Heading into Gameweek 4 of Fantasy Premier League (FPL), two-time Indian FPL champion Lateriser reveals his team and looks ahead to a Gameweek 6 Wildcard.
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I imagine many managers like me are looking to probably Wildcard in Gameweek 6. I had a look at potential options for a Gameweek 6 Wildcard and I thought it might be a good idea in this article to ponder some of the decisions and dilemmas we might have around then.
The purpose of this piece is for us to monitor players we will be looking at a little more closely and put on our ‘scouting’ hat.
For those who are not on a Wildcard, this might give an idea of what your competition (future Wildcarders!) might be looking at.
The Big Arsenal question
One of the big reasons to Wildcard before Gameweek 6 is the big fixture swing for Arsenal just after they play Manchester City at the Emirates.
I currently have no Arsenal players. After Gameweek 5, they have two juicy home ties against Leicester City and Southampton. This precedes a trip to Bournemouth. Which three Arsenal assets to go with on the Wildcard is something definitely to think about.
The fact that the fixtures in Gameweeks 9-11 for Arsenal read Liverpool (h), Newcastle United (a) and Chelsea (a) tells me that one or two of these Arsenal assets we own will probably be dispensable. Given those fixtures, I feel like a defender might be more disposable than an attacker.
On paper, Kai Havertz (£8.1m), Bukayo Saka (£10.1m) and one defender seem like the best bet. However, I do wonder what the trickle-down effect might be if Martin Odegaard (£8.4m) is injured for longer than anticipated. We sometimes forget that losing a key player changes the dynamic of a team, especially a side like Arsenal.
That said, I am not fully sure whether we can extrapolate the information from the north London derby, where they will likely be without Odegaard and Declan Rice (£6.4m). This will be vastly different game to the home matches in Gameweeks 6 and 7.
Arteta did say that Odegaard is feeling positive and hasn’t fully ruled him out of Sunday’s match, despite the Norwegian media reporting a timeline of three weeks. It might be a case of much ado about nothing.
One decision we do have to debate is David Raya (£5.5m) versus a £4.5m goalkeeper like Mark Flekken or Alphonse Areola. I do think the premium ‘keepers might be better this year as the early data tell us that clean sheets are more correlated with bonus points than saves. That wasn’t the case in previous years.
Opting for Raya would limit my flexibility of owning Arsenal outfielders but I am certainly more open to a premium ‘keeper than I have been previously. You don’t even mind holding Raya through trickier tests, as he could easily post a double-digit haul in one of the tougher fixtures if he manages to keep a clean sheet – which Arsenal are perfectly capable of in any game.
The Glue Guys and the Diaz conundrum
I have an early ‘hot take’ feeling that this might be Luis Diaz‘s (£7.6m) season. This formation for Liverpool is built to create space for Salah and Diaz, and I feel like he looks distinctly better than he did under Jurgen Klopp.
It is still early days, of course, and European football is imminent. I want to see what his expected minutes look like in the next few weeks so I can weigh his appeal up against the more secure ‘ticks-all’ glue picks like Bryan Mbeumo (£7.1m) and Eberechi Eze (£6.9m).
While I am monitoring this bracket, I’m also interested to see how the likes of Jarrod Bowen (£7.5m) and Mohammed Kudus (£6.4m) do. Julen Lopetegui’s teams are not inherently known to be very attacking (neither were those of David Moyes, to be fair) but they have a bunch of good fixtures, especially from Gameweek 9 onwards, and are of interest to me.
Which enablers are we scouting?
Brighton have a tough run of fixtures from Gameweek 6 onwards, so I am not sure how popular Joao Pedro (£5.7m) will be then.
Outside of the already popular Morgan Rogers (£5.1m), I do want to see if Antoine Semenyo (£5.6m) continues posting strong underlying numbers. Bournemouth have Southampton at home and Leicester away in Gameweeks 6 and 7. The Cherries do have a tough run in Gameweeks 8-10 but the likes of Ipswich Town and Everton have good fixtures in that period, which is why I will be monitoring these teams. I’ll be watching Iliman Ndiaye (£5.4m), Sammie Szmodics (£6.0m), Liam Delap (£5.5m) and Omari Hutchinson (£5.4m) closely as I aim to have eight playing attackers on my Wildcard.
I do believe that Sean Dyche’s team is laying the same trap they did by having a slow start last season. With Ndiaye back and Jarrad Branthwaite (£4.9m) not far from a return, I’m not ruling out a pick or two from the Toffees for their favourable run of fixtures.
Other Shouts
I am hoping that with the UEFA Champions League imminent, we get to see a run from Ian Maatsen (£4.9m). I do think there is value in that full-back/wing-back slot for Aston Villa. We will need to see some positive proof for expected minutes first but I do think that he will eventually make that spot his.
The Rico Lewis (£4.7m) question on Wildcard is pretty big too but if he starts the next two Premier League games, I am more inclined to go with him than without. I think the upside is simply too big to ignore. That said, I will balance that risk with four nailed-on defenders around him.
Liverpool
Liverpool have a mixed bag of fixtures after Gameweek 6 but I am of the opinion that Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.0m) is just one of the best picks in the game right now. If you haven’t owned him yet, you have gotten away with murder.
I think he’s just a perma-play glue guy who shouldn’t be over-thought, irrespective of fixtures. I also wonder if Mohamed Salah (£12.7m) is going to be disposable in upcoming games. Weighing him up against Cole Palmer and Saka is definitely going to be interesting.
LATERISER’S GAMEWEEK 4 TEAM + TRANSFERS
That is all from me this week. If you want to see more, I spoke at length about a potential Gameweek 6 Wildcard to Alon from FML FPL – which you can view below:
