Cash, Udogie - Keep or sell?
Douglas Luiz - Keep or Sell?
Alvarez to Solanke?
1. Tough call, I have massive defensive problems myself, but unfortunately I don't have room for defensive moves for a couple of weeks. I'm keeping my problem players (Cash, Al-Dakhil and Lamptey) and focus on putting out other fires for now. If you don't have other pressing matters I would sell one of them for Saliba/Gabriel.
2. Easy sell. Never was an FPL option, and never has been. Has massively outperformed his numbers this season and 0,06npxG/90 and 0,08xA/90 is just not what you want from any of your attacking 8 players. Penalties or not, golden rule of FPL: never buy 6s or 8s. Tougher fixtures comming up and better options in the same pricerange out there.
3. As much as I love to see opponents fail, this is a big NO! He plays for the 6th worst attack in front of the 3rd worst defense defense in the league. There are no good fixtures for Bournemouth. Do not knee jerk Solanke into your team off the back of one good performance. Before the Newcastle game Solanke sat on 0,44xG/90 and 0,05xA/90. Solanke is a horrible finisher and has through his 5 seasons in the PL consistantly underperformed his numbers by 30% (bottom 2%). You don't want an attacker that has a history of being a consistant poor finisher that is ranked 24th in the league for xG+A/90 for players that have played at least 450 minutes so far this season. Fun fact: Solanke has blanked in 86 of his 108 PL games in his career.
Here's a list of strikers who play for better teams, have better numbers (most of them massively better) AND are better finishers (some of them massively better):
Haaland (1,44xG+A/90), Wilson (1,39xG+A/90), Nunez (1,35xG+A/90) (? on the finishing for Liverpool, but was hot at Benfica), Isak (1,16xG+A/90), Watkins (0,96xG+A/90), Jackson (0,94xG+A/90) (? on the finishing for Chelsea, but was hot at Villareal) , Joao Pedro (0,78xG+A/90) and Mcburnie (0,63xG+A/90) - Solanke (0,59xG+A/90 - including the Newcastle game).
Other honorable mentions are:
Awoniyi (0,57xG+A/90), DCL (0,51xG+A/90), Alvarez (0,51xG+A/90), Edouard (0,50xG+A/90) who are all better finishers than Dom, and you have Jesus who's back from injury now (played for Brazil in the international break, but also a horrible finisher).
If you don't like or can afford any of these alternatives go for a cheaper guy and spend the money on one of the 15 midfielders and 1 defender that are more likely to return than him every time they enter the pitch (in ranked order and including injured players all with more than 450 minutes this season):
Salah, Palmer, Saka, Mbeumo, Son, Diaby, Bruno, Eze, Hwang, Estupinan (defender), Maddison, Richarlison, Doucoure, Bowen, Jota and Gordon.
+ good midfield shouts who are better finishers with above 0,50xG+A/90 (in ranked order and including injured players all with more than 450 minutes this season):
March, Sterling, Mitoma, JWP, Neto, Gakpo, Diaz, Foden, Silva, Rashford and Soucek.
Players that didn't make the list, but might deserve a mention (same criterias and between 0,4-0,5xG+A/90):
Antony, Doku, Nketiah, Hojlund, Elanga, Wissa, Ferguson, Johnson, McNeil, Morris Odegaard, Cunha, Brown, Enzo, Tripps and Foster.
My team right now:
Johnstone (Turner)
Tripps, Mitchell, Cash (Al-Dakhil, Lamptey)
Saka, Bruno, Eze, Gordon (Palmer) (Might start Palmer over Gordon)
Haaland (C), Watkins, Nunez
0 free transfers. 5,1M ITB
Plan is to get Salah in for Bruno on Saturday and assess the defense in the upcomming GWs. I want to keep Cash if possible because AVL plays SHU at home in the GW18 blank.
I also plan to play my WC in GW19 and make up some lost ground there.