Week 29 – Up for the Cup

So, a weekend of FA Cup quarter finals action witnesses Man City, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest progress to the semi finals where City will face Forest and Villa will play Palace.

More to come later on the fixture schedule but, as Palace and Newcastle have already played one less league game than everyone else we already know that Palace will definitely have at least 11 games to play in the final two months compared to City, Villa, Forest and Newcastle with at least 10 games and everyone else who only have 9 games left.

The victorious Cup sides dominate this week’s Team of the Week, L. Digne (£3.4m) of Villa leading the way with 13 points scored. With clean sheets recorded by 5 of the 8 Premier League sides, the Team of the Week is, unusually, a 5-3-2 formation.

D. Munoz’s (£2.7m) 7 points means he overtakes the injured T. Alexander-Arnold (£5.2m) into the highest points scored for the Defenders. N. Milenkovic (£2.7m) joins him in the Team of the Season.

With injuries to E. Haaland (£8.5m) and C. Wood (£3.5m), we see O. Watkins (£5.7m) promoted into the Affordable and Available Team of the Season.

The fixtures will now be piling up thick and fast until the end of the season, starting with a double game week for all teams in TFF week 30:-

At time of writing, the re-arranged fixtures for FA Cup semi-final affected teams haven’t been scheduled but, best guess from the Fantasy Football community 😆 is that it is highly likely that there will be a double game week in Week 33 for Villa, City, Arsenal and Palace.

Keep an eye on our TFF Fixture ticker – page 6 on the Players Stats Portal – for updates to the fixtures later this week, I’ll aim to update it on Friday 4th along with injury updates.

Speaking of injuries, some high ownership players have been affected this week:-

C. Palmer (£5.8m) is likely to play and B. Saka (£5.8m) is also back from a longer term injury although his re-introduction may be carefully managed.

Injuries to E. Haaland (£8.5m), T. Alexander-Arnold (£5.2m), C. Wood (£3.5m), A. Gordon (£4.7m) and M. Gibbs-White (£3.4m) will be of concern to the > 10% of gamers who currently own these assets.

So, with that all in mind, lets focus on replacements from teams with lots of forthcoming and easier fixtures – Palace, Villa, City and Arsenal (who will likely double in GW 33) and also Forest, Newcastle, Bournemouth, Brentford, Brighton and Wolves who all have a favorable run of fixtures.

For this we’ll refer to our brand new ! report, Six Week Form Segmentation which we described in depth on this blog:-

Our pick of the Goalkeeper options if you don’t already own them ! are M. Sels (£3.2m), D. Henderson (£2.8m) and D. Raya (£4.3m). These three have shown periods of form throughout the season and also play behind 3 of the meanest defences.

Any of the highlighted Defenders are good picks, in particular D. Munoz (£2.7m) is a ‘no-brainer’ if you don’t already have him ! Likewise, either N. Milenkovic (£2.7m) or O. Aina (£2.4m) of Forest should be in your team.

From Arsenal, W. Saliba (£4.5m) or G. Magalhaes (£4.3m) are probably the safest bets, J. Timber (£4.0m) is another option but, with big European fixtures on the horizon and B. White (£4.6m) back from injury, Timber may be a rotation risk?

The Bournemouth duo D. Huijsen (£2.4m) and M. Kerkez (£2.5m) could be worthy of consideration also.

Midfield choices from the selected clubs are more limited, with injury doubts on Gordon and Gibbs-White, the best choices here remain J. Kluivert (£2.7m), an out of form P. Foden (£5.4m) and K. Mitoma (£3.6m) and as a bit of a punt the returning B. Saka (£5.8m) who, prior to his injury was one of the best midfield picks in the game.

Striker options on the other hand appear plentiful ! we’re going to narrow down our suggestions to the ‘no-brainer’ A. Isak (£5.1m), the dependable O. Watkins (£5.7m), and our favoured ‘long shots’ are Evanilson (£3.8m), J. Mateta (£4.1m) and O. Marmoush (£4.9m), the latter of whom should get lots of minutes, depending on the extent of Haaland’s injury of course…

Here’s hoping you have saved up plenty of transfers ! 😊