FPL GW6

Endless options

So many options this week - for some a wildcard is needed, Palmer has made the free hit interesting for some, some had planned the FH6 from the beginning of the season (hello!), and lastly the triple captain is seeing the first proper opportunity of the season.

No right or wrong here, it all depends on the state of your team and your future plans.

In the bottom of the preview, you can see my free hit draft for gameweek 6.

Palmer

Palmer is out at least until after the international break. It's simple for most, he should be sold. If you are on a free hit like me, you can wait until GW7 and decide whether you just bench him for 1 week, which was against Liverpool anyway, or you swap him for Saka that starts a great run of fixtures or something completely different.

The biggest problem that there are no good direct swaps, so it would have to be a double move to make it work well as I see it. Combined with getting Haaland in to your team would be preferred.

Haaland, Salah, or both?

Honestly, this is the stuff that really matters. So much going on in our X feeds about getting Haaland in and yes, Haaland is by far and away the best captain this week and will be on of the best captains of the first half of the season. You should've planned for getting Haaland in your team somehow in gameweek 6 from the beginning of the season.

The hard decision is when you zoom out and have to choose whether Haaland or Salah should be the premium of your team for the longer term. You only have one captaincy band, and the raw value (points/price) is simply too poor without captaincy to allow both in the team for the long term.

All in all, it comes down to how much you should value short term performance against long term performance. Salah has looked poor, Haaland has become Robot 2.0 if you read your X feed. Both are overreactions if you ask me, and betting markets predict returns that return about the same amount of points for both Haaland and Salah. That is with one key difference. Salah is expected to play about 5 fewer games being away to AFCON and thus more points per game on average, and is therefore still predicted to be the superior asset. On top of that captaincy rotation just does not favor Haaland with other popular FPL picks such as Bruno and Palmer beating him when he is predicted to score more than Salah.

Remember, this is not about GW6 where Haaland is superior, but this makes me comfortable holding Salah for the period up until AFCON.

I feel for all the wildcarders, the timing is terrible for making a decision on this. Hopefully your wildcards include a plan to focus on one of either Haaland or Salah for the long run.

This decision is up to you. Control your recency bias and find an objectively good balance between long and short term performance of the two would be my advice.

Triple captaincy

Haaland is in contention for triple captaincy this week if you're not on a wildcard or free hit.

Feel free to do it, he is in flow and Burnley have been by far the worst defense in terms of xG conceded so far.

He could obviously go ahead and score big points, but there will be other options just as good. Salah in GW14 against Sunderland or Haaland against West Ham in GW17 are both options.

I'm also slightly concerned with him not getting full minutes even if only slightly ahead. Pep subbing him in a potentially title deciding game that was not concluded at all is not something we have ever seen.

Also, it just feels so tough that Haaland can score a brace and only walk away with 13 points while Salah can score a 1-0 winner and get 11 points.

Had I decided not to free hit I would probably not have used the triple captain, but it's a close call in my opinion.

My Free Hit Team

I made 2 early moves this week. Salah and Chiwome to Reijnders and Haaland. I did this to not miss out on value if I wanted to go for the Haaland route permanently while still having the option to free hit in the case that a double/blank GW became very unlikely. It turned out that way after Crystal Palace drew Liverpool in Carabao Cup and now has 20-23% chance of advancing and thus even more reduced probability of double/blank GW this first half of the season.

The free hit became the conclusion for two other reasons:

Long term predictions still favor Salah over Haaland
The length of the Palmer injury makes me want to have the option to keep him and bench in GW7

On top of that, I had planned for FH6 from the start of the season, and I would end up spending all my 3 FTs to get to Haaland and still only be able to make a suboptimal move where Palmer needed a transfer out - to Mbeumo for instance, which would leave a lot of money in the bank.

Try to see your best free hit team

On https://managerbotten.dk/optimal-teams-fpl you can try with your team value to set up the strongest free hit line up.

Here is what it is suggesting me:

Looks really good in my opinion with punty type picks in Foden and Richarlison that are definitely on my radar. I like to seek correlated points on FH (some would call it to seek pain), and I'm determined to put 3 Spurs players in my defense. A contributing factor is that underlying BPS has been looking really impressive for Vicario compared to other Spurs defenders, which make him very likely to get bonus points when Spurs get a clean sheet.

Back to my team

Below is my free hit draft with 0.2m in the bank.

I've decided to keep Salah on the free hit, as many people are now selling, and Salah is still a great FPL pick capable of a big haul.

Three defensive assets from Spurs is definitely a risk, but I look to seek correlated points on free hit and the picks are good from a value perspective too. Wolves are by the way the team in the Premier League with the lowest total xG created, so clean sheet chances are definitely there.

About the free hit I would just suggest that you pick the players you believe in for that single gameweek as long as it's sensible. Enjoy no long term commitments, the 0.1 or 0.2 differences in points predictions are not as significant as the psychological aspect of feeling good about your free hit team.

Good luck everyone!

Small update to the team to upgrade Van de Ven to Romero.

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