William Saliba, who stands like a rock at the heart of the Arsenal defence, rarely misses a match. He has been a regular feature in the defensive third of the Gunners, pairing up with teammate Gabriel. Till GW21, he missed just the Liverpool match back in October, due to a red card received in the Bournemouth clash prior to it.
However, he was forced to sit out against Aston Villa in the home tie last weekend. Later on, head coach Mikel Arteta cleared the air of confusion around Saliba’s absence: “He felt something before the match, something muscular. I don’t think it’s too much, but he could not train yesterday. He wasn’t feeling good enough to play so we have to assess the situation.”
It has been further revealed that he was not dealing with any particular discomfort after the midweek fixture against Spurs. In Arteta’s own words, “No, no, hopefully not (too serious), he wasn’t feeling good after the game (against Tottenham on Wednesday). We have to do further tests to understand what he’s got.”
It seems that Saliba is now knocked out from at least the upcoming GW23. He had a mouth-watering fixture against Wolves. And after the City hurdle in GW24, Saliba was supposed to be up against Leicester City and West Ham in the following two gameweeks. Both of them can be considered as pretty easy fixtures, at least on paper.
Saliba, who costs you £6.2m, has started all the twenty games in which he has featured. Having earned seven clean sheets and scored two goals, his points tally in FPL currently stands at 76.
He is owned by more than 26% of the teams at the moment. Even if he goes on to miss the next two games, he should be one of the favourite choices to bag home clean sheet points in the following two plum fixtures.
Therefore, if you have enough defensive cover in your team and no other fire to take care of, then you may well hold him for the time being. And in case you want to offload him before GW23, there’s an instant fix —
Andrew Robertson(£5.9m)
Liverpool will be pouncing on a dismal Ipswich Town yet to recover from the 0-6 thrashing at the hands of City, in GW23. Slot’s men will then enter the first double gameweek of the season, where Bournemouth and Everton await them. And they face Wolves in the following gameweek.
Liverpool’s defense looks solid and there’s a huge potential to secure a couple of clean sheets in this time period. Robertson, who doesn’t have any goal or assists under his name in Fantasy Premier League, 2024-25, is an FPL veteran and a seasoned customer in PL.
He has seven clean sheets in this campaign and might come up with attacking returns against these struggling sides. And some flashes of brilliance can evoke moments of nostalgia, as the Scotland international used to be a template pick once.
To make things sweeter for you, he costs way less than TAA and considerably less than VVD. And it would be wise to pick him up instead of Konate, because of his serious attacking threat courtesy of the constant overlapping runs through the left channel.
