Player Feature: Michael Turner
This was certainly one of those surprise moves I did not see coming. Turner is now the second highest scoring defender in the game with an impressive 41 points, just one behind Bosingwa and 7 ahead of Terry who costs almost 3m more. This week has seen his price rise again, up to 4.7m and with 23,000 transfers in already, I would not be surprised if this rises to 4.8m before the weekend.The question therefore is will this success continue, and if so, for how long. My concern is the fact that he has snagged two goals already which distorts his points total, hiding the fact that Hull have just two clean sheets. This concern would be allayed if Turner could prove that he will be a weekly threat from corners in the way Laursen and Terry have been in past seasons. In the past two seasons Turner scored 5 and 3 goals which is decent but not enough to support a defender who doesn't keep clean sheets. Having not seen a full Hull game this season, it is hard to say if getting the ball to Turner is a definite game plan (as it clearly is with Laursen).
Hull's defense has been decent this year conceding 11 in 8, 5 in which came against Wigan. However, without the clean sheets (which to be fair have now come back to back) this does not translate to many points.
More encouraging are Turner's 8 bonus points, which lead the league along with Laursen. Whilst Villa are considered a decent defensive side, Laursen has only two clean sheets too, suggesting Turner may be even better value. Bonus points, if accrued consistently, can be the lifeblood of any team (ask any Frank Lampard owners).
Overall, I think Turner is well worth a look and is clearly the pick of the sub 5m defenders at this point. However, the next six weeks see Hull travel to West Ham, Man United and Portsmouth, as well as entertaining Chelsea, Bolton and City. All six of these games rate somewhere between very hard and potentially tricky and this alone should be reason enough to possibly hold off Turner for a while. If you have him stashed away at 4.5m then bench him if you can and look forward to the good times to come when Hull play Stoke, Boro and Sunderland in the weeks after the aforementioned games.
Comments
He might not be a regular fantasy starter every week, but his value is going to soar until it hits at least 5.0, meaning he's gonna be a great money-earner over the next couple of weeks.
His goal tally over the last 4 years: 1, 2, 3, 5. His shots have also increased every year, meaning he gets more and more involved. (At only 24, you have to figure he's still improving.)
He'll get 6 or 7 goals this season, with his fair share of bonus points as an integral part of the team.
PS: Anyone find it odd that Torres has been dropped 291,000 times, added only 74,000 times, and yet his value hasn't dropped at all? I know the rate of +/- varies for different players, but that's ridiculous.