Both popular in their own right last season and with Bournemouth’s favourable opening fixtures, it’s no surprise that Wilson and King are making their way into many of our early pre-season drafts.
Bournemouth on the whole have quite a few tempting attacking options, Fraser and Brooks in the midfield and King and Wilson up top. Wilson being the headline grabber, flying in with an inflated FPL price of £8.0m, he’s the most expensive forward outside the Top 6 except for Vardy. King who has become a household name amongst FPL fans since his unforgettable season in 2016/17 makes the decision of which Bournemouth attacker to back a difficult one.
Callum Wilson (£8.0m)
A rumoured transfer target last season for Chelsea, now finds himself priced higher in FPL than every single Chelsea player in the squad. His price is where I start because I feel it’s raised a few eyebrows, in particular being priced less than Wolves’ Jimenez (£7.5m) and £1.5m more than his teammate King. The price tag really shouldn’t surprise managers though, even with his knee injury causing his absence across 8 games – he still netted 14 goals and 12 assists. That’s an average return every 97 minutes – for context, Salah managed a return every 95 minutes. £8.0m suddenly sounds like a bit of a bargain.
His ‘Expected Goals’ (xG) for the season were 16 showing if anything he actually marginally underperformed, but it should assure managers that this was far from a flash in the pan. Wilson’s 2019/20 season has the potential to be enormous, irrespective of the fact he plays for a team outside of the Top 6 and if he can match last season’s record he shouldn’t just be a consideration for being in our team but he’s a potential captain option.
Josh King (£6.5m)
Same position. Same team. The similarities end there, Josh King is a completely different animal and FPL prospect. Bursting on to the FPL scene listed as a midfielder in the 2016/17 season, King has never quite gripped the hearts of managers compared to his teammates Wilson and Fraser. However whilst his teammate’s prices surge around him, he’s stayed steady at £6.5m. It puts him in an interesting sub category of his own, with a shared price with Jota, Deulofeu and Pukki and cheaper than a couple of defenders we might be interested in.
In 2018/19 he notched up 12 goals and 3 assists and as he played most of the season, he only managed a return every 197 minutes. A feather in King’s cap has to be penalty duties, scoring 5 last season and the ‘VAR affect’ potentially impacting the amount of penalties awarded could see that tally increase. It does feel like he’ll need a steady income of penalties to retain any sort of value though, which is not really what you want to rely on. Any sign at all of him losing said privilege and he’s a total non-runner.
Who to pick?
Having a Bournemouth attacker to start the season feels like an easy decision, picking which one isn’t quite so easy. King’s price alone might make him a worthwhile addition to your team, there’s not many players either cheaper or the same price that have the potential of scoring the same amount as King does. Likewise, Wilson has proven he’s capable of maintaining consistent attacking performances over the course of the season and actually a reasonable captain option if the week fits. It feels reasonable that Wilson is definitely the better pick of the two and if I was choosing one today, it would be him. It still feels like we’re missing a treat though doesn’t it…
So (and bear with me here!), why not consider both? Two strikers from the same team is almost FPL taboo but if you strip the game to its bare bones, you need to pick the players you expect to score the most points for their price. It’s difficult to see any other players outscoring these two for the price, in particular the opening ten gameweeks. Well who knows, we could even have a Suarez and Sturridge situation on our hands.
Written by FPL Bandit (@FPLBandit)
