With Gameweek 8 of Fantasy Premier League (FPL) nearing, our pundits are starting to finalise their teams ahead of Friday’s deadline.
FPL General, who has three top 500 finishes to his name, is fully committed to going without Mohamed Salah (£14.5m) and Erling Haaland (£14.4m) this season. He shares his Gameweek 8 team thoughts below.
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GAMEWEEK 7 REVIEW
Gameweek 7 was a good one, following the disaster that was Gameweek 6. Three free transfers brought in captain Bukayo Saka (£9.9m), Marcos Senesi (£5.0m) and Nick Pope (£5.1m). Out went Tijani Reijnders (£5.8m), Marc Cucurella (£6.1m) and Emiliano Martinez (£5.0m).
The resulting 72 points brought a rank rise of more than one million places. Hopefully, I can gain some momentum now and claw back as much ground as possible. I’m looking forward to the challenge and have heard from a reliable source that Erling Haaland is going to calm down soon.
Anyway, it’s good to have Saka back in the fold for the armband. He’s likely to get it again this week when visiting Fulham. Can we all agree beforehand that if he hands the ball to Viktor Gyokeres (£9.1m) before the next Arsenal penalty, it’ll go down as an assist?
Meanwhile, what a season Antoine Semenyo (£7.9m) is having. Last time’s 18-pointer was a nice start to the Gameweek. He’s another that I can now lean on for the captaincy when Bournemouth have a favourable fixture.
Yet Mohamed Kudus’ (£6.8m) points were the sweetest of all. There’s a lot of competition in his price bracket and it wasn’t easy to keep faith in him after three blanks in four, but it paid off. He’s likely to stay for a while.
Pope and Daniel Munoz (£5.6m) did the business in defence. The Crystal Palace wing-back is such a good Fantasy pick. During the Everton game, I watched him repeatedly get into goalscoring positions, so he’s not going anywhere either.
The plan was to get both Gabriel Magalhaes (£6.3m) and Saka, but the Brazilian’s slight injury concern scared me off. I opted for Senesi instead, timed perfectly because it was his first occasion without defensive contribution (DefCon) points.
Forwards are a nightmare at the moment. All three blanked again. Despite that, there aren’t any real standout replacements either. Gyokeres and Joao Pedro (£7.7m) have a good fixture, so they’re getting one more week at least. However, Chris Wood (£7.3m) needs to go soon.
GAMEWEEK 8 TEAM
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Best of luck for the Gameweek folks and have a great weekend.
Check out this week’s video with Joe on the Fantasy Football Scout YouTube channel and my latest 59th Minute Podcast.
