Aaaand, we’re back, reader!
After weeks of peace, things are picking up again. A large chunk of this week’s content will likely count international break casualties and assess how those injuries will affect things going forward.
(plus, there’s still one round of international games that involve quite a few Premier League players when I’m publishing this)
But we expected that, and we’ll be prepared.
Gameweeks 6 and 7 are another popular wildcard window, and because you already know GW7 is my preferred choice, I’ll start discussing injuries as early as today.
Alright, let’s see how I’m easing back into FPL.
🍕 What’s on today’s menu?
How easily you can bench 32 points…
Bruno Fernandes and his final product
Bukayo Saka and Arsenal’s injuries
Is it worth offloading Dominik Szoboszlai and some of my defenders?
Does Alex Scott’s injury hurt Bournemouth? Assessing him and his replacements
My approach for GWs 6 to 10
Looking at some solvers’ paths
And more.
Gameweek 5 review: Pascal Groß’ haul
… on my bench.
After two weeks without seeing my team, I forgot how bad it was:
Yes, that’s 39 points, with 32 on the bench. It resulted in a 15-point red arrow.
The lesson from that is… there’s no lesson unless you made a benching decision based on a flawed process, which I don’t think was the case here (and you know I own my mistakes).
Most of the time, those benched points also mean you have a robust team and will use those players in upcoming gameweeks, so it’s actually a good thing they perform. And with Brighton playing Sunderland in Gameweek 6, that trio is coming back swiftly.
Let’s see whether benching my two Leeds players against Arsenal will have the same effect this week.
I hope it won’t, as I don’t think DCL and Muharemovič can do this:
… and this:
If you’ve got a silly amount of free time, I wrote a deep dive into long-range shooting last season.
The good thing about reading this is that you will always have a counter-argument to all those poor takes on social media about shots outside the box:
As a gift, I’m unlocking this premium article for you for the next 72 hours.
Anyway.
I’m entering Gameweek 6 with 2 free transfers and £1.6 million in the bank to address any potential issues.
The bus team is as follows:
Gameweek 6 team: Key areas to focus on
When I open the team in the FPL app instead of Solio, it shows zero yellow flags (which is a bit of a miracle), even though there was news that Bruno Fernandes played a few games with some pain.
That’s highly unsettling, given he’s a £11.9 million player whose value isn’t really there unless you plan to captain him often enough.
I’m not 100% convinced I want to do that, even this week.
It’s a combination of his performances and Spurs’ defensive performances. I’ll most likely write a standalone article about Bruno this week, so just briefly:
With only 5 GWs in, there’s merit in removing that outlier Ipswich game to get a more realistic picture.
If you do that, you find he’s on 0.09 xA per 90 minutes, which is below average and a massive drop from last season’s 0.36 (99th percentile). It’s data from a tiny sample size, and he still plays many tough passes, so it’s probably just a matter of time that number increases, but this is simply the current state of things.
He’s now producing 2.50 shots per 90 outside that IPS clash, with xG in the 70th percentile, but if you look deeper, it’s kinda meh – outside the IPS game, it’s 11 shots, with 7 out of the box.
And only one truly dangerous attempt, which means the final product isn’t too enticing for the price.
I’m not saying he’s a sell, but if you factor in the quality of Spurs’ defence, he may not be the standout captaincy pick this week.
Again, if we remove Spurs’ outlier game, which happened in Gameweek 1 against Brentford when the team was nothing like it was in the following weeks, they are actually ranked:
6th for xG conceded
6th for xG conceded from counters
7th for shots conceded
9th for xG per shot conceded
10th for goals conceded
Not elite, but maybe not numbers you’d expect from a team that sits here:
The good news for United is that Jan Paul van Hecke (£4.9m) could miss the game with an IB injury, which should weaken their backline somewhat. Nothing is confirmed yet, though.
Most likely, I’ll keep Bruno, mainly because it’s probably the last week before I play my wildcard.
If I won’t captain him, is Bukayo Saka the second-best choice and my GW6 transfer?
Well…