Gameweek 27 is here and a lot of Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers are looking to deploy the Free Hit chip. Keeping this in mind, I thought I would do a form-focused activity talking about a few of the games this week. I’ve focused on attack and done a small exercise to look at the expected goals (xG) and expected goals conceded (xGC) for the last six matches and give my thoughts on some names that jump out.
ATTACK
Southampton are sixth for xG amongst all teams in the last six matches and Norwich City are 19th in the league for xGC. This leads to me think this is a good match-up for Saints attackers. They are a team bang in form as only Liverpool have scored more goals than them in the last six matches. Rightly, Armando Broja (£5.5m) is a very popular asset as he has the highest expected goal involvement (xGI) amongst all Southampton players in the last six matches. In midfield, James Ward-Prowse (£6.5m), who is on penalties, set-pieces and created three big chances against Everton last time out, is a good shout as well. I’ve also really liked the look of Mohamed Elyounoussi (£5.4m), who has looked good on the eye test every time I’ve seen him play. He has also registered five shots in the box and has created 10 chances in the last six matches.
Manchester City are third for xG and Everton are 14th for xGC. After the disappointing result against Tottenham Hotspur, City will be a wounded animal looking to bounce back. Riyad Mahrez (£8.7m) should likely start and is someone I’m eyeing up given he’s on penalties. Notably, he has the highest shots in the box tally in the last six matches. Raheem Sterling (£10.7m) has an enticing match-up as well. It is noticeable that in the short tenure Frank Lampard has been the Everton manager, they have conceded a lot of shots in the area Sterling likes to operate in as can be seen in this heatmap below.
That’s it from me this week. I hope you enjoyed this article. We did a special episode on The FPL Wire this week talking about the top three Manchester City assets which you can view here.
You can also view our standard episode below where we discuss Gameweek 27 as well as the pros and cons of a Gameweek 28 wildcard.
