Dec 14

Risky Selections Gameweek 8 - Fantasy Premier League Tips

Share post on:
Echoing throughout the burrows of East London during the 2012/13 Championship campaign were ceremonial cries of The Dave Clark Five's timeless classic Glad All Over. The dainty tune's stadium-based vocal predecessor featured Crystal Palace's announcer declaring an all too familiar goal scorer, Glenn… Palace fans know the rest. This Fantasy Premier League Tips article discusses a formidable but ageing goal scorer, who has been granted an opportunity to prove himself that he must grasp. Glenn Murray � 5.6m Back in what is beginning to feel like the 'Caveman Days' of Wilfried Zaha's tremendous touting prior to his eventual elite level disregard, Ian Holloway's Eagles mounted a second tier promotion challenge that appeared very comfortable until a winless run of nine games saw them facing the potentially heart breaking play off two-legged semi-final against despised rivals Brighton and Hove Albion. Zaha's brace in the away leg following a goalless match at Selhurst Park confirmed Palace supporters would be making the short but simultaneously mammoth trip to North London to face Watford, whose dramatic route to the final may never be replicated. But the volcano created by Troy Deeney's climactic countering winner following a late Leicester penalty didn't quite erupt as Hornets fans would've hoped. The ice cool veteran Kevin Phillips launched Holloway and his team in the upper echelon of English football with a ferociously accurate penalty kick. A hero throughout the entire campaign, Glenn Murray's thirty goals in just forty two league appearances were enough to earn the golden boot shaped cherry sitting temptingly on top of the lip-smacking Premier League cake. Murray however, appeared the forgotten man once the Eagles had reached this new height until Frazier Campbell and Dwight Gayle's coinciding injuries in 2014 prompted relatively new managerial appointment Alan Pardew to introduce Murray regularly into the fray. Naturally, Murray produced goals, scoring seven times in nine starts that season, replicating the attacking formula that proved so successful one year previously. Alongside Yannick Bolasie, Jason Puncheon and then Manchester United loanee Zaha, goals for the finisher were an inevitability rather than a possibility. Callum Wilson's ACL injury has forced the young Bournemouth striker out of action for six months according to his club. Writhing in pain on Staffordshire grass (one could confuse this mental image for an excerpt from Morrissey's debut novel), Wilson's immediate replacement in last week's 2-1 defeat to Stoke was Murray. Perhaps a telling sign of things to come. Selected by just 0.2% of Fantasy Premier League managers, Murray's low ownership makes him an arguably irresistible steal under the condition that he is rewarded with game time by Eddie Howe. Playing football is so important for this now ageing striker which made his transfer to Bournemouth entirely understandable. Priced at 5.6m, the mass amount of the wallowing over wounded Wilson can be reassured in the fact that they can make a straight swap with a small pocket of change to spare. Whether goals come however, lies the risk involved with this transfer. Now 32, one would argue that Murray's best days are behind him. But scoring so fluently only last season promotes the idea that this will not cease abruptly, despite the example of the dip in form of fellow Premier League footballer John Terry ringing loud and true. At Palace, Murray was being fed by a wealth of attacking minded midfield players and naturally, his newly promoted employers don't have quite as much strength going forward. Likelihood of starting Gameweek 8: 4 out of 5 Mike Botto, AFC Bournemouth's stadium MC has been forced to throw away his pre-prepared weekly script that involves Callum Wilson's name and practice proclaiming a new name through his presumably tender vocal chords. Whether the words, ‘Glenn Murray' will be uttered quite as often as they were at Selhurst Park is yet to be heard.