Ok, confession time. When I set this team up on Boxing Day I was drunk and in a partial food coma so I f*cked the captain selection. You wonderful readers correctly voted well over 50% for Harry Kane but due to my copious intake of Punk IPA and Celebrations I completely forgot to change it! Yes, I have more excuses than Mourinho but this balls up hurt more with every Kane goal. Thankfully the slight consolation here was that we still had Raheem Sterling from GW20 and his 11pts doubled was definitely a case of damage limitation.
With all that said we still saw green arrows so let’s have a quick run through before we get set for this coming gameweek.
Turns out Rob Elliot was the pick. Not sure how Manchester City only scored the one goal though. Unfortunately we went with 1pt Nick Pope. Damn you Jesse Lingard. Damn you for your goals and damn you for hooking up with Jena Frumes! Still not sure what irritates me more.
At the back we had Andrew Robertson to thank for keeping our backline scoring respectable. His 6pts were a big help as Phil Jones and Arthur Masuaku could only muster 2pts between them.
Our midfield was a full house of returns. We had accidental captain Raheem Sterling scoring 22pts with his winner against Newcastle, Mo Salah continued his frankly silly form with two assists against Swansea whilst Wilf Zaha and Richarlison both picked up assists against Arsenal and Leicester.
Up top was also full of points as Harry Kane scored his 2nd hat-trick in a matter of days and Roberto Firmino scored twice in the 5-0 win over Swansea. Jamie Vardy’s blank meant he was the only one of our front seven not to pick up a return. I’ll take that from our team every single week!
81pts on a 62pt weekly average means we saw our second set of green arrows in consecutive weeks and the 8th set in the last nine GW’s. With just one GW remaining in 2017 I’m happy to be sitting here with an overall rank of 153k and all chips in tact.
I have a feeling that GW21 will be a big test of our good form as we now have Harry Kane on a blank week. We also have Arthur Masuaku without a fixture so we need a little maintenance to be certain that we can field 11. I have deliberately ensured we have two free transfers going into these two GW’s so that we could cover the blanks with one transfer and then have the extra one carried over to use two for the DGW.
Kiko Femenia (OUT) – Schindler (IN)
With our team looking fairly strong for guaranteed starters I have made just the one transfer to ensure we are ok. With Kiko Femenia unlikely to play I couldn’t run the risk of of having no outfield subs, so I have brought in Huddersfield’s Christopher Schindler. He’s a nailed starter, fairly cheap and fixtures look alright for the majority of January.
So with our first blank of the season let’s have a look at how we line up for GW21.
I’d spent about 30 minutes deliberating over the keeper choice and still couldn’t decide. It was then that I read that Rob Elliot is now out of the Brighton game so the decision is now made for me. Nick Pope gets the start against Huddersfield.
At the back new addition Christopher Schindler comes straight in as we go with a back four. Home to Burnley is by no means a hopeful clean sheet but I prefer him over Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting in midfield away at Chelsea. He joins Andrew Robertson, Phil Jones and Sead Kolasinac. All three play mid table teams so I’ll be disappointed if we don’t pick up at least one or two cleanies here.
In midfield we start with the same four who delivered us 40pts combined last GW. Wilf Zaha has the toughest game of the four as Palace face Man City. With City’s defensive injuries he will still fancy his chances though. Richarlison faces bottom of the table Swansea, Mo Salah is home to Leicester and Raheem Sterling, the only one playing away, will face off against Zaha at Selhurst Park. I’m not expecting the same kind of performance as they gave us last GW but there’s points to be had there.
Up top we have a big Harry Kane shaped hole. I’m going with a front two as I have decided against a one week transfer out of Kane. I had weighed up the idea of Alvaro Morata in for a week but I’m not up for losing out on £0.2m and would rather the two FT’s to use to bulk up on DGW players. So we go with two strikers who will both play in the same game, Jamie Vardy and Roberto Firmino. Considering I think it’s a game full of goals I’m not overly concerned. Although saying that the two of them enter the game in completely contrasting form. Jamie Vardy has just three goals in the last 15 GW’s whereas Roberto Firmino has two attacking returns in each of his last three GW’s. If we didn’t have the blank/DGW situation to deal with Jamie Vardy would be very close to a transfer out.
Can we finish the year with another set of greens? It won’t be easy but we have form players in our line up and have avoided taking a hit. Getting the captain choice right will go a long way to achieving this so as always please get involved with the captain poll below and I promise I”ll be sober enough on Saturday to set it!
[polldaddy poll=9907159]
Thank you for reading and the best of luck to you all!
Written by FPL Guru (@FPL_Guru)
