The Grand Pursuivant

Yeah, the double liverpool Mana/Salah injury is a major headscratcher. I'm waiting until deadline for news. Still no idea what I'll actually do about it.

StuMiller and StoneColdSteveE. I go ultra friends with both of you tomorrow. Can't remember what your forum names are though. I would very much like to pop a lucky egg for it. What time would you like to organise for? 7pm good with everyone?

Edit: Wrong thread!

There was a guy at the raid I caught it who has done 80 Mewtwo raids and his highest is a 96. I would feel guilty if I wasn't so delighted!

I'm sure you guys are sick of me posting my high IV catches, so here is the last one until I get something better. Which will probably take a while!

I still have my wildcard too. Never normally keep it this long, and looking at the fixtures the time to use it seems to be over the next couple of gameweeks, or save it for an emergency and wait until December to reorganise for the festive fixtures. I follow the same rules with the wildcard as I do for all my transfers. Will this team get more points over a mid-term period than my other one? Much harder to do when comparing 8+players compared with just two, and also with the added caveat that for a successful wildcard you really want your new team to do better than your old team at the very first time of asking as well as over a longer period. I figured the Kane transfer was a recent thing. I was toying with the idea of doing the same as you but looking at it the transfers I made instead I got more points. I also hate swapping big name players around as I've been badly burned doing that before. I don't envy you the decision of what to do with him. If you do wildcard, I would really recommend looking at double Liverpool defence. Their run is so good and since they signed Van Dijk they have the meanest defence in the league. Lovren or TAA along with Robinson could be a points bonanza. In a couple of drafts I've done I've looked at this whilst experimenting with 3 budget strikers (Arnie, Mitro, King) and a packed out midfield of Salah, Hazard and Stirling. It's maverick, but it looks really good. Don't know if I have the guts to pull the trigger on that though!

To start with put Boly first on your bench! You play differently to me. I never have expensive GKs and rarely go with more than one premium striker. Most of my advice will be telling you to play the way I do because I will inevitably think the way I play is superior. Namely focusing on getting most of my points from midfield. I will try to make that useful. You definitely need Hazard and a Liverpool attacker. Hazard is having one of those seasons where he's just the best player in the league. You don't necessarily need Hazard vs Utd this week though. Liverpools next two games are Huddersfield and Cardiff. There will be goals there. That should be your priority. I really do think you have too much money up front though. Your midfield is so weak. Whilst I would definitely recommend Fraser, Maddison and Richarlison to people looking for a 6-7m midfielder, having all 4 of your playing midfielders at that price point leaves you nowhere to go. There are so many players that are going to get hauls over the next couple of weeks that you don't have and will need to make big changes to get. Stirling, Mane, Salah, Hazard, Firminho, Lacazette, maybe even KDB when he's back. Going without some of those is going to be terrifying in the short to medium term. Tottenham look lethargic, are missing a bunch of their creative midfielders and Kane is just playing so deep and looks so tired. Not to mention the offpitch nonsense with their new stadium. Having three of their players is not something I would be happy with at the moment. Recognising when you have made a mistake is really important. Having that many Spurs players at this point in the season in may be a big mistake. It might be great in December, when their fixtures turn and they have a chance to gain form. Not now though. The decision you really have to make is do you want to take Kane out now when he is playing against Cardiff, or wait to do it next week. It would depend on how many free transfers you have. I don't think it's worth a hit to get him out when he's playing West Ham. If you have one FT then I would hold and maybe do 3 transfers for a -4 next week. If you have both then you have a decision to make. I'd recommend looking at Kane out to a striker from 3 price points and then upgrade Moura. 9-9.5 with Lacazette and Firminho. 6.5-7 with Arnie, Mitro and the Bournemouth players, then 5.5ish with Ings and Jimenez. All of those I think are likely to give a higher points per million than Kane over the next few games. Then see what that lets you do with your midfield. You could do Moura+Kane to Firminho/Mane or Salah/Jimenez (not sure of your sell values here so I may be off but it should be possible). Both of those are pretty good transfers if you look past a potential loss of points from Kane vs West Ham. Maybe you could hold, then sacrifice a premium defender and try to get Hazard in along with a Liverpool attacker and a cheaper defender. If you still have your wildcard I'd put serious thought in to using it. I say all this, but your Spurs players could go wild against West Ham and kickstart their season. A big win and they might remember that they're a good team who know how to play football. It's entirely possible, but the question you need to ask yourself is whether or not it is probable. I don't think it is. I don't know anything though.

Honestly, I understand the worries about Aguero's game time. 60 minutes per game for a 11mil striker is not what you are looking for. But it's Aguero. Generally he'll only need 60 minutes. That's how I'm rationalising it anyway. The situation is different if you don't have Salah though, so moving Aguero on is a better option for you than for me. This week is a case in point. Salah vs Huddersfield and Aguero vs Burnley. Both could score big, but if Aguero doesn't, and you captain him it will be painful. But then, if Salah and Aguero score big, and you've captained Stirling, it could be even more painful! Especially in a situation where Hazard, your other captain option, is playing Man Utd, so putting the armband on him is always fraught with risk. That's FPL though. Will be interesting to see what you do in the end. Good luck with it!

I'll just leave this here:

I probably shouldn't be giving you tips, because if I don't you might do something as pointless as a transfer like this and give me a chance to catch you in the league. That said, you're doing so well in the early season for a second year in a row, I really don't want you to screw it all up again either! I'm assuming here you have 2 free transfers. Transfers are precious. You get 38 of them. The should be used exclusively to improve your team. Whether that be through removing injured players, underperforming players, suspended players, every time you do one it should be done to maximise your points potential for the next few gameweeks. I personally don't like making transfers unless I want those players for the next 5 games minimum. Now the question here is, does swapping a Manchester City and a Liverpool player for a Manchester City and a Liverpool player maximise your points potential. Without even naming specific players, the answer to this is a resounding no. When you look at the players you're wanting to change and ask 'Does this improve my team' the answer is also no. If you're concerned about Aguero being subbed off after 60 minutes, that's fair enough. Stirling's playtime is equally as unassured as Aguero's though. They will both start most games, but are highly likely to be subbed early and rested on the odd occasion. Those are the inherent risks of having a premium City player. They are also incredibly likely to score very similar amounts of points over a season. The same can be said of Mane and Firminho, who are both players who go through patches where they either do nothing, or get explosive scores. All 4 of these players will probably score close to or more than 200 points this season. I doubt there will be more than 40 points between the highest of them and the lowest. You don't want to waste transfers switching these kinds of players about. That's not really what transfers are for. Over a subset of 5 or 6 weeks, there may be a huge swing in favour of one over the other. This is true. Just look at the start of the season. Mane scores 4 goals in 4 games. Then 0 goals in 4 games. Now you want him out. Firminho is still 14 points behind him, even with Manes blank patch. Neither of them are exactly in form, but they are playing for a goalscoring team. Could Firminho even that up? Possibly. Could Mane pull further ahead? Also possible. You just can't call which of the 3 attackers in a freescoring side like Liverpool are going to perform. It's all just variance. Luck. There is nothing you can do about that. What you do know is that eventually they all will perform. Now, you could still go ahead and make this transfer and do amazingly out of it. I'm not saying you couldn't. But, if you did, that would make it a lucky decision, rather than a good decision. And whilst luck is important in FPL, luck is not how you do well in FPL. A good decision, if you are worried about something like, say, Aguero's gametime, would be to see how downgrading him to somebody who might match his points output over the next 5 games, like Arnautovic or Mitrovic, and upgrading somebody in your team who just isn't performing and can't be relied upon for points, like Neves or Moura. You say that Mane is not performing, but what about Moura? He has blanked in the last 4 games as well, and he is playing for a team that is currently struggling to score and he is far from guaranteed to start in. You have Neves in your team. He has blanked for 7 games in a row. He's an absolutely incredible footballer, but he will be lucky to get 100 points this season. He is not a fantasy football asset. Mane is. He will score points. If Aguero is troubling you that much, and he needs to go, you could do Aguero to Arnautovic and Moura to Stirling. One of the best ways of making transfers is just putting the two players next to eachother and asking yourself 'Who scores more points?' Aguero/Neves or Stirling/Arnautovic. Over the next 5 games, who scores more? I know how I would answer that one. That's a transfer that improves your team and could get significantly more points over the next few weeks than playing the City/Liverpool 'who will score this time?' lottery. You have a pretty healthy squad, but this is just one of many things you could do.You could look at shifting some money out of your defence to upgrade your midfield deadweight. Like last season, I think the high priced defenders getting all the points at the start of the season phenomenon will die out soon, as midfield/forward partnerships start clicking. Keeping 4 high price defenders may prove detrimental with the Wolves defence looking incredibly stubborn and mid priced midfielders like Richarlison and Maddison doing the business. And you don't even have a City defender in your 4 premium defensive line up! As an Arsenal fan I would not recommend keeping Monreal, our defence is going to leak goals for the foreseeable future. Tottenham have hard fixtures coming up and rotate their fullbacks so Trippier is always someone it's risky to have. Alonso is a solid pick but arguably not worth the money. You could get rid of one of them for a Wolves defender, or someone like Holebas, upgrade Neves to somebody who will actually get points and still have a really strong team and bench. Again look at the options you have. For example Trippier/Neves or Richarlison/Doherty, who scores more? That one is closer to call, but I still think it's the latter. That's just one of many pairings you could look at. You could do any of these things and they would be better decisions than just switching players from the same teams around. Second guessing yourself is the best way to do badly in this game. If I was in your position, as you can probably guess, Neves and Moura would be my priority transfers out. Who you get in for them, how long you take to do so and whether or not you potentially downgrade an expensive player to upgrade them is up to you, but getting rid of those two is your best bet for keeping or improving your rank. Imagine if you did this transfer you're asking about and it fails miserably, and then Moura and Neves continue to blank and your rank plummets. That's just as likely as it going well. Look at your decision to get Lacazette in. That was an absolutely fantastic transfer. You got him in at exactly the right time, he looks like he'll keep scoring goals and now everyone wants him. If you want to keep doing well, you need to make decisions like that one. There is definitely a defender/midfielder combo that will get more points than Neves + one of your premiums. There is definitely a midfield/forward combo that will get more points than Neves/Moura and Aguero. There are probably even single transfers from either of those players that will score your more points in the long run. You want to be looking for those, instead of doing the Liverpool/City hokey-cokey every couple of weeks.

Nature's blessings upon you.

What. Is. Going. On. 3 in less than 24 hours. What are the chances of that?

And on the very same day!

I believe the formation Jose was going for today was P-4-5.