Fantasy Football Fixture Analysis Gameweek 3

Welcome to Fantasy Football Fixture Analysis Gameweek 3. GW2 FPL 2018/19 may now forever more be remembered as Jamie Jackson Week. There’s a fair to middling chance that prior to about 4.25pm on Friday many (most) of you will never have even heard of Jamie Jackson before. Yeah sure enough, he’s got a hallowed ‘blue tick’ on his twitter page and he’s a ‘journalist’ for The Guardian but we aren’t talking Henry Winter or Neil Custis levels of notoriety here. I’ll freely admit I didn’t have a scooby who he was either. I do now though! He’s just about the most hated person on twitter within FPL circles as we speak. Even Ben Crellin blushed. Bobby Madley’s publicist was perhaps the only person to benefit from the whole debacle, in a Tony Blair style ‘good week to bury bad news’ style.

We digress (before we get sued!)… On to this weeks Fixtures article –

My much younger, less good looking and much smaller (than Rosco, who isn’t?!) predecessor AT (don’t worry he’s not dead!) spent last week telling you all about the bleeding obvious. Gems such as ‘Man City and Liverpool are good, Newcastle are bad’ fell from his expert fantasy hands onto the keyboard. And he was correct to do so. I’ll not be so lazy though, rest assured. Maybe…

To be fair to our young whipper snapper he gave you Man City who spanked Huddersfield, Everton who were also victorious, just, and Liverpool who limped home, in a grey fashion….

Unfortunately he also advised you avoid both Newcastle and Brighton like the plague. And both went and got (relatively) positive results. Which is quite fitting really given as the mantra ‘Bloody AT’ was almost trending on site after GW1! I’m not entirely sure why it was but it seems he may have spent pre-season systematically destroying peoples teams one by one like some demented FPL version of T-1000.

I’m sure it was just a quirk of the scheduling calendar that meant I could follow up next after his every fixtures article….

Favourable Fixtures

Manchester City – Wolves (A), Newcastle (H), Fulham (H) There was a benign early passage of play, way before City even opened the scoring, it involved Ederson and Stones playing it across their own goal line, virtually. If you love football you’ll have seen it and smiled wryly as I did. It was almost Pep eating himself, such was it’s audacity and daring. The whole thing took a matter of seconds, but probably encapsulated Pep’s whole philosophy, maybe to an n’th degree that even he didn’t daren’t envisage. But it also then ballooned a while later into Ederson himself making a pinpoint through ball, an 80 yard one, for Kun’s opener. Surely the best and most deliberate assist we’ve ever seen from a keeper?

Does it really matter who they play next? Probably not, they’re streets ahead of anyone. Your main difficulty is of course second guessing which players will actually play. Fortunately that’s not our job here on Fixtures, we just point you at the correct teams! I will however give you a steer as to my own thinking on this, as a bonus (!), I have Ederson and Kun currently and I’m fixing to add Mendy to those. I’m ignoring the mids for now as it’s clearly a mine field. Mendy thinks he’s a mid anyway, so that’s good enough for me.

Arsenal – West Ham (H), Cardiff (A), Newcastle (A)
Wenger out! Oh no, hang on… we went there, did that and he left. Eventually…. Emery out?! Not quite yet. Yeah ok the first two results haven’t quite been perfect but then again neither were the fixtures. The next ones will probably tell us far more as they’re all ‘winnable’ on paper. And it’s not just the next 3 either, Emery and co go all the way until GW11 now until they next meet one of the Big 6. They have a clear run now, as such. Make of it what you will but GW’s 3 to 10 will be definitive for them and also perhaps Emery himself.

West Ham at home is probably just the tonic they need right now as Pellegrini’s men have shipped 6 in 2 games and only scored 1 in response, and that was from the penalty spot. A couple of away trips follow but neither looks particularly daunting.

If you deliberately swerved the Gunners for their opening couple of games then that was probably wise but you can start to look at them as viable options from here on in. Certainly from an attacking point of view anyway. Personally I’d take a rain check on their defenders for now, until they all get their heads around this playing out from the back thing, or at least until Cech does finally stick one in his own net and is inevitably forced to pick up his walking stick and wander off into the distance like Grandpa from The Simpsons, muttering ‘bloody kids’ under his breath.

Chelsea – Newcastle (A), Bournemouth (H), Cardiff (H)
Would Sir like sauce on that? Sometimes the devil is in the detail. Or so it seems in football management. Seemingly, something as simple as reintroducing ketchup to the lunch service can reinvigorate an entire squadron of men these days. I’m being slightly facetious of course but ketchup is the new word for ‘fun’ in modern football management parlance. If the manager allows it he’s perceived as the relaxed type, if he doesn’t then he’s a disciplinarian. And so cyclical are these things that replacing the ‘no sauce’ Conte with the more ‘saucy’ Sarri was the logical step.

Whether it is indeed sauce, or simply the fresh approach from a manager known for his attacking style, the players certainly seem to have embraced it and they have 2 wins out of 2 under their belts now and 3 goals in each game. Even Morata has scored. Miracle sauce?

If you’re looking for cheap options who play for a top side then you could do worse than look at the likes of Luiz and Pedro right now. Alonso carries a more premium label but if the hype is to be believed then he’s more than likely going to score a lot more than most mids or even forwards who cost the same. You’d have to imagine that Hazard may just embrace playing in a free flowing Sarri side too.

Best of the rest
Crystal Palace – Watford (A), Southampton (H), Huddersfield (A)
This is just a heads up really that you have 6 weeks of Palace bliss, if you choose to accept it, and then 5 weeks of hell. Well ok, probably not hell, but it’s all relative. After the above 3 games Woy also leads his twoops into games against Newcastle, Bournemouth and Wolves. And then things get potentially more wocky, albeit gradually so, with Everton, Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs and Man United being their next 5.

Richarlison – Bournemouth (A), Huddersfield (H), West Ham (H)
Fun fact, our young Brazilliant hero has never scored a professional goal without Marco Silva being tucked into his left sock and operating him by remote control. Ok, so that may not be strictly true but it doesn’t feel that far removed from the reality of his career in England thus far. Robot Rich has a decent run of games ahead of him. The ones noted above are punctuated by a trip to Arsenal but even after that he gets a go at Fulham, Leicester and Palace.

Unfavourable Fixtures

Cardiff – Huddersfield (A), Arsenal (H), Chelsea (A)
When you need a 97th minute penalty save to get a point in a 0-0 at home to Newcastle you probably know it’s going to be a long season. Huddersfield away next is the proverbial 40 pointer. Beyond that classic it’s Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City on the bounce and then Spurs and Liverpool in 2 of the following 4. Sell! Sell! Sell! Or rather, slap yourself hard in the face for buying in the first place.

Spurs – Man United (A), Watford (A), Liverpool (H)
Take a pic. It’s not often you find Spurs hidden down here. It’s more cautionary than anything though as we know they can perform in any given game, from an attacking perspective. I probably just wouldn’t bank on any of their defenders for a few weeks, that’s all really.

Thanks for reading Fantasy Football Fixture Analysis Gameweek 3. This article was written by Inittowinit

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