Fansided

EPL DFS Breakdown – Saturday 8/24/2019

By Vince Dray

EPL DFS: Liverpool forward Sadio Mane celebrates his goal during the Premier League match between Southampton and Liverpool at St Mary's Stadium, Southampton on Saturday 17th August 2019. (Photo by Jon Bromley /MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
EPL DFS: Liverpool forward Sadio Mane celebrates his goal during the Premier League match between Southampton and Liverpool at St Mary's Stadium, Southampton on Saturday 17th August 2019. (Photo by Jon Bromley /MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
5 of 7
Next
EPL DFS
EPL DFS: LONDON, ENGLAND – AUGUST 18: Ricardo Pereira ofLeicester City with Kurt Zouma of Chelsea during the Premier League match between Chelsea and Leicester City at Stamford Bridge on August 18th , 2019 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Plumb Images) /

EPL DFS: Top-Tier Defenders

Trent Alexander-Arnold (Arsenal @ Liverpool, $18) – It’s hard to not favor TAA as my top defender on this slate, even after his 8.6 point game last weekend.  I’m actually hoping that this has the game log watchers looking elsewhere for top defenders.

You all know that Alexander-Arnold is an elite wing-back in the EPL, and I think he’s a great addition to a game stack of the late game.

I’m expecting this game to open up quickly and that is great for TAA’s style.  He’ll get to do some attacking, but he’ll also have to defend as Arsenal will be able to sustain their own attack.  This is a good spot for TAA to bounce back from last week and lower ownership than normal.

Ricardo Pereira (Leicester @ Sheffield United, $16) – Pereira is off to a hot start this year with fantasy games of 18.8 and 20.8 fantasy points.  Both of those games were against top 10 defensive teams in Chelsea and Wolverhampton.  This week, my favorite underrated wing defender gets a plus match-up for the first time this season.

Pereira’s defensive stats (mostly tackles) have been crucial to his fantasy value this season, but last year he did a little more attacking.  That should change this week against Sheffield.  I like Pereira to go 20+ for the second straight week especially with an extra 5 points from a clean sheet in the realm of possibilities.

Sokratis (Arsenal @ Liverpool, $16) – I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to write up Sokratis or Harry McGuire ($16) for the same price.  I landed on Sokratis mainly due to the match-up.

While center defenders like McGuire playing against Crystal Palace often rack up clearances, I could see United controlling that game so much where McGuire doesn’t have much defending to do at all.  In my opinion, Sokratis has a match-up where a dud is less of a risk.

Liverpool almost always wins the possession battle which means opposing defenders spend the majority of the game defending and getting defensive peripherals.

That’s exactly what I’m looking at Sokratis for in this game.  He’s had 5 or more clearances in both games this season, but the downer is that he doesn’t get too many other peripherals.  I’m thinking that he goes for 5+ clearances again with a few other peripherals as well due to the match-up.

Jack O’Connell (Leicester @ Sheffield United, $14) – O’Connell is great evidence for my point above about center defenders loading up on clearances against CP as he had 11 last week.  This is a match-up where O’Connell can repeat that performance.

If he can add in a few other peripherals, we could see another 20+ point game.  Sheffield has only conceded 1 goal so far this year, so if they can continue to defend well, a clean sheet bonus against Leicester is a real possibility.