Fantasy Football Tips Gameweek 14

Welcome to Fantasy Football Tips Gameweek 14

One look at the Site Team sitting pretty near the top of the FPL charts and you’d be forgiven for thinking that this must therefore be THE place to come for weekly Player Tips. Ahem, well… erm. Look, we try. Some weeks we nail it, other weeks we call… GW13! Just as a recap then, we called out Sa who conceded 3 vs Fulham, Bowen who didn’t play due to injury, Awoniyi who got so injured he’s now out for 4 months, and Solanke who did bugger all, despite Bournemouth actually scoring 3! As for defenders we simply said ‘Urrrghhh’. Which, technically speaking, was our best and most accurate shout, albeit also a massively unhelpful one in the process.

Let’s go see if we can do any better for you this week, or at least get some players on the damn pitch, for starters….

Goalkeeper – Kelleher vs Fulham (H), by OddDane, the cheapskate
Alright let’s get to it then shall we, my fellow armchair Pep’iolas!
I’ll keep this one short, as Init will probably have 23 defenders lined up after last week’s omission of said defenders. Maybe he’ll get one right, who knows 😉

Catastrophe has hit Liverpool and their best player, Sir A. Becker, has been struck by injury. Fear not, says Klopp, we have Caoimh K. who he believes is the strongest option. Well, now he is, anyway…

Liverpool has Fulham at home (and decent games to follow) and are amongst the very best in the league at defending. Ironically, by comparison, Fulham have only recently learned that goals are needed in the other half, not your own. So, at 3.9 he’s an excellent option to replace mister Turner, who has been banished to the realm of the bench – at least he has better seats than most of us going to the games. Oh come one now, admit it. You have him too, you cheapskate. At any rate, you’ll still save another 0.1. Probably. If this is published quickly enough…

Defender(s) – Various issues… by Init

Is it just me or are these clean sheets getting harder and harder to come by? It may be a statistical anomaly, or it may even not be an oddity at all, but last week produced just the 2 of them, out of the 20 possible, the week before that just the 3, the week before that just 4. Just for fun we checked… and yes, the week before that was 5. You fill in your own missing number patterns… 5, 4, 3, 2, X.

Back to grown-up numbers, that is just the 14 in the past 4 weeks from 80 ‘chances’. We began to investigate whether that was indeed a drop off on normal stats, but in all honesty that was a rabbit hole we wished we had not bothered entering. Instead you will just have to trust that they are scarce at the moment.

Hunting around for clean sheets and looking for any signs of patterns or form we can see that Man United have actually been responsible for a cleanie in 3/3 now. Could that be something to jump on? Well, it’s Newcastle away next and then Chelsea and Liverpool in two of the next three, so we would probably give that one a miss. Other than them the clean sheets have been a bit random with Bournemouth, Brentford, Palace, Newcastle, Forest and Everton and Man City grabbing one each in the last four.

The only others left out the 14 have two apiece, and may actually be where the answer lies here, as Arsenal and Liverpool both also tick the box of having some decent fixtures ahead to cling to. Beginning this week, helpfully.And crucially they boast top two spots in least goals conceded, 10 for Arsenal, 11 for Liverpool.

Fixture-wise Arsenal have Wolves at home and this is backed up by Luton away. Liverpool have Fulham at home and then Sheffield Utd and Palace, albeit both away.

We appreciate that you may already own a defensive asset from each, but even the double up here looks like a risk worth taking, as both actually have affordable, if less glamorous options in their ranks, especially if it is simply a case of ticking off clean sheet boxes.

Midfield – Mbeumo vs Luton (H), by Matt X

At the start of the season Bryan Mbeumo was competing with Mitoma, Diaby and a few others for the title of best 6.5 mid among all FPL managers. Well it’s safe to say he’s currently winning that battle by 10 points. Sitting on 76 points sees the Brentford man ranked as the 4th best midfielder and the 6th best overall player in the game. When Toney was given his ban we all wondered how Brentford would survive and hoped Mbuemo would step up to the plate. Boy, has he done that. Taking over as the penalty taker has helped him up his goal scoring chances, seeing him get 6 goals to date. This is already over half way to last seasons tally of 9 goals. With the next few games I wouldn’t be surprised if Mbuemo beats 9 goals by Christmas Day. While his goals are improving his playmaker skills have taken a hit. Only 3 assists this season is way down on the 7 and 9 in the previous 2 seasons. This is likely down to his main target Toney being missing. I will still take any and all goals he can provide though!

An average of 5.8 points per game is a brilliant return for the season but looking at the underlying stats Mbeumo is actually one of the biggest underperformers in the game. He has 6 non-penalty returns yet has a non-penalty xGI of 9.21. This boils down to an xG of 0.44 and xA of 0.29 per game. This puts him just behind the FPL Paragons, Salah and Haaland. He should be getting more returns going by these stats so let’s hope he can start matching those numbers to join Mo and Erling. I brought him in this week and really I probably have waited too long to own the man but with Luton and Sheffield United coming up in his next two then bring that guy in as you could be made to regret not owning him!

Midfield – Sterling vs Brighton (H) – by OddDane, again with this clown…

There’s a thin line between bravery and stupidity I always say. Let’s play around with that line (…some more). Next up we have the randomness of Chelsea against Brighton. You could tell me the game ended 8-6 or 5-9 come Sunday and I’d believe you. Or 0-0 with four reds handed out and 12 offside goals.

Yeah? Sounds about right…
Well, Chelsea has started scoring goals and Raheem has been decent in that regard. So, why not have a swing at their only player above 20 years of age. Probably. Well apart from Thiago Silva, who I firmly believe is in fact 439 of years (or more?) but has a picture in his attic which ages for him, all the while he runs around and kicks the occasional football. In perpetuity.

Alright, enough rambling.
Sterling has been returning the past three games and against Brighton’s injury ridden side should get the chance to do so again!
And if you don’t like this idea, why not see if Brighton’s Mitoma is back in action?

He’ll have a decent chance in the lottery that is the game of Seagulls versus… Erm… Whatever Chelsea goes by.
Have fun!

Forward – Darwin Nunez vs Fulham (H), by Jamie Mc

Another game week another rubbish score for me!!!
A paltry 32 points this game week which was 14 points below the game week average sees red arrows galore across virtually every league that I am part of.

Now 85 points behind the leader of my main mini league who happens to be my Brother-in-Law (long time reader of FF247 articles).
Anyway, time to end the pity party, lick my wounds and move onto game week 14 with renewed enthusiasm.

The call for game week 14 came quite late in the day with apparent little enthusiasm from my fellow writers (perhaps their score was as disappointing as mine).

For a change, I have volunteered to write about a player from a prominent team with a favourable home fixture.

In Premier League folklore time will tell whether this player will be remembered as an Alan Shearer or a Chris Sutton (the Chelsea version not the Blackburn Rovers version), as a Thierry Henry or an Anthony Martial, as an Erling Haaland or an Egil Ostenstad.
I present for your consideration; Liverpool’s Darwin Nunez (£7.6m with 17.1% ownership who is the 4th most popular forward in the game).
Darwin currently has 55 points which is 5th highest for all forwards. There is no real consistency to Darwin’s playing time as generally he either starts and is substituted or is on the bench and comes on with 30 minutes or so remaining. On only 3 occasions has Darwin played all 90 minutes from a possible 13 game weeks. Darwin has scored 4 goals and assisted 6 times this season. Further breakdown highlights 2 home goals and 2 away goals (in one game) with 5 assists at home and only 1 assist away from Anfield. Darwin seems to have a struck up a good relationship with Salah and has provided 4 assists for Mo which is doubly helpful if you are also a Salah owner and given him the captains armband for the game week.

One further test of a player’s credentials is the fabled “Eye Test”. Darwin can be an extremely frustrating player as when he plays instinctively then he can look a real world beater but given too much time to think then invariably the play breaks down.

Darwin is currently sitting at 17.4% (66,924 further transfers required) in FPL Statistics for a £0.1m price increase.
At the time of writing, 57,490 managers have transferred Darwin into their squad with a slightly surprising to me; 40,487 managers deciding to now go without.

It should be noted that Liverpool have still got some work to do to top their Europa League group with a home game against LASK on Thursday. Time will tell on how strong a line up Liverpool play so caution should be taken with your free transfer being used no earlier than Friday to avoid any possible risk of injury.

Liverpool have a decent run of 3 away fixtures up to and over the Christmas / New Year period verses Sheffield United (game week 15), Crystal Palace (game week 16) and Burnley (game week 19) with 4 home games at fortress Anfield against Fulham (game week 14), Manchester United (game week 17), Arsenal (game week 18) and Newcastle United (game week 20) until the FA Cup / Winter shutdown.

Good luck for the game week.

Thanks for reading Fantasy Football Tips Gameweek 14. This article was written by OddDane, Matt, Jamie Mc and Init.

Follow @FantasyFooty247

The GW14 Captain Confessional…

No Capos article this week. Simply because we can only force our writers to come up with so much bumph to fluff up what are essentially two way battles, most weeks. Instead let’s play a simple game of Haaland or Salah with them…..

DMC — Haaland

Follow @DCoelho

The Gallant Pioneer — Salah

Follow @MitchellC_FF247

Jamesimmo — Salah

Follow @James777Simpson

Ivan — Haaland

Follow @IvanGB111

Swirly — Salah

Follow @theswirly

Matt — Salah

Follow @MattyMcveigh

Loud Atlas — Salah

Follow @FantasyFooty247

Smash — Haaland

Follow @Chrismartin1984

Kop — Salah (probably)

Follow @KenLyons79

Rosco — Salah

Follow @eugoogooly

Ellefcee — Salah

Init — Salah

Follow @AdamalcockFF247

Gear — Mo

Follow @Lukerouthorn

Stone Frog — Salah

Follow @StoneFrog638

OddDane — Salahaalando…

Jamie Mc — Salah

VOTE ON THIS WEEK’S CAPTAIN POLL

FPL FIXTURE TRACKER

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