Welcome back for another article. 📖
A disaster gameweek with 36 points out, one of the strongest teams I've fielded all season, everyone with a solid home fixtures besides the Man City triple up away at Forest who all blanked. No clean sheet from City, Liverpool or Raya who all conceded once, Timber not in the squad which meant Mukiele off the bench who did hit defcon at least. Thank god it's a quick turnaround because it's pretty mad who much the team underperformed. Dubravka with the 11 point haul though I was never starting him over Raya, well done if you had him starting. 🧤 The red arrow was so big that even if I'd gotten Dubravka and Andersen's points it was still a red. New rank is about 37K. 📉
The three players that came in were Cunha, Ekitike who only got an assist between them, Bruno, Semenyo and Guiu left the team.
Let's run through the team for GW19. ⚽
Goalkeeper
Although Villa are on an unbelievable run of 11 wins in a row, Arsenal are top of the GW19 bookies clean sheet odds given a 50% chance. Second is Man Utd home to Wolves, then Liverpool and Man City are joint third, then Newcastle, Chelsea, Forest, Palace. Villa will be missing both Cash and Kamara through yellow card suspension who could be big misses. 🛡️
Defence
It's a back 4 this week which is Van Dijk, O'Reilly, Timber and Andersen.
-
Timber: So yeah Timber not in the Arsenal squad, the rumours are that it was just a precautionary measure and is expected back, though we won't hear from Arteta before the deadline - not that he'd give us anything honest or useful. So unless we get training pics with him or something like that it's down to unofficial sources that could be wrong. There would be some logic to giving him the Brighton game off, White and Mosquera are out still so they're probably about to start him on the 30th, the 3rd and the 8th, with FA Cup and League Cup straight after that, so he does need managing. Maybe they felt Brighton home is the game they could afford to rest him, but I'd have expected he at least made the bench so who knows. Anyway, a decision to make with him transfer wise.
-
O'Reilly: O'Reilly has ended up literally the worst scoring of the four Man City defenders over the last 4 gameweeks, the other three all have attacking returns over that run and bonus points. Gotta stick it out with O'Reilly though, way too much of a luxury move to consider switching.
-
Van Dijk: Van Dijk's been painful as well actually, conceding to the worst team in the league last gameweek, and 10 man Spurs the game before that. They are winning games but the lack of clean sheets isn't good, I'll likely keep him until at least GW22 when they have Burnley home and then make a call on him, maybe Gabriel in.
-
Andersen: I wouldn't mind some low scoring games if it means some more clean sheets this week after how horrendously last gameweek went. Palace away could be a good fixture for defcon for Andersen, he's averaging exactly 11 per 90 this season, which ranks third best in the league after Senesi and Collins. Keane by the way doing better than Tarkowski!
LegoMane makes awesome fixture ticker graphics, this one shows all competitions including cups, plus colour co-ordination based on recovery periods. It really helps visualise just how hectic the schedule is right now, I wonder if Ake gets a start at some point, when you look at how mad their schedule in particular is. Just hope it's for Gvardiol and not O'Reilly. Those teams in particular with 3 red bars in a row could have particular rotation risk, Man City, Brentford, Fulham, Palace, Spurs, Leeds, Sunderland. 🗓️
