Back at it again. Just some stream of consciousness flowing from me before sleeping and back at it tomorrow. Here we go:

Thinking back in time about the post-mortem and the pre-cog episodes (I wanna re-listen this week if possible) and I’m trying to actually bring some of those lessons aggressively into my Wildcard team and one of the things was Palace and Burnley.

Always reliable for cleans. Get’em. Ok. Getting’em…



Tinkering in the 4D chess combo of Ward + Ferguson for 8.5m - guaranteed Palace right-back - and with Taylor from Burnley the rotation is pretty nice alongside the god, Trent, and Saïss with Wolves’ fixtures is pretty great and cheap and good feeling. Don’t feel like I’ll have to make any moves in defense for months there barring injury which is sort of a goal here.





Started my season with Mane and started my wildcard with Salah and now I’m wondering if I’ll have either when I finally print the thing…

and started my wildcard with and now I’m wondering if I’ll have either when I finally print the thing… Captaincy is very important to me when deciding over 12m players and honestly I don’t see a world where I captain either Liverpool guy in the next three GWs. Yeah, GW4 away Villa is good, but I so much prefer City against Leeds for my cap there. Could be a TEN goal match.

So this is my first time tinkering with a team of Raz+KDB+Jesus. Oh man… That’d probably be captain for the next two GWs, one of them, and then move on from one of them in GW5 to a different captain-able asset. HMMMMMmmmmmm…….. ok ok ok….





There has also been a sneaky mid-price mid crop popping up that’s getting trendy.

Wilf has been playing OOP forward like the good ole days and when he plays up top in the 4-4-2 he really owns in the stats and the eyetest and the production. He’s so much more influential and better up top then at wing. But will it last once Bats gets in? And will he be staying at Palace this transfer window? Not sure.

has been playing OOP forward like the good ole days and when he plays up top in the 4-4-2 he really owns in the stats and the eyetest and the production. He’s so much more influential and better up top then at wing. But will it last once gets in? And will he be staying at Palace this transfer window? Not sure. The other main guy in this range is Harvey Barnes also at 7.0 and he’s just good. He’s one of the MANY frustrating wingery/wide forward guys who are seemingly bad at finishing and shit but Harvey’s also really good at getting chances in the box and that’s more important. That skill is very good and very repeatable whereas finishing we don’t know that much about in general so it’s better to rely on that ability of getting on the chances when projecting forward.

also at 7.0 and he’s just good. He’s one of the MANY frustrating wingery/wide forward guys who are seemingly bad at finishing and shit but Harvey’s also really good at getting chances in the box and that’s more important. That skill is very good and very whereas finishing we don’t know that much about in general so it’s better to rely on that ability of getting on the chances when projecting forward. Leicester are good, he’s good, he’s a good pick. He finished with 16 returns last season in just 2075 minutes (24 starts) which is very solid and projects out to 21ish returns for more realistic starter minutes (2800) and again, that’s just fucking good. He’s young and maybe he’ll improve / is improving. TLDR I’m definitely interested in Harv and I’m disappointed in myself for letting Leicester’s bad end of last season get in my way of considering Harv for GW1 team this season.





Robbo is also on my mind… part of my double barrel Liverpool clean this GW but also he was so incredibly involved and forward.

is also on my mind… part of my double barrel Liverpool clean this GW but also he was so incredibly involved and forward. Yes, on the one hand he fucked everything up, 1/12 successful crosses on the day. You hate to see it. But last season he didn’t have a single match in the Prem nor Champions League with double digit crosses. He also had the most successful passes in the final third in the match, second most (to salah) touches in the final third in the match, and look at his Passes Received Heatmap below…



Long story short maybe there’s a world where it’s not all on Trent to deliver the final balls and Robbo takes on more attacking responsibility as he did in the post-restart end of last season. Maybe double barrel Liverpool fullbacks is exactly what I want for a long-term Wildcard setup. Maybe just maybe…

That’s it for today y’all, super fucking tired basically watched sports for 16 hours straight. Sundays are fucked up… Pod tomorrow night (Monday night) and the diary entries will continue as well.

Cheers,

Alon