Assessing midfield options ahead of GW29 of the 2017/18 FPL season

We really only have ourselves to blame – yes Richarlison is still an integral part of our Fantasy Premier League squad. The Brazilian hasn’t scored since November, while his last assist came in December but to compound matters even further, he hasn’t completed 70 minutes in any of his last 4 starts.

However, sometimes more pressing transfers and concerns can mean that certain players continue to get a stay of execution and that certainly seems to be the case with the 20 year old Brazilian.

But is he really that bad? Well, let’s compare him with another player from a similar price bracket, Stoke City’s ‘flavour of the month’ Xherdan Shaqiri by examining their underlying stats (courtesy of the brilliant Understat website).

It’s clearly not all doom and gloom for the Watford wide-man since he possesses a better xG90+xA90 figure than Stoke’s Swiss international.

Both players are set to feature in a blank gameweek 31 but Richarlison is unlikely to get a better match-up than the one presented to him in GW29, when the Hornets host bottom club West Bromwich Albion. So do we really want to take him out?

Richarlison is not our only midfield dilemma either.

Manchester United’s Jesse Lingard came off the bench to score the winner against Chelsea last time out but that still doesn’t guarantee him a start against Crystal Palace on Monday, while another of our midfielders, Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling, who has been pictured back in training, after missing the Citizens’ last 2 matches, is by no means certain to be recalled for his side’s clash with the Blues.

In spite of this, Richarlison, Lingard and Sterling are all pencilled in for Gw29, although we will be keeping a close eye on the inclement weather, in case any game is postponed.

Jamie Vardy gets the armband as we continue out contrarian captaincy strategy.

That’s our provisional GW29 line-up – we will update our twitter feed if there are any last minute enforced changes due to the weather!