Week 5 – Time for some transfers….?

The addition of the Carabao Cup to TFF continues to ‘shake things up’ a little, e.g. this week’s Team of the Week Star Player I. Maciel da Cruz (£2.9m) of Forest scored 12 points against Swansea in the Carabao (Forest still managed to lose the game!) but has only scored 4 points with his League appearances, all made as a Sub !

He’s actually Forest’s fourth highest scoring player which, tells you a lot about their League form…

Some changes to the Team of the Season this week – C. Richards (£2.6m) and T. Livramento (£3.3m) come in at the expense of M. van de Ven (£3.3m) to make up a back 5 highlighting an increase in Defender points in the game in general so far this season.

The Chelsea midfielders E. Fernandez (£4.3m) and M. Caicedo (£3.9m) move out of the side with J. Anthony (£2.8m) of Burnley moving in (3 goals and 1 assist in 5 games).

No changes up front with E. Haaland (£8.3m) extending his points lead and becoming the first player this season to hit 2 weeks as the highest points scorer.

Our TFF revised Fixture Ticker – page 6 on the Player Stats Portal :-

shows us a number of Carabao Cup Dark Green i.e. ‘easy’ fixtures starting tonight and tomorrow. IF you can find players who will also start the League fixtures swell from these teams then some serious point hauls could be available, as witnessed last week with the Forest striker.

We’d recommend keeping a close eye on team line-ups and, were you looking at bringing certain players in anyway, IF they start then, could give you a serious jump up your leagues.

For example, Liverpool and Spurs face lower league sides at home Tue/Wed…. were Liverpool for example to start the likes of A. Isak (£6.1m) to get minutes into his legs…. could be a great time to bring him in?

With that in mind, we reckon 5 weeks in now is time enough to think about changes to the side from any under-performing players (Forest, Villa, Man Utd – how long should we wait?! 😆)

We’ve re-jigged the Player Form tab (Page 7 on the Player Stats Portal ) and have filtered here position by position. If you have players still in your teams that DON’T appear on these views, questions probably now need to be asked, regardless of the forthcoming fixtures:-

Goalkeepers – Top 10 shown but, I think you want your keeper to be on 25 points plus by now? Spurs’ improved defence, good run of fixtures and Team of the Season member, well priced keeper G. Vicario (£3.3m) is our top pick :-

Defenders – Top 20 shown, any defenders still lurking in your teams not shown here, we’d be asking serious questions of. The Arsenal defence is looking mean again and their fixtures turn for the better, particularly after the Newcastle away game. The attacking full backs currently lead the way, Team of the Season defenders R. Calafiori (£4.2m) and J. Timber (£4.3m).

Some interesting cheap Palace ‘enablers’ in the list also, C. Richards (£2.6m) looks great value :-

Midfielders – again here we’ve filtered the Top 20. A. Semenyo (£3.1m) continues to lead the way and is the joint highest selected player in the game now, with Salah, in 48% of teams.

Forwards – we’ve filtered the stikers to top 15 but, as you can see the points spread here is large so, I think you want at least 20 points from your strikers at this stage, unless of course you’re looking at bringing in Isak.

E. Haaland (£8.3m) is the must have striker now, he’s only 2% behind Semenyo and Salah on % Picked By also and I reckon he’ll be top of all metrics by this time next week :-

For the first time I can remember there’s probably an argument to only have the one striker in the team with J. Pedro (£4.5m) next best, but, that could of course change by next week with a Double Game Week coming up now for most sides…