Welcome back for another article.
Is that the worst transfer of the season? Ekitike to Mbeumo as the Liverpool forward bagged a brace against Newcastle and Mbeumo blanked against Fulham, with the other attackers Bruno, Cunha, Sesko returning. 71 points all out though so still actually a pretty good week, could have been a huge week but wasn't to be after a bad call. A green arrow to 39k and DGW26 is now confirmed, Arsenal play Brentford away and Wolves away. Wolves have Forest away and Arsenal home.
So that's a relief, given I only have one Chelsea player and no Everton the alternative double would've been very bad for my team. Triple Arsenal and Mane in place for the double, however Saka pulling up in the warm up means he's going to need to be fixed. In hindsight that's another reason I think getting Mbeumo a week too early was a bit too aggressive, we were due to get more info on the league cup this week, whether that's the predicted double for Arsenal and Wolves locked in, or Chelsea pulling an upset. I would have 3 transfers instead of the 1 and more points. So I wanted to be honest about that, no one plays perfectly and I make some mistakes every season. Sometimes it's worth doing nothing to get extra info.
Elsewhere in the team though captain Bruno with a clutch stoppage time second assist earning him 2 bonus for 20 points as captain, Enzo with a late goal, Le Fee defcon, double Arsenal defence clean sheet and Mukiele making it returns in 9 straight games. He's only 4 points behind Timber almost in team of the season. I did an article on the biggest gamebreakers of all-time a year or two ago, Mukiele will need another 42 points in his final 14 games to make the list. The of Palmer, Mahrez, Kane, Dallas from seasons gone by, with the most points per million in the game's history. Defcon will obviously have helped a lot though of course.
So let's look at how the team is shaping up for GW25 and transfer plans.
🧤 Goalkeeper
Arsenal are home to Sunderland, which is a fixture that has some of the best clean sheet odds of the entire season, so hopefully that translates into clean sheet points for Raya. Every game needs to be played like a title decider, the gap is 6 points to City and they still need to play at the Etihad.
🛡️ Defenders
In defence it's Gabriel, Van Dijk and Andersen.
So the clean sheet odds have got Arsenal on 58% which is 24% more than next most, Chelsea and Fulham on 34% so I'm glad to have Andersen in place. It's a rough fixture for Van Dijk and I'd earmarked this to be a difficult week for my team due to how the fixtures have all fallen in the worst way. I've got Mukiele and Le Fee with Arsenal, O'Reilly with Liverpool, Mane has Chelsea, Van Dijk has Man City. Now also have to deal with the Saka injury so it might be a week where I just want to survive rather than expect any big movement.
Who will you be captaining for the double? I was strongly considering Saka which makes that injury a huge shame, though maybe it's saved me from what would've been a disaster. Now Gabriel I expect will be by far the most popular. 7.2 points per match is top in the league, he's actually even ahead of Haaland just about who is now averaging 7.1 points per game.
This screenshot is from fpl.page on the statistics page, it's free if you want to check it out. FPL Focal in the app store. Bruno is third top for points per game, Rice now too far down on 5.6 points per game so he's a shout as well.
