The community is keen to splash their cash this week on a number of premium-priced players with two fixtures in Gameweek 34.
Our Hot Topic posters offer advice on how to squeeze them all in, as well as take in a spot of controversy surrounding the Golden Boot race.
Home comforts and away day joy come under scrutiny among our resident scribes, who also reveal who are the real-life football maestros among our community.
There’s further detail about the best Gameweek 34 options in our Members tables round-up and we finish off with a look at who emerged from a record low-scoring set of fixtures last time out to claim bragging rights in our community leagues.
The Community Articles
Players who enjoy home comforts and those that excel in away matches are the focus of Stat’s latest look at this season’s points per minute numbers.
Meanwhile, it is Manchester United options who have caught the eye of ‘the crowd’ according to Hutch_James’ round-up of their Gameweek 34 predictions.
Fresh from the excitement of a Double Gameweek, MrKlin of Norway dropped by to preview the next set of fixtures in Fantasy Eliteserien. This also explains how a change in formation is making former Arsenal striker Nicklas ‘Lord’ Bendtner an attractive option once again in this Norwegian top-flight game.
Elsewhere, MyPrettyPony has posted a review of the inaugural FFScout charity football tournament, which has raised more than £1,000 for charity in memory of community regular Simon Humber (Absinthe), who lost his battle with ocular melanoma in 2015.
The article has now been updated to include some goal highlights from the day courtesy of excellent matchday camera work from Rupert The Horse with editing from TopMarx.
Don’t forget, if you’ve got some analysis, scout reports or features brewing, be sure to visit our community section to submit your article.
The Hottest Topics
Fitting all of the best premium Double Gameweek 34 assets into one squad appears to be an impossible task. With that in mind, we launched a Hot Topic focusing on which of the three big hitters – Spurs’ Harry Kane and Manchester United duo Romelu Lukaku and Alexis Sanchez – should be sacrificed.
Agueroooney added to this debate later in the week by airing his concerns that United may rotate their stars for their second match of the Gameweek, away to Bournemouth, as its scheduling gives them a day’s less rest than Spurs ahead of their FA Cup semi-final clash.
Doosra’s latest number crunching, delivered via G-Whizz, indicates that the Red Devils’ first match of Gameweek 34, at home to West Brom, may be far more lucrative anyway.
Our Hot Topic on lessons learned from Gameweek 33 also considers which of this top-priced trio is best to captain, with Kane clearly not short of motivation given his relentless quest to claim the Golden Boot for a third season in a row.
The striker is now only four goals behind this season’s top scorer, Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah, following Spurs’ successful appeal to have their second goal against Stoke City at the weekend awarded to Kane.
The decision comes too late though for those that captained the Spurs man, as the FPL has announced that the original decision to award the goal to Christian Eriksen stands and there will be no alteration to the points. Unsurprisingly, those that handed Kane the armband for that match were among those with plenty to say in Torres Magic’s discussion on this controversial goal.
Salah’s successful return from injury in Liverpool’s midweek Champions League defeat of Manchester City, presents the Egyptian with the perfect chance to extend his Golden Boot lead over Kane.
However, some of those taking part in our discussion on the prolific winger are concerned that he could find his pitch-time curtailed in the league as Liverpool look to prioritise their European semi-final matches. This was an issue Mark also addressed, following the news that Liverpool will face Roma in this competition.
Greenwindmill suggests that Kane and Salah’s tussle for the Golden Boot may be less important than many in the community think, based on previous top scorer battles.
Meanwhile, cut price options took centre stage in our discussion on using the Bench Boost chip in Gameweek 34. This looks at key budget enablers, as well as realistic predicted points scores from its deployment. There are further cheap gems put forward in our discussion on Gameweek 34’s best differentials.
With the season drawing to a close, Dazz dropped by to find out to what extent rank and mini-league glory are keeping us motivated.
Rank is certainly an important factor for those at the top of our Live Hall of Fame, which has been updated to take into account Gameweek 33’s scores.
To view all our discussions, please visit our Hot Topics page.
The Members Tables
FPL Virgin has been busy constructing a raft of tables looking at the best double Gameweek 34 assets.
My tables looking at bonus magnets and attacking defenders offer further insight into the best rearguard options to consider.
If you’re a member and are yet to get to grips with the custom statistics tables, you can view this movie for an explanation of how they work. Also, remember to tag them so that people can find the tables with ease.
The Community Tournaments
Anders Lium takes over from Christos Sui at the summit of Red Lightning’s Top 10K Any Season following Gameweek 33, which saw this season’s lowest average score of 32. Anders is now up to 73rd in the overall rankings.
There’s also a change at the top of Red Lightning’s Doubles, Blanks and Chips mini-league, where Dylan McCullough is the new leader.
Meanwhile, Shirin Nizar remains first in Red Lightning’s January to May league, Paul Gee retains bragging rights at the top of the FFScout Members league and Rizwan Chaudhry continues to dominate the FFScout main league. Rizwan slipped from second to third in the overall rankings and is now 29 points behind world number one Bharat Dhody.
It’s business as usual in the FFScout moderators and contributors league, where a Gameweek 33 score of 37 was enough to see Jack Wain remain in first. QPR Utd’s Frequent Summer Posters league has the same scenario, with Zoumas Bloomers still leading.
In TorresMagic’s Last Man Standing, the safety score was 34, which saw 43 players depart and 76 remain.
If you are running a community tournament and would like the latest scores included in future Community Round-Ups, please email us a summary of the current leaders and a link to your league, spreadsheet or head-to-head competition, at jonty@fantasyfootballscout.co.uk.
