Fantasy football tips for gameweek 23: Captaincy conundrum with Mohamed Salah still absent

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Alistair Bruce-Ball

Let's start with the captaincy for gameweek 23, and with Mohamed Salah still absent for Liverpool it's far from a straightforward choice.

At the moment, it's still a single gameweek - though there has been some discussion within the fantasy football community that Aston Villa could potentially double up, either with a home game against Burnley or a trip to Leeds to add to their scheduled fixture at Everton.

As I've previously mentioned, @BenCrellin is the man to follow on Twitter to keep you up to date with all the news on that front, with this week's Fantasy Premier League deadline at 18:30 GMT on Friday.

If it happens, it would make Aston Villa, Leeds and Burnley players potential captaincy options for us, particularly with Leeds at home to Newcastle in their first game.

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Raphinha is the obvious choice there - still superb value at just £6.5m and having provided attacking returns in seven of his past 10 appearances. He could easily have trebled his tally of six points in the 3-2 win at West Ham in gameweek 22 - he rattled the crossbar with one free-kick and would have had the assist for a Mateusz Klich goal had the ball not unfortunately hit Rodrigo in an offside position on the way in.

He's already owned by 15% of managers in the game so the differential choice would be hat-trick hero Jack Harrison at £5.5m and just 1.2% ownership - he's been pretty quiet until now but don't forget he was a star performer last season with eight goals and 10 assists. If Leeds are genuinely rediscovering their form, he could be a great signing.

It will also be worth listening to what Marcelo Bielsa has to say about the fitness of Patrick Bamford, who will hopefully be returning to first-team action very soon.

As for the Aston Villa assets, new signings Lucas Digne (£5m) and Philippe Coutinho (£7m) look really exciting and both are already proven Premier League performers. If you do want to wait a little bit longer to see how they both settle in, there's plenty of other good options in that squad with the likes of Matty Cash (£5.1m), form man Jacob Ramsey at the bargain price of £4.6m, and Ollie Watkins (£7.7m), who would be the best captaincy choice if you're thinking along those lines.

I'm not ignoring the Burnley players if they get the double gameweek, and at some point we'll probably all have at least one of them in our squads because they've got so many games to catch up on, but I'd steer away from them for captaincy.

If it's not a double gameweek for any of those teams, or if we don't get confirmation of it before the deadline, then our thoughts naturally turn to Manchester City and Liverpool to provide us with a captain as the freest-scoring and meanest defensive teams in the division.

Statman Dave brought Kevin de Bruyne (£12.1m) in last week to replace Salah for this very reason, and gives a very compelling argument in the latest Fantasy 606 podcast as to why he's the man to captain at Southampton in gameweek 23.

He's started the past six games for City and scored four goals but the most eye-catching stat according to Dave is his "expected assists", which is way above the one actual assist he's provided this season. The underlying numbers are good, so Dave says it's only a matter of time before the points start rolling in.

If you don't have the money for De Bruyne then I'd definitely point you in the direction of Phil Foden (£8m), although he is more susceptible at the moment to 'Pep roulette', or Raheem Sterling (£10.7m), who didn't manage an attacking return against Arsenal or Chelsea recently but racked up 56 points in his seven previous appearances and looks back to his sharpest.

The Liverpool choices are less obvious in the absence of Salah, and I'd actually favour Trent Alexander-Arnold or Andrew Robertson over Diogo Jota. They've both out-performed him on average over the past six weeks, but it's the riskier option because you're really banking on Liverpool keeping the clean sheet at Crystal Palace to add to their potential attacking returns.

I got lucky with my choice of Bruno Fernandes as captain in gameweek 22 but I won't be giving him the armband again at home to West Ham. Cristiano Ronaldo always comes into the equation, as does Harry Kane with his improved form, even though Tottenham are away at Chelsea.

Finally, I know Chris Sutton won't like me saying this, but Joshua King or Emmanuel Dennis could be worth a differential dabble at home to his beloved Norwich. The choice is yours.

Alistair Bruce-Ball presents the Fantasy 606 podcast alongside former Premier League winner Chris Sutton and Statman Dave. The latest episode is available now on BBC Sounds - just search for the 606 feed and click subscribe.

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