Time to sell Erling Haaland?
Rankings for Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 10
Hello and welcome to Fantasy Gameweek’s rankings for Gameweek 10 of the FPL season. Erling Haaland is top of our rankings for the first time this week. Tom wrote about Haaland in his excellent piece on Thursday, which you can read here. However, Haaland topping our rankings and this tweet below from FPL fixture expert Ben Dinnery got me thinking about it further…
The argument in the tweet is that Haaland’s ownership is so high - more than 80 per cent of FPL teams have him - that it could be a viable strategy to go without him and spread the money you save across your team. This means if Haaland blanks, or even just scores one goal, you can take advantage and surge up the leaderboard of your mini-league. However, if he brings in another big haul of points, you risk being left behind. Keeping Haaland but captaining someone else would be another variation of this strategy given how many teams are captaining the Norwegian forward…
It’s a contrarian strategy, a risky one, but one to consider if you are well behind in your mini-league. If you do, our rankings suggest you should not replace him with another premium option like Harry Kane or Mo Salah - they are just not offering the value relative to Haaland to make that move effective - but spread around the cash. When thinking about this, consider whether those you are chasing in your mini-league have Haaland (almost certainly yes), whether you are prepared to take on that risk, and whether Haaland is going to keep up this level of performance. It is interesting that it has taken Haaland scoring three hat-tricks to make it to the top of our rankings - an example of how much a premium striker has to do to offer stand-out value. He definitely won’t carry on this level of performance in Gameweek 12 because Man City and Arsenal don’t play that week…
So, let’s get into the rankings. A reminder, they show a player’s value and weekly upside in their position based on their points so far this season plus the opportunity they have this week based on the quality of the attack/defence they play in and the quality of the attack/defence they are playing against. Injured or suspended players are not included.
Goalkeepers are grey, defenders blue, midfielders yellow and forwards red. The numbers included in the table are a player’s price, their FGPE score, which tracks a player’s performance so far, and then their FGPE+ score, which takes into account performance so far but also the opportunity this week.
I wanted to show you both FGPE numbers this week to demonstrate how being in a good team or having an attractive fixture impacts your place in the rankings - Haaland, Cancelo, Foden and other Man City players benefit from playing for the best attack and defence in the league. This matters - a lot - for FPL. We use FiveThirtyEight’s data to rank the attacks and defences…
Here are the rankings in PDF if you want to view them in a different format or share them with others…
And here are the best attacks and defences this week based on FiveThirtyEight’s scores. This ranking is calculated on the basis of the quality of the team and who they are playing. Southampton, for instance, are not the worst attack or defence overall - it’s Forest and Bournemouth for attack, Forest for defence - but they are expected to be this week given they are playing Man City…
Best attack
Man City
Liverpool
Man United
Leicester
Tottenham
Chelsea
Aston Villa
Newcastle
West Ham
Arsenal
Crystal Palace
Brighton
Brentford
Leeds
Everton
Bournemouth
Fulham
Forest
Wolves
Southampton
Best defence
Man City
Chelsea
Aston Villa
West Ham
Man United
Leicester
Newcastle
Crystal Palace
Tottenham
Leeds
Liverpool
Brentford
Fulham
Brighton
Forest
Wolves
Bournemouth
Everton
Arsenal
Southampton
That’s all for this week. Please share Fantasy Gameweek if you enjoyed it or subscribe if you haven’t already signed up…