With Double Gameweek 25 (DGW25) for Liverpool upcoming, Fantasy Premier League managers are stacking up on Liverpool’s assets alongside Manchester City, Brentford, Luton Town and Bournemouth. While City’s assets would be highly in-demand owing to multiple factors from the coming back of Erling Haaland and Kevin de Bruyne to the fixtures at hand and more importantly their records in the second half of the season. But we are not here to talk from the Blues from Manchester, we are here to take a brief look at Liverpool assets and chat about the ones you can target in your FPL squad;
We will walk through a few in-demand players severally and discuss their potential in the upcoming gameweeks.
Mo Salah
Let’s start with the Egyptian messiah, Mohamed Salah Hamed Mahrous Ghaly. Salah is one of those names you cannot keep out of your FPL squad, albeit there are some fitness concerns going into the double gameweek. He picked up an hamstring injury away with Egypt in AFCONs and had to pre-maturely return back to Merseyside. Although there have been pictures of him training and working out in the gym, there still stands a bit of haze over whether he will be fit & available. Although the matchday squad for GW24 should give us ample of information on this.
If he is fit and nailed to start, he could potentially be a triple-captain as well. Salah has put up some tremendous numbers this season with 14 goals and 8 assists backed up by an underlying xG of 13.8 and xA of 5.8. These are some serious numbers.
He did suffer an hamstring injury, as stated earlier, that means Jurgen Klopp & Liverpool will have to monitor his comeback to prevent the recurrence of the injury – as we have seen with countless players time & time again. Kevin de Bruyne would be seen as a popular alternative to Mo Salah given how the Belgian has fared recently.
Diogo Jota
With 19.9 expected points over the next three fixtures (Burnley, Brentford, and Luton Town) by Draft Hound – the Portuguese has the highest xPoints for any Liverpool assets in the period. He has already been transferred by over 200,000 FPL managers at the time of writing which just seconds his popularity. He had a run-in of 40 points in 4 games before blanking against Arsenal, and if you are pondering it with Darwin Nunez in an either or contest, the following are the factors you might want to consider:
- Let’s get basic discussions out of the way first, Jota being a midfielder on FPL while Nunez a forward can prove to be one of those small details leaning towards the Portuguese if you feel both of them will score. It’s an extra point for a goal and one for cleansheet.
- Salah, if he returns earlier than expected as we are expecting him to, Jota’s playing time could prove to be more vulnerable when you compare that to Darwin’s. And Salah alongside Nunez has always been the case since the start of the season. Moreover, the Uruguayan has had his share of rest against Arsenal with his foot injury, so that could mean he is likely to get more minutes than Jota over the next few matches. A lot of this depends on Salah’s availability though.
Liverpool have performed phenomenally with Jota, and if Klopp would prioritize resting Salah and going through with Diogo Jota we can bag for him for the Double GW (essentially we would be aiming for 3 starts in next three).
Darwin Nunez
If Salah is not available, he is at the top of the list for me. Darwin Nunez has been getting into good positions lately and it just seems like a big pointer game would be around the corner for him. Against a weak Burnley side following a rest, having him is almost like a punter… if he gets going you can get big results, only if though.
With Darwin, his expected stats per 90 for the ongoing season (Gameweek 1 to Gameweek 23) has been better than Jota on almost all fronts. He also has a big chance involvement of 2.30 per 90 this season, so he just needs to finish one and more should follow. Moreover, if we do a basic fbref search and compare – Darwin has an npxG of 0.69 while Diogo Jota has an npxG of 0.35, so essentially the Uruguayan has almost the double of expected goals (non-penalty) then Jota which is a massive difference. To put that into context, Darwin gets double the amount of chances than Jota and I would like to have someone who has that probability of getting into the game more.