Week 22 – See the (Chris) Wood for the Trees

Some eye catching results this weekend, led by Nottingham Forest’s return to form following their surprise heavy defeat to Bournemouth last week, Forest responded with a 7-0 thumping of Brighton led by Star Man of the Week – C. Wood (£3.5m).

Arsenal thrashed champions Man City 5-1, spreading the goals around the team which means only their surprise scorer T. Partey (£3.4m) makes the Team of the Week.

No changes to the Team of the Season (budget and availability not considered) this week, but there is a significant change to the Affordable and Available Team of the Season, Page 2 on the Player Stats Portal :-

Despite his lofty price tag, E. Haaland’s (£8.5m) recent fine run of form warrants his return to the top side, coincidentally at the expense of his weekend rival, G. Magalhaes (£4.3m) whom I’m sure won’t mind too much considering the result 😂.

D. Munoz (£2.7m) enters the top side at his expense moving up to 95 points (just 3 points behind the much more expensive Gabriel).

We’ve left T. Alexander-Arnold (£5.2m) in the side but please note – he appears to be a major doubt at time of writing for this weekend’s round of FA Cup games and thus will be at high risk of a rest :-

Speaking of Week 23 and a weekend of Cup games, prepare for another weekend of TFF points frustration?! with players either omitted from the competition (Arsenal, Brentford and West Ham players) or at high risk of being rested/rotated i.e. Man City, Liverpool, Newcastle and Palace are due to face teams in lower divisions.

The fixture guide is a little unhelpful to us at the moment due to the FA Cup omission but also as a number of the following fixtures are projections :-

It’s worth visiting the actual website hosting the above I would say, as the projected double game weeks for Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs and Fulham are of a very low likelihood (Arsenal and Spurs would need to upset the odds in this week’s Carabao Cup semi-finals)

But, with Liverpool’s fixture against Everton not showing in the above, their players are still very much safe bets, especially as they top every single team metric ! :-

We note that Manchester United’s new manager bounce didn’t last long… 😆

Final thought for this week, lets have a look at the latest form (keeping in mind forthcoming fixtures) and see if we can highlight a few players on trend, we focused on Bournemouth in last week’s blog so we’ll skip over those players for now (NB – they were a little unlucky to lose 2-0 to Liverpool so are still worthy of serious consideration) :-

Star Man of the week – C. Wood (£3.5m) continues to surprise and amaze and if you can find room for him in your forward line then he’s a great choice.

As noted earlier, E. Haaland (£8.5m) is definitely back in form and even managed to score in City’s mauling by Arsenal.

As many Liverpool players as possible seems to be the way to go – M. Salah (£7.2m) obviously but if you can find a way of also getting in C. Gakpo (£5.3m) and A. Becker (£4.5m) even (perhaps if TAA is out for any length of time?) so much the better.

The form players from Crystal Palace enter our thinking, with Week 22 Team of the Week entrants J. Mateta (£4.1m) yet another Striking option but D. Munoz (£2.7m) a very worthy, attack minded cheap Defensive option.

And finally a little tip of the hat to I. Ndiaye (£2.9m) of Everton who has flown a bit under the radar so far this season, but certainly is in fine form currently and at a bargain price to boot.