Premier League: GW21 Retrospect
With GW21 in the books I recorded my third highest score of the year, 67 points. Not all that impressive given the fact I made the decision to play my wild card (WC) ahead of this week’s fixtures. Although this decision was made late, I missed out on major moves in terms of prices increases, which would have benefited me going forward. Between GW20 and GW21 my value dropped from 103.1m to 101.6m! I was a bit shocked by this movement, but decided to stick with the decision to WC.
It had been some time since my squad played well and rewarded me with a good (above average, 60 points) week. I was coming off two red arrows, five out of the last seven. Something was missing, along with consistency and I spent the better part of the week mulling over stats, formations, input from community managers and pundits before deciding on my squad. The squad I decided upon made sense…to me at least and moving forward looked strong on paper, injuries and DGWs aside.
A few days prior to kickoff I posted Wild Card: Hold or Activate. I then followed through for the rest of the season putting together a strength of schedule, indicating potentially good match ups. From there I began looking forward with possible transfers from GW21 to GW28.
This week debuted my newly built squad built to be played as a 3-5-2, which was a change in formation from the 3-4-3 I had been playing since the season began. The decision that facilitated this was the fact that many of the third forwards would be a budget buy in the 6.8m to 6.2m price range. On paper, there are some good options; Rondon, Negredo, Gray, Origi, Llorente, just to name a few but their underlying stats and consistency leave a bit to be desired. My thought process was to spend as little as possible for a third forward, using that savings to upgrade my defense and midfield. Diomande at 4.5 for Hull, a full time starter is who I decided upon. He’s only got 2 goals on the season, but played well in GW21, I don’t expect to use him, so it’s a good budget buy.
Up front 22.9m of pure striking power and consistency over the last 10 games; Costa and Ibrahimovic. Unfortunately I missed the late Friday news that Costa was not going to start against Leicester, followed by the China rumors or else I would have offloaded him for Giroud, Defoe or Kane (in that order). So my 3-5-2 ended up being a 4-5-1 as Diomande was my third sub. Still Ibrahimovic rewarded me with a goal and 7 points. Now the Costa watch is on for this week.
In the midfield the only player I temporarily retained was Rodriguez with the intention of moving him for GW26. Southampton still looking for goals and while J-Rod didn’t start, he saw 23 minutes of action. Not what I was hoping for. Probably would have been better off with Lallana, but didn’t like the Man U match up. I also rolled the dice with Eriksen and Alli, both returned’ 10 and 12 points respectively as Spurs rolled to a 4-0 victory. Too bad it was Kane as the big winner with the hat trick. Stanislas was my budget midfielder with a good match up and now on pens, which he finished to score 7 points. He too will be short lived as I am already planning his transfer as well. Finally, Ozil, who returned to the starting lineup for the Gunners after an illness. He’s got some excellent numbers and feel he will play an important role going forward for Arsenal and their bid at the championship. He did return an assist and CS in 78 minutes.
Defensively I set up with Rose, Daniels and Azpilicueta as my starting three with Friend and Yoshida my two budget defenders on the bench. This week was particularly tough as I selected Daniels ahead of Friend because of the match up with Hull. Bournemouth then gave up 3 goals to Hull City, while Friend and Boro kept a clean sheet versus Watford. Not quite sure all is right with Southampton, as their defense is a shambles, yet I held out hope they would turn things around and start providing clean sheets. Burnley away looked good, but a late free kick from Barton killed any hope of a CS for Yoshida.
As for the starters, Rose looked sharp down the left side all game long and feel this was a great selection, he picked up an assist and 6 points. As mentioned, Daniels was my second starter against Hull but that didn’t work out, just a single point. Finally, the decision was Alonso or Azpilicueta as my starter and final defender. The rumors of Ake being recalled to Chelsea because of a potential long term injury to Alonso saw me select Azpilicueta. Usually I would be happy with a CS and 6 point return, but the 21 Alonso returned was excellent!
In goal, I made the change from Courtois to Heaton, solely based on budget and save points. Heaton is now just 1 point off Courtois for 1.0m less. I retained the services of Jakupovic, who took his starting job back for Hull. He looked sharp in goal, conceding just a spot kick. I have two possible weeks upcoming to play him, based on match up. Not yet decided if I will stick with Heaton or go with a rotation for those two weeks.
Overall, 67 points and green arrows all around. I am finally back to 946k and moving up. Hopefully this is the start of a positive change for the new year. I need to string toward a few good weeks to get back to winning ways. As mentioned before I have the next 7 weeks transfers planned out, the Costa concern could be addressed this week as I had not planned on making any transfers and banking one for my transfer in GW26. GW26 is also looking it might be the best opportunity to play by AOA chip as all players have good match up except Ibrahimovic who faces Spurs. The only possible move will be held in check until we received further news on Costa, his injury and potential move to China. If that happens I probably won’t move any of my Spurs players and opt to pick up Giroud as Arsenal face Burnley (H) and Watford (H).
