Fantasy Watch View: It is time to drop your Tottenham stars, tough run of games ahead
After an unbeaten start to the Premier League season, a second consecutive defeat away at Wolves capped off a truly miserable week for Tottenham and Ange Postecoglou.
Heading into the previous international break, Spurs sat top of the Premier League, unbeaten after eight matches. This time around they find themselves fourth after back-to-back defeats.
Tottenham’s troubles started with a 4-1 defeat at home to Chelsea on Monday 6 November, during which they lost a number of first-team players to injury and suspension, and the week would end with a 2-1 defeat away at Wolves on Saturday 11 November.
With this in mind, we take a look at what changes you should make to your Premier League Fantasy teams.
No room for any Spurs players
In truth, there aren’t many Spurs players worth choosing left to choose from. James Maddison, the club’s second highest-scoring player on the game with 63 total points, is sidelined with injury. Meanwhile, both Cristian Romero (44 points) and Micky van de Ven (43 points), who are among some of the highest-scoring defenders in the game, are unavailable.
Guglielmo Vicario (47 points) and Pedro Porro (45 points) are both in Spurs’ top five highest-scoring players, however, with both van de Ven and Romero unavailable, it is hard to see those two picking up many clean sheet bonuses for the foreseeable future.
The injury/suspension crisis which hit Tottenham during the game against Chelsea would have left many fantasy managers scratching their heads. All of a sudden, Maddison, van de Ven, Romero and Destiny Udogie were all set unavailable, and there was a good chance plenty of people had at least two or three of those stars in their teams.
One player who didn’t need replacing was Son (82 points), the club’s highest-scoring player – although now might be the time to do it. He gained just two points against Wolves in Gameweek 12 and it is hard to see the South Korean bagging as many goals and points without the influence of Maddison pulling the strings behind him.
Tough run
If the club’s struggles weren’t enough of a reason to convince you to replace whatever Tottenham stars you had left, their upcoming run of games certainly will.
Three of their next four matches will see Tottenham host Aston Villa, travel to Manchester City and welcome Newcastle United to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. These are three games which Spurs lost last season.
The visit of Unai Emery’s Villa is ranked as a three out of five on the Premier League Fantasy’s Fixture Difficulty Rating, while the trip to Manchester is as tough as it gets, with a score of five and the clash with Newcastle is rated as a four.
Even with their full-strength team, this is a hard run of games, so with the number of notable absentees the club have, it is hard to see the likes of Son, Vicario or Porro picking up many points in this run.
Time to replace those Spurs stars.
In other Tottenham news, John Wenham believes the club’s finger players missed a big opportunity against Wolves.