recorded only two clean sheets and almost half as many points.
There was only really one major scare against a below-par West Ham, with Vladimir Coufal (£4.7m) striking the post and Jarrod Bowen (£5.9m) unable to tap home the rebound.
Jesse Lingard (£6.6m) blanked for the third match in a row, with his repeated dropping into a deeper position as much of a sign of frustration as his late booking for dissent was.
Aaron Cresswell (£5.6m) and Yerry Mina (£5.5m) both limped off, with David Moyes confirming that the former merely had a dead leg.
WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS 2-1 BRIGHTON AND HOVE ALBION
Brighton and Hove Albion have often been their own worst enemies this season, failing to translate promising underlying and attacking numbers into meaningful results.
And they imploded in spectacular fashion on Sunday, contriving to lose a match that they had been winning comfortably and seeing two key players sent off.
Lewis Dunk (£4.9m) and Neal Maupay (£5.9m) will both be suspended for Gameweeks 36 and 37 as a result of their dismissals: Maupay’s sending off for dissent carries an automatic two-match ban, while Dunk’s red card – for a denial of a goalscoring opportunity, on this occasion – was his second of the season and he will also be unavailable until Gameweek 38.
Dunk had earlier opened the scoring with his fifth goal of 2020/21, a tally that only Stuart Dallas (£5.2m) can better among FPL defenders.
Wolves may have triumphed but this was another unconvincing audition for their Fantasy assets, with Nuno Espirito Santo’s side second-best before Dunk’s red card and little better thereafter.
Santo looks to be rotating in the season run-in, too, with Adama Traore (£6.0m) only named among the substitutes before coming off the bench to draw the hosts level.
Morgan Gibbs-White (£4.9m) rounded off the comeback in the final stages, having squandered a glorious chance minutes earlier.
ARSENAL 3-1 WEST BROMWICH ALBION
Arsenal condemned West Bromwich Albion to the drop after a 3-1 win at the Emirates.
There was little interest in this match in the upper echelons of Fantasy Premier League, with Rob Holding’s (£4.3m) effective ownership larger than the rest of the players on show put together.
There was to be no joy for his owners, however, as the Gunners conceded a second-half solo goal to Matheus Pereira (£5.4m).
That was the Albion playmaker’s ninth goal from Gameweek 19 onwards, a total that no other FPL midfielder can beat in that time.
Arsenal may be out for Europe but there was still rotation aplenty, with six alterations made by Mikel Arteta and the likes of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (£11.3m) and Alexandre Lacazette (£8.4m) benched.
One of FPL’s cheapest midfielders, Emile Smith Rowe (£4.2m), was among those on target for the Gunners, with Willian (£7.5m) and Nicolas Pepe (£7.6m) adding superb strikes of their own.
