We continue our analysis of the Gameweek 30 Fantasy Premier League (FPL) action in our Scout Notes series.
The focus here is on Leicester City v Bournemouth and Fulham v West Ham United.
Any numbers you see in this article are taken from our Premium Members Area, where you can access Opta player and team data from every single Premier League fixture.
BARNES INJURY
Managerless Leicester City were dealt further blows on Saturday, losing to relegation rivals Bournemouth and also seeing their main goal threat of recent weeks, Harvey Barnes (£6.7m), limp from the field of play.
“Harvey felt his hamstring in that incident. I haven’t had a conversation with the doctor yet. They’ll assess that over the next couple of days and see where Harvey is.” – Adam Sadler
A possible absence for Barnes might not be all bad news. The 10-goal midfielder is the only convincing winger the Foxes own (Tete (£5.2m) has been a bit of a disaster signing), so much so that defender Ricardo Pereira (£4.3m) was played ‘out of position’ on the right flank against the Cherries.
Barnes being out (if that is the case) will surely prompt a rethinking of tactics by whoever is in charge, potentially seeing a 3-4-1-2 in operation. We’d have at least one budget FPL forward starting in such a formation, on top of James Maddison (£8.3m) being in his natural no. 10 role and the likes of Timothy Castagne (£4.4m) deployed as an attacking wing-back.
While this is all hypothetical talk, one thing we can say for sure is that Leicester desperately need a new manager at the helm to resurrect their season and bring the Foxes’ Fantasy assets back into consideration. Caretakers Adam Sadler and Mike Stowell haven’t shown any signs that they can arrest the slump, while a move for Jesse Marsch has now collapsed.
On a run of 15 matches without a clean sheet, it’s Manchester City away next…
SOLANKE TOP OF THE SHOTS
The Cherries’ latest victory was well deserved, with Daniel Iversen (£3.8m) forced into making six stops and eventually beaten by Philip Billing‘s (£5.1m) seventh goal of the season, the Dane pouncing on a Maddison error to settle the game.
Gary O’Neil’s side have shown some good attacking form of late, scoring in seven of their last nine matches despite being near the bottom of the Season Ticker for fixture difficulty during that time.
Dominic Solanke (£5.5m) was once again in the thick of things, racking up six goal attempts at the King Power Stadium. Over his last six matches, he is top of the pile among every FPL asset for shots in the box:
He’s £5.5m for a reason, of course. Just one goal has come from those 19 shots, while he’s only scored on four occasions in the whole of 2022/23.
No forward is ‘underachieving’ more on the xG front this season (a delta of -3.59).
INGS AND ANTONIO UP TOP
David Moyes named an uncharacteristally bold-looking line-up for Saturday’s win over Fulham, pairing Danny Ings (£6.4m) and Michail Antonio (£7.0m) in attack.
It might not be an experiment that he continues with going forward.
For starters, West Ham now play twice a week, every week, for the foreseeable future. With Gianluca Scamacca (£6.6m) currently injured, Moyes will surely now revert to dividing his striking options between the Premier League and the UEFA Europa Conference League, especially with forwards as historically injury-prone as Ings and Antonio.
Moyes even had second thoughts about the 4-4-2 set-up early in the second half at Craven Cottage, citing Joao Palhinha‘s (£4.9m) influence.
“I actually thought [Joao] Palhinha was getting too much into the game at the time and felt we needed to deal with it differently at that time. We were also winning 1-0 and we’d also brought on a different attacking player in Said Benrahma for Pablo Fornals. We had swapped a real attacker in Danny for Said and swapped a midfield player for Pablo Fornals, so I actually didn’t think it was [too different], it is just the perception and how people see it.” – David Moyes
One other personnel selection worthy of mention was Moyes’ decision to overhaul three-quarters of his defence, days after the 5-1 loss to Newcastle.
Emerson Palmieri (£4.0m) was among the players making way, with another budget defender in Vladimir Coufal (£4.0m) coming back in. Kurt Zouma (£4.4m) was the only survivor, and he again went close to scoring less than 72 hours after he netted against the Magpies.
“I think [experience was key]. I’ve said this before, we would like to play a more expansive game, that’s the plan. But when you are in this position in the league which West Ham have been in several times, you understand that there is a way you have to play to grind the results out. I think today, the decisions we made worked really well.
“I always had in my mind that I would change a few players for this game and actually, the changes worked. I saw a few boys who have been around for a while doing their jobs like Cressy [Aaron Cresswell], [Angelo] Ogbonna, [Vladimir] Coufal all defended very well with Kurt [Zouma]. That gave us a real good base to work from. We started with the two boys in Danny [Ings] and Mick [Antonio] up top today to try and give us something else, to change it. In bits it did, so it was okay.” – David Moyes
Fulham meanwhile have now taken just one point from a possible 15 and have lost five successive games in all competitions as their season winds its way to a low-key close.
Aleksandar Mitrovic (£6.6m) remains out until Gameweek 36 and goals are proving hard to come by in his absence.
The fixtures remain good and there’s a Double Gameweek still to come but it’s nevertheless hard to make much of a case for the blissfully mid-table Cottagers after a series of lukewarm displays: they’re bottom for xG in the last six matches and 17th for xGC.
