There’s not a Liverpool or Chelsea player in sight in the Scout Picks for Gameweek 3 of Fantasy Premier League (FPL).
A West Ham triple-up instead provides the spine of the side this week, with Tottenham Hotspur and Leicester City also represented by a brace of assets as we play the fixtures.
After Sam, Az, Neale and Tom submitted their Scout Squad selections earlier this week, we have chosen our best players ahead of tomorrow’s 11:00 BST deadline.
We line up in a 3-4-3 formation and come in at £81.8m, well under our £83.0m budget.
GOALKEEPER
Chasing the points? Perhaps we can be accused of that as we plump for Hugo Lloris (£5.5m) between the posts but back-to-back clean sheets for the Lilywhites and the visit of a Watford side who created precious little in the Championship last season (let’s overlook the Gameweek 1 victory over Villa), not to mention away at Brighton last week, sees the Frenchman get the nod.
Oliver Skipp (£4.5m), Pierre-Emile Hojberg (£5.0m) and Dele Alli (£6.5m) have shown plenty of graft in front of the back four and while Spurs may rank bottom of the table for shots conceded, six teams have worse ‘expected goals conceded’ (xGC) tallies. Ergo: lots of shots for Lloris to save and not as many high-quality chances.
Nuno Espirito Santo’s side have also faced perhaps two of the more attack-minded teams in the division in Manchester City and Bruno Lage’s gung-ho Wolves, so will surely have an easier ride this weekend.
DEFENDERS
Leicester City’s backline hasn’t really convinced for a while, even going back to the tail-end of last season, and the continued absence of Jannik Vestergaard and Jonny Evans weakens them at centre-half. Still, Ricardo Pereira‘s (£5.5m) promising start to the season (which hasn’t really been reflected in his underlying numbers yet) has earned him a national team call-up and there are murmurings that he could be the one to replace the banned Ayoze Perez on the right wing this weekend. The fact that four of Manchester City’s goals against Norwich came from the Canaries’ left-back position further influences our selection.
Only two clubs have allowed more chances to be created from set plays than Crystal Palace this season and Aaron Cresswell (£5.5m) indeed bagged an assist from a dead-ball delivery in a match-up between these two sides in 2020/21. Joel Ward seems more of an obliging opponent than Tyrick Mitchell on the other flank, too, when we were weighing up the Cresswell v Coufal conundrum.
Ruben Dias (£6.0m) delivered on the goods for us last week and while he may not offer that edge-of-the-seat appeal of a Joao Cancelo (£6.0m), the release of the Manchester City teamsheet on a matchday is much less stressful when you have plumped for the Portuguese centre-half over many of his teammates. No side has created fewer chances than a spluttering Arsenal in 2021/22, with the Gunners failing to score a single goal against City in their last five meetings.
MIDFIELDERS
Opposition fallibilities influence Raphinha‘s (£6.5m) nomination as much as his own ability. The Clarets are not only among the three worst defences for crosses and chances created from their left flank, they’ve also allowed more opportunities to be created from set plays than any other top-flight side – a decent match-up, you’d think, for Leeds’ corner-taking right-winger.
Four attacking returns from an xGI of 1.01 suggest the Said Benrahma (£6.3m) points bonanza can’t go on forever but confidence is an underrated commodity in the Fantasy world and the Algerian is brimming with it currently, not to mention a new-found maturity that has finally seen him win lukewarm praise from his manager. While Crystal Palace’s two new centre-halves look the part, Joel Ward struggled with the Brentford overlap last weekend and the Eagles’ away record (four wins from the last 17) bodes well for the Hammers in Gameweek 3.
Bruno Fernandes (£12.6m) may have blanked last weekend and face the spectre of Cristiano Ronaldo eating into his ownership but the fact remains that he has returned 11 of his 18 double-digit hauls on the road and still averages 7.5 points per game on his travels despite last week’s one-pointer.
Son Heung-min (£10.1m) has produced double-digit hauls in exactly half of his last 18 home matches and has only blanked in two of his last 19 appearances against newly promoted clubs. Up against a Watford side who have conceded on four occasions in their first two league fixtures in 2021/22, not to mention 10 goals in their three pre-season fixtures against top-flight sides, there could be a haul to be had against the Hornets.
FORWARDS
Six attacking returns in two matches – 40% of his 2020/21 total – is probably all we need to mention with regards to the selection of Michail Antonio (£7.8m). The underlying stats suggest this is not a complete fluke, even if the points-per-match average is unsustainable: the West Ham striker tops all players for big chances (five) and goal attempts (11), with eight of them coming from inside the penalty box. Antonio also has the second-best record for penalty area touches (14) among FPL forwards.
With some concerns about whether Harvey Barnes (£6.9m) keeps his place this weekend, Jamie Vardy (£10.5m) looks a safer – if more expensive – punt as Brendan Rodgers will surely only add to his assemblage of forwards against Norwich City rather than take the veteran striker out of the equation. Vardy’s record against promoted teams (credit to TopMarx) is also eye-catching: zero blanks in his last 11 matches, six double-digit hauls and an average of 9.55 points per match.
Former Magpie Adam Armstrong (£6.0m) could make hay on Tyneside against a defence that has allowed more big chances than any other team bar Arsenal in 2021/22 and also rank bottom for expected goals conceded (xGC). The ‘law of the ex’ is also perhaps a factor with this selection, of course, but his link-up play with Che Adams (£7.0m) has caught the unbiased eye and he has been presented with a big chance in both of his Saints appearances so far.
THE CAPTAIN
We choose the Scout Picks captain using a four-way vote between our Scout Squad pundits.
Because we use Fantasy Football Scout data so heavily in this process, the skipper we choose each Gameweek is known only to those with a Fantasy Football Scout subscription and revealed to the public only when the deadline has passed.
Here is how we voted for Gameweek 3:
COMMUNITY CHAMPION
Each week, one of the Fantasy Football Scout community takes on the Scout Picks by pitting their chosen XI against ours.
The Community Member who beats our team by the largest margin will win a £100 Amazon Voucher and a place in our Moderators and Contributors League for the following season.
Our champion is week cfreel, who has gone with a 3-4-3 line-up of Martinez; Coufal, Konsa, Reguilon; Son, Benrahma, Grealish, Raphinha; Kane (c), Vardy, Antonio.
We’ll bring you up to speed on the results of the first two contests in our next Scout Picks feature.
