Following Wednesday evening’s surprise announcements, Fantasy Premier League released five more player prices ahead of the game’s relaunch for 2019/20.
The big news saw Mohamed Salah drop in price and remain an FPL midfielder.
Mohamed Salah (£12.5m) – Midfielder
Perhaps the headline price reveal of the day sees Mohamed Salah not only stave off a positional reclassification but also drop in price.
The Egyptian was £13.0m a year ago and got as high as £13.6m in Gameweeks 24-28 of the season just gone.
While he couldn’t match his record-breaking returns of 2017/18, Salah was still the highest-scoring FPL asset of last season.
Salah remaining as a Fantasy midfielder presumably means that there won’t be any seismic shift in terms of positional grouping (i.e. wingers in a front three won’t be reclassed as forwards) and that the likes of Sadio Mane and Raheem Sterling will remain as FPL midfielders.
All eyes will be on Mane’s price reveal, whenever that may come, to see how much the Senegalese winger has risen ahead of 2019/20 and how much cheaper he is than Salah this time around.
READ MORE: Our review of Salah’s 2018/19 season
Jack Grealish (£6.0m) – Midfielder
The first Fantasy asset from the newly promoted clubs has been revealed.
Jack Grealish will cost FPL managers £6.0m next season, having registered six goals and seven assists in 34 Championship starts in 2018/19.
Grealish tends to play as one of the two more advanced central midfielders in a 4-1-4-1/4-3-3 though is given license to get forward from that position under attack-minded manager Dean Smith.
Grealish takes his fair share of corners for Villa and had a better rate of chances created than any of his teammates in the second tier.
It’ll be interesting to see what price Conor Hourihane, Villa’s other dead-ball expert, is listed as when the FPL game launches.
Callum Wilson (£8.0m) – Forward
Callum Wilson is the second Bournemouth asset priced up by FPL and, like Ryan Fraser, he has been handed a £2.0m rise from his starting price last season.
Wilson finished 2018/19 as the fifth-highest-scoring FPL forward despite missing eight of Bournemouth’s league matches.
Sergio Aguero and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang were the only strikers to register more attacking returns than Wilson (26).
It’ll be interesting to see what price Joshua King and Raul Jimenez are as a result of this announcement: King as an alternative route into the Bournemouth attack and Jimenez as a rival in the upper mid-price/lower premium forward bracket.
King indeed outscored Wilson in the preceding three seasons, although there were mitigating circumstances (injuries being one) for that.
Teemu Pukki (£6.5m) – Forward
Norwich City’s main goal threat has been listed as a £6.5m forward, exactly what Aleksandar Mitrovic was at the start of 2018/19.
Teemu Pukki plundered 29 goals in the Championship last season, with not one coming from the penalty spot.
The Finland international was joint-top for shots in the English second tier in 2018/19 and first for efforts in the box.
Pukki also contributed nine assists to the Canaries’ promotion-winning campaign.
Norwich face Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City in the opening five Gameweeks and sit bottom of our Season Ticker as a result.
The picture looks rosier from Gameweek 6 onwards, so Pukki may enter the FPL radar from that point.
The Canaries have signed striker Josip Drmic in the past few days, however, which will add to Pukki’s competition up front.
READ MORE: Our Scout Report on Josip Drmic
Raul Jimenez (£7.5m) – Forward
Wolves striker Raul Jimenez has been handed an expected price hike after his much-heralded debut Premier League campaign but the rise isn’t perhaps as bad as feared.
Jimenez began 2018/19 as a budget £5.5m option but rose more than any other FPL asset over the season, briefly hitting the £7.0m mark.
The Mexico international, currently representing his country at the 2019 Gold Cup, hit 13 goals and registered ten assists in the season just gone.
As we discussed earlier, Callum Wilson is £0.5m more expensive than Jimenez but did register more attacking returns (26 v 23) and had a better points-per-match average than the Wolves forward (5.6 v 4.76).
The next thing we’ll be looking out for is Diogo Jota‘s price and position, with the Portuguese attacker anticipated to be reclassified as an FPL forward based on his run up front from Gameweek 15 onwards.
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