Who are the best players to buy for GW5? Whether that's free transfers or on a chip, let's discuss all the positions and the best picks.
As a reminder, this week European football starts, so the sensible thing to do is wait before making any transfers. The following teams all play before GW5: Arsenal, Brentford, Palace, Tottenham, Forest, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City and Newcastle. A few League Cup games in there as well. Injuries are unpredictable and you never know when it might happen to your team, it could be in one of these games if you're very unlucky, and therefore that's why waiting is sensible, though of course there might be times where you have exact money for a particular move and then you have to make a judgment call on it. ⚖️
🧤 Goalkeepers
First, and this week Alisson tops the table, facing Everton at home for the Merseyside derby. 🏡 However, Alisson is a very good example of where the next 5 projections column comes in handy; long term, Raya is in front on 19 points vs Alisson's 17.3. If you're making a keeper transfer or wildcarding, Raya would be my pick. 🎯 It's not often we make keeper transfers, and when one joins our team it's therefore with a very long-term view. On average, it's always the lowest-scoring position and therefore it's not an area worth spending transfers on most of the time. I've always found goalkeepers to be so unpredictable as well; the premiums rarely finish as the top-scoring keeper because the cheaper ones face more shots that make up the difference in slightly reduced clean sheets. Even then, teams can have a bubble season and do well, such as Sels, who I think shared the golden glove with Raya last season. Wolves face all three promoted teams in their next 5, which has Jose Sa on 16.4 points. I really don't have much confidence in the Wolves defence personally though, so I'd rather find the 0.5m for Martinez or Petrovic over Sa.
🛡️ Defenders
Next, and it's a Liverpool player top once again, Van Dijk with 4.6 points on FPL Review. Back-to-back 8 pointers for Virgil and very good clean sheet odds for GW5. Only 0.13 xG conceded last match. Liverpool won 1-0 in the same fixture last season, 2-0 the year before, 2-0 the year before that. It's the away games vs Everton that have been unpredictable historically. Munoz and Lacroix make the table again this week, though I'd actually swerve unless you desperately need a defender for one week. They have West Ham away, after which point they have Liverpool and Arsenal in the four gameweeks to follow. 😬
It is an interesting point of reference that the algorithm is clearly heavily favouring defensive contribution picks, and although Palace's fixtures turn, from a defcon perspective the odds go up, which would explain Lacroix actually being ahead of Munoz for the next 5 but behind this gameweek. Senesi and Agbadou are good examples as well, they're fantastic for defcons. Senesi is basically a lock in my team if I wildcard GW6.
Huge props to Iraola 👏, despite the outgoing players they've kept two clean sheets and are fourth in the Premier League table with 3 wins on the bounce. And that's all without Kluivert needed back in his starting 11 either.
There's an interesting trend of increased clean sheets; we've had 32 already from 4 gameweeks, an average of 8 per gameweek. Last season at this point we'd had 18, so 14 fewer. The season before that we had 14. Non-penalty has also decreased year on year the last 3 seasons, at this stage. Is "big at the back" back, particularly with defensive contributions in mind? 🤔
As a consequence, the team of the season is a 5-3-2. Vicario, Timber, Calafiori, Chalobah, Guehi, Lacroix, Semenyo, Caicedo, Enzo, Haaland, Joao Pedro. Including defensive contributions, Caicedo has returned in every game as well.
Some midfielders to mention not shown here: Tarkowski - he's hit defcon in every game so far, has Liverpool of course, so not the right entry point to buy though he probably will hit it again vs them. GW6 they have home games to West Ham and Palace back to back. Gvardiol - back in the starting 11 last match, kept a clean sheet and has dropped in price. He'll likely play CB primarily however.