Article 50, Scottish independence, strikers failing us left, right and centre – we’re living in torrid times.
At least Say What? remains consistent, providing quotes of note from the likes of Lukaku, King and Gabbiadini to soothe your troubled Fantasy brow.
There’s also Pochettino on Kane’s replacements and the latest Moyes’ meltdown to keep you reading to the end.
Hopefully.
FA Cup And Sorcery
The magic of the FA Cup: Sutton United…Lincoln City…the moment Marcos Rojo’s alleged stamp on Eden Hazard disappeared in a puff of non-disciplinary smoke.
Oh how Tyrone Mings must have gasped with wonder at such sorcery, and the magic wasn’t finished there, playing a particularly spiteful trick on Harry Kane’s ankle seven minutes into Sunday’s match with Millwall.
In case you’ve already forgotten, Kane was back to being the Gandalf of strikers, with six goals, an assist and 40 points from a bewitching four matches.
Now, we might have to pick between Heung-Min Son and his Paul Daniels-like ability to score league goals (just not a lot), or Vincent Janssen, who’s spent most of the season in full-on Tommy Cooper mode.
Spurs coach Mauricio Pochettino is certainly under no illusion as to the importance of Kane.
“When you lose a player like Harry Kane, you miss him. But it’s important for the players in his position, like today Son or Vincent, to feel the net, score goals. We talked in the past about the squad. Now they are important.”
Tottenham’s schedule is just too good to ignore, with one (yet-to-be-scheduled) double Gameweek and, of the big guns, only Arsenal and Man United, both at home, to face before season’s end.
Dele Alli (25%) and Christian Eriksen (13.5%) are already part of many a managers’ plan, but there’s a nagging sense that with those fixtures and the team’s form – just one defeat since Gameweek 15 – whoever ends up replacing Kane might bring some of Harry’s stardust with him.
Son, as a midfielder who could be about to go up front, offers strong potential for points and he hit a hat-trick once Kane had hobbled out of the Millwall tie.
“I’m very happy with Son. He can play like a striker. One of our best performances was against Manchester City and he was the striker when Harry was injured.”
At just 6.8 and with a 3.9% ownership base that positively screams differential, it’s perhaps not surprising to see the South Korean 11th among transfers-in this week.
But more than 30,000 managers have plumped for Alli instead and nearly double Son’s 23,000+ new owners have bought into…Kane. What black magic is this? Or did they all just go for a Saturday shop and discovered that they couldn’t return the goods free of charge at approximately 1.37pm the very next day?
Janssen also scored at Millwall, his first from open play for Spurs. Could that be the turning point for him?
“Yes of course. In the last few months he’s stepped up and started to work better and I was happy in the way he was performing on the training ground. In football you need to be ready to show your quality. Janssen was working very hard, today was a great opportunity to score and he scored.”
A relatively cheap 7.5, the Dutchman is owned by 0.8% and he’s also a mean penalty taker should he ever get the chance in the league.
In the run-up to Gameweek 34, Tottenham face Burnley and Swansea away and host Southampton, Watford and Bournemouth.
If either Son or Janssen can even half-fill Kane’s magical boots during that spell, we’ll be missing a trick by not taking a punt on one or the other.
Straight Shooting From Lukaku
With Gandalf gone and Zlatan ‘Ibracadabra’ Ibrahimovic out for two more matches for the close-up routine he did on Mings’ face, Everton striker Romelu Lukaku briefly became Fantasy Premier League’s prestige striker this week.
And then he went and spoiled it all by rejecting Everton’s monster contract.
His timing is impeccably poor – the Belgian is now the most-owned FPL player, with 43.4% of us invested on the back of a five-match run that has produced seven goals, an assist and 47 points.
Saturday’s home match with Hull should have been a great opportunity for Lukaku to add to his Goodison Park tally – eight of his last nine goals have come on Merseyside.
But now…what will await him when he steps onto the turf at 3pm?
Fair play to the man, he’s come out fighting.
“At the minute I am one of the best strikers in the league. I can’t not say that. If I don’t say that I am one of the best? I am shooting myself in the head. At the minute I am one of the best in the Premier League? 100 per cent.”
So he’s avoided shooting himself in the head, but turning down £140,000 a week just days before his next home match suggests his feet are still very much in the firing line.
Lukaku is finally looking like the consistent performer we’ve all hoped for, but rarely seen. He’s leading the race for the Golden Boot and is 12 points clear of Diego Costa at the top of the strikers’ chart.
Deciding to reject a contract now doesn’t seem like the smartest of moves, and it certainly hands us a major case of doubt just when he was looking like a sure thing.
And is he naïve to say the following…
“We have got 10 games left. That is 10 finals for me. I hope that is the same for the rest of the team. I’m sure we will make the best out of them.”
…when those ten ‘finals’ could well be marred by the reactions of an Everton crowd unlikely to be united in appreciation for his explicit criticism of the club’s ambitions?
“Obviously stuff is changing and stuff is happening, but like I said there were some players that we could have got. That I knew the club could have got and they didn’t get. And they are playing in this league. I am not saying names, but they are doing well.”
That’s fairly strong stuff, strong enough for Ronald Koeman to weigh in with his own thoughts on the affair.
“Of course I am not happy about that interview. If Everton is not a club with a lot of ambition I would not be manager. But I am not so afraid about his situation because the player has more than two years on his contract. Everyone knows what can happen in football but you need to respect your contract.”
Football and contract-respect have not exactly been the chummiest of bed fellows over the years, but the key point Koeman then goes on to make is that Lukaku’s place in the side looks safe whatever has been said and done, or not done in the case of his signature and that unrespected contract.
“He has no problem. He is training how he needs to train, his behaviour – except some quotes in this interview – is what I like from the player and there is no reason to put him out of the team. The team needs Rom, and Rom needs the team to score goals.”
Lukaku’s final rallying cry, however, could well backfire on him.
“It is a little bit frustrating but, at the end of the day, we have fantastic players. We cannot look at the others, we can only look at ourselves. We are the only ones to blame. We cannot blame the fans. We cannot blame the manager. Us as players we need to give a bit more and that is a nice challenge. I really relish that challenge to be fair, I relish that challenge. The last 10 games of the season I think: Bring it on. Let’s go.”
What exactly Lukaku is about to bring on will become a lot clearer come Saturday afternoon. And how he reacts to it will help shape our striker strategy as the season reaches its climax.
With Liverpool and Man United away to come after Hull, it could well be a case of bin him off, not bring it on.
The King And Us
Amidst these striker shenanigans, all hail the King called Josh – the midfielder with the forward’s output.
The man is currently hotter than the Devil’s Pop Tart, with five goals in three matches and eight from his last seven – a run that’s brought in 58 points despite the team winning only once.
His boss, Eddie Howe, is happy enough to make him the pick of the Cherries at present.
“When I first started to work with him, I believed he could be anything he wanted to be. I still feel the same way. We work in the same way with all the players, to try to improve them individually. Always the responsibility is with the player how much they will improve, because it is their responsibility to take everything on board. That’s what Josh has done. I’ve been very, very impressed.”
And so have we.
King has gone from 30,452 managers to 252,000+ over those seven matches and close to 100,000 have bought into him this week alone – only Diego Costa is more popular.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect with King has been his adaptability. Half his recent goals have come when playing as a striker, the rest (from his last two matches) whilst reverting to the number 10 role.
“I am learning so much from the gaffer. Last year, I was playing more as a winger and playing deeper. I have been working with the gaffer about getting the instinct to score goals. He has been telling me to get in the box whereas before I was just outside it. Now I am being a No.9 and enjoying it.”
Nine or ten, the numbers aren’t lying with King, but his upcoming fixtures will present a stern test.
Swansea at home this week explains the latest rush for his services, but then it’s Southampton away and a horrible run involving Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs after that.
The one thing with Bournemouth is that they might be about as secure as a Samsung smart TV, but boy do they score goals – only six teams have netted more than the Cherries this season and they’re all in the top seven.
King, for his part, has scored against both Everton (twice) and Man United in recent weeks, so he’s no respecter of reputations.
At 5.6 and owned by 7.9% (and rising), form could very well trump fixtures for a while yet.
Of Saints And Spoilers
Not so far away, a truly out-and-out striker continues to catch the eye – and all manner of managers.
Manolo Gabbiadini’s four league goals in three starts for Southampton seems to have persuaded huge swathes of us to forget such minor fripperies as blank Gameweeks and a trip to Spurs and just buy him in anyway.
How else to explain his ownership rush from 0-9.2% despite no Gameweek 26 and White Hart Lane up next?
Formation is one answer – the Saints have scored ten goals in the three matches they’ve played since returning to a 4-2-3-1 at Sunderland.
Midfielder James Ward-Prowse is certainly buying into that theory.
“Every system is different, but this has worked in the last few games and everyone’s enjoyed it. It’s something that has been done to help the team improve and we’ve shown it to be the correct decision with the amount of goals we’ve scored. The system has helped as well but the introduction of Manolo has helped massively.”
As for the man himself, the Italian understands that his Southampton start is merely the tip of the iceberg.
“I know the story of the Titanic. Well, in my case, the adventure has started well, but I’m always realistic.”
Do you see? Iceberg? Titanic?
Blimey. Tough crowd.
Anyway, in case you haven’t seen the film, the boat sinks and Leonardo DiCaprio dies, so I’ve just saved you from three utterly wasted hours of your life and the interminable warblings of Celine Bloody Dion to boot.
More to the point, the news that Gabbiadini is about to pack away his big Travel Tavern buffet plate suggests a settled Saint on the horizon.
“I still live in a hotel, but I’ll be moving into a house soon. Southampton can really be the turning point in my career. The manager has helped me find the freedom I had lost in Italy by letting me play as a pure striker.”
Once Spurs are out of the way, there really doesn’t look like a better time to board the good ship Gabbiadini – he’ll face Bournemouth, Palace and West Brom after that.
No fewer than three fixtures need re-arranging as well, with two double Gameweeks expected, but five of the top six are still to be faced before the end of the season, so the time for smooth sailing is almost certainly now.
Heads We Lose
It always seems right to end on Sunderland, so we shall. Football itself, after all, rocks up to the Stadium of Light, realises the hopelessness of its task and legs it before anyone in a red and white shirt is any the wiser.
Small wonder then that David Moyes’ sorry descent into the anti-manager is gathering pace.
Where other bosses seek out the positives and spin them into unfeasible yarns of hope and about-to-turn-a-corner-wishful-thinkingness, our David continues to tell it how it really shouldn’t be, but undeniably is.
He’s got 99 problems, but the pitch ain’t one. In fact, set-plays are the latest thing to furrow that heavily-lined brow.
“We’re always slightly against it from set-pieces for me, even defensively, we’re at full tilt to hang in there because we’ve not had Victor Anichebe or Jan Kirchhoff playing often enough. We’re actually physically quite small as a team.”
The smallest of them all, of course, is Jermain Defoe – a man with all the aerial prowess of an emu-shaped piano.
But no, rather than feel the need to provide proper service to a striker with a hand in 17 of his side’s 26 goal this season, Moyes wants to aim higher.
“The biggest thing for me is that we’ve actually not headed anything in the net, we’ve probably not been close. Ultimately the ball needs to come into the box to score and then what you need is people who are going to head it, we’ve not had that.”
Not that he’s going to damn those who are there to provide the service with lashings of faint praise.
“Could you put it down to delivery? A little bit but it’s not been all down to delivery. Seb (Larsson’s) deliveries are of quite a decent standard, Adnan (Januzaj’s) a bit mixed at times. Those quality of deliveries have been OK.”
Yep, with praise like that, who needs, erm, praise like that?
Defoe’s 22.8% fan base has remained surprisingly loyal to man with just two goals from his last six starts.
His pedigree and 7.7 price tag are probably a lot to do with that, but it’s now definitely do or die time for Sunderland – they have a great run all the way through to Gameweek 37, aside from a home match with Man United and a potential midweek trip to Arsenal in Gameweek 34.
If teams performed in direct relation to their manager’s positivity, then Sunderland would have been down by Christmas.
That they still have a fighting chance is not down to a lack of headers, just wee Jermain.
Those who have stuck by him through thin and thinner will be hoping for that loyalty to be repaid over the coming weeks.
And with the current state of play among FPL strikers, a few more of us might be tempted to go big on the little fella as well.
