Well, that was rubbish wasn’t it? Costa, Aguero and Hazard got 5 points between them, clean sheet locks Chelsea and Southampton both conceded 2 goals, Arsenal continued to Arsenal and even your smart sleeper picks at Bournemouth did nothing.

If, like me, the autodraft ended up selecting some of the less favourable players for you and you spent Gameweek 1 slowly weeping to yourself over the fact that your team has 7 players who didn’t start (including the recently departed Angel Di Maria) you might already be looking at the available player pool for salvation. Let’s hope, unlike me, your power-hungry chairman hasn’t locked transfers until the end of the transfer window.

So let’s take a look at 5 players you might want to pick up this weekend. I’m going off players who are available in my ten-manager league.

Xherdan Shaqiri

The Premier League new boy, Barcelona B’s new signing at the Britannia Stadium. Chances are, someone has already added him to their transfer priority list, this one’s a given. He might not make his debut this weekend, but it’s a tough game away at Tottenham anyway. If you can get Shaqiri in your squad now, you’ll reap the rewards in a run of games that includes Norwich, West Brom, Leicester, Bournemouth and Aston Villa all in the next month and a half. I won’t spend any longer dwelling on Shaqiri, everyone in your league knows he’s good and wants him.

Marc Muniesa

Another Stoke player, this time a defender. Stoke looked solid for 90 minutes on Sunday and it was only a wonder goal by Philippe Coutinho in the dying minutes that won the game for Liverpool. Benteke was kept quiet by a pretty formidable looking defence that kept 9 clean sheets last season. Having a Stoke defender isn’t a bad option to have and Muniesa will get plenty of playing time with Ryan Shawcross out for a reported further 2-3 months. And plus, did you see those fixtures above?

Bryan Oviedo

With Leighton Baines out for the foreseeable future and potentially facing surgery, Everton have a Costa-Rican sized gap on the left just waiting for Oviedo to fill. Before a devastating leg break in January 2014, Oviedo was a genuine competitor for Baines’s starting place, picking up 2 goals and 2 assists in 9 matches. After missing most of last season thanks to various injuries and generally being a bit-part player when fit, this is a good time to go all in on your Bryan Oviedo stock, who should beat off Brendan Galloway for the regular spot, although it was Galloway who started at the weekend. The added benefit of picking up Oviedo is that he can play further up in midfield and so could grab more assists and goals, which will give you a scoring boost as he’s listed as a defender on Real Fantasy Football. The downside is Everton conceded 50 goals last season and their defence can leak, however they kept 7 clean sheets after the turn of the year. By this time Everton had progressed out of the Europa League group stage and for the most part had a less congested schedule. With no European tour to worry about this season, maybe this form will continue – although conceding 2 goals at home to newly promoted Watford in their opening game doesn’t inspire much confidence.

Rudy Gestede

Aston Villa’s summer signing Rudy Gestede went kind of unnoticed, and by that I mean I forgot they had signed him. Gestede bagged 33 goals in 66 appearances over the last two Championship seasons for Blackburn. More than half of these goals (19) were headers, and if you watched Tim Sherwood’s Aston Villa last season, you’ll know they like to play a higher tempo and get the ball to the target man in the box. Gestede scored on his debut at the weekend from a set piece, and you can probably expect he will be good for a few more of those this season. For all their inconsistency and defensive woes, in Tim Sherwood’s 13 Premier League games Villa averaged 1.46 goals per game, which stretched over a full season equals 55 goals – only the top 5 teams in the League scored more. That’s all you have to think about when picking up Gestede.

Winston Reid

After that pre-season, not many will have predicted a 2-0 win for West Ham away at Arsenal, in fact not many will have even expected them to finish the game with 11 men. There is still that nagging feeling that Slaven Bilic’s team could implode in any game this season, but it’s hard to argue that they didn't look incredibly impressive in their opening match. For all the attention that has been given to the Arsenal defence and Petr Cech, it was their inability to create real chances at the other end of the pitch which was just as damaging. Arsenal kept 61% of the possession but a solid back four along with the protection of 16 year old Reece Oxford kept Arsenal out. With James Tomkins at right back for now and Aaron Cresswell a little bit more withdrawn on the opposite flank, it looks like Bilic is favouring a strong defensive back line and Winston Reid is at the heart of it.

statistics courtesy of www.whoscored.com

By Nathan Fogg

https://twitter.com/Nathan_Fogg