Welcome back for another article.
54 points and a fairly disappointing blank gameweek, Mukiele didn't make it off the Sunderland bench so just 10 players, Dango with an unexpected benching and Ekitike also benched, with a 1 point cameo. The two highlights just being captain Bruno with his 11th double digit return of the season and Wilson scoring, though Wilson had to come in for the injured Salah so that only made the Salah punt worse who had come in for that Spurs home fixture a couple gameweeks ago. Fulham's 3.2 xG against Burnley was more than any team, the most captained player was Haaland which shows the number of inactive teams at this point, must be several million!
Double Gameweek 33 is confirmed following the FA Cup games last weekend, the six teams doubling are Bournemouth, Brighton, Burnley, Chelsea, Leeds and Man City. I was very set on wildcarding in GW32 but that was under the assumption that Arsenal knocked Southampton out, since that would've made WC32 very obvious to me given you'd have triple Arsenal, triple City, probably triple Chelsea and 2 or 3 from the other teams that double besides Burnley.
Chip strategy is wide open now, which is arguably a good thing. Obviously it's always team dependent chip strategy and I'll talk about where I'm at now. Some of you have used more chips than me, some of you still have all 4 chips which I don't with triple captain gone. We'll be chatting to world number 1 Erik tomorrow to see where he's at with his team and strategy too. Let's get into the team for GW32.
Starting in goal and the back 3 it's Raya, Gabriel, O'Reilly and Van Dijk.
🧤 Goalkeeper
- Raya was sensational in the Champions League as Arsenal edged a 1 - 0 win away vs Sporting who were unbeaten in 23 games at home with 17 wins in a row. Only .71 xG conceded. After losing the league cup final and dropping out of the FA Cup Arsenal are fighting on two fronts now and every game is crucial at this stage.
🛡️ Defenders
- Gabriel started on Tuesday night having recovered from that knock he'd picked up in the FA Cup which forced an early sub and ice on his knee, so he should be in line for a start home to Bournemouth. Last time I went to this fixture I'd just sat down at my seat, tweeted come on you gunners or something like that, had double Arsenal defence as well, looked up and Bournemouth had put the ball in our net after 11 seconds.
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I wonder what position FPL classify O'Reilly as next season, overall he's played left back 20 times so that's been by far his most popular position however of course recently we've seen Pep using him in midfield more where he's been fantastic, obviously came away with the brace in the league cup final to win it for City, so I expect he'll appear in many wildcards along with Semenyo and Haaland most likely. It's a choice between O'Reilly with Chelsea away or Mukiele with Spurs home. We'll surely see some kind of bounce from Spurs with De Zerbi now in charge and given O'Reilly's upside if playing in midfield again I've gone with him.
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Lastly Van Dijk playing home to Fulham, starting to feel like Slot is very much on borrowed time unless Liverpool manage to win the Champions League which is incredibly unlikely in my opinion, two losses on the bounce now, 4 - 0 to City and 2 - 1 to Brighton, recording this before they play PSG. For those on the FH33 chip strategy Van Dijk is still handy given he plays home this week and GW34 which is home to Palace.
Arsenal top the GW32 clean sheet odds given a 44% chance, second place is Man Utd on 36%, then Liverpool, West Ham and Brighton tied on 34%.
