A later-than-usual Scout Picks has arrived as we attempt to navigate the choppy waters caused by the quick turnaround between Gameweeks.
Our chosen XI features double-ups on Liverpool, Manchester City and Wolverhampton Wanderers – and a triple-up on Brighton and Hove Albion.
As ever, we are limited by certain restrictions in our selection:
- An £83.0m budget for our starting XI
- An overall squad limit of £100.0m
- No more than three players per team
GOALKEEPER
It’s fair to say that we’d have preferred to have had last weekend’s incarnation of Sheffield United facing our Scout Picks goalkeeper than the Blades side potentially rejuvenated by the return of Chris Wilder.
Still, Sean Bean’s troops (Sheffield United, not The 33rd Regiment of Foot) are the division’s lowest scorers in 2023/24 – and no managerial change is going to make Will Osula (£4.3m) a 20-goals-a-season man.
The Blades are also bottom of the league for expected goals (xG), big chances and shots.
Mark Flekken (£4.5m), by contrast, operates behind a defence sitting an impressive fifth for expected goals conceded (xGC) this season.
DEFENDERS
Manchester City are the bookmakers’ favourites for a clean sheet this weekend but the ongoing uncertainty over which combination of defenders Pep Guardiola chooses leads us to ignore the reigning champions’ backline.
Instead, we’ve plumped for representatives of the three teams who feature just behind City in G-Whizz’s bookies’ odds Hot Topic.
Trent Alexander-Arnold (£8.0m) is in a rich vein of form, racking up more points in the last seven Gameweeks (53) than Matty Cash (£4.9m) has all season. He’s also first among FPL defenders for shots, chances created and big chances created in that time.
Liverpool’s clean sheet prospects at Selhurst Park would be given a further boost if Roy Hodgson, who is already without Eberechi Eze (£6.0m), listens to his sports science team and opts not to risk the dangerous Michael Olise (£5.8m).
Craig Dawson (£4.5m) and Lewis Dunk (£5.0m) don’t offer the same all-round points potential as Alexander-Arnold but they are aerially dominant beasts with plum home fixtures this weekend.
No centre-half has had more shots (16) than the Brighton man this season.
Opponents Nottingham Forest and Burnley are both in the bottom five for goals scored, meanwhile.
They’re also 20th and 19th for points in the six-match form table, with Steve Cooper’s job hanging by a thread going into this weekend’s clash at Molineux.
MIDFIELDERS
There’s no Mohamed Salah (£13.1m) in the Scout Picks, with the decision taken to spend the money elsewhere given that fatigue and managed minutes might be a factor – as it was in Gameweek 15 – for some Liverpool players this Saturday lunchtime.
Instead, we’ve got four names all under £8.0m.
Hwang Hee-chan (£5.7m) has been a reliable performer on home soil, with six of his seven goals arriving at Molineux. He’s also seemingly inherited the responsibility for taking Wolves’ penalties.
The underlying stats (he’s the biggest xG overachiever this season) suggest that his rate of returns isn’t sustainable – but that’s over the long term. Against a struggling Forest outfit that just shipped five goals to a mid-table Fulham side, there should be ample opportunities to extend his purple patch.
Talking of runs of scoring, Jarrod Bowen (£7.7m) has netted in every single away league appearance this season. That’s helped him to a points-per-start average of 8.1 away from the London Stadium, while he is also the leading FPL midfielder for ‘big chances’ (seven) on the road.
Opponents Fulham will be buoyed by their midweek victory but as evidenced in the three Gameweeks immediately before that, they’re also liable to concede a hatful of chances and goals when up against anyone remotely decent going forward.
Phil Foden (£7.5m) is a slightly risky pick given that we’re not quite sure how Pep Guardiola will react to the flat loss at Villa Park.
But, outside of the gurning cyborg up front, Foden had looked like the likeliest source of City goals of late.
Joint-top among FPL midfielders for goals scored in the last six Gameweeks (three), he’s also joint-third for shots in the box – and that includes Wednesday night’s stinker in which Man City as a collective only had two goal attempts all match.
Finally, Pascal Gross (£6.3m).
The tortoise to Kauro Mitoma’s (£6.5m) hare, he beat his more exalted team-mate for FPL points last year and he’s doing it again this time around.
Joint-fifth among FPL midfielders for chances created (31), he’s typically good for minutes – last weekend’s benching was his first ever in the Premier League under Roberto De Zerbi.
FORWARDS
Staying with Brighton, Evan Ferguson (£6.1m) has as many goals as starts (five) at the Amex in 2023/24. Man City’s Norwegian number nine is the only forward who has scored more on their own turf this season.
Half the battle with Albion assets is guessing which of them is going to start in any given week, so a midweek benching for Ferguson raises the prospects of a recall against a Burnley side that hasn’t kept one clean sheet on the road since promotion.
Providing he doesn’t knock himself out going through the Oak Road entrance, Erling Haaland (£14.0m) could have a field day against Luton Town.
The Hatters have proven themselves to be far from the pushovers many of us thought.
Even so, no side has allowed more headed opportunities or big chances than Luton in 2023/24.
Get this for a stat: Haaland has had three times as many ‘big chances’ (21) as anyone else in away fixtures this season, and 17 more than Salah has on the road.
Lastly, Darwin Nunez (£7.7m).
He’s a Liverpool attacker who likely doesn’t have to worry about game-time this weekend, having been benched in midweek.
His minutes-per-chance average of 19.4 is also superior to every other single FPL forward who has started at least one match this season.
THE CAPTAIN
We chose the Scout Picks captain using a vote between our Scout Squad panel.
Erling Haaland was unanimously handed the armband, with Darwin Nunez on vice-captaincy duties.
COMMUNITY CHAMPION
Each week, a member of the Fantasy Football Scout community takes on the Scout Picks.
The community member who beats our team by the largest margin will win a £100 Amazon voucher and a place in our Moderators and Contributors League for the following season.
Prophet’s 75-51 victory in Gameweek 3 gave them the biggest win (24 points difference) of 2023/24 so far.
Our champion this week is The-Red-1, whose selection is as follows:
Onana, Trent, Walker, Pinnock, Dunk, Salah, Son, Mitoma, Gross, Hwang, Haaland (c).
Last week’s entrant, The Knight’s Template, was defeated 59-45.
The Scout Picks are 10-5 up on the community this season.
FOLLOW THE SCOUT’S WEEKLY TRANSFER PLANS
We’re running a Scout community team in FPL this season, with regulars like TopMarx, Tom Freeman, Marc Jobling and more contributing to the weekly decisions.
And we’re not just looking one week ahead like we are with the Scout Picks but instead planning in advance for the weeks and months to come.
You can follow our team via the Premier Fantasy Tools Pro Planner, which you can learn more about here.
