Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers are starting to feel the festive fixture crunch, with the latest round of Gameweek 18 fixtures offering us another armband conundrum to solve.
Both Manchester City and Brentford blank – so captaincy heavyweight Erling Haaland (£13.9m) is out of the equation – with focus instead on a variety of assets from Aston Villa, Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and Newcastle United.
As usual, the Captain Sensible article is here to highlight which assets have the best chance of hauling.
First, we will assess the fallout of the captain poll, before then analysing the best options, Rate My Team (RMT) and the Premier Fantasy Tools ratings ahead of Thursday’s 18:30 GMT deadline.
THE CAPTAIN POLL
Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins (£8.7m) sealed a comeback 2-1 win against his former club Brentford, in a bad-tempered affair at the Gtech Community Stadium.
The Villa marksman nodded home following a set-piece to register his 18th attacking return of the season – a tally equal to Mohamed Salah (£13.2m) and just one behind City’s Norwegian Haaland.
And the visit of Sheffield United to Villa Park further boosts his armband appeal with Watkins backed in droves, by just over 60% of our users, to put the Blades to the sword.
Meanwhile, Son Heung-min (£9.8m) blanked in Tottenham Hotspur’s 2-0 win at Nottingham Forest, with Ange Postecoglou’s side playing the last 20 minutes with 10 men.
The South Korean – again deployed from the left-hand-side with Richarlison (£6.7m) leading the line – played second-fiddle at the City Ground to Dejan Kulusevski (£7.1m) but equalled the Swede for shots in the box (three) and efforts on target (two).
The Spurs talisman has been backed by a mite over one-tenth of our users to find his shooting boots when Sean Dyche’s in-form Everton side visit this weekend.
Salah occupies third place with 7.82% of the vote, with Cole Palmer (£5.6m) and Dominic Solanke (£6.8m) a long way further back.
THE PLAYER STATISTICS – LAST SIX MATCHES
