It was not the best of the nights for Arne Slot or Liverpool, as the Reds bowed out from the FA Cup at Home Park. Championship’s bottom-placed Plymouth Argyle knocked out the PL leaders in the fourth round of the premier cup competition in the English top-flight, courtesy of Ryan Hardie’s 53rd-minute spot-kick.
Though there are hardly any takeaways for Arne Slot apart from the hard lesson learnt at the cost of FA Cup elimination, there is an interesting aspect to cultivate for fantasy managers, from possibly the biggest shock of this year’s cup ties. It’s none other than the 28-year-old Portuguese forward, Diogo Jota who started the game to forget for the Liverpool faithful.
It has been a while since the Portugal international last donned a Liverpool shirt on the pitch and we suggested letting go of him in FPL back in January. Liverpool were in great form and good shape but Jota was forced to the sidelines with a muscle injury. It was the second blow for the Liverpool attacker in the Fantasy Premier League 2024-25, having missed the entire action between GW8 and GW15 due to a chest issue.
Diogo Jota took just 22 seconds to decide the fate of the match against Nottingham Forest and then had to sit out against Brentford, Ipswich, and Bournemouth, where Arne Slot’s men scored 8 goals in total. Jota didn’t register any attacking return against Plymouth Argyle but came very close to scoring in the dying minutes of the game, when the opposition keeper Hazard thwarted his last-ditch effort to create history for the Championship side.
When fit, Jota has been favoured as the Liverpool no.9 by Slot. He has 5 goals and 3 assists from 7 starts in this season’s PL, having an enviable xG of 0.71 per 90’. With Liverpool awaiting another double gameweek in GW25 before locking horns with Everton in the Merseyside derby, this seems to be a nice entry point for Diogo Jota in fantasy football.
Meanwhile, Jota gives you a high-ceiling as he is registered as a midfielder in FPL but mostly plays out-of-position as a striker and there’s also room for clean sheet points. In a nutshell, a great fantasy asset with a £7.2m-price-tag and a superb differential ownership of just 2.5%.
