Playing it safe vs. going for broke

With 6 teams blanking in FPL this week, including Manchester City and Chelsea, everyone’s having to make wholesale changes to their lineup. Forward in particular, is a tricky one. Pretty much everyone had Erling Haaland in their team, a lot of people had Joao Pedro, and both Danny Welbeck and Dominic Calvert-Lewin were popular budget options, especially in the double gameweek.

This week’s most popular pickup is Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins, who is the definition of a safe pick. He’s been remarkably consistent over the first and second halves of the season.

And he is, as always, scoring right on his xG. Even while Aston Villa benefit from some lucky finishing and great goalkeeping, Watkins is doing exactly what you’d expect him to be doing. If you like your team and your standing in your mini leagues, this is the correct “just don’t screw it up” pick.

A popular differential pick among pros right now is Jarrod Bowen, but he racked up a lot of his FPL points earlier in the season, and he hasn’t been trending in a good direction. Here are his shots since January 1.

If you’re using your free hit, wildcard, or just have a lot of transfers banked, my recommendation is to make some room for whichever one of Alexander Isak or Kai Havertz you feel more comfortable with or have budget for. Arsenal and Liverpool have extremely favorable matchups and are the teams expected to score the most goals this week. Both teams also have pretty favorable run-ins and something to play for to the end of the year, so they might be worth keeping around to the end anyway.

Of course, the issue with Havertz is that he’s coming off an injury, and is still likely to be rotated with Viktor Gyökeres a bit. But given how effective he’s been at getting quality shots when fit, I suspect he’s going to play more, and score some goals too.

If you’re a real sick freak willing to gamble on a huge boom or bust pick, the suggestion from Solio FPL is Dominic Solanke. Picking a Tottenham striker is scary, but picking the guys who are playing Wolves has been an extremely effective meta so far this season. And Solanke’s actually been scoring since coming back from injury, even if Tottenham’s opponents generally score more.

So the tl;dr is: Isak if you have budget, Watkins for mid-price if you like your position, Havertz for mid-price if you have a bit more risk tolerance, Solanke if you need a big swing. Bowen is pretty clearly the worst of these options by the numbers.

If you didn’t plan to have your free hit, wildcard, or a lot of free transfers to deal with this game week, you should subscribe to Lazy FPL so that doesn’t happen to you again.

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