It was quite a weekend in and around the Premier League. Spurs dropped a surprising match to Burnley that also may have taken them out of the fringes of the title race. Manchester United and Liverpool drew in an outcome that pleased the Red Devils far more than the Reds and the underlying play has to concern Liverpool supporters and those invested in their players for fantasy. Outside of the Premier League, Chelsea continued to implode despite fighting a good fight against Manchester City through extra time in the League Cup. Oh, and Manchester United lost another raft of important players to injury, almost like they’ve been playing like they’ve been on maximum caffeine for about ten weeks straight and they’re finally coming down and counting the cost.
That’s a lot of headlines for a week that only saw eight league matches and we didn’t even include Miguel Almirón getting his first start and looking very much at home in the Premier League along with Fulham and Huddersfield Town looking like they’ve packed it in for the season. So, what to make of it all for Week 28 which starts tomorrow? Here are some thoughts, first for the Salary Cap game and then for Draft.
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Salary Cap Captain
There are some fairly obvious choices out there with Manchester City hosting a suddenly leaky West Ham United, Wolves traveling to Huddersfield Town, and Arsenal hosting a Bournemouth side struggling with significant injuries. The obvious choice is Sergio Agüero although he comes with a solid chance of being rotated against modest competition after playing 120 minutes on Sunday. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is another one that’s bound to be popular after he was rotated against Southampton and given the struggling opposition. My only concern there is that he might be held out of some or all of the mid-week match as well with a trip to Wembley coming up this coming weekend. Finally, for those brave enough to pick a player who doesn’t ply his trade for a big club, Raúl Jiménez has as attractive a match-up as you’re going to find.
The one name that I haven’t seen much, despite his return against the Clarets, is Harry Kane. He scored on his return and has a strong record of scoring in bunches after injury-imposed layoffs. Yes, there is a chance that he’ll be rested for the middle of three matches in a week but can Spurs really afford to rest him against Big Six opposition in Chelsea? I see him starting and scoring at least one against a crumbling Chelsea side.
I’d include Paul Pogba in the above analysis but absent so many teammates that have contributed to United’s revival, I have a hard time seeing a scenario where he’s prolific against a Crystal Palace side that is playing well and will be at home.
Transfers in - Salary Cap and Draft
Alexis - One opportunity that Manchester United’s injuries opens up is a chance for Alexis Sánchez to get an extended run in the side. He looked bright in the time he played against Liverpool and, without a real alternative, he could be a boost on the (relative) cheap as a transfer in Salary Cap or a Waiver Wire addition in Draft.
Miguel Almirón - With all the appropriate caveats about his first start being against Huddersfield Town (and a 10-man Terriers side for most of the match), Almiron looked like what MLS fans expected him to be in the Premier League. With West Ham and Everton next up on the schedule after this weekend’s visit from Burnley there’s every chance that the former Atlanta United midfielder is a great pick-up for at least a few weeks in either format.
Nathan Redmond - Fulham are pretty well cooked and travel to St. Mary’s, I’d take a chance on Redmond if I needed a midfielder as an alternative to one of the myriad United midfielders who are currently unavailable.
Denis Suarez - Could this be the match where he gets his first start? It could be that it is Aubameyang who comes in from Iwobi who looked to have injured his calf late in the win over Southampton but it could be an ideal spot to give Suarez his first start ahead of a much more pressure-packed match against Spurs at the weekend.
Xherdan Shaqiri - Feels a little like Liverpool’s front three need some rotation after some less-than-scintillating performances of late. Shaqiri is the obvious choice to freshen things up this weekend.
The other thing that I’d be doing right about now in draft (and I actually already did it) is take a good long look at the waiver wire to see who might be available from the weekend. We are at a time of the season when it wasn’t at all unreasonable to waive a very good player from one of the teams that wasn’t playing over the weekend. I know someone in one of my leagues (OK, it was Chuck Booth) dropped Kevin De Bruyne. De Bruyne has been very disappointing and he certainly hasn’t justified his draft position. That said, picking him up for free on waivers for the home stretch where it appears that City will need to pick up every point possible is something entirely different. Whether it is KDB or Sane (who hasn’t been playing as much recently) or someone like Pedro from Chelsea or a slumping Richarlison at Everton there might well be some serious bargains available on the scrap heap. I don’t know what happened in your league but you owe it to yourself to scour the available players in the event someone useful is unexpectedly available.
Looking Longer Term
Picking the trends as they ebb and flow during a season is critical to your success, especially in fantasy games that go on as long as the Premier League season does. There are things that you can count on like wanting to start Sergio Agüero all the time but there are also some things that seem certain but are probably far less so. For instance:
- It might be a case of selling too low but cutting bait on (or speculatively buying) Eden Hazard while he’s slumping right now is certainly worth considering. This was the case with Pogba, Martial, and Rashford earlier in the season and the same could be true of Hazard now. It does feel like we’ve got at least a few more weeks left, if not an entire season, of Chelsea dumpster fire.
- Rotation is going to start being more important for all of the Big Six as they fight to stay alive in the races (title, top four, Champions League, Europe League) that they’re involved in. Guys like Riyad Mahrez who have been disappointing compared to their draft position are going to get some chances against some of the lower lights of the Premier League and they’re going to crush it. Time to make sure that you have guys like that on your bench if the owner who originally draft them got frustrated and cut bait.
- I tend to get very attached to the players I drafted. I drafted them for a reason and with a full season in front of them, the reasons to keep them tend to outweigh the urge to maximize short term benefits on the waiver wire. As we come closer to the end of the season, the potential upside of keeping non-stars when they have minor injuries or bad match-ups is greatly reduced. With clubs like Fulham and Huddersfield Town offering little resistance and having little to play for over the balance of the season I’d be rotating in a player or two each week from the waiver wire when they’re facing one or the other of those clubs.
- The end of the Claude Puel era at Leicester City (can we even call it an “era”?) may mean that new management is better aligned to the players on hand, specifically, Jamie Vardy. Puel is a fine, if unspectacular, manager who would surely have kept the Foxes safe. What he isn’t is a manager who plays the sort of deep-lying defense-leading-to-fast-breaking-attack style that won the Foxes a title and made Vardy a star. The club may not be that club forever in the way Arsenal want to be a pretty passing team forever but as long as Vardy is the lead forward, that is the style they need to employ. If the caretaker(s) and then the new manager understand this, Vardy could be a great “buy low” candidate for the stretch run (or a great one for a draft bargain next season if it takes a little longer for things to turnaround at the King Power).
I’ll leave you with one final thought as you look to make your waiver wire and transfer moves. I know we’re more than 2/3rds of the way through the season but apparently I still need to remind people not to overreact. I recommended Miguel Almirón above because I believe in the talent. What I don’t believe in is any result that you get against 70 minutes of 10-man Huddersfield Town, a historically bad Premier League side. I don’t believe in Gerard Deulofeu hat-tricks or Troy Deeney braces against teams in contention for relegation. These are great performances but please, please apply some context. If you need a player at the end of your bench and Deulofeu is available then, by all means, take a flier on him (or Deeney or Almiron) but do remember that they’re available for a reason and that your expectations should be limited. Heck, Almiron didn’t even manage a goal or an assist in 70 minutes against 10-man Huddersfield Town. Just saying.
