It's been over a week since I've last provided any update on my team. I've sharpened around the edges and made lots of changes, so let's run through the new team. Thanks for the incredible reception to the pre-season content so far!
In other news, Son has just announced that he will be leaving Spurs after 10 years 😢. I made a quick graphic of Son over the years, and he's certainly an FPL legend.
- 10 years
- 454 games
- 173 goals
- 101 assists
- 1,730 FPL points
The streets won't forget prime Son and Kane in FPL ✨.
🏆 The Focal League
The Focal league is open to join as well, the code is ddqiou. Chuck that in your app to get in the league.
🥅 Goalkeeper
In goal, I've opted for Chelsea's Sanchez who, in my view, will be amazing value for 5m if he remains nailed through the season. There is a slight lingering doubt that if he hits a bad patch of form, Maresca might look towards Jorgensen, perhaps he will regardless around CL football. He's cemented the spot as his own for now and was absolutely fantastic in the Club World Cup final, arguably man of the match if not for Palmer's brace. He's massively improved his distribution, claiming crosses, and timing of his sweeping.
I really like Chelsea's fixtures as well at a glance, and the fixture ticker widget on my app agrees. Opening 5 gameweeks they're 5th best; however, I'm considering a GW13 wildcard because there are some insane fixture swings for Liverpool, Man City, and Newcastle who play the three promoted teams loads between them. That places Chelsea very top, same when filtered specifically to defence fixtures.
🛡️ Defence
In defence, it's now Saliba, Van Dijk, and Milenkovic.
Gabriel is yet to play in pre-season, working through an injury which the medical staff are managing. There's a chance he's back in the team before their final two pre-season games, it's Villareal and Ath Bilbao then it's GW1. In the meantime, Saliba makes far more sense until the situation changes. The immediate term fixtures are a mixed bag, Liverpool GW3, Man City GW5, but longer term I really like them and I'm trying to minimize potential areas to require a transfer. Leeds GW2 is great, GW7 they hit an amazing run: West Ham, Fullham, Palace, Burnley, Sunderland leading into the potential GW13 wildcard.
I came across a clever bit of analysis from Tom Hadley, who some of you might remember came on the channel when he was rank 1. What are we looking at here? With Defensive Contribution points factored in, he's measured the percentage of times a defender would have scored fewer than 2 points. Tarkowski and Saliba were the winners with only 15.2% of the time. This is interesting reading because it's answering the question, which defenders generally have the highest floor under these new rules. So about 1 in every 6.6 games, they'd have scored under 2 points. Van Dijk also fared extremely well with 16.2% of games, and Murillo was a defensive contribution beast and would have been on 16.7%.
Why Milenkovic over Murillo then? I'm going back and forth on this one, do we want to be completely ruled by def cons? Are they a trap or the only way to play with defenders now? Or can we pick players that are a mix of good DCs but goal threat? Let's get really nerdy with it now, two tables here, one from Solio analytics measuring def cons last season, the other comparing their attacking data. So Murillo hit the 10 CBIT threshold 53% of the time, just over every other game an extra 2 points. Milenkovic 35%, so about 1 in every 3. However, comparing attacking stats, Milenkovic is miles ahead: 4.02 expected goals to Murillo's 1.42, 4.56 xGI vs 2.56, 5 goals 2 assists for Milenkovic, 2 goals no assists for Murillo. Part of me wants to chase that upside. Hopefully, I'm explaining myself well. Last table to show you, also from Scout. They recalculated every single player's points under the new rules, and Milenkovic would have been the top scoring defender in the league last season with 178 points, Murillo second with 169. Use s.id/FPLFocal to access all the Scout goodies and get a 47% pre-season discount.
