Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 13: injury news, price rises, tips & captain picks as Man City face Liverpool

Welcome back to our regular Fantasy Premier League strategy guide, brought to you by the moderately smug managers of a Top 5,000 FPL team – so at least you know you’re in good hands. As usual, we’ll be offering updates on price changes and tips for your picking your captain, but first we need to get into some big decisions many players will face this week, with several key players injured over the international break. Should you keep Jarrod Bowen? Sell Erling Haaland? We’ll get into it all below.

Before we do that, remember to get all of your transfers in by 11:00am BST on Saturday 25 November, the deadline ahead of the first game of the weekend, a mouthwatering showdown between the champions Manchester City and Liverpool. Hopefully a game that good will get everyone up in time to get their team sorted. Let’s face it, we’ve all slept through the deadline before…

An injury crisis or a storm in a teacup?

As if the slew of injuries endured by Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur players before last week wasn’t enough, quite a few hugely popular assets went down over the international break, and there are several very scary-looking yellow triangles glaring out from computer screens around the world right now.

Let’s go through some of the biggest decisions you may need to make one by one and see whether we think it’s time to keep or sell, based on the information we have. Remember, we’re writing this ahead of the managers’ Friday press conferences, so there will be updates later, and this is one week where you’re really going to want to keep across what they have to say.

Let’s start with Jarrod Bowen, who withdrew from the England squad ahead of the game against North Macedonia with a reported knee issue. The latest updates have suggested that the injury is relatively minor, but he may well be rested for West Ham United’s game against Burnley.

The are two questions we need to ask with players like Bowen, who are unlikely to miss more than one game. Firstly, if he misses out, do we have an acceptable substitute to cover for him? And secondly, how are his fixtures looking over the coming weeks, and is it worth keeping them if their returns might naturally drop anyway?

In Bowen’s case, West Ham have Crystal Palace, Fulham and Wolverhampton Wanderers in the four games they play after the trip to Turf Moor. We would keep him unless your team looks decidedly dodgy this week, either because you’re set up to play five midfielders at all times or because you have other injured players. If that’s the case – and this goes for anyone we’re talking about today – it’s entirely reasonable to make a move. Just remember to plan ahead and make sure you don’t buy someone who’s good for one week but not the coming month or so.

Another midfielder in the same situation is Brighton & Hove Albion’s Kaoru Mitoma, who is currently rated as fifty-fifty to play against Nottingham Forest. Mitoma is probably the toughest to call right now – the severity of the injury is unclear and he may miss multiple games, and Brighton’s fixtures are a mixed bag, with three ‘easier’ games and three toughies in the following six gameweeks. We’d lean towards selling, and may not wait until the pressers – he’s close to a price drop as well.

Moving on to Manchester City, and both Erling Haaland and Ederson are a doubt to some degree for the game against Liverpool. If you have Ederson then you’re already either new to these columns or simply ignoring our advice (fair enough…), but you’re probably stuck with him until your next wildcard or double transfer, anyway. If you do have him, plan to sell, but not because of the injury.

As for Haaland – just keep him. He might miss a game, or be withdrawn at half-time again. But firstly, if he is even close to fit, Pep Guardiola would wheel him onto the pitch on a gurney if necessary given the importance of the game. And secondly, buying Haaland back in, which you will surely need to do, is much harder than moving on. He’ll still bring in a huge haul of points over the course of the campaign, so if he misses out the we take the loss and move on.

Matty Cash is also yellow-triangled, thanks to a shoulder injury sustained against Nottingham Forest – reports suggest that he should be fit to play against Spurs, however. That said, we’re looking to move Cash on regardless, simply because of Villa’s fixture list. Manchester City and Arsenal both lie in wait over the next few weeks, so their assets are depreciating fast. As a mid-priced defender, we’re not panicking if he has to stay around, because transfer priorities may lie elsewhere, but if your team is otherwise in good shape he’s a good candidate for a move. Ollie Watkins isn’t necessarily essential at the moment, either.

Finally, a quick word on the various Arsenal and Newcastle players who are doubts – guys like Martin Ødegaard, Ben White, Callum Wilson and Alexander Isak. There’s an element of case-by-case here, but right now Newcastle players are much, much less valuable than usual thanks to a couple of tricky games and the grotesque number of injuries throughout the squad. Once players start coming back, there will be some bargains, but we’d move players on for now. Arsenal players we would simply keep, with the same caveats that apply to Bowen.

Captaincy calls and price changes

Apart from Kaoru Mitoma, the other popular player who may lose £0.1m from his value by Saturday morning is the aforementioned White, because apparently quite a few players aren’t following our thought processes. We’d still keep hold, unless the need to sell was dire.

Other players edging towards a price drop – but who could all hold out until the weekend – include Malo Gusto, Miguel Almirón (another yellow flag!), Pedro Neto and Christian Romero. There are good reasons to sell all of those players anyway, not least various injuries, but the chance of losing a bit of value should probably nudge you further in that direction.

There are also a small handful of players who could go up over the next couple of days – keep an eye on Dominic Solanke, Byran Mbeumo, Sam Johnstone and Darwin Nuñéz. All could jump, so if you want them in your squad, then don’t hang about.

As for this week’s captain, for once we’ll advise against Haaland unless Guardiola very clearly states that he will play the full 90 minutes on Saturday. He may be injured, the opposition are tougher than usual, and early kick-offs tend to see fewer goals. That said, if we know for sure that he’s fit and raring to go? He may well still be the best option, and we’d take him over Mohamed Salah on this occasion.

Aside from the knock-carrying Norwegian, this is a rare week where there are no standouts, and all of the usual suspects have tough games except, perhaps, for Bukayo Saka. If you can’t convince yourself to give Haaland the armband, Saka is our man. We’d also say that with a fair chance of a lot of low scores this week, this is one of the better weeks to take a bit of a flyer and pick someone unexpected if you’re in that kind of mood…

3 Added Minutes FC

Finally, let’s provide an update on our example team, 3 Added Minutes FC, because that gives us the chance to gloat a little bit. A big 83-point week (against an average of 64) has sent us soaring all the way into the top 5,000 worldwide – and we’re rather happy to have some hard evidence that our advice has some actual value.

For this week, we have one free transfer and while we normally like to roll them over, this looks like a great time to move Cash on. Arsenal’s good fixtures mean we want a defender from their team, and William Saliba is well within our budget with £1.2m in the bank – but depending on injury updates, we might go budget and pick up Gabriel again. Let’s hope he doesn’t let us down like he did at the start of the season…

Good luck to all of you this week, and may all of you soon know the pleasure of being able to smugly share screenshots of your FPL team because they’re doing rather well.