Welcome back for another article. 🗞️
Who are the best players to buy for GW38?
There is a 14.5% increase in goals per game in GW38 on average. We've seen some crazy scorelines and hauls over the years So there's always massive potential in GW38. For the last time this season let's run through the best picks.
🧤 Goalkeepers
Goalkeepers first and we'll keep this the shortest segment since you're probably looking at other positions. Which fixtures are the best for clean sheet potential?
Man City are home to Villa, Arsenal have Palace away, Chelsea have Sudnerland away, West Ham have Leeds home. So the top 4 keepers for the finale are Donnarumma, Raya, Sanchez and Hermansen.
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If you're not tripled up on City or Arsenal and need a keeper than Donnarumma and Raya are your best bets. Arsenal are top on the clean sheet odds with a 44% chance, then Man City 38%.
Reflecting back on the season, Arsenal's defensive numbers have been absolutely ridiculous compared to the rest of the pack, 27.3 xGC. Man City with 40.1 xGC second best, then Liverpool, Brighton, Man Utd, Chelsea, Palace. A few surprises in there, Brighton in fourth. Though Hurzeler at St Pauli had them set up elite defensively. Seems like next season double Arsenal defence is almost essential from GW1 assuming they carry on similarly. Four clean sheets on the bounce now since the loss to Man City. Will they keep a fifth and lift their first Premier league trophy for 22 years?
🛡️ Defenders
There's some really exciting defenders, mids and forwards so let's move on to defenders next.
Now generally speaking there's a huge bump in both teams scoring so choose carefully.
In roughly 83% of seasons, GW38 beats the season's prior goal-per-game average. In fact, for the last 15 consecutive seasons, the final day has outscored the rest of the campaign's average.
The final defenders table is Gabriel, Porro, Saliba, O'Reilly, Van Dijk, Matheus, Danso and Mavropanos.
The high floor low ceiling pick is Saliba, assuming you already have Gabriel and go double or triple defence. Arsenal defence is so highly owned that just owning one negative affects rank for any clean sheet points.
Porro is the main one to highlight, Spurs are playing Everton home. Recording before Chelsea vs Tottenham, whether they win that or lose that it's a really good transfer given his upside. Plus some set piece duties. In fact over the last 6 gameweeks Porro's 10 chances created is second most among all defenders, and 10 shots taken is more than any defender.
O'Reilly will see a significant price bump next season, we'll probably be paying 6.5m to own him from GW1. 8.09 xGI more than any defender, amazingly second most is Guehi with 6.4 xGI, then Timber, Munoz, Senesi.
If the relegation scrap goes down to the wire Mavropanos is a really nice option for 4.5m, decent clean sheet potential and huge goal threat with 3 goals this season. Who remembers Wolves home in GW32 where he scored a brac,e kept a clean sheet, hit defcon and got max bonus for a 21 pointer. It's so unlikely let's be honest but someone is going to spike one of these mega hauls and some of you watching will own whoever it is.
Which random player do you think will spike a huge GW38 score?