We’ve put together our Scout Picks ‘bus team’ ahead of Blank Gameweek 32 of Fantasy Premier League (FPL).
In this early selection, we select a first draft of our regular picks before they are finalised and published much closer to Friday’s deadline.
We are limited to an £83.0m budget for our starting XI, while our bench is also price-capped after a reader vote.
In the meantime, this ‘bus team’ article – a term coined by the duo behind the Always Cheating podcast – will discuss the players who are likely to be in the running.
GAMEWEEK 32 FIXTURES
Times given in BST
THE LIKELY LADS
The Scout Picks is basically a Free Hit side, and there’ll be plenty of those chips deployed ahead of Gameweek 32.
Arsenal and Liverpool triple-ups feel almost inevitable, given that both sides have plum home fixtures against relegation-threatened opposition, who happen to be in poor form.
Since Ruben Selles’ appointment in Gameweek 24, Southampton have scored just six goals in nine matches, with their initially impressive defence particularly porous of late. Nottingham Forest, meanwhile, haven’t won since the first week of February and have been awful on the road all season, finding the net just four times and conceding 36 goals in 15 matches.
The Gunners’ backline has looked shaky without William Saliba (£5.0m) lately, conceding in each of the four matches he has missed, so an injury update would be welcome. If he is ready to return on Friday, you can expect interest in Ben White (£4.9m) – who has two goals and two assists in his last six matches – and Gabriel Magalhaes (£5.3m) to pick up.
However, for now, we’ve opted to include a trio of exciting attackers, which probably makes the most sense given that Mikel Arteta’s troops have racked up a whopping 27 goals in their last nine outings.
Gabriel Martinelli (£6.9m) is the man in form, averaging 8.3 points per start over the last eight Gameweeks and registering 10 attacking returns in just nine appearances in that spell. Gabriel Jesus’ (£8.1m) minutes are being managed since returning from injury, but he too could prosper, with the final spot at this stage feeling like a straight shoot-out between Bukayo Saka (£8.6m) and Martin Odegaard (£6.7m).
Liverpool will also feature prominently in our plans. In the last six matches, no FPL midfielder has attempted more shots in the box than Mohamed Salah (£12.8m), with Nott’m Forest’s susceptibility to conceding chances in wide areas also leading us to Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.3m) and Andrew Robertson (£6.8m).
Further forward, a differential punt on a low-owned attacker carries appeal, perhaps at the expense of Robertson. The battle for game-time between Cody Gakpo (£7.6m), Luis Diaz (£7.8m), Roberto Firmino (£8.0m), Darwin Nunez (£8.7m) and Diogo Jota (£8.7m) looked too close to call and too risky to gamble on before the Leeds game – but have Jota and Gakpo now cemented their starts after the 6-1 demolition at Elland Road?
IN CONTENTION
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