Week 20 – Foden spearheads the traditional City 2nd half of season charge…?

A double game week with goals and points a plenty has led to our highest total points scoring Team of the Week so far this season ! – a total of 206 points scored (next highest was Double Game Week 17 – 172 points)

Man City appear to be back in form, just in time for their traditional strong second half of the season run, hitting 6 past the hapless Ipswich defence and P. Foden (£5.4m) is our Star Player of the Week with the highest single game week total so far this season of 28 points !

Foden is closely followed by the impressive and cheap ! J. Kluivert (£2.7m), his 26 point haul would have been the highest weekly score of the season but for Foden.

Two clean sheets for Crystal Palace results in a clean sweep for them of the defensive positions.

J. Kluivert’s (£2.7m) recent excellent form has now propelled him into the Team of the Season for the first time this year and he is joined in the midfield slots by another TotS debutant, the consistent A. Iwobi (£3.5m).

The other changes to the TofS this week witnesses the return of O. Aina (£2.4m), replacing G. Magalhaes (£4.3m) and a return to the team of A. Isak (£5.1m) who replaces B. Mbeumo (£3.9m).

The Affordable and Available – Team of the Season (page 2 on the Player Stats Portal) :-

has only one change now from the standard Team of the Season – C. Wood at £3.5m replaces the super expensive E. Haaland (£8.5m) at a cost of 9 points but a saving of £5m !

Incidentally, this is the week that M. Salah (£7.3m) finally takes over from Haaland as the most number of weeks as the game’s highest points scorer.

So, having highlighted the importance of the double game week, lets look firstly at the forthcoming busy fixture list:-

keeping in mind that TFF Game Week 23 is the 4th round of the FA Cup which is not shown in the above (it would be game week 24.5 in the above ! 🙂

I believe we’ve lost Arsenal, Brentford and West Ham for the 4th round so, remember to keep that in mind. Also, teams such as City and Liverpool in particular and possibly Newcastle will likely rest some of their star players for TFF game week 23…

So we have a confirmed double game week coming up for Liverpool and Everton and a projected double game week shortly thereafter for Spurs and Fulham….making form players from those sides such as the below, particularly desirable ! :-

Standing out to us from the above list would be the obvious M. Salah (£7.2m) – his recent relative ‘dip’ in form is likely to be the calm before the storm of points (Ipswich at home next)….?!

With defensive and attacking point potential, Mo’s teammate T. Alexander-Arnold (£5.2m) is another strong choice.

D. Kulusevski (£4.8m) has been on good form for awhile now and appears to be the best choice of Spurs’ attacking options…? (only a crazy person would consider the Tottenham defence?! 😂)

The ‘financial enabling’ Fulham trio of A. Iwobi (£3.5m), R. Jimenez (£3.8m) and A. Robinson (£2.7m) are solid picks and, perhaps as a small gamble/differentiator, Everton may see a ‘new manager bounce’ and maybe worth a punt on the likes of J. Pickford (£3.7m), I. Ndiyae (£2.9m), V. Mykolenko (£2.9m) and, a big enabler from last season, J. Brainthwaite (£3.0m).

Final thought for this week – with two high scoring midfielders in this week’s Team of the Week, let’s just have a look at the form players in that position, regardless of the fixture list:-

B. Guimaraes (£3.9m) has gone very much under the radar from the likes of his fellow Newcastle midfielders A. Gordon (£4.7m) and J. Murphy (£2.9m) but as you can see, Bruno joint tops the Midfielder points total over the last 7 game weeks with no ‘blank scoring’ game weeks (the same can be said for Gordon).

Man City may have a tough set of forthcoming fixtures but, P. Foden (£5.4m) is bang in form and has proven over the years he can score points regardless of the opposition…

J. Kluivert (£2.7m) has had an excellent couple of game weeks and is super cheap and we have also highlighted M. Gibbs-White (£3.4m) and E. Eze (£3.9m) of Palace who are also both in good steady form and Palace also have easier forthcoming fixtures including a 4th round FA cup game against League Two Doncaster Rovers….