Gameweek 16 is one which promises to be causing lots of headaches to FPL managers everywhere, and I'm expecting lots of points hits amongst managers.
My thought process has been pretty scrambled this week, and I'm one of the lesser affected, although I had targeted this week as a bench boost potential. With the removal of Harry Kane last week, my only absentees from the postponed Spurs Brighton fixtures are players that would've been on my bench anyway (Sanchez and Skipp).
Earlier in the week I was fairly settled on taking a 4 point hit, probably in at attempt to chase points lost from last weeks dismal effort. The plan was to downgrade Alonso, to allow me to replace either Connor Gallagher ( with concerns about him recently playing a more defensive role) or Raphinha (Leeds injuries, and their fixture turn make him a less desirable option).
But as the news broke about Spurs, I saw more and more FPL Twitter accounts talking on taking hits, and it made me more determined to avoid one if possible. With so many accounts taking hits, an average week can provide good results if you avoid joining in with the hits too.
And then I started thinking if I don't want Raphinha, why a mi looking at taking out Marcos Alonso, who plays Leeds this weekend, as the Leeds injuries will increase his chances of a clean sheet?
The move I was planning to make was to stick with my squad and replace Raphinha with a Man City midfielder, but I didn't have the funds, and so Jarrod Bowen was next on my list.
And then yesterday, the twitter detectives spotted that Diogo Jota was nowhere to be seen in training. Today, Klopp has confirmed he is yet to train all week and whilst he may train this afternoon, it didn't seem too positive.
Sidenote: If you don't follow TedTalksFPL. Go follow him Best Data Vis in the game....
With Jota potentially out. I've decided to replace him, and give Raphinha (and his higher likelihood of playing time) a further game week.
To replace Jota, I suddenly had funds for a Man City midfielder.... choosing which one to replace him has been quite a quandary. Bernardo Silva, Phil Foden, Jack Grealish and Ilkay Gündoğan were all suddenly options, and each one of them were tempting.
Silva is the form man. He's scored 5 in his last 5 in the league, and is top of a lot of people's shopping lists having been brought in by nearly 800k managers this week.
Foden and Grealish were both unlucky not to haul vs Watford last season, meanwhile Gündoğan was the cheapest option of the four, and was last years FPL hero.
@TedTalksFPL again provided further insight into my decision with two visualisations with convinced me to take the route I've gone down.
Both graphics take a look at midfielders priced under £11.0m
The first looks at the number of shots and average shot distance for each option.
As you can see from this, Jota really is a different beast. If it wasn't for the injury doubt, I wouldn't be selling him, and as soon as he's back fit he will be back in.
Bernardo Silva and Gündoğan are the closest things you can get to Jota's shot profile, Gündoğan registering 11 shots, with an average distance of under 12 yards in the last 6 game weeks.
Further to this, Ted shows the "Big" attempts and "Small" attempts for each midfielders, and the German international compares well again.
In this, it really shows that whilst Bernardo has been returning well, it seems to be an over-performance over what would be expected from his number and type of chances, and that his current run of form may not be overly sustainable.
Looking at the Compare Players tool in the Scout Members area told a story of there not being much to separate the players over the season in terms of Key attacking stats
Gündoğan's creativity is boosted by the fact that he's on corners, and I like the fact that he's the cheapest of all of the options, and so he's in.
Team selection for this week is a 4-4-2 with Salah as captain (although I was very tempted to go with Ronaldo)
