FPL GW7 tips: Who to captain, who’s in Patrick Bamford’s team?
GW6 was all about Patrick Bamford and his 17-point hat-trick. But can we learn anything from Bamford’s own FPL team?
FPL mini-leagues were turned upside down at around 21:00 on Saturday evening.
For a minute or so, Mohamed Salah appeared to have given Liverpool the lead against Sheffield United with a delightful finish. Trent Alexander-Arnold provided the assist.
This was music to the ears of the 1.7 million FPL bosses who had captained Salah. And to the 2.6 million keeping faith with the low-scoring TAA.
But then VAR ruled it out.
Salah and Trent blanked, and the 1.7 million tumbled down the rankings. 48 hours later, their misery was compounded: Harry Kane and Son Heung-Min — the GW’s second and third most popular captaincy choices — got points against Burnley.
The disallowed goal was ultimately of no consequence to Liverpool, who legally took the lead almost immediately after, but it could yet have massive consequences for your £5 pub mini-league.
Will GW7 rest on similarly fine margins? Here’s how were approaching it:
Best fixtures
Sheffield United – Man City
Even without strikers, Man City made light work of Marseille.
Can John Lundstram succeed where Dimitri Payet failed? Logic suggests not, and rested City midfielders like Phil Foden (£6.6m) and Riyad Mahrez (£8.4m) look appealing for the Saturday lunchtime match.
Kevin De Bruyne (£11.5m) is back too and currently owned by just 15.4% of managers.
READ: Phil Foden and a first touch that shows he’s learned from David Silva
Spurs – Brighton
Tottenham’s penultimate game of a piss-easy run of fixtures should be a banker, as should their next game against West Brom.
But do Jose’s men have any FPL candidates beyond the big two?
Perhaps Sergio Reguilon (£5.6m), who has looked more creative than Matt Doherty in his two PL starts, but you’ll be selling him over the November international break before Spurs’ hellish fixtures during GW9–11.
Who to captain
Harry Kane
We rightly tipped Son Heung-Min (£9.5m) as a better captaincy choice than Harry Kane (£10.9m) for GW6, but the Korean superstar will be up against one of the PL’s most in-form right-backs, Tariq Lamptey (£4.7m), in GW7.
Kane, on the other hand, will feel confident going up against the likes of Dan Burn and Joel Veltman.
READ: Kane to Son among the best assist-scorer combos in Europe’s big leagues
Marcus Rashford
Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford (£9.5m) needed 16 minutes for his Champions League hat-trick against RB Leipzig.
We expect him to keep up that scoring rate against Arsenal, which should see him put 17 goals past Bernd Leno, ending the career of the talented German then and there.
David Luiz is a doubt for the Sunday fixture, and the prospect of facing Shkodran Mustafi should have Rashford hungrier than kids living in Tory Britain.
Morning 😁 pic.twitter.com/wt0xAE1RUF
— Marcus Rashford MBE (@MarcusRashford) October 29, 2020
Kevin De Bruyne
Hardly the safest bet given he’s still regaining his fitness, but KDB (£11.5m) will be captained by a tiny minority this weekend, making him a legitimate differential option.
One for managers languishing at the bottom of their mini-leagues, perhaps.
The FPL teams of Leeds players
In GW3 we looked at the personal FPL teams of TAA and Andy Robertson, and now we’re going to analyse the inter-squad mini-league of Leeds United, which contains Patrick Bamford, Kalvin Phillips and several others.
The LUFC League is currently topped by Tom Williams, one of the club’s sports scientists, with Welsh attacker Tyler Roberts a close second.
Liam Cooper is only fifth, but the club captain deserves immense credit for not picking any Liverpool players in GW1 when Leeds came up against them. No such respect for his apprentice Leif Davis, who picked three Liverpool defenders for the match.
So what about Patrick Bamford, the club’s unexpectedly prolific striker?
Only 226,666 FPL bosses chose Bamford (the player) ahead of GW1, but Bamford (the manager) was one of them and has stuck with himself ever since, reaping the rewards and climbing to fourth place in the mini-league.
He’s loyal to his team-mates as well: Ilan Meslier and Luke Ayling have been ever-presents in Bamford’s hillside fc.
The loyalty isn’t necessarily mutual. Since GW1, Ayling has favoured the woefully out-of-form Fulham striker Aleksandar Mitrovic over Bamford in his Stuttering Stars team.
Finally, a big round of applause for Macedonian utility man Ezgjan Alioski, who signed up a week late, put Virgil van Dijk as captain (-4 points in GW4) and hasn’t touched his team since.
He’s bottom, obviously.
How we fared last week
What we got right: Putting Son as captain; backing Raul Jimenez to score; flukily suggesting Roman Saiss would get points, which he did, but only because he got subbed before Newcastle’s equaliser.
What we got wrong: Backing Sergio Aguero to last a whole game; insinuating Patrick Bamford would never score again and that Rodrigo was a better option; backing Lucas Digne — who did, to be fair, take the game by the scruff of the neck.
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