What an odd midweek round of fixtures.
Manchester United scored goals, Aston Villa gave winning a go and Mesut Ozil registered precisely zero assists. WEIRD!
But one piece of promising news for Fantasy Football players is the fact that Jamie Vardy got seventy minutes under his belt during Leicester’s victory over Spurs.
He heads our list of must-haves this week as we’re backing him to get back to goalscoring ways.
Three players to sign
HE’S BACK!
Incredibly, Jamie Vardy managed to have surgery over Christmas but still has featured in every single league game for Leicester this season. That’s crazy!
In that time he’s scored 15 goals but he’s come off the boil as of late but we’re OK with that considering he was playing through a mending groin.
Reports claim that he’s approaching something close to full fitness and who better to find his scoring boots against than Aston Villa, whose winning streak of one is very likely to come to an end.
Leicester have won five of their last six games on the road while Villa have only won once at home this season.
Let’s look at Spurs’ last four games against Sunderland. Three wins, a draw and three goals for a certain Danish midfielder.
Eriksen loves playing against the Black Cats and he’s due a goal if truth be told.
We’ve held off on bringing him into our sides for awhile now just based on the fact that he hasn’t been in great form but a home tie against Sunderland is an ideal way to get back on track.
He isn’t exactly a well-kept secret but we’re very tempted by the prospect of captaining Odion Ighalo against an absolutely abject Swansea side.
In the Swans’ last eleven Premier League games, they’ve lost all but one and have conceded 18.
Their defence only seems to be getting shakier, having conceded four at home to a Sunderland side who you’d have said would be lucky to score four all season.
Only Jamie Vardy and Romelu Lukaku have scored more than the Nigeria international and he’s definitely in with a shout to finish as top scorer by the end of the season.
Three players to sell
With these pair of teams having each conceded three in the midweek round of fixtures, we decided to take out the dodgiest member of the combined back fours.
For all Liverpool’s attacking flair on Wednesday night, every cross into their box was met with the same kind of panic that would greet news of a Brendan Rodgers return.
Sakho is a great centre-half if you like defenders playing out from the back but when you want your big man to assert his dominance, the Frenchman often goes missing.
Arguably Manchester United’s best performance under Louis van Gaal came in this fixture last season and, with Jesse Lingard fit again, the Red Devils are a genuine attacking threat.
This is a very cynical one because Jermain Defoe has, to be fair, scored five goals in his last two games for Sunderland and the narrative is perfect for him to punish his former club.
But we just don’t see it happening.
Spurs’ superior fitness levels would lead you to believe that they will be better able to deal with the congested fixture list while Defoe is 33 and can’t be expected to perform at the highest level for the second game in four days.
Mauricio Pochettino has put together the best defence in the league with Spurs having conceded only 17 goals this season, three goals less than anybody else.
Add to that the fact that Sunderland have a daunting set of fixtures ahead of them which include games against Manchester City, Liverpool and Manchester United and it just makes sense to get rid of Defoe.
We wanted to get rid of Jack Butland but didn’t have the heart.
Like Sunderland above, Stoke have a pretty difficult set of matches ahead of them and their terrific defensive record could go out the window when they travel to Leicester, Palace and Manchester United after this tricky home tie against the Gunners.
In the last two games between Arsenal and Stoke, Arsene Wenger’s men have outscored the Potters by a scoreline of 5-0.
We don’t have faith in a Stoke clean sheet with the kind of form Oliveir Giroud is in so we’re ditching the liability known as Glen Johnson.
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