It’s that time again people, another round of Premier League fixtures is behind us and as we come ever closer to the end of the season, it’s time for the 6th instalment of ‘The Last XI’. Join me for a heartwarming eulogy at Gameweek 33’s wake, while keeping one eye on the mouthwatering and oversized buffet kindly provided by Gameweek 34.

The weekend was a rare sad one for Chelsea fans as they not only suffered a 2-0 loss at Old Trafford, but also heard the news that club legend John Terry will be leaving at the end of the season. Kurt Zouma was preferred to the former England captain in a side that was tormented by 19 year old Marcus Rashford, but given Terry’s shady history, it certainly wasn’t the first time a Chelsea defender struggled with a rash. Manchester City comfortably beat Southampton thanks to a marvellous goal scoring performance from Vincent Kompany who found himself back in City’s starting line-up, a sight that has become as alien looking as the big Belgian himself. Finally, Ross Barkley starred in Everton’s 3-1 win against Burnley, but denied himself of a first goal in 9 games when the dubious goals panel credited his strike to a Burnley centre back. The panel rang the midfielder after the game asking ‘Did you score that or did it come off a defender?’ to which Barkley replied ‘Are you joking? of course it was Mee’.

With plenty more action to look back on and plenty food for thought ahead of next week, let’s have a quick look at how the team got on…

Gameweek 33

Transfers: Sigurdsson & Vardy > Zaha & Kane (+9 gross with captained Kane)

Points: 57

Rank: 31,260 ↑

On the weekend where the trailer for Star Wars VIII was released, my team decided to do it’s best impression of the Death Star, capable of incredible attacking blasts, but with one small weakness that quickly turned into a completely compromised defence, and a young man called Luke was all to blame (my name’s Luke by the way).

In simpler terms, I’ve gone from 1 defender/goalkeeper on an orange alert to 4, which is a huge concern, but before we address what happened let’s have a look at the rest of the team…

If you’d read last week’s edition in it’s entirety you will know that I was set on the idea of captaining Christian Eriksen, but at 10 AM Saturday morning I bit the bullet and put the armband on highly captained new signing Harry Kane, and the rest was history. Despite getting my captaincy spot on by not trusting either Spurs midfielders, I was perfectly content with their performances, with an assist and clean sheet each.

Alexis Sanchez’ passed the ‘score or I’ll transfer you’ test but the Chilean’s form was largely inconclusive, a marvellous free kick in the first half sent well needed points to my side, but from open play looked far from worth the £11.7 mil I have tied up in him. Sanchez stays for now, but I’ll need money to upgrade my Middlesbrough contingent after GW34, and with so many tempting mid-priced mids, it could be sayonara Sanchez before long.

Lastly it was a weekend of surprise injury and rotation. Reportedly fatigued swede Zlatan Ibrahimovic insisted that his omission from the line-up was a tactical one, the pace of Rashford and Lingard being preferred against Chelsea’s ‘slow’ back line, but speculation clouds the 35 year old’s potential physical exhaustion. Marcus Alonso refrained from playing less than an hour before kick-off having featured in the line-up (leaving me confused for a good 20 minutes watching the game), illness supposedly troubling the wing back. Victor Valdes was left out of Boro’s Monday night fixture while Fabio returned from concussion only to injure himself again shortly afterwards – my 3 Middlesbrough players are quickly becoming the least appealing trio since Jedward collaborated with Vanilla Ice.

Oh and yes, John Stones got a knock before the one bastarding time City keeps a clean sheet, fuck you, John Stones, fuck you.

It was a perfectly respectable week with a small but welcome green arrow, but with an important DGW coming up and plenty of defensive issues to address, the free transfer that I very much wanted to save may have to be used.

Gameweek 34

It’s time to have a look at the bizarre schedule that is Gameweek 34. Two FA cup semi-finals, eleven Premier League games over the span of six days, and West Brom have somehow blagged a week off, but as much as I’d love to speculate Darren Fletcher’s favourite mini-break locations, my focus is on the 19 playing teams. The question is, do I take a one/two-week punt on one of the three double Gameweekers, Crystal Palace, Middlesbrough and Manchester United? Despite boasting two games each, it is the poor form and/or the fixtures of these teams that are helping contain my excitement, and it means that if you at home are to bring in a DGW player, it’s going to require a lot more thought than ‘he’s playing twice, I’ll get him in’.

Addressing my transfer, it looks like Fabio will regrettably get the chop. I was pleasantly surprised when the Brazilian left back started against Arsenal, but with a 16th minute injury and a spirited performance from replacement George Friend, I’m about as confident in the twins potential minutes as I am in my 4 year old nephew’s darts playing ability, there are 180 available, but I’ll be amazed if he even gets 1, so I’m promptly running for cover.

Selling £4.4 mil Fabio will give me £4.8 mil ITB, so let’s have a look at the teams realistically willing to sell me a bargain.

Middlesbrough

If I still had my wildcard intact, I’d almost certainly simply make a sideways move to another Boro defender as I love their GW34 chances at the back. Unfortunately that is not the case and I just do not have enough free transfers left in the campaign to justify a one week punt at this stage. After this week is over Middlesbrough players will be about as appealing as that one guy in a nightclub gurning and stinking of B.O., and probably as likely to score, so with that in mind, I want as little to do with the relegation candidates as possible.

If you do still have your wildcard I’d recommend forward thinking George Friend at £4.2 mil, the left back has a great cross on him and looks to be nailed on for both games.

Crystal Palace

With a DGW and Burnley at home straight after, Palace players in general are not a bad idea this week, however with free scoring Liverpool and Spurs over the next week you may be disappointed if you expect anything more than 4 points from an Eagles defender.

Joel Ward is at £4.8 which may be a little pricey for what you’re buying but has amazingly missed just 3 minutes of Premier League action all year, nailed on is an understatement.

£4.7 Jeffrey Schlupp comes off the back of an assist and has been relatively solid in Palaces recent run of shutouts, but beware of Patrick van Aanholt’s return to fitness, Big Sam’s love for the forward thinking Dutchman may mean that despite Schlupps impressive form, PVA will once again be glued to the starting line-up.

Sunderland

Ok, just hear me out. Between now and Gameweek 37 Sunderland’s fixtures are better than anyone’s, and the Sunderland I know always pull results out their arses at this time of the season (even if this year it might be too late). For good reason there are some incredibly low priced Black Cats defenders and if you can correctly predict some surprising results, you’ve got yourselves an incredible differential.

£4.4 mil Billy Jones looks relatively nailed on and has little competition, with Kone out of the side against west ham, Jones is perhaps the only Sunderland defender I’d recommend with the exception of Pickford, and you know what I’m almost falling asleep at my keyboard writing about Sunderland defenders so I’m going to end this paragraph right now.

Hull

The Tigers are a tricky one to call, I fancy them more than anyone to pickup some surprise clean sheets over the coming weeks with everything to play for and an excellent manager in Marco Silva. The only problem with Hull is the lack of double gameweek, when wildcarding in Gameweek 30 I did so in the assurance that I could use my free transfers to eventually bring in 15 DGW players for the bench boost, bringing in a Hull defender would almost certainly limit me to 14 DGWers, immidiately putting me behind the patient wildcarders, but would the differential of a Hull defender be worth it in the long run?

Andrea Rannochia has impressed since arriving on loan from Inter Milan, at £4.5 he is slightly pricier than other Hull options but his position in the XI is as sure as any in the league at this point. Also note his 2 goals in the last 4.

Harry Macguire at £4.4 is perhaps the obvious shout here, gets on the end of a terrific amount of chances for a central defender and like his defensive partner boasts 2 goals in the last few weeks, it’s a toss up between the two as to who’s going to score, the last 4 games have gone Rannochia, Macguire, Rannochia, Macguire, so if you are a believer in patterns then perhaps Rannochia is still your man.

More of an assistant than a scorer, Andrew Robertson is always worth considering and comes in at the same price as Harry.

Transfers and Captaincy

Well with all this talk of mediocre defenders I’m sure you want to move on as quickly as possible so after considering the above discussion, my potential transfers in order of most to least likely look like this…

Fabio > Macguire (£0.4 mil ITB)

Fabio > Rannochia (£0.3 ITB)

Fabio > Robertson (£0.4 ITB)

Fabio > Ward (£0.0 ITB)

It may seem naive to ignore my internal dilemma of bringing in a non DGW player, but something tells me Hull are going to start tightening up, and the goalscoring threat of the defenders is nowhere near as present in the others mentioned, Macguire may have to come in solely on the basis that he is cheaper. If you can use your imagination to replace Fabio with a Hull defender, my team will look like this.

For captaincy it simply has to be a DGW player, Ibrahimovic is the favourite option by a country mile but I’ll be closely monitoring United’s game against Anderlecht on Thursday to see if and how he plays. Wilfried Zaha is a risky punt and would see me desperately hoping for at least one huge upset. It’s not impossible, but I don’t want my week to depend on it.

Final thoughts

Apologies if you find this issue of lower quality than previous ones, at times when I would normally be writing this week I was getting obscenely shitfaced in the name of our lord and saviour, so it was a little rushed. I’ll promise to return next week teetotal and ranty as ever. Thanks if you enjoyed it and good luck to you and your team!