...to this!
Whereas some players need TLC, some respond best to what is known as 'the hairdryer treatment'. Step forward please Mr Charlie Daniels, presciently referred to in my last blog as "the poor man's Leighton Baines". After naming and shaming him then for his woeful 1 point return for my -4 points hit in GW21, I couldn't have hoped for a better reaction as he earned the accolade of 'top player' in the GW22 Dream Team. In so doing, he spared me the yet more blushes threatened by his predecessor Danny Rose, who made 2 assists and scored 8 points vs SUN just 2 GWs after I'd described him as "now redundant".
We Need To Talk About Wayne. Clearly, I shouldn't have tempted providence by daring to declare his mishap vs AVL as uncharacteristic. Hennessey's failure to keep goal properly when faced with a speculative Delph effort will leave a lot of managers awaiting CPL's next team sheet with interest and/or anxiety.
Fortunately for me, having already parted company with Harry Kane, last gameweek's top recommendation for captaincy, I put the armband on Aguero, more as a penitent than a devout believer. I provided the repentance and he the salvation! Naturally, as someone who had insurance cover in the form of Eriksen, I was less than happy with the unwelcome gift of a penalty to Kane from the hapless debutant Kirchoff.
And so, I found myself sitting down to the Saturday teatime kickoff having already amassed 80 points from my first 7 players, and knocking very loudly indeed on the top 1K club door, especially as I had Mahrez, Arnautovic, Ozil (or so I believed) and Gomes still in play.
What happened next , however, was a timely reminder that we should never count our FPL chickens before they hatch!
Thus, my last 4 players, featuring a 4 points cameo from Vardy, contributed a paltry 10 additional points. So instead of getting my name on the Top 1K Club VIP guest list, I shuffled my way towards the back of the queue in around about two thousand, three hundred and sixty ninth place.
Still, 90 points isn't too bad, so I mustn't grumble, as we British like to say. Onto my GW23 Preview, which can hopefully continue the onwards and upwards trajectory.
Transfer Business
My pronouncements two blogs back on the end of the Ighalo party have still not been made to look as silly as those people who are always found in the kitchen hoping to greet another pretty goal. (Please feel free to tweet me the song reference above to @barCOLEYna for your fifteen seconds of fame!)
ATTACK
LEI, MUN and SOT all reenter calculations for the next 6 GWs, with the first named expected to drop away again, due mostly to 2 tricky fixtures in GWs 25 & 26. Thereafter though, they embark on a very tasty run of fixtures again, so there's certainly cause for optimism that they'll be back in the goals again.
'How Do You Solve A Problem Like Mahrez?'
Having been taken off penalties, the writing is on the wall for Mahrez, and a strong case can now be made for offloading him, especially as his price is probably set to plummet. One man's poison is another man's treasure, however, and those who offloaded Vardy to bring Aguero in, may be looking back on that transfer with some regret the next time LEI are awarded a penalty.
Knowing which teams are on the up or in decline is one thing, but the tricky part is getting your timing right. It's all very well 44,432 managers bringing Daniels in this week, but surely it's better to be ahead of the curve than behind it? Hence, I'm introducing a new feature to my blog, which will hopefully make entry and exit points for attacking and defensive assets clearer. Obviously, we all have differing budgetary constraints and transfer priorities, so these are purely a guide to the optimal times suggested by my spreadsheet. Inevitably, some points will be missed, but:
"Don't waste your time on jealousy;
Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind.
The [FPL] race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself [and your mini-league rivals]."
(That's another fifteen seconds of fame going for a Burton Albion to whoever
tweets @barCOLEYna first with that particular song reference.)
Live Arrivals & Departures Board (ATTACK)
DEFENCE
4 new entries onto our DEF assets chart for the 6 gameweek period commencing GW23, easily the most significant of which is EVE, who mark their seasonal debut in this particular chart. You may recall earlier in the season when GW11 was being heralded by many to be the threshold for tripling up on the blues. My spreadsheet advised against investment in their defensive assets at that time, and I warned that the seeming turning point in their fixtures might be but a mirage, and so it proved, from a defensive point of view at least.
After touting "the poor man's Leighton Baines" to you a couple of blogs ago, however, it's nearly time to turn to the rich man's equivalent. Namely, erm, yeah, you've got it: Leighton Baines. I say nearly because my new Arrivals & Departures Board (see further below) tells us that Clean Sheet (CS) points are not due until GW25. That said, EVE's attacking prowess continues to rank highly in my scoring charts, so I wouldn't discourage you from trying to be the early bird catching some [assist/goal] worms! I generally prefer to wait for good ATT prospects to coincide with good CS prospects though before I bring in an expensive defender.
Only AVL from the 3 teams falling down my chart drop off our radar completely for the time being. ARS & LEI look likely to remain under the microscope when I do this again for GW24. The former team has such heavily owned assets, that they will only be included in my Arrivals & Departures Board when significant turning points arise. Likewise with MCI & TOT.
Live Arrivals & Departures Board (DEFENCE)
Having endorsed sales of Clyne and Moreno in my last blog, my Arrivals & Departures Board now shows GW25 to be the next disembarking point for LIV.
BOU heeded my call last time, to give us a reason to keep their DEF assets, with such aplomb, that they now top both the 6 GW charts for GW23-28, as well as the early forecast for the one spanning GW24-29. Thus the Daniels bandwagon seems justified to me.
Excuses were made for NOR against STO, but none such could be made vs BOU. Clearly, they are to be avoided away from Carrow Road, but they are still worthy of consideration for any budget home rotations for the time being.
O Captain! My Captain!
Whereas most managers base their decision on who to captain purely on which players are in form, my approach is to ask which teams are likely to score the most goals that gameweek, and then see if there are any obvious candidates for the armband from those teams. The 8 teams identified by my spreadsheet as likely to score the most goals in GW23 are shown below:
Dangerously for me, I have strong representation from both EVE & ARS in my squad, meaning I will likely be hiding behind my sofa when MCI visit the Boleyn Ground. It's looking like there'd have to be some momentous news emerge from the pre-match press conferences to prevent me from captaining Lukaku*, who has remarkably been shipped out by some 46,427 managers this week (at the time of writing). They are probably doing so to belatedly fund the acquisition of Aguero, and it is to be hoped that this will be a huge advantage to those of us owning both. After all, EVE are ranked 2nd for expected goals in the next 6 gameweeks.
ARS are ranked above them, and this is the GW I've long had one eye on to dismay and dumbfound my mini-league rivals by adding one Alexis Sanchez to my squad. I'll be monitoring the noises eminating from The Emirates Stadium closely over the next few days.
ARS are ranked above them, and this is the GW I've long had one eye on to dismay and dumbfound my mini-league rivals by adding one Alexis Sanchez to my squad. I'll be monitoring the noises eminating from The Emirates Stadium closely over the next few days.
* No momentous news, but I've subsequently compared MCI's key ATT stats away with EVE's at home, together with WHM's key DEF stats at home vs SWA's away, and that has swayed me into captaining Aguero. Remember: my spreadsheet doesn't make allowances for things like the difference that Aguero and Silva returning to full fitness and match sharpness can make!
Keeping Clean Sheets
My spreadsheet identifies the 6 teams below as likely to concede the least number of goals in GW22:
My 5 selections last week only conceded 4 legal goals (I'm NOT going to count Terry's blatantly offside last minute equaliser!) in the process of delivering 2 clean sheets.
Predicted Scorelines
Season Ticker
Lastly, the screenshot below provides an overview of all teams' next 6 fixtures, from which all of the recommendations above are drawn:
Key: Dark blue is best and dark red the worst. The top table relate to expected goals scored,
and the bottom one to expected goals conceded.
As ever, please feel free to comment or ask questions, either below or via my twitter account @barCOLEYna.
Actually, I have just been asked a very good question via a Twitter DM that I think the answer to would be useful to share here:
In the Expected Goals Scored (next 6 games) chart in the ATTACK section under Transfer Business, LEI are predicted to average 8.3 goals, but they don't feature in the projected chart for the GW24-29 period, meaning they are expected to score less than WBA's 5.9, yet the top table in the screenshot of my season ticker directly above seems to contradict this because 8.3 less the 1.6 expected in GW23 equals 6.7! How come?
Well, what you don't see here is next GW's projected season ticker based on the scores predicted for GW23. Each team's last 3 scores gets altered in either the home or away columns every time they play. Thus, it is a constantly changing, ever evolving fixture ticker!
Please refer to my 'New Year's season ticker Resolution' blog for further insights into the 'philosophy' underpinning my approach to FPL.
Coley.
