In his latest article, three-time top 200 finisher Lateriser weighs up the merits of Manchester United midfielders and whether they take priority over a move for Jean-Philippe Mateta (£7.7m).
So many times when we’re playing this game of FPL, we (and by which I mean “I”) have so many urges during the week to do something flairy. Over the years, for better or worse, I have learnt to quieten those voices.
GAMEWEEK 10 TRANSFER DILEMMA
This week in FPL, I had to prioritise either Jean-Philippe Mateta (£7.7m) or one of the Manchester United midfielders for my FPL team. I have two free transfers and £0.5m in the bank.
The moves I could make are either:
- A straight swap from Joao Pedro (£7.4m) to Mateta or;
- Pedro down to Eli Kroupi Jr (£4.6m) to upgrade either Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (£4.9m) to Bryan Mbeumo (£8.2m) or Enzo Fernandez (£6.7m) to Bruno Fernandes (£8.9m)
A CASE FOR BRUNO OVER MBEUMO?
Now, I have been a proponent of Mbeumo all season and have said I prefer him to the more expensive United midfielder. I even owned him until my Gameweek 8 Wildcard but couldn’t find a way to fit him into my revamped team as I was too obsessed with big Nick Woltemade (£7.5m) and got enticed by Chelsea’s fixtures, which is why I went for Pedro.
I’ll take the proverbial win in calling Mbeumo an asset but something has changed at Manchester United tactically in the last two weeks. Bruno Fernandes’ positioning is now much better than it has been all season. There are a few reasons for this. He is now the first line of press, along with Benjamin Sesko (£7.3m), which means in the ‘rest defence’, he takes up some really encouraging positions. I explain the same below.
In addition, while Matheus Cunha (£7.9m) plays, he and Bruno rotate the ‘8’ and ’10’ positions quite frequently. This means there’s a higher percentage in the game where Bruno Fernandes is occupying a position further up the field. Mbeumo though rotates between a right winger and a centre forward and even does the Mohamed Salah (£14.3m) thing of being furthest up the field in the last 20minutes of a game when United are leading.
One other aspect that is playing on my mind is that Manchester United have a lot of ‘dribbly’ close control players like Amad Diallo (£6.3m), Cunha and Mbeumo who are very much capable of winning penalties. I’d back the Red Devils to be among the top three penalty winners in the league, which is a huge feather in Bruno Fernandes’ cap. If you look at the recent data between Mbeumo ando Fernandes, it is fairly close.
Cunha has also just scored to get that weight off his shoulders. Last season, he was very streaky for Wolves, so are we seeing the commencement of a new good run?
All these factors made me come to the conclusion that I can delay my decision to get a Manchester United midfielder. Neither Mbeumo nor Fernandes feel wrong right now but I do want to see how Amorim tactically deals with the deeper blocks we’ll face in the next game or so. If I were going for one today, it would still be Mbeumo, but I am very much Fernandes-curious if he’s going to start showing more open-play threat.
MBEUMO V MATETA
Good luck this week! If you want more, we discuss FPL in length on this week’s episode of The FPL Wire, which you can view below:
