GW Points: 97
Overall Points: 3,499
Overall Rank: 358
Awful game week, mainly down to Palmer hitting a massive score with a single fixture. This cost me over 100 places on the leaderboard, which is a bit of a nightmare at this stage of the season, as I’m pushing for my best finish ever. However, just to put this in context, it would be easy to say with hindsight that taking Palmer out was a massive mistake but that’s easy to say once the points are scored. If we consider the decision before a ball was kicked this game week, many others did the same thing – within the top 1,000 teams on the leaderboard Palmer dropped to the 5th highest owned midfielder, he was the second most transferred out player by the top 1,000 teams and even the top 3 players on the leaderboard now don’t own Palmer. My point is a huge number of people (who are already doing very well in the game) came to the same conclusion. As a result, I’ve got zero regrets as I know it’s just the way the game can go sometimes and I’ve had an awful lot of luck this season so it’s about time that ran out. It also wasn’t an ideal week with most of the Premier League clubs going out of Europe so the plan to have a team full of European players is now looking a little shaky.
Here is my breakdown of each player:
Ederson – now he’s back, I may as well hold for the rest of the season.
Gabriel – will probably keep until the end of the season.
Bradley – is injured so needs to come out, Alexander-Arnold could be a good replacement
Van Dijk – will probably keep until the end of the season.
De Bruyne – if he remains fit, could be one to keep for the rest of the season
Foden – keeping for the rest of the season.
Diaz – another one I’d be happy to drop with Liverpool out of Europe.
Saka – keeping for the rest of the season.
Nunez – not overly appealing to keep him now with rotation at Liverpool and a lack of European fixtures.
Salah – keep for the rest of the season.
Haaland – keep for the rest of the season
Player watchlist
Fernandes – has been scoring well and Man Utd have good fixtures this week. Could be a good choice for captain as well.
Palmer – hard to overlook given Chelsea have a lot of double game weeks coming up and his current form.
Alexander-Arnold – could be a good replacement for Bradley.
Watkins – might bring him back in now Villa are the only team left in Europe but not this week.
Plan for game week 31
I roughly know what I’m going to do this weekend, but I’m not sure at the moment. If Bradley wasn’t injured, I’d 100% be bringing in Fernandes and Palmer. However, it seems daft to play with only 10 men and carry Bradley into the game week knowing he’s not going to score any points. My issue is that I can’t decide between Fernandes and Palmer – both are in good form but Man Utd have two excellent fixtures. Chelsea have two very difficult fixtures but I just know a lot of people will bring Palmer in. If I do take Bradley out, Alexander-Arnold would be the player I’d likely bring in. It would be between Diaz and Nunez as the player to drop for Fernandes or Palmer. I’d probably opt for Nunez to come out at this stage, simply down to game time but Liverpool do still have two decent fixtures this week. I’ll wait until tomorrow morning and confirm my changes then.