GW9 was a crazy gameweek, with a lot of FPL managers planning to captain Lukaku (including me), before he picked up an injury and because of which captaincy pick became a differential option. There was no standout pick per say and a successful differential captain could have been a great rank booster. And so the FPL managers who captained Foden, Mount must have experienced. Because of my average start to the season, and my OR lurking around 1.5M and I went with safe pick in Salah, even though he was up against Manchester United, I usually don’t captain against United, but I didn’t let my club loyalties get in the way of FPL captaincy choice this time. It sort of worked out with my OR improving to 1.3M, now moving towards sub 1M.

As for the transfers I had 2 major issues that I needed to deal with, Adam Armstrong being relegated to Southampton’s bench and Romelu Lukaku’s injury. Before Rom got injured I was considering options to replace Adam Armstrong, but eventually replaced Lukaku with Jesus and got in Havertz to keep Chelsea attacking presence in my team. I heavily contemplated getting Chillwell and Auba in instead, well my hindsight would have made for a great FPL Manager, but sadly it doesn’t work like that.

As I get to selecting my team for GW10, there are a lot of players who are either flagged because of injury concerns or are expected to be resigned to bench for their respective teams.

As part of my current preferred XI, Raphinha and Mbuemo are flagged because of injury concerns but both their managers have come out with positive injury updates with Raph closer to starting the game than Mbuemo, I might risk keeping both in the starting XI. The biggest challenge is that none of my bench is expected to get game time, so I might end up with 10 or 9 players for the GW.

I was hoping Broja would be fit for the GW and I could get him in Armstrong as a single change, but with him out of the game against Watford, my options are restricted to Pukki, Hwang and King. I am not too keen on either, and might just take a chance that Armstrong will get some minutes with Broja out.

The other big conundrum in my mind is if shipping Ronaldo out of my team is the best option, he has blanked for last 4 GWs and for a 12.5M FPL player (12.4M now!), it just doesn’t cut it and Kane could be a great differential punt for this GW, but I have a feeling (or rather hoping) that United will bounce back against Spurs, Ole will set up the team to not concede. Also with Spurs’ fixtures turning after the International Break, I could use Ronaldo funds to get Son.

So it looks like I will not be making any changes to my team this GW and play the waiting game, hope my differentials from last week, Kai and Jesus, can work their magic and grab a few points.

As with regard to the captaincy pick, it is not even a debate, Salah’s current form puts him in World’s Best category and even though Bissouma might be back, I still think Salah is the best choice, given his high ownership and high captaincy picks.

Differential picks for GW10

Nathan Redmond (0.3%) – Part of the front 2 against one of the leakiest defence in the last 5 GWs and only 0.3% owned. Sounds too good to be true, but Redmond in addition to this, also has 2 assists in the last 2 GWs, got rested for the EFL cup and should be raring to grab a haul against Watford. If I could get him without taking a -4, I would have.

Jarrod Bowen (1.3%) – Bowen has gone somewhat unnoticed amongst the hype of Benrahma and Antonio, but he has accumulated a goal and 3 assists in last 5 GWs and West Ham are playing against Aston Villa who have an xGA of ~2 per 90 minutes.

Raul Jiminez (7.5%) – Jiminez hasn’t looked his old self so far this season, but Wolves seem to settling into a rhythm now and this could bring the best out of Jiminez. Everton are not the strongest defence in the league at the moment and Hwang and Jiminex could trouble them.

Sadio Mane (3.6%) – Well Sadio is only a differential because he is in the same team as Salah. I can’t fathom that he is only 3.6% owned, many FPL managers were looking to get the threemium early in the season, with Lukaku out and Ronaldo not in the best form, Mane could be a way to go along with Salah, specially since he was benched against United and would be raring to go.

Best of luck for GW10, green arrows everyone!