Week 21 – The Cherries On Top

Bournemouth’s surprise 5 – 0 thumping of Nottingham Forest results in five of their players making up Week 21’s Team of the Week with D. Ouattara’s (£3.1m) hat-trick making him star performer of the week.

J. Kluivert (£2.7m) continues his fine run of form and consolidates his place in the Team of the Season with 10 extra points. Arsenal’s first clean sheet in 2025 results in a return for G. Magalhaes (£4.3m) who replaces N. Milenkovic (£2.7m).

In the affordable and available Team of the Season, page 2 on the Player Stats Portal :-

there is still budget to bring in Gabriel along with B. Mbuemo (£3.9m) replacing C. Wood (£3.5m) as the only other change.

Man City win again, led by P. Foden (£5.3m) and E. Haaland (£8.5m) is back in form also. Despite his high price tag, Haaland’s season points total of 138 is now third highest in the game and leads to him overtaking C. Palmer (£5.8m).

In fact, Palmer’s recent slump in form has led to him scoring half the number of points as fellow midfielder, Foden over the last 7 game weeks !

Palmer still has the highest % of gamer ownership at 75%, down 1% from last week and Chelsea do have some tasty home fixtures coming up so, with Man City still to face the hardest forthcoming fixtures, including Arsenal away next week, it may be worth holding fire for now in swapping the likes of Palmer for the City form players….?

Don’t forget the above a) includes a hypothetical fixture between Fulham and Spurs and b) doesn’t include the FA Cup games in TFF game week 23 – Arsenal, Brentford and West Ham all play a game less and teams such as City and Liverpool in particular and possibly Newcastle will likely rest some of their star players that week.

Going back to the beginning of the blog, its impossible to ignore Bournemouth so lets do a deep dive into them…

First point to know is they’re about mid-way down the fixture difficulty chart including Liverpool up next although they do have the bonus of an FA Cup fixture away to Everton where one would think they’ll field a full strength line up?

With some highly credible results against so called ‘bigger teams’ including wins against City, Arsenal and Newcastle, perhaps the so called harder run of fixtures should even be ignored…?

Their overall Team stats continue to impress, in 6th place now for total points ahead of champions Man City! They appear in the top 5 of the other key metrics, Goals, Assists and Goals Conceded and with a very low total % picked by of just 24% ! they are highest in terms of Pts per £m and thus, Bournemouth player ownership may give you a great advantage over your gamer rivals (assuming they aren’t also bringing them in 😆)

Especially as he is in the lower scoring bucket of midfielders, J. Kluivert (£2.7m) is the most obvious ‘no-brainer’ pick. NB – 5% of TFF gamers have already noticed this and have brought him in already this week ! 😊

Closely following Kluivert and also in all three matrices of form above, are this week’s Star player D. Ouatarra (£3.1m) and A. Semenyo (£2.8m).

With the third best defence, even Bournemouth’s defenders and keepers are worthy of consideration, perhaps as cheap replacements for Forest defenders, were we to take this week’s result as an indication of a ‘turning of the tide’…?

M. Kerkez (£2.5m), O. Huijsen (£2.4m) and maybe even the keeper – K. Arrizabalaga (£3.2m) appear to be the best defensive options.