PLFantasy

I've missed a couple of 'fanning the flames' pieces over the festive period as the games have simply come too quickly to stay on top of. Given the fact that the wildcard window is about to open, I thought it might be useful to look over the last four  gameweeks of action and perform the same analysis as we normally do; deciding whether their success is legitimately repeatable. As in prior weeks, each player is assigned a 'buy', 'hold/monitor' or 'sell' status. These do not necessarily reflect what I would personally do, rather what I suggest to be a decision based in logic. For example, I might feel that Rooney represents better value than van Persie, but I would still 'buy' the Dutchman's success and consider him very ownable. The different assigned statuses are summarised as: Buy - the player can be purchased immediately taking consideration of his playing time, fixtures, injury status etc. This status does not necessarily mean yo...

Goalscorers are highlighted in bold , players with an assist are underlined Arsenal Szczesny, Sagna, Koscielny, Vermaelen, Gibbs , Arteta, Wilshere , Cazorla , Oxlade-Chamberlain , Podolski , Walcott Subs: Mannone, Rosicky, Giroud , Ramsey, Djourou, Coquelin, Gervinho Pretty standard lineup here from Arsene Wenger, with Walcott once again given the chance to shine up top. While I was somewhat hesitant to crown Walcott as the next Thierry Henry after his garbage time goal at Reading, he's racked up 10 shots over his last two games and looked very comfortable this week, taking up advanced positions rather than drifting out wide and only looking to feed off balls put behind the defense, which can sometimes make Arsenal a bit blunt going forward. At 8.6m he isn't a steal and I still believe that Giroud will get some  minutes up top, but Walcott is certainly a very viable option and I'd be happy to grab him from GW23 onwards after which Arsenal enjoy a very favourable fi...

Attacking data Powered by Tableau Clean sheet data Powered by Tableau Individual data Powered by Tableau

Captain Picks Barring transfer mistakes or an act of God, you own at least one or two Spurs players and will surely captain them this week. Therefore, in the interest of time I am going to skip over the other candidates and focus on Redknapp's big three: Gareth Bale - leads the trio in points to date but has suffered badly from inconsistency with too many two or three pointers so far this year (9). However, his last four home games have given him 4-13-11-14 points which more than hints at the upside the young Welshman brings. His 40 shots ranks 3rd among all midfielders (Dempsey and Sinclair) and his 44 key passes can only be topped by Mata (45). Both opponents have tightened up of late but the likes of Tony Hibbert haven't faced anyone of Bale's quality for a while. His threat from set pieces is limited but his style of play tends to lend itself to bonus points so if he scores, he is likely to rack up 2 or 3 bonus points too. Summary: Rarely rested, high upside bu...