Welcome Back for Another Article
Two of the best transfers I've ever made before the break, it was Saka and Thiago that joined the team in place of Gyokeres and Ndiaye, and they went on to score 3 goals between them. Saka hit defcon and got max bonus which meant 12 points for him, 13 for Thiago. So basically 22 points gained from those two, very lucky. A green arrow to 165K.
One thing I have said and said it in last gameweek's team selection article, is FPL is about putting yourself in a position to get lucky and the 50/50 choice between Thiago and Minteh boiled down to Thiago being on pens as I couldn't separate them, and one of the two goals was a pen. Very lucky though I won't dispute that. Elsewhere Arsenal conceded twice to Sunderland, Munoz kept a clean sheet, Semenyo missed a pen, as did Haaland in fact so there was some bad luck last gameweek two. 79% of penalties are converted on average, and I know tons of you had the Semenyo and Haaland combination too, very unlucky.
The international break has thrown up several flags as well, I'm going to talk about all 3 in my team: Gabriel, Semenyo and Enzo and what I'm going to do with them. It could certainly be worse, I was posting about my flags the other day and Elder replied with their team, 10 flags. I've genuinely never seen so many flags: Guehi, Calafiori, Gabriel, Neto, Semenyo, Enzo, Paqueta, Gyokeres, Sesko.
🎯 Gameweek 12 Team and Transfer Plans
It's the north London derby with Arsenal hosting Spurs and Raya starts in goal. The Gabriel injury isn't great, he's in the conversation as one of the best CBs in the world right now for me. However I feel a lot are overlooking just how unbelievable Hincapie and Mosquera are as backup CBs. The only thing is, Arsenal's defence will be hovering around 100% effective ownership now so I'm no longer going to gain anything from Arsenal clean sheets unless I sell Gabriel for another Arsenal defender. More on that in a sec.
🛡️ Defence
So the defence is Munoz, Gabriel and Andersen.
What's the latest with Gabriel? David Ornstein is as reliable as it gets, and he's reported that Arsenal are continuing to assess him, there's concerns he could miss 1-2 months through injury. This is literally the worst possible time in a season to pick up an injury for that long because of the busy winter schedule. I've put together a quick graphic to visualise this, if it's 1 month that could be 6 gameweeks, if it's 2 months that's potentially 10 gameweeks. So the only logical conclusion you can come to is to sell. Obviously if you've got depth it doesn't have to be this week however I can see myself selling before this deadline.
We talked a lot about Gabriel replacements in the players to buy article, give that a watch after if you haven't seen it yet. Munoz would be in my top 3 replacements so I'm pleased to already have him, and a bit fortunate to not have owned any Palace defenders already because I'd be a little reluctant to go double Palace defence if I was selling Gabriel and already had a Lacroix, Guehi or Richards. It's not that bad though.
Andersen has Sunderland home. I agree with all your comments, Sunderland is not an easy fixture right now but I've got to play him. Using my bench defenders is overthinking. As the stats widget on my site shows he's been amazing for defcons, averaging 10.79 per 90 which is second best after Senesi and Van Dijk this season. A 70% hit rate.
