Fantasy Premier League Captain Picks Game-week 8

Fantasy Premier League Captain Picks Gameweek 8

Welcome to Fantasy Premier League Captain Picks Gameweek 8. So what drives your choice of captain pick every week? The answer probably should be as simple as “because that’s who I think will get me the most points from my team this week”. And it’s hard to argue with that! We only ask because we are going to take a slightly different approach to the article this week and look at some key indicators as to who should / could logically be your captain. We are going to look at it from a stats point of view but also try to apply the usual common sense logic too. We may well still end up with the same list of names as we would have done if we had taken the usual approach of picking the obvious mix of big ‘stars’ allied to decent fixtures. But we may not, either way it’ll be interesting to see. Let’s go find out…

To have nailed the ultimate captain every week so far your choices would have had to have been –
GW1 Coutinho 30 pts (as captain)
GW2 Stuani, Ibra, Kun 26 pts
GW3 Sanchez 32 pts
GW4 Son 38 pts
GW5 Chadli 42 pts
GW6 Lallana 30 pts
GW7 Koscielny 30 pts

Best Captain total = 228
Aguero as captain total = 78

Interesting, eh. We’ll send you 7 t-shirts if anyone can prove that they nailed all 7 with the armband. It’s safe to say we won’t be rushing to the post office anytime soon. The point of posting that was to partly illustrate the element of luck / randomness involved in it all but also to show that there are more ways than one to skin a cat. Aguero actually missed 2 games in that sequence so his score could be adjusted to 109, pro rata. We picked on Kun because he is probably the best combination of a player who most people own, the best player most do and is also almost fixture proof.

We are going to look at this from a stats point of view mainly –
Who is playing for the best attacking team in terms of goals scored.
Who is playing against the worst defence in terms of goals conceded.
Who has the most FPL points overall.

Who is playing for the best attacking team in terms of goals scored?
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Technically there are two teams here with both Man City and Liverpool having scored 18 in total and you cant separate them in terms of home goals either with both registering 9 so far. In terms of their respective opposition City face Everton who have only conceded 2 away from home so far and Liverpool have the marginal advantage playing Man United who have shipped 4 on the road. On the face it then neither has the easiest opponent this week despite the home advantage and despite being the highest scorers themselves.

Looking at Man City Raheem Sterling is their top FPL points scorer out of those available to play this week but Sergio Aguero has a slightly better points per minute ratio and let’s face it if you had a straight choice between both on any given week you’d pick Kun 99% of the time unless you had some sort of real reason to do otherwise. It’d have to be a real good reason too, like some sort of premonition brought on by too much cheese at bedtime. Aguero is our weapon of choice here then and for those superstitious lot amongst you it’s possibly worth noting that he loves GW8. It was GW8 when he went off on one against Newcastle last season and fired in 5 and in GW8 in 2014 he managed 4 against Spurs. It has absolutely no bearing on this week but we just thought we’d mention it! Probably more pertinent is that he has 5 goals in 5 league games, which includes 2 braces, as well as 6 in 3 games in other competitions including 2 hat-tricks. Yes, he’s explosive, and quite what the other 56.7% of managers who don’t own him are thinking we aren’t sure!

Looking at Liverpool Philippe Coutinho and James Milner are tied on 43 points as their best FPL scorers. One is playing at left-back but is on penalties whilst the other is at the sharp end of a potent attack. A bit like above then, given a straight choice, you’d not blink twice at selecting the more obvious one. Given the other choices available though Coutinho would probably feature down our list of picks if we are being totally honest.

It’s no surprise then that Aguero wins our vote from the teams with the best attacking stats.

Who is playing against the worst defence in terms of goals conceded?
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West Ham have conceded the most overall with 17 goals against. They are away this week and have also conceded the 2nd most goals on the road with 9. Their opponents Crystal Palace thumped Stoke 4-1 in their last home game and new signing Christian Benteke has their best points per minute ratio with 3 goals in his 5 starts so far. As well as starring on international duty with a hat-trick the other night, albeit against Gibraltar! Given the Hammers defensive woes though we wouldn’t bet against him adding to that tally.

Stoke have the second worst record with 16 conceded and despite this weeks opponents Sunderland being the only team to be below them in the league they do at least have one player who is prospering as such, if indeed you can, for a team rooted bottom with two points and only 6 goals to their name. The good news in that respect is that Jermain Defoe has scored 4 of those and even better is that on every occasion he has scored he has attracted 2 or more bonus points, something which wasn’t always evident last season, particularly when we think of the likes of Vardy and Costa. Unsurprisingly nobody else even comes close to him in terms of fantasy points in that Sunderland side.

So that’s two ‘different, ish’ picks anyway. Don’t forget though we are simply playing the stats here and examining if there’s anything in it. It’ll be interesting to see afterwards if there was any merit to it, plus we know a good few managers like to throw caution to the wind occasionally and at least this lends some weight to doing so.

Who has the most FPL points overall?
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As we stand right now it’s Sanchez (49), KDB (49), Capoue (48) and Costa (46). Let’s immediately remove KDB from the argument for obvious reasons (he’s injured) and we will also overlook Capoue here simply because you wouldn’t seriously consider him as a captain ahead of the likes of the aforementioned players. Heck, most people are now beginning to wonder if he’s shot his load for the season already after consecutive blanks against Burnley and Bournemouth. He does have 3 good fixtures ahead in which to prove his worth again but we would simply play him if you have him, we wouldn’t go handing him the all important armband.

And so that leaves us firstly with Alexis Sanchez. Which leaves us with a massive dilemma of it’s own! Last time he went away on international duty he played on the Wednesday and was subsequently rested on the Saturday. This time around he basically has the same schedule… That’s not to say it will happen again as he doesn’t have a history which suggests it’s a common pattern but it will be worth checking what Arsene says prior to the weekend if you fancy captaining this week, which we would highly recommend in fact, assuming he plays! Arsenal have scored the 3rd most overall and the 3rd most at home, behind only the previously mentioned Man City and Liverpool.

Having dealt with his possible downside (not actually playing!), here’s the positive news – he’s an explosive player, we know that from previous seasons and we always like that element in a captain and he’s already notched up scores of 16, 10 and 14 in recent games. Probably more importantly is that he’s now seemingly nailed down the forward position in one of the most potently attacking sides in the league with the likes of Ozil sat behind providing him with the ammunition. Plus they’re playing Swansea who have conceded an average of 2 goals in their last 6 games and are sat just above the relegation zone in 17th place.

Having neatly sidestepped the other 2 top scorers we have Diego Costa as our final pick this week. He could have just as easily slotted into a ‘consistent’ or ‘form player’ category here as he now has 6 goals in 7 games and has 2 assists as well, something which he is famously unaccustomed to. Chelsea have a healthy 12 goals so far and he’s had a hand in 8 of those. Opponents Leicester have the worst goals against record away from home this season with 10 conceded in just 6 games. Ignore the big man at your peril, it looks like he’s in the mood to bite back if you do.

Thanks for reading Fantasy Premier League Captain Picks Gameweek 8. This article was written by inittowinit

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Fixture Tracker – the next 6 games