The FPL Intelligence Brief
Summarizing GW11 and what'll keep me busy during the International Break
Forty-four and fourteen percent.
The former is the shockingly low number of points my team got in GW11.
The latter is the percent increase (green arrow) in my overall standing.
Sometimes you gotta make lemonade out of lemons.
My GW11 was saved by Igor Thiago, a player I profiled in my GW11 preview, and one I will spend a bit more time on in this article.
As usual, we’ll review the weekend’s matches and I’ll share the data x insights that I found most relevant. I’ll also comment on trends and players I’ll be reviewing during the IB as we prepare for GW12 and beyond.
Manchester City 3-0 Liverpool
Heading into this match I wrote quite a bit about Liverpool’s upcoming fixtures swing and shared some of my early thoughts about what I’d do FPL transfers-wise to prepare. In my last article, I cautioned that if we squint hard enough we can make a case for any number of players but that there just isn’t enough in the data to support any one of them except maybe Cody Gakpo.
Arne Slot, of course, has seen it fit to bench Gakpo in favor of a middling Florian Wirtz at LW experiment.
I said I would wait to see how Wirtz did versus City to determine what I’d do about Gakpo. And hoo boy did Wirtz put up a bad performance. Now I’m highly probable to hold on to Gakpo. Perhaps a move I might consider is a Liverpool defender in for Senesi. We’ll see.
This was not a good, confidence-inspiring performance by Liverpool:
Although it also wasn’t terrible. Liverpool do have excellent attackers. It’s just really hard to bet on any of them individually. If there were a chip that lets you back an attack, the Liverpool one would be a good shout for the coming fixtures.
I hate to say it, but we need more information. For now I suggest we use the GW12 Forest match as a further gauge.
Re: Man City, I’ve written a lot about how I am actively looking to add a second City asset, likely an attacker. I wish it were Marmoush, but Pep and his g’awful Roulette won’t let it be. Rayan Cherki is a master playmaker and isn’t expensive, so he might be a good shout. But I’m not sure I want to play Roulette with Pep and sweat Reijnders starting over Cherki for a one-pointer.
Foden is playing well, but that’s IRL not FPL. It might be that Jeremy Doku is one we need to consider. My bias against Doku is the same I have against Jack Grealish (and Adama Traore) - it’s really hard to count on players in FPL who don’t shoot the ball and have negligible xG. You’re banking on assists. The difference, of course, is that Doku has Haaland. And Doku has been A MONSTER this season at everything except shooting and scoring.
I’m not 100% sold on Doku for my FPL team. I’m not even 80% sold. But it could happen. We’ll see.
Spurs 2-2 Man Utd
I’m fading Spurs and have no plans to bring any of their assets into my FPL team.
I brought Mbeumo in during my GW7-8 Wildcard just in time for his goal-scoring explosion after a slow start IRL but a pretty hot one per his underlying data. That was great timing. Also because I sold Semenyo for him just before the latter’s collapse (which the data were screaming would happen despite his red hot start IRL).
United’s fixtures are going to take a turn for the better, and I might think about adding a second midfielder. Ideally, I’d just set-and-forget Bruno, but his price point is causing me major problems. The other option I’d consider is a player I've been tipping for the past three weeks: Amad Diallo. He’s one I’ll be reviewing extensively over the IB.
Everton 2-0 Fulham
All hail Fulham’s leading goal scorer. A player so reliable that he’s scored in all three of Fulham’s victories this season, including a spectacular one in the win over Leeds.
OG is his name.
Fulham are in trouble. I have no interest in any of their players.
Everton is always a hard read. I don’t enjoy hard reads. I’m also having season-long GK troubles. Maybe it’s just Jordan Pickford set-and-forget. We’ll see.
West Ham 3-2 Burnley
Other than backup GK Dubravka (who btw is starting WAY more for me in FPL than I was hoping for), I have no interest in any player from either of these teams.
Jarrod Bowen was briefly popular heading into GW11, but that was mostly noise by FPL “experts” who know nothing about football data analytics. It wasn’t hard to see that Bowen was a bad choice given how badly his shot chart has been all season.
