Two well-owned Virtual FPL assets picked up injuries in Tuesday night’s round of fixtures.
We look back on Gameweek 8 of Ragabolly’s popular Fantasy management game and preview Thursday’s simulated action.
READ MORE: How to sign up and play Virtual FPL
GAMEWEEK 8 NOTES
(The full results from Gameweek 8 are available via the Virtual FPL fixtures page or the game’s Twitter account.)
Injury Blows
Two players who are among the top seven Virtual FPL assets for ownership picked up injuries on Tuesday night.
Bruno Fernandes (£8.5m), the second-most-popular midfielder in the game, will miss Manchester United’s next four games, while Teemu Pukki (£6.5m), the most-owned vFPL forward, is set for a six-match absence.
Both players at least bowed out with attacking returns, with Pukki scoring Norwich’s opener in their 2-1 win over Arsenal and Fernandes grabbing a brace of assists and a bonus point in United’s comfortable 3-0 victory against Crystal Palace.
With price changes not an issue in Virtual FPL, there is no value to be lost in selling either/both players and revisiting them when they are fit.
Who the most popular replacements for the pair will be is another question, with United and Norwich among the teams with the best runs of fixtures during their absences – so Emiliano Buendia (£6.0m), Anthony Martial (£8.0m) and the recently recalled Paul Pogba (£8.3m) may pick up some new owners as Fernandes is offloaded.
Grealish on Pens?
There was just one penalty awarded in Gameweek 8 of Virtual FPL, which was converted by Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish (£6.5m).
We might be able to add the Villa talisman to the list of those assets on spot-kick duties that we compiled on Tuesday, then.
While Anwar El Ghazi (£5.5m) was on the pitch at the time, it should be said that Wesley (£5.5m) was not on the field when Villa were awarded their penalty.
Both of those players have taken spot-kicks for the Villans in “real life” this season.
It could be, then, that Wesley is still first choice if and when the Brazilian is actually playing.
Given that he is sharing pitch-time with Mbwana Samatta (£5.9m), of course, that might not be all that often.
Clean Sheets
Five teams are still without a clean sheet after eight Gameweeks of the campaign and they’re not all lower-table fodder.
Along with bottom-of-the-league Bournemouth and mid-table Norwich City, Manchester City, Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur have yet to register a single shut-out – and all of those sides sit within the top seven as things stand.
Crystal Palace and Liverpool are top of the division for clean sheets, having registered four apiece.
All four of Palace’s have arrived at Selhurst Park, where the Eagles face Aston Villa in Gameweek 9.
Newcastle United are on a run of three successive games without conceding, meanwhile.
De Bruyne Benched… But Still Scores
Kevin De Bruyne’s (£10.6m) unbroken run of starts came to an end on Tuesday but the Belgian still made the most of his 13-minute cameo, grabbing Manchester City’s late equaliser in a 1-1 draw with Sheffield United.
Riyad Mahrez (£8.6m), also on as a substitute, claimed the assist for City’s leveller.
Roberto Firmino (£9.5m), Joe Gomez (£5.3m) and Jordan Ayew (£5.1m) were other players to taste bench duty on Tuesday, emerging for the dreaded one-pointer in the second half of their respective teams’ games.
Patrick van Aanholt (£5.6m) didn’t even make it onto the field for the defeated Eagles.
Alonso On Top
Sitting joint-top of the defenders’ list for total Virtual FPL points is Marcos Alonso (£6.1m).
On top of banking three attacking returns and four clean sheets, Alonso has nine bonus points – a tally that no other vFPL defender can trump.
After the visit of Arsenal on Thursday, Chelsea then face six of the seven teams who have scored the fewest goals this season from Gameweeks 10-17.
Team Conversion Rates
We have been keeping tabs on the number of attacks teams are mounting (and conceding) over the Virtual FPL season so far, with the updated spreadsheet to be found further down this article.
But how many of these opportunities are being converted into goals at either end of the pitch?
Below are the conversion rates for the 20 Premier League clubs, both for and against.
For
Team | Attacks | Goals | Attack conversion |
Man City | 167 | 23 | 13.77% |
Aston Villa | 87 | 11 | 12.64% |
Spurs | 163 | 20 | 12.27% |
West Ham | 78 | 9 | 11.54% |
Bournemouth | 72 | 8 | 11.11% |
Chelsea | 97 | 10 | 10.31% |
Arsenal | 141 | 14 | 9.93% |
Newcastle | 55 | 5 | 9.09% |
Wolves | 198 | 17 | 8.59% |
Leicester | 152 | 13 | 8.55% |
Liverpool | 269 | 23 | 8.55% |
Watford | 129 | 11 | 8.53% |
Norwich | 172 | 14 | 8.14% |
Man Utd | 203 | 15 | 7.39% |
Burnley | 82 | 6 | 7.32% |
Crystal Palace | 113 | 8 | 7.08% |
Sheff Utd | 124 | 8 | 6.45% |
Everton | 142 | 9 | 6.34% |
Brighton | 95 | 5 | 5.26% |
Southampton | 100 | 5 | 5.00% |
Against
Team | Attacks Conceded | Goals conceded | Conversion |
Sheff Utd | 138 | 8 | 5.80% |
Chelsea | 132 | 8 | 6.06% |
Man City | 136 | 9 | 6.62% |
Burnley | 145 | 10 | 6.90% |
Arsenal | 129 | 9 | 6.98% |
Watford | 142 | 10 | 7.04% |
Liverpool | 84 | 6 | 7.14% |
Crystal Palace | 138 | 10 | 7.25% |
Everton | 145 | 11 | 7.59% |
Leicester | 130 | 10 | 7.69% |
Newcastle | 129 | 10 | 7.75% |
Southampton | 126 | 10 | 7.94% |
Man Utd | 131 | 12 | 9.16% |
West Ham | 157 | 17 | 10.83% |
Spurs | 147 | 16 | 10.88% |
Aston Villa | 110 | 12 | 10.91% |
Wolves | 129 | 15 | 11.63% |
Norwich | 122 | 15 | 12.30% |
Brighton | 131 | 17 | 12.98% |
Bournemouth | 138 | 19 | 13.77% |
Gameweek history now visible
Ragabolly has helpfully added Gameweek histories to the Virtual FPL game, allowing managers to see the transfers they have previously made along with data such as captains selected and rank changes.
Managers can access this by clicking on ‘GW HISTORY’ (highlighted in red above) in the menu bar.
The season histories of other Virtual FPL managers are also visible and can be viewed by entering their team ID in the address bar (e.g. https://www.livefpl.net/history/1915)
VIRTUAL FPL PREMIER LEAGUE TABLE
UPCOMING FIXTURES
TOP SCORERS/ASSIST-MAKERS
STATS TABLES
Our spreadsheet that details team attacks (both for and against) by Gameweek and overall has been updated after the latest matches.
The fixture difficulty rating colour (according to Ragabolly’s ticker) is reflected in the relevant Gameweek.
The updated standings are below:
TopMarx has updated his interactive player stats spreadsheet after Tuesday’s matches, meanwhile.
He has also added a ‘Player Picker’ to help with your transfer-making decisions.
The stand-alone spreadsheet can be accessed via this link, with Fantasy managers able to make their own copy by selecting “File>Make a copy”.
INJURIES AND BANS
Danny Ings (£7.1m) returns from a three-match ban in Gameweek 9, with no other players currently serving a suspension.
Dele Alli (£8.3m) is now free of injury, meanwhile, along with Mamadou Sakho (£5.0m).
Apart from Pukki and Fernandes, Norwich City’s Christoph Zimmermann (£4.4m) was the only other player to pick up an injury in Gameweek 8.
The centre-half will miss the Canaries’ next four matches.
The likes of Rui Patricio (£5.1m), Frederic Guilbert (£4.4m) and Gylfi Sigurdsson (£7.3m) remain longer-term absentees.
RANKINGS
DeltaFox dropped from first to joint-ninth after a Gameweek 8 to forget, with Eddie Campbell‘s VAR United (aka pelle9) taking top spot after a 60-point swing between the pair.
The top four managers above are all signed up to our mini-league, along with DeltaFox.
Francisco Lamarque, who is level with the erstwhile overall leader, heads Greyhead’s Great and the Good league, while Fantasy Football Scout head honcho elfozzie moves to the top of the Mods and Cons mini-league and up to 71st in the world.
You can join the Fantasy Football Scout mini-league by entering the code 9RV4A via the below link.
3 years, 11 months ago
Hope you’re all having a great Wednesday....