Why we don't have Salah and we hope he hauls

FPL is a zero-sum game. For the first time in my >20 years as a player, doing well is less about making good picks, but about avoiding the mainstream poor performers picked by an extremely large portion of the FPL community.

Looking at the four public fallacies we highlighted at the start, i.e. our "reverse-differentials":

• Finished harvesting - Our early call (and therefore advantage) that Nottingham Forest defence will underperform is "largely harvested". Almost everyone I know has moved on from their double Notts defenders setup, especially given Ange's takeover.
• Finished harvesting - we were against Everton's defence at the start of the season and got mixed results - Everton is clearly a stronger package than people expected but only secured 1 clean sheet from 3 games; the goals conceded were to easier opponents Leeds/Wolves! So we largely benefited.
  We think it's possible Everton will continue to lack clean sheets for the next few matches as there's a tricky angle to all of the opponents (a desperate Aston Villa; derby with league champions Liverpool; a possibly resurgent West Ham, Community Shield and FA cup holders Crystal Palace, Man City; and Tottenham!). But we won't bet against Everton nor will we bet for 'em.
• Mid-harvesting - In contrast, our call that Fernandes will disappoint is at a "Goldilocks level" in the sense that we can keep on harvesting. His extremely last-minute penalty against Burnley got him 10 points, with several arguing out that he is a good pick for defensive contributions. No one is pointing out that without the last-gasp penalty, he otherwise would have gotten 3 straight blanks at a 9.0 price tag - similar to Watkins! We think Manchester Utd is not a bad attacking team; we just think Mbeumo (8.0) is simply sense. We don't mind if Fernandes re-issues Hopium to his believers now and then to keep the harvesting going.
• Key edge - our bet that Salah is overpriced, especially versus his peers, is going strong. He technically gave returns in two of 3 games (3, 5, 8) but he's not worth 14.5. He is not supported by the stats, and his teammates are better picks. If Salah hauling against Burnley is necessary for more than half of the FPL community to continue holding him (54.3), including to re-own him in a wildcard, I will happily take that bet. These owners will be less able to have quality players in other parts of their team (Haaland, Joao Pedro, Semenyo, quality defenders) so we are talking about not just captain blanks in subsequent weeks but an ailing 30-40% of the team overall.

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