Fantasy Football Captain Picks Gameweek 13

Fantasy Football Captain Picks Gameweek 13 2017/18

Welcome to Fantasy Football Captain Picks Gameweek 13. Well, here we go, dear managers — 13 — the unlucky-for-some gameweek is looming. I suppose that’s true for any given game-week; fortunes varied widely in the FPL world last weekend. The shockwaves of both Salah and Hazard’s braces touched almost all of our teams, a phenomena now known as the Spacey effect, except managers who actually owned these players certainly weren’t complaining. The important question is: who will reveal themselves as the next big scorer? I think the following 5 candidates, given their delicate ball control and ability to score frequently, all have a good chance…

Riyad Mahrez vs West Ham (A)

Now, this isn’t quite 2015–16 and the dazzling peak of Mahrez’s career, but he’s been breezing along nicely so far. Every man, woman, child and Millwall fan already knows about Silva’s tally of assists — we’ll move onto him soon enough — but Riyad has 6 to his name already, with a couple of goals too, and was in-form to the tune of 7.75 points per match prior to last weekend’s Man City fixture.

Wanna hear something funnier than West Ham? Joe Hart. Wanna hear something funnier than Joe Hart? David Moyes. Wanna hear something funnier than David… sorry. This is where the fun ends. No team has conceded more goals than the tragic 25 that West Ham have so far and it’s not like the home advantage will save them; they’ve conceded 7 goals in their last pair of home matches alone. Mahrez will hope to resume his fine displays and send Moyes straight up to Scotland far faster than GP can yell out in desperation.

Form: 7

Fixture: 8

Explosiveness: 6

Paul Pogba vs Brighton (H)

I feel very, erm, plastic for making this recommendation. Pogba’s only just come back and scored somewhat of a tap-in last weekend. The fact is, though, his admirable 8.6 points per match is a statistic unmatched by any FPL player who’s had more than 90 minutes of action. I certainly haven’t had 90 minutes of action in quite some time. Anyway, only Salah and Aguero come close to rivalling this, which just goes to show how potent Paul is.

The main drawback here is the opposition. The heaviest defeats that Brighton have suffered have been 2–0 losses to Man City, Leicester and Arsenal, the latter being the only one without a mention already. It’s generally best for my mental health to avoid chatting about Arsenal nowadays. Would you captain a player who’s up against a team that’s never conceded more than twice in their entire Premier League history? It sounds pretty stupid to me. Then again, so does blacking out on a night bus back home and regaining consciousness inside Manchester Airport, but here I am. Pogba can pull this off.

Form: 6

Fixture: 7

Explosiveness: 6

Harry Kane vs West Brom (H)

This man’s my new ‘Aguero’ headache: he always forces his way into my articles. Judging from his recent form — currently 3 sad blanks in his last 4 matches — you’d think this would be an opportune gameweek for me to exclude him. However, looking slightly further back than ‘Form’ does on the official FPL site reveals that Kane has bagged 4 braces in his 8 most recent matches. I wonder: what would you say if someone offered you a coin toss to decide whether your captain delivers 26+ points or not? Heads (brains) for a blank and tails (why not ‘bums’? I’m doubting everything now) for a brace. I’d imagine “yes” and “my body is now yours” would be two common responses.

West Brom actually make the coin analogy somewhat inaccurate and conservative. They haven’t kept a clean sheet in their last 7 matches and conceded 14 goals in that dark period. Spurs have stopped pussyfooting around at Wembley, finally, so perhaps Harry blanking actually corresponds to rolling a 6 on a die, or to Matt counting up competition points correctly, or to Charlie Adam featuring in a Sensodyne advert. The main message is: don’t be fooled by the masses. Kane is a top captaincy contender this weekend. Oh, and he scored in the Champions League this week…

Form: 4

Fixture: 8

Explosiveness: 8

Mohamed Salah vs Chelsea (H)

Over to Liverpool, to Salah, to the Premier League goal machine right now. Matt was pleased to see Liverpool pick up all 4 points, I mean 3 points, against lowly Southampton over the weekend. Mo will face a far tougher challenge in Chelsea on Saturday evening, a team that’s kept 3 consecutive clean sheets now, a team that has collected more points in the Premier League than any other since the start of last season.

That’s mainly old news, though, really. What’s very much ‘new news’ is Salah’s rise to the summit of both the Total Scores and Form lists. To score 4 goals in just 2 matches means the opposition goes out of the window, especially when the fixture is at home, a rule that’s particularly pertinent here. Liverpool are unbeaten at home so far, scoring 12 goals and conceding 1 to date. Tempted yet? Liverpool also relish playing the so-called ‘big teams’ under Klopp now. Don’t rule out lightning striking once again; brace yourselves.

Form: 9

Fixture: 5

Explosiveness: 8

Pep Guardiola vs Huddersfield (A)

Well, well, well. Mr Potato Head probably hasn’t made a direct appearance in one of these articles before but he’s definitely a key influence in many of the FPL decisions we make nowadays. Man City just beat Feyenoord in the Champions League and the starting XI that Pep chose should, in theory, greatly influence who I’d recommend here. Kun started : Jesus didn’t. Sterling started : Sane wasn’t even on the bench. But then Sterling scored… KDB started : Silva didn’t. Etc, etc… Does it matter though? You could go on second guessing this lot as a betting man and lose a lot of money. Don’t forget too that they played on Tuesday, the earliest European date of the week, and don’t go again until Sunday, in the last PL game of the week. Plenty of rest there then. But just to confuse matters further there is another PL game-week in midweek. City play on the Wednesday, just for the record.

Let’s assess the options. I personally own Aguero, a real fans’ favourite, and Sterling; you probably have Jesus and Sane if you’re actually a decent FPL manager. Sane’s the in-form option right now, but only one of these players is realistically capable of pulling out a 20+ pointer from nowhere, in truth. Not forgetting both KDB and David Silva, two borderline world-class players who can score and assist freely, who are perfectly good captains if you own them. Not least for their security of starts. Nobody is really guaranteed a 90-minute match. The hipsters will captain Fernandinho and smoke for the best. Why, then, are we looking to Man City for our captains? The answer’s very obvious. Pep’s men have scored 40 goals. The bottom 5 teams in the 2016–17 season couldn’t better that after playing over 3 times as many matches! Captaining the Man City player who’s most likely to start — defenders aside — for the rest of the season sounds like a plan to me. I wish you well in deciding exactly who that player is…

Form: appears to stand with good posture

Fixture: 10

Explosiveness: very temperamental in a wig shop

All the best for this weekend, guys, and see you on the boards.

Thanks for reading Fantasy Football Captain Picks Gameweek 13

This article was written by James.

@James777Simpson

Gameweek Tracker GW13-19