Week 22 – Advantage Arsenal

A great week for the league leaders Arsenal, with Spurs doing them a favour, mounting an unexpected second half comeback and taking two points off City. With Aston Villa losing at home to Brentford, Arsenal have extended their lead at the top to 6 points.

Two fine goals for H. Ekitike (£5.1m) in Liverpool’s 4-1 mauling of Newcastle means he is our Star Player of the Week:-

A clean sheet for Sunderland means R. Roefs (£2.6m) reclaims the keeper spot in the Team of the Season.

Other than a change in order in Midfield, there are no other changes to the team this week, perhaps the Team of the Season is now ‘settling down’ – a 3-5-2 formation differs from the usual 3-4-3 in previous seasons and reflects the increased point scoring from attacking midfielders….as well as the lack of viable Strikers !

There are quite large gaps between the Defenders and Strikers to the Team of the Season challenging pack:-

But, goalkeepers as mentioned and Midfielder spots are a lot more competitive :-

If the injury to B. Guimaraes (£4.2m) keeps him out for any length of time then the likes of M. Rogers (£3.8m), J. Bowen (£5.5m), J. Garner (£2.9m) and D. Rice (£4.8m) seem poised to pounce and grab his place in the top side.

Transfer wise, gamers appear to be buying in to Michael Carrick’s Old Trafford revolution, with big jumps in ownership for B. Fernandes (£6.4m) – rewarded with an 8 point score and B. Mbuemo (£4.2m):-

We mentioned E. Fernandez (£4.3m) in last week’s blog and he duly popped up with a late winner for Chelsea against West Ham. A. Semenyo (£3.1m) has now moved up to 61% ownership ! and another Chelsea player increasing in popularity and points is J. Pedro (£4.5m) coming off the bench to score 8 points.

Players being ditched include out of form and now out of the team P. Foden (£5.4m) as well as D. Henderson (£3.1m) who has moved from most selected keeper to now second most selected behind D. Raya (£4.4m) :-

A quick reminder of the fixtures (updated on the Player Stats Portal) coming up as the Carabao Cup semi-finals conclude this week:-

and moving onto a look at players in form:-

We’ve already mentioned E. Fernandez (£4.3m) and J. Pedro (£4.5m) of Chelsea who also have lots of great fixtures coming up.

J. Bowen (£5.5m) or the cheaper C. Summerville (£3.9m) are two West Ham midfielders on great form as well as F. Wirtz (£5.0m) of Liverpool who is beginning to justify his massive price tag !

Under the radar players in form are C. Kelleher (£3.1m) and E. Buendia (£3.4m) and with just <= 2 % ownership, these two, along with Summerville, represent great differentiator options…?