Triple Bees + City, Double villa

Based on this week’s Scout Squad posts by Marc, Sam, Tom F, and Tom J, we have finalized our selection of Scout Picks for Fantasy Premier League (FPL) Gameweek 13.

As always, there are certain limitations to our choice:

Budget £83.0m for our starting XI
The overall squad cap is £100.0 million
No more than three players per team

GAMEWEEK 13 SCOUT OPTIONS

GOALKEEPER

FPL Notes: Salah on the bench, Isak injured + will Guiu start? 1

Among this week’s posts, William Vicar (£5.0m) got a chance to make amends despite conceding nine times in two games last week. To be fair to the Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper, those games are away against Premier League leaders Arsenal and reigning Champions League champions Paris Saint-Germain, while this weekend there will be a home game against 15th-placed Fulham, whose only wins against the teams above them in the standings – Sunderland and Brentford – came on their own turf.

Only two clubs – Leeds United and Wolverhampton Wanderers – have scored fewer goals than the Cottagers (13) and Marco Silva’s men have a similarly low shots on target rating this season, managing just 39 goals. Meanwhile, of opponents’ shots on target, Vicario has prevented 3.50 goals, the second most of any goalkeeper.

DEFENDER

Who is the best replacement for Gabriel in FPL? 1

Daniel Munoz (£5.9m) retained his place in the back line after being supported by three of our Scout Troop panel. The Crystal Palace full-back is almost always ready to go thanks to his attacking threat – he ranks second among defenders for expected goals (xG) and expected assists (xA) – as last weekend’s 14-point tally illustrates, and the Eagles will be eager to bounce back from midweek Conference League disappointment when they host a Manchester United side who have conceded more Opta-designated ‘big chances’ on the road this season than any other club. Impressively, Munoz has managed to return to FPL – at least one clean sheet, goal involvement or defensive contribution point (DefCon) – in nine of his 12 games so far.

It’s not surprising that that happens Nico O’Reilly (£5.1m) has been in this week’s Scout Picks, as our four-in-house panel selected him as the top-choice defender for Matchweek 13. He’s made Manchester City’s left-back position his own recently, making three attacking returns from his last four starts (plus nine shots in the last five Matchweeks, the most of any defender), and was rested – along with most of Pep Guardiola’s seemingly first-choice crew – during the midweek Champions League defeat to Bayer Leverkusen. This also helps City have the best clean sheet chance of the Gameweek, with opponents Leeds being quite lackluster in front of goal away from home, scoring just four goals (three of which came against last-placed Wolves).

Continuing our theme of attack-minded defenders, Matty Cash (£4.6m) is Aston Villa’s highest scoring Fantasy asset. The ever-present right-back Unai Emery has scored two goals and picked up five bonus points this season in addition to his four clean sheets (two of them in his last two home games); those are all tallies he has a big chance of adding to given Wolves’ struggles on both ends of the pitch. In terms of his basic statistics, Cash has attempted the second most shots of any defender over the last six Matchweeks, created 10 chances for his teammates this season and completed 51 crosses, the fifth most among FPL defenders.

Brentford center back Sepp van den Berg (£4.5m) earned the final spot as our main defender. The budget-friendly Dutchman has registered 12 DefCon points in the opening 12 Gameweeks, is the only defender with three or more big chances yet to score, and is the biggest xG underachiever at the position (-1.50).