Gameweek 15 | The show goes on.

🚨 Gameweek 15’s deadline is Saturday 7th December, 11:00 GMT.

👀 Lopetegui gets “one more chance” at West Ham.

🙏 “Sunday is a possibility” for Gabriel, confirms Arteta.

🙄 A high chance of more rotation this weekend, given the fixture congestion.

Keep reading to find out if Haaland is the new Harry Kane.

Alright?

No time to recover from the goal-fest that was Gameweek 14: Gameweek 15 is breathing down its neck like it’s marking it for a corner.

Big Cole keeps returning. Mo Salah keeps on scoring. And we’re rolling into Gameweek 15.

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Summary for the Lazy: Bournemouth are weirdly good at defending.

Friday morning edit - okay, Bournemouth were selfish enough to keep a second clean sheet of the season against Spurs, which now makes this section a little more “obvious” than it was before. Fuck. Still, the principles discussed here still apply.

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We’re writing this during the Bournemouth vs Spurs game on Thursday evening, which definitely exposes us to the risk of humiliation.

But even if Spurs do batter Bournemouth, it’ll only serve to disguise a season-long phenomenon that deserves proper acknowledgement: Bournemouth are good at defending.

The above chart shows the expected goals conceded this season. It’s full of surprises - like how is Man City so high?

At the other end, you’ll find the usual suspects (Liverpool and Arsenal) in curious company: Fulham and Bournemouth.

Bournemouth are particularly interesting here for a few reasons:

As managers continue to move towards a budget-heavy midfield, austerity measures elsewhere need to be swift. In our view, Bournemouth are being overlooked as a potential outlet for clean sheets. None of their defenders are owned by more than 2.4% of managers.

Which isn’t surprising. At the time of writing, they have as many clean sheets as Ipswich, Southampton and Leicester, amongst others.

But Penetrative Stats would be boring if it only looked at the success stories. The idea here is to find the hidden opportunities - the ones that haven’t surfaced yet.

Could Bournemouth add to their clean sheet tally over the next six gameweeks with a fixture run like this?

The stats suggest they will. And with the £4.5m Milos Kerkez leading the way for goal involvements from defenders over the last six gameweeks, there’s a chance of attacking returns too.

In Bournemouth, we’ve been gifted a defensive unit operating in the same manner as a top-six side, only their players are cheap and they’ve got great fixtures on the horizon.

It’s like Christmas has come early but without all the shit music.

Summary for the Lazy: Haaland played much deeper in his last game.

Summary for the Lazy: FPL is more fun when you can’t have ‘em all.

We ran a poll in a recent newsletter, asking you whether this season is the hardest yet. Here are the results:

A significant majority of you are struggling more this season than any other.

But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

We’ve criticised FPL Towers before, but they’ve absolutely nailed player pricing this year. It’s impossible to own every good player, and that hasn’t always been the case in recent seasons.

The result is that we actually have different teams. We cannot simply Wildcard in the optimal 15 players. We have to suffer through hauls from players we don’t own, and we can celebrate returns from our priciest players with unencumbered enthusiasm.

Consistently scoring the same number of points as everyone else is a coddled way to live. At its core, FPL is supposed to include suffering, frustration and jealousy. That’s what truly makes it interesting: a bit like life itself.

Part of the reason we started LazyFPL was to preserve that corner of FPL analysis that still finds joy in the game. If you’re having a shit time with FPL at the moment, take solace in the knowledge that these lows will make the highs all the sweeter when your fortunes inevitably improve.

Summary for the Lazy: Haaland played much deeper in his last game.

Man City looked much better against Nottingham Forest.

A large part of that may well have been Kevin De Bruyne’s return to their starting XI, along with the added threat that Jeremy Doku provides.

It also saw Erling Haaland grab a first assist of the season.

But whilst that might seem like a positive for his frustrated owners, his heat map from the game tells a different story.

Here’s how it usually looks:

Haaland occupied a deeper role in Gameweek 14, busying defenders to free up Man City’s other attackers.

Whether this was a tactical quirk of one particular game or a hint at things to come for the Norse God remains to be seen, but it deserves scrutiny in their upcoming fixtures. He’s the second-most transferred-out player this week.

Summary for the Lazy: It’s Mohamed Salah.

Mohamed Salah is exasperatingly brilliant. Exasperating because, even in those games where everything points to a rare blank, he somehow finds a way to notch another double-figure points haul.

This is record-breaking stuff. FPLFocal’s reply to a YouTube comment sums up his monstrous points scoring so far this season better than we ever could:

He’s currently involved in 72% of Liverpool’s goals. This will not last all season.

But despite the immortal words of Mahatma Gandhi, there’s little to suggest that his visit to Everton in the early kick-off will slow his remarkable momentum.

Sorry Gandhi, but the Egyptian King is the best captain for Gameweek 15.

The Professor is once again rolling a transfer. He still owns a faltering Erling Haaland, but the prospect of Crystal Palace away is enough to justify keeping him for now.

The Prof is also conscious of December’s fixture schedule, in which having plenty of Free Transfers to navigate rotation and injury is always advised.

Mohamed Salah gets the armband.

Overall rank: 813k.

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Okay, no midweek gameweek next week, so we’ll be back next Friday afternoon (there’s no early kick-off on Saturday).

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.