Murray in mint condition to soothe Cherry Drop fears
This week’s Mondogoal English Premier League Shootout contest consists of 6 matches with £10k up for grabs in prize money for just a £3 entry fee. If you place in the top 20% you will guarantee a 66.66% Return on Investment.
If you’re familiar with our Selecting Defenders section you will know that we like to look for defenders who are picking up points on a consistent basis for regular facets of the game such as tackles won, fouls won, minutes played, interceptions and passes completed. We rank all defenders in a contest by this criteria then factor in the difficulty of the fixture before making our final choices. Jordan Amavi, Ciaran Clark and Simon Francis all figure prominently for consistency and with Aston Villa and Bournemouth both having favourable looking home fixtures this weekend we are happy to include them in our 3 man defence. Brad Guzan has been producing plenty of saves and is selected between the sticks in the hope that Villa can keep Stoke out to give us a real springboard from which to build on.
Manchester City will be looking to bounce back from last week’s collapse against Spurs and will surely put a poor injury-ravaged Newcastle side to the sword here. Sergio Agüero hasn’t quite hit top gear yet but should get plenty of chances this weekend while Kevin de Bruyne has settled in seamlessly. Chelsea have a tricky looking home fixture to contend with against the Saints who have certainly been given plenty of respect by the bookmakers but Eden Hazard, last season’s best performing player, is affordable and is included along with team-mate Pedro. Wes Hoolahan pulls the strings in the Norwich midfield and should be in the thick of the action against a Foxes side that shipped 5 goals at home to Arsenal last week.
With Max Gradel already side-lined for 6 months Bournemouth were dealt another huge injury blow when the news that Callum Wilson will miss a substantial part of the season was confirmed. Martin Laurence produced an intriguing WhoScored article suggesting that Bournemouth would have to adapt their style somewhat to overcome these injury problems and it’s difficult to argue with his conclusions Glenn Murray has plenty of Premier League experience though and could be the man to fill the void. If he can thrive on the ammunition provided by Matt Ritchie, who is just starting to show glimpses of the sensational Championship form that helped propel his side into the big time, he might just help Bournemouth to soothe those Cherry Drop fears!
Here’s our provisional line-up:
