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?
⚽ Midfielders
Midfielders next. The final mids table is Bruno, Salah, Semenyo, Szobo, Cherki, Palmer, Saka and Anthony.
Will Bruno get the assist he needs to break the all-time premier league record? Currently tied with Henry and De Bruyne as it stands and he'll desperately be looking for it, they're playing Brighton away who collectively have a lot of motivation themselves battling for Europe and they could still miss out completely.
Anyone going for one last dance with Salah?
The end of an era as the FPL goat plays his final game for Liverpool, has to start surely. Such an expensive punt though I wouldn't go for it unless you can get to him without any sacrifices and that will probably take a few transfers without interrupting the rest of your team.
Szobo is only 0.1 points behind him this gameweek for exactly 7m cheaper! Palmer and Saka's projections hang in the balance dependent on their expected minutes, the data suggests swapping one to the other is sideways, but if you're desperately chasing a big upside move then you could go for Palmer and captain given he has Sunderland and extremely low owned. Single digit ownership among active managers really underlines the potential but it's not been a good season for Palmer, or Chelsea.
Anthony for 5m is another fun differential, so cheap and many of us are sitting on some assets you don't necessarily want to play in 38 if you can help it like Gross, Tavernier, Wilson etc. They're playing home to Wolves, both relegated so that could be a really fun game when neither team are playing with any pressure. Tavernier's on 4.3 points so it's a slight improvement, Gross 4.2, Wilson 4.4 though he was benched last match.
Tel is on 4.2 points and just misses out. Maybe he's the random player that spikes a GW38 haul, only 0.3% owned and last match scored vs Leeds, the match before got an assist.
Tottenham are the ultimate GW38 anomalies. They average a massive +84% goal increase in GW38 compared to their GW1-37 averages, famously featuring massive scorelines like their 7-1 over Hull or 5-0 over Norwich
Newcastle are another side that historically explodes on the final day, historically averaging double (+110%) their season scoring rate in GW38.
It's hard to recommend someone like Tel or Muani though let's be honest, Solanke not fit enough for the Chelsea game so we can be reasonably confident in a Richarlison start in GW38. let's take a look at the forwards then Team of the Week.
🎯 Forwards
The final forwards table of the season is Haaland, Bowen, Welbeck, Thiago, Richarlison, Flemming, Joao Pedro and Armstrong.
Haaland with 7.0 projected points top of all players in GW38, playing home to Aston Villa and what's very much in City's favour here is that Villa play the Europa League final just a few days before, and Villa have already secured Champions League football so it's a dead rubber for them.
Bowen is looking like a really good transfer in however, 5.5 projected points actually places him second highest across all positions. Bruno was on 5.3. Leeds are another side with nothing left to play for, and it's astonishing they came away with a 1 - 0 win vs Brighton, don't let that result fool you. They only amassed one shot on target which was the DCL winner off a huge mistake by Van Hecke. 0.39 xG they registered, Brighton playing Leeds away came away with just over 3 expected goals, 19 shots.
Richarlison is on 4.4 points with an estimated 65 or so minutes, if we bump that to 80 he moves up to third place on 4.9 points. If Solanke's out or still a doubt in GW38 then we can be quite confident in Richarlison's minutes. 85 minutes would place him on 5.2 points, not far behind Bowen. Gyokeres was benched for Arsenal's game against Burnley, a huge frustration for owners coming off the bench for a 1 pointer, hundreds of thousands captained even. Do you keep or sell?
Well I said in last week's content that Havertz has a chance of starting one of the final two games to get some rhythm before the Champions League final where I'd expect Havertz to start personally, thought the Palace game was likelier but Havertz did score the winner and there's a good chance Arteta sticks with that again, with Lewis-Skelly probably coming back in to the team in midfield in place of Eze. So Gyokeres to Bowen or Richarlison looks worth it.
Finishing up with a look at Team of the Week using the projected points. The team is Donnarumma, Gabriel, Porro, Saliba, Bruno, Cherki, Anthony, Szoboszlai, Bowen, Haaland and Welbeck.
On the bench Hermansen, Minteh, Danso, Esteve.
Team is within a 100m budget and 3 players per team max. If you saved your free hit for GW38 then there's some inspiration.
That's the final players to buy article of the season, thanks for reading these! See you soon for the next one.