Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 9: Tips, price changes and team news as Liverpool face Everton
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The Premier League is back after its enforced hiatus for internationals, and that means the return of the FPL as well – so as always, 3 Added Minutes has gone over the form, fixtures and team news to bring you our weekly guide to maximising your points ahead of Gameweek 9. The first match this weekend is Saturday afternoon’s Merseyside derby, which means the deadline to get all of your transfers done is 11:00 BST on 21 October – so don’t have too much of a lie-in after your Friday evening indulgences.
There’s an awful lot of fresh injury news to get through later on, but first let’s have a quick spin through the players you should consider bringing in and the teams whose assets you need to target as we head towards the quarter-way mark of the Premier League season. Is that a thing? Probably not.
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Teams to target and players to pick up
It’s unusual for there to be a handful of specific teams who simply have much better fixtures than everyone else over the course of the coming weeks, but a few sides have very generous runs coming up and maximising on players from those teams seems to be a must.
Aston Villa, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United all have very gentle runs over the next month of matches, with the obvious caveat that both Villa and the Hammers play each other this very week. Brighton & Hove Albion, too, have a very soft run soon – they play Fulham, Everton, Sheffield United and Nottingham Forest on the bounce, but they do have to get Manchester City out of the way first, so we wouldn’t be jumping onto too many Seagulls players this week.
Manchester United also have what should be some fairly soft fixtures coming up – a Manchester derby next week notwithstanding – but until Erik ten Hag’s side show signs of consistent improvement, it’s hard to recommend bringing any of their assets in. Eventually, Marcus Rashford and Bruno Fernandes will come good. That could be this week, could be a month’s time, could be even longer. Until we know for sure, we’re advising you steer clear.
As for choosing the specific players you should be chasing from those teams, it’s always good to dip into the statistics and see who’s performing well and which players are scoring more frequently than they should – remember that a lot of players who are doing well now will regress to the mean over time. By that token, it’s worth noting that Jarrod Bowen, arguably West Ham’s best asset, is hitting goals at a rate comfortably above his xG, so while we won’t warn you against him, he’s an example of a player who may drop off over the coming weeks and months.
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Looking at players who are doing the right things and due a few more points, Darwin Nuñéz is leading the entire league in terms of goals and assists per 90 minutes – if he gets a run of starts, he’s definitely a player you’ll want in your squad. There are, however, rumours that he may have sustained a minor injury this week, so check the pre-match press conferences for any updates from Jürgen Klopp. Speaking of Liverpool, a serious injury to Andrew Robertson could see the Scotsman out for the next couple of months – and that may well make Kostas Tsimikas (£4.4m) a must-have for the foreseeable future.
In terms of teams whose assets you should perhaps avoid, Chelsea have a horrible run coming up, Brentford’s games get tricky once Burnley are out of the way on Saturday, and don’t get too excited about Manchester City players – their upcoming run is Brighton, Manchester United, Bournemouth, Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs and Villa. If City are going to drop more points this season, and if their players are going to have quiet gameweeks, a lot of them will come soon. That said, we don’t think you should be panic-selling just yet. Brighton tend to concede quite a lot, United have been pretty dodgy and Bournemouth look like relegation fodder, so you can peel City assets out of your sides slowly.
We still don’t recommend selling Erling Haaland, by the way. There’s been quite a lot of conversation among FPL players about wildcarding into non-Haaland teams, but our firm belief is that you should always hold onto the most nailed-on high-scoring players and work around them. It’s perfectly possible to build a strong team full of regular goalscorers with both Haaland and Mohamed Salah in it, and that remains the way to go.
Injury updates and captaincy calls
Let’s get going with the rest of the injury news – of which there is plenty to get through. Let’s start up in Newcastle, who have quite a few players who are doubtful ahead of their match against Crystal Palace – Sven Botman is at best fifty-fifty to make his comeback this weekend, while Sandro Tonali may well not play as the investigation into his alleged gambling offences continues. Alexander Isak is also a doubt, while Harvey Barnes is out for the long term.
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Hide AdPlayers you may have elsewhere who won’t feature this weekend include Taiwo Awoniyi and Pervis Estupiñán, while there are doubts over Christian Romero, Armando Broja, Mark Flekken, Ethan Pinnock, Kaoru Mitoma, Nicolas Jackson, Leandro Trossard, William Saliba, Cole Palmer, Bukayo Saka, Jordan Beyer and many, many more. This is a week where waiting until the managers’ press conferences is simply essential, even if it could see you fall afoul of price changes.
Speaking of which, we aren’t expecting too much movement before the deadline but Mitoma, Botman, Saliba, Rashford, Cody Gakpo and Amari’I Bell could all go down by Saturday lunchtime. Pedro Neto, Pedro Porro, Vladimi Coufal and Julian Álvarez could go up by £0.1m, but none of those are certainties.
As for your captaincy this week, there are quite a few good options. Salah plays against Everton at home – a game in which both he and his side typically do rather well – Haaland faces off against Brighton, a team who tend to ship some goals, and Son Heung-Min has a home game against Fulham. Any of those three are very sensible calls and it’s tough to drive a wedge between them. We’re probably opting for Salah this weekend, but there are certainly several good options. It’s very hard to go in to bat for anyone else, however, when three of the most reliable big-scoring players are all involved.
3 Added Minutes FC
Finally, let’s take a look at our example team, 3 Added Minutes FC – we had another above-average but unexceptional week, which has seen us drop out of the top 20,000 for the first time in a little while. Still, things look good overall and we’re happy to escape what could have been a tricky week without a major disaster – and we like our team a lot this time out, so we won’t be making any changes. Here’s how we lined up last time out – we’ll be bringing Anthony Gordon and Mark Flekken back into the starting XI. Flekken may miss out, but if he does that Matt Turner will come in, which is hardly a major problem given that Forest are at home to Luton Town.
That’s all for this week – best of luck to all of you, and may whoever you choose to captain hit you a hat-trick, or at least avoid missing a penalty and picking up a card.
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