Crystal Palace come up against Chelsea and Liverpool either side of the International break. On paper this doesn't scream ‘asset to be invested in'. However, there are some things that we should look into before we make our decisions.
Market Trends
Otamendi and other 5m+ defenders have been popular in the game but with few clean sheets, players being dropped and the emergence of FPL God's John Lundstram and Soyuncu as well as cleansheets from bargain basement players such as Rico. Many FPL managers are shifting away from expensive assets in defence in favour of cheap defenders.
Mason Mount has been a particularly popular FPL asset, but his lessening returns, moving back into midfield with the emergence of Pulisic and Hudson-Odoi and his niggling ankle injuries many managers are looking at mid priced FPL assets, with the likes of Tielemans proving vogue right now.
With these two problem positions in mind;
- Cheap Defender
- Mid Priced Midfielder
Let's look outside the box for some solutions.
Options and Fixtures
One comes to mind and of course as given away at the start of the article, this is Crystal Palace.
We will start with the mid priced midfielder
Chelsea have not been defensively strong this season, conceding 17 goals in the league (and a healthy load more in other competitions) this 17 puts them on par with West Ham and other clubs in the bottom 8. In fact, no other club in the top 10 come close to this rate of goals conceding. A lot of this comes down of course to not having Kante available. With the Frenchman working his way back to fitness this week, he could feature. However, Chelsea will also be dealing without Jorginho who is suspended after picking up 5 yellow cards. With this in mind Chelsea aren't the rock that their positioning in the league puts them. After the break Palace face Liverpool which is a hard one, no two ways round it. Liverpool have conceded more goals than they probably should've but their underlying stats show a good defence. But, after these two games Palace's fixtures change entirely with this run:
bur
BOU
wat
BHA
new
WHU
sou
nor
Taking us all the way until the FA Cup break in January. This run is one of the best in the league and is prime for investment now for a team who have had a great start to the season.
Conclusion
This run gives us the likes of the cheap Ayew up top, Zaha as their best player playing a part in goals and winning penalties (likely), Milivojevic converting those penalties and Cahill defending a good backline which should include Sakho back from injury at some point. Cahill, interestingly sits with one of the highest threats in the game for defenders. A few of these players fit into the brackets that the market is currently looking at, but due to the ‘red' fixtures of Chelsea and Liverpool players may look elsewhere and miss an investment opportunity.
