Steem Fantasy Premier League - Gameweek 2 Review

Going into gameweek 2 Liverpool are top of the table after their 4-0 trashing of West Ham in gameweek 1. This gameweek there will be a Monday-clash between highly owned Liverpool attackers and Crystal Palace’s high scoring defenders from first gameweek. The most “transferred in” players after gameweek 1 are Neves, Wan-bissaka, Mendy and Mane who all have also gone up in price. On Wednesday big fantasy news arrived when reports said that Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne had suffered a knee injury in training and that he could miss up to three months. I’m sure he was on many FPL players “one to buy” list and for those (27000 players) who already had transferred him in this week in it wasn’t the best of news.

Games in gameweek 2 are:

Chelsea-Arsenal

The “biggest “ game of the weekend is a London-derby between Chelsea and Arsenal.There will be a lot of prestige in the air on Saturday evening when the two new London managers Maurizio Sarri and Unai Emery goes head to head at Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea got a good start to season with a 3-0 win at Huddersfield, while Arsenal's Premier League campaign begun with a 2-0 home defeat against Manchester City. Playing and losing against City though, may not tell us so much about Arsenal’s real ability. Also Chelsea had the same treatment from City two weeks ago.

It feels like both teams here could live with a draw but however, it will be Sarri’s first home Premier League game at Stamford Bridge and for sure he will try to give his home fans a win and some fluent attacking football. On the other hand Emery will not want to be beaten in the capital for second game in a row. It could well be an entertaining game to watch.

Possible starting lineups:

Chelsea XI: Kepa, Azpilicueta, Rudiger, Luiz, Alonso, Jorginho, Kante, Barkley, Willian, Pedro, Hazard

Arsenal XI: Leno, Bellerin, Sokratis, Mustafi, Lichtsteiner, Torreira, Xhaka, Mkhitaryan, Ramsey, Ozil, Aubameyang

Spurs-Fulham
Tottenham will play their first home game of the season at Wembley on Saturday in another London derby, against Fulham. Tottenham are waiting for their new stadium to be finished and have already been forced to delay opening of new stadium until end of October after some issues with “critical safety systems”.

It hasn’t been the easiest of pre-seasons for Spurs when they had more players than any other Premier League club playing in final stages of the World Cup. In their 2-1 win over Newcastle last weekend Pochettino gambled and played five players that had only one week or less of training with the team. The gamble paid off and two semifinalists from the World cup, Dele Alli and Jan Vertonghen, where on the scoresheet in their victory.

Fulham on the other hand had some kind of reality check in their opening 2-0 home defeat against Crystal Palace. After spending around £100 million in the summer transfer window there are quite high expectations on the team. A new loss here and the pressure on their shoulders will start to grow.
Possible starting lineups:
Tottenham XI: Lloris, Trippier, Sanchez, Vertonghen, Davies, Dembele, Amos, Moura, Eriksen, Alli, Kane

Fulham XI: Fabri, Christie, Chambers, Le Marchand, Bryan, Cairney, Anguissa, Seri, Schurrle, Mitrovic, Sessegnon

Crystal Palace-Liverpool
Then to the interesting Monday-night game between two winning teams from first gameweek.
After Liverpool’s convincing 4-0 win over West-Ham ( a team that looked really poor) last weekend many sees them as real contenders for the title this season. Palace, meanwhile, took a stable 2-0 win against Fulham at Craven Cottage and Roy Hodgson will be hoping to get a second win in a row against his former club. But it will be a tough task. I find it hard to believe Liverpool’s incredible forward trio of Mo Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino will leave the Selhurst Park pitch without goals but on the other hand Palace got their own big attacking weapon in Wilfried Zaha who earlier this week committed himself to Palace until end of the 2022-23 season.

Both teams are likely to name unchanged teams from their wins in gameweek 1 although both Jordan Henderson and new signing Fabinho could start in Liverpool’s three man midfield. It won’t be easy for Klopp to drop any of James Milner, Keita or Georginio Wijnaldum after their great performances last Sunday.

Interesting facts about the game:
The last time these teams met on a Monday in the Premier League was in May 2014 when Crystal Palace were 3-0 down after 78 minutes and rescued a 3-3 draw.
The “Crystanbul classic” can bee seen on youtube: