We round up the key Fantasy Premier League (FPL) talking points of the day in FPL Daily, a weekday series that serves non-Premier League matchdays and days when we don’t bring you a team news/press conference round-up.
The headline story was the announcement of Double Gameweek 26, with eight teams – including Liverpool – set to play twice.
We’ve further coverage of the wider Blank/Double Gameweek picture in our summary article, while you can read the early Gameweek 26 team thoughts of five-time top 1k finisher Tom Freeman here.
Thursday also saw a number of Premier League managers give press conferences ahead of the weekend’s cup fixtures and we’ve rounded up the key quotes and injury updates in this article.
WILL SALAH START IN GAMEWEEK 24?
“Four days is enough recovery time” versus “there’s no way he starts”.
Whichever camp you fall in with regards to Mohamed Salah‘s (£12.7m) Gameweek 24 game-time prospects will probably be influenced by whether you own the Egyptian in FPL or not.
Anyone who belongs to the first clique will surely be less confident now, however, after Salah and Egypt made it through to the Africa Cup of Nations final on Sunday, where Sadio Mane (£11.7m) and Senegal await.
That final takes place four days before Liverpool’s Gameweek 24 fixture against Leicester City, so there has to be more than a bit of doubt about how many minutes the premium pair will be afforded on their return to Premier League action.
It’s not just the four-day turnaround, which isn’t too bad, but the match-time that Salah has accumulated since Egypt’s first group game on January 11.
FPL’s leading points scorer has already started six AFCON games ahead of the final and the last three have all gone to extra-time, so it was impossible (a stoppage-time substitution aside) to have logged any more game-time than the 630 minutes of football he has racked up; that’s the equivalent of seven 90-minute run-outs in just over three weeks.
Jurgen Klopp will undoubtedly be keen to get his talisman back in action as quickly as possible, with the Reds’ title tilt still just about alive – the question is how keen, and can he afford to even consider giving Salah a post-tournament breather like the one Pep Guardiola handed Riyad Mahrez (£8.6m) with so much on the line.
