Last gameweek went well... Despite taking on Erling Haaland with the captaincy.
The logic behind giving Trippier the armband beared fruit, as the Newcastle man still claimed maximum bonus points despite picking up a yellow card. On the Saturday evening, I was happy with my days work. Trippier doing what he does, and new signing Mitoma hauling...
And then, on Sunday. The Norwegian freak of a goal-scoring machine made me pay, withhis hattrick vs Wolves.
Whilst I was happy with the results on Saturday night. I hated the process. When captaining a defender, all you want to happen is the final whistle. It's a 90 minute countdown to get that clean sheet locked in. It's 90 minutes of terror. Every attack, every notification, it makes you panic. At least when captaining an attacking player, you can live in hope for the whole 90mins (Assuming they don't get taken off), hope of a dodgy penalty, hope of a lucky bounce, hope of something going your way... Obviously these can happen to defenders too, but clean sheets are their bread and butter, and that's what you're hoping for as a return.
So whilst I don't regret the decision (the outcome, is a different matter), it's not likely to be something I do again, purely because it ruined my enjoyment of the game.
But to end up with 93 points, without Haaland captain was a decent effort.
I was also set up nicely, and planned to roll my transfer for this week... until Andy Carroll struck.
The injury to Christian Eriksen has altered my plans (ish). I was set with triple Man U, and whilst I couldn't get to Bruno Fernandes (I think he goes big this GW) I was happy with Eriksen as my third United asset behind Luke Shaw and Marcus Rashford.
I was still tempted to roll, as I'm not keen on making a transfer only for them to sit on my bench, until I joined a conversation with @FPL_PointBreak and @FpLinzaghi on twitter, and Andrew came up with a move that's taken my fancy, in preparation for the upcoming blank gameweeks
Yep... In a move I can't quite believe, I'm back aboard the Leon Bailey train. As Andrew points out above, it gives me nice fixtures for GW25 and 28, frees up nearly £2m and means I'm not going into this week with Timothee Castagne as my only sub... The only downside is that it means going with only 2 Man Utd players in to a highly favourable double, but in my teams situation, the only realistic option would've been to bring in Casemiro, and I'm not sure I'd have started him this week despite the double gameweek.
And so Bailey comes in, and sits on my bench this week. With 22 points since the restart, I'm happy to bring him in, especially with Aston Villa's fixtures against Everton and Bournemouth when teams are liekly to blank. In fact, from GW 25-28, Villa have a very nice looking run.
Elsewhere, I take on the Haaland captaincy again, going with Marcus Rashford. I only wish I had the triple captaincy chip still available.