Week 12 – Eze Come, Eze Go

North London is Red !! Eberechi Eze was linked with a transfer to Spurs in the summer only to then sign for Arsenal, it was somewhat inevitable that he’d have an impact on the first North London derby of the season…. and so it transpired with Eze scoring the first North London derby hat-trick since Alan Sunderland in 1978 !!

E. Eze’s (£4.6m) 17 points make him our Star Player of the Week, joined by three Nottingham Forest defenders who’s clean sheet at Anfield in a 3-0 demolition of last season’s champions Liverpool, along with Man City’s defeat at Newcastle, made this a very good game week for Arsenal !

A good week for defensive assets has led to a change again in formation for the Team of the Season, R. Roefs (£2.6m) has reclaimed the keeper spot from D. Raya (£4.4m).

Crystal Palace’s clean sheet at Wolves means that M. Guehi (£3.6m) comes back into the team replacing B. Mbuemo (£4.2m). A long term injury to G. Magalhaes (£4.5m) means that D. Munoz (£3.7m) takes over the top Defender spot for the first time this season.

J. Palhinha’s (£3.8m) 9 weekly points moves him up to the Top midfielder position.

Now that we’re a quarter of the way into the season, we’ve re-instated the Six Week Segmentation report, Page 9 on the Player Stats Portal :-

This report is most useful when filtered by Position and, can be used alongside the various other Form reports to draw out insights into the best players to pick. As a general rule we’d suggest serious question marks should be asked of any players in your team that do NOT appear on any of these form reports ! 🙂

Consideration should of course also be taken for the difficulty and frequency of forthcoming fixtures:-

For example, filtering on Keepers, Team of the Season member R. Roefs (£2.6m) is the only keeper in 6 out of the 7 segments so far this year BUT – Sunderland are out of the Carabao Cup and have very tough league fixtures…

Goalkeepers such as D. Raya (£4.4m), E. Martinez (£4.0m) or even R. Sanchez (£3.6m) are currently in form and would appear to be the better picks.

Interestingly, on the Differentiators report it is D. Henderson (£3.1m) who is in nearly a third of teams and he does, just about squeeze into the Top 5 recent points alongside the names already mentioned.

For Defenders the injury to G. Magalhaes (£4.5m) is clearly high impact with 16% of gamers moving him out already ! His team-mate, J. Timber (£4.3m) would appear to be the obvious replacement, with top defender points scoring D. Munoz (£3.7m) coming into form and W. Saliba (£4.6m), M. Gusto (£3.4m) and M. Lacroix (£3.0m) being less obvious options.

For Midfielders, J. Palhinha (£3.8m) is a near ever-present, steady scoring player who again is flying under the radar, he is 5th highest points scorer in ALL positions and in just 14% of Teams. B. Guimaraes (£4.2m) and D. Rice (£4.8m) are other form options alongside Player of the Week, E. Eze (£4.6m) and bargain Y. Minteh (£3.0m) who could be a great swap for A. Semenyo (£3.1m) IF his injury keeps him out for awhile.

NB – the most popular midfielder in the game, Semenyo is still in 53% of teams but his form has been dropping off for awhile now before this injury….

For the Strikers, our two Team of the Season forwards E. Haaland (£8.3m) and I. Thiago (£3.6m) lead the way with D. Welbeck (£3.4m) (just 3% ownership!) and B. Mbuemo (£4.2m) following slightly behind.

J. Mateta (£4.2m) and N. Woltemade (£4.5m) at the moment look like ‘flash in the pans’ 😆. The only other interesting option is in-form L. Trossard (£4.6m) who’s categorisation as a Striker rather than a Midfielder leaves him often overlooked. With just 2% ownership he could make a great differential…?

I’m afraid that’s it from us for a couple of weeks as we head off to our mid-season holiday training camp 😆 – the reports will be updated again following the busy double game week 14… Happy TFF points Hunting !!