Our resident FPL expert looks at whether two promising assets - Pedro Porro and Dominic Solanke - will start this weekend against Brentford.
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The new Fantasy Premier League season is just two days away, and millions of managers around the globe are putting the finishing touches to their starting team – but their lives are being made more difficult by the fact that quite a few popular FPL players are at risk of missing matches early on, with Pedro Porro and Dominic Solanke among them.
Porro is among the most widely-selected defenders in the game at this early stage, with 22.8% ownership, while Solanke is priced to move at just £6.0m up front. But will either start Tottenham Hotspur’s opening game of the season against Brentford this weekend?
Will Pedro Porro start against Brentford?
There are only two defenders who are currently in more Fantasy Premier League teams than Pedro Porro – Gabriel Magalhães and Riccardo Calafiori. An awful lot of players are keen to roll the dice on the World Cup winner.
There’s plenty of good reason for that. When I was scouring the price lists for must-buys shortly after the game released a few weeks ago, I picked out Porro as one of the best assets in the game. He enters the new season in tremendous form and Spurs head coach Roberto De Zerbi made very aggressive used of the Spaniard after taking charge back in April.
As it stands, however, he is a significant minutes risk. After a long (albeit successful) summer, Porro only returned to first-team training last week and wasn’t involved in either of Spurs’ back-to-back friendly games against Hoffenheim over the weekend.
Although the 26-year-old isn’t injured, several reporters who follow Spurs are of the opinion that it’s far more likely that Archie Gray starts at right-back against Brentford on Saturday, with Porro likely to be eased into the action over the first few weeks of the campaign.
From an FPL standpoint, it makes little sense to splash £5.5m on a defender who’s liable to spend a couple of games on the bench. He was in my first draft team, which I went through over the weekend, but now that it looks likely that he’ll play I’ve moved on. I recommend you do the same, although there’s a strong chance that he becomes an excellent purchase in the very near future.
Is Dominic Solanke injured – and should you pick him in the FPL?
When the price lists first came out, I named Dominic Solanke as my early pick for the best budget striker in the FPL. Unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, he’s now wound up with another injury.
Solanke hasn’t played since a warm-up match against Chelsea a fortnight ago after feeling pain in his ankle, and is one of several Spurs players who are doubts for the game against Brentford.
So far, De Zerbi has kept his cards close to his chest when it comes to Solanke’s return date. The former Bournemouth forward could be in the squad on Saturday, but it would be a surprise if he starts, with Richarlison looking far more likely to play up front at the moment.
Perhaps we get some unexpectedly good news from the pre-match press conferences – and it’s possible that the same is true of Porro – but unless De Zerbi explicitly states that Solanke will start I suspect it’s best to leave him out of your teams for now. He still has a very high ceiling for his price point, but I’d earmark him as a player to bring in once he’s back to full fitness.
That also ensures that you don’t sign a player who could end up getting surpassed by a new signing. A striker doesn’t seem to be Spurs’ top priority in the transfer market but they have been linked with a handful of players who could usurp his spot. For now, I’d stick with a safer option like Leeds’ Dominic Calvert-Lewin, and look to bring Solanke in down the line.