Youri Tielemans is the man to target this week for a Fantasy Premier League boost.
While fellow midfielder Ilkay Gundogan remains in ridiculous form for Manchester City, the Leicester man is not far behind and is set up to make more of an impact in the coming weeks, according to the PA news agency’s approach to tracking the game’s statistics.
Here we look at who to pick up in gameweek 21, and why.
‘Your’ the man
PA uses a Transfer Score metric to rate all players in the game each week, 50 per cent of which comes from a player’s recent form with the other half rewarding low cost, ownership and upcoming fixture difficulty rating (FDR).
Tielemans’ recent average of eight points a game, helped by two goals, two assists, two clean sheets and three entries in the bonus points in his last four games, translates into a 91 rating for form while he is owned by less than three per cent of FPL managers and Leicester have the easiest upcoming run of games on paper.
That all combines into a transfer score of 90 out of 100, three points more than Gundogan despite the German retaining the 100 rating for form with an average of 8.8 points per game.
West Brom’s Matheus Pereira completes a strong top three in midfield – and in the overall rankings – with a transfer score of 84 after his 24-point double gameweek in week 19.
Positions five to eight overall are also occupied by midfielders, with Tielemans’ team-mates James Maddison and Harvey Barnes sandwiching Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka and West Ham’s Tomas Soucek.
Stones bucks the trend
John Stones is the one non-midfielder in the top eight, with the Manchester City defender riding his six clean sheets in seven and brace against Crystal Palace to the second-best form score in the league and a transfer score of 83.
Even as his ownership rises to almost 20 per cent, the England hopeful remains the pick ahead of central defensive partner Ruben Dias by virtue of being £700,000 cheaper in FPL at £5.2m.
Craig Dawson, whose first five West Ham appearances on loan from Watford have yielded three clean sheets and a goal, and Aston Villa full-back Matt Targett are our defensive runners-up and the last members of our overall top 10, just ahead of Leicester keeper Kasper Schmeichel with all three recording transfer scores of 74.
Dias and team-mates Joao Cancelo and Oleksandr Zinchenko follow Schmeichel in the overall ranking and just miss out on the defensive podium, all on 73.
Striker light
Options remain limited in attack, where Alexandre Lacazette is the pick of the bunch despite Arsenal’s unappealing run on FDR limiting his transfer score to 68 – good for only 29th overall.
Two places behind on 67 is Michail Antonio, with two goals and an assist in three games since returning to West Ham’s starting line-up after injury.
Beyond that, West Brom’s Callum Robinson (65) shapes up as a desperate differential pick with his sub-one per cent ownership – Ollie Watkins (59) is kept out of the top three by the 13.8 per cent of managers already on the bandwagon but may make more appeal.
