Going into gameweek 2 Liverpool are top of the table after their 4-0 trashing of West Ham in gameweek 1. This gameweek there will be a Monday-clash between highly owned Liverpool attackers and Crystal Palace’s high scoring defenders from first gameweek. The most “transferred in” players after gameweek 1 are Neves, Wan-bissaka, Mendy and Mane who all have also gone up in price. On Wednesday big fantasy news arrived when reports said that Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne had suffered a knee injury in training and that he could miss up to three months. I’m sure he was on many FPL players “one to buy” list and for those (27000 players) who already had transferred him in this week in it wasn’t the best of news.
Games in gameweek 2 are:
Chelsea-Arsenal
The “biggest “ game of the weekend is a London-derby between Chelsea and Arsenal.There will be a lot of prestige in the air on Saturday evening when the two new London managers Maurizio Sarri and Unai Emery goes head to head at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea got a good start to season with a 3-0 win at Huddersfield, while Arsenal's Premier League campaign begun with a 2-0 home defeat against Manchester City. Playing and losing against City though, may not tell us so much about Arsenal’s real ability. Also Chelsea had the same treatment from City two weeks ago.
It feels like both teams here could live with a draw but however, it will be Sarri’s first home Premier League game at Stamford Bridge and for sure he will try to give his home fans a win and some fluent attacking football. On the other hand Emery will not want to be beaten in the capital for second game in a row. It could well be an entertaining game to watch.
Possible starting lineups:
Chelsea XI: Kepa, Azpilicueta, Rudiger, Luiz, Alonso, Jorginho, Kante, Barkley, Willian, Pedro, Hazard
Arsenal XI: Leno, Bellerin, Sokratis, Mustafi, Lichtsteiner, Torreira, Xhaka, Mkhitaryan, Ramsey, Ozil, Aubameyang
Spurs-Fulham
Tottenham will play their first home game of the season at Wembley on Saturday in another London derby, against Fulham. Tottenham are waiting for their new stadium to be finished and have already been forced to delay opening of new stadium until end of October after some issues with “critical safety systems”.
It hasn’t been the easiest of pre-seasons for Spurs when they had more players than any other Premier League club playing in final stages of the World Cup. In their 2-1 win over Newcastle last weekend Pochettino gambled and played five players that had only one week or less of training with the team. The gamble paid off and two semifinalists from the World cup, Dele Alli and Jan Vertonghen, where on the scoresheet in their victory.
Fulham on the other hand had some kind of reality check in their opening 2-0 home defeat against Crystal Palace. After spending around £100 million in the summer transfer window there are quite high expectations on the team. A new loss here and the pressure on their shoulders will start to grow.
Possible starting lineups:
Tottenham XI: Lloris, Trippier, Sanchez, Vertonghen, Davies, Dembele, Amos, Moura, Eriksen, Alli, Kane
Fulham XI: Fabri, Christie, Chambers, Le Marchand, Bryan, Cairney, Anguissa, Seri, Schurrle, Mitrovic, Sessegnon
Crystal Palace-Liverpool
Then to the interesting Monday-night game between two winning teams from first gameweek.
After Liverpool’s convincing 4-0 win over West-Ham ( a team that looked really poor) last weekend many sees them as real contenders for the title this season. Palace, meanwhile, took a stable 2-0 win against Fulham at Craven Cottage and Roy Hodgson will be hoping to get a second win in a row against his former club. But it will be a tough task. I find it hard to believe Liverpool’s incredible forward trio of Mo Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino will leave the Selhurst Park pitch without goals but on the other hand Palace got their own big attacking weapon in Wilfried Zaha who earlier this week committed himself to Palace until end of the 2022-23 season.
Both teams are likely to name unchanged teams from their wins in gameweek 1 although both Jordan Henderson and new signing Fabinho could start in Liverpool’s three man midfield. It won’t be easy for Klopp to drop any of James Milner, Keita or Georginio Wijnaldum after their great performances last Sunday.
Interesting facts about the game:
The last time these teams met on a Monday in the Premier League was in May 2014 when Crystal Palace were 3-0 down after 78 minutes and rescued a 3-3 draw.
The “Crystanbul classic” can bee seen on youtube:
Palace have won their last three PL matches at Selhurst Park and can secure four home PL wins in a row for the first time in the competition.
Wilfried Zaha needs one more goal to become Palace's all-time highest PL goalscorer. He is level on 23 with Chris Armstrong.
Sadio Mane has scored five goals in his seven PL appearances against Palace, more than against any other side.
Possible starting lineups:
Palace XI: Hennessey, Wan-Bissaka, Sakho, Tomkins, van Aanholt, Milivojevic, Schlupp, Kouyate, Townsend, Benteke, Zaha
Liverpool XI: Alisson, Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson, Milner, Keita, Wijnaldum, Salah, Firmino, Mane
Steem-pick
Jamie “always scoring” Vardy (£9.0m) is my “steem pick” for gameweek 2...and onwards (good looking fixtures). The Leicester City striker scored in his first game of the season against Man Utd though he played for only 30 minutes. And it feels like he always scores against big teams and this is the only reason I can see for him not scoring this weekend. Leicester impressed me in their opening game and now they play Wolves who’s defence looked quite shaky against a 10-man Everton.
Last season Vardy scored 20 goals in 18 different games so he’s consistent but not so explosive. I can’t promise you a double-digit score but if you‘re okey with a goal an mabey 8p from a player with low ownership (8% ) Vardy may be your man.
Last but not last I have really good news for many of you in the steem fantasy league. Somewhere I found stats saying that in the two last seasons of FPL, the winners of the game achieved an overall points score of 2512 (17/18) and 2564 (16/17 season). There are 38 gameweeks in the season meaning that it required an average weekly score of 66.11 and 67.47 to win the game in these FPL seasons. This means that top 45 i our league are heading towards the champion of FPL? Am I right?
Please let us know your steem-pick for gameweek 2!
This Review was written by 
, follow him for more Premier league content.
This Tournament is sponsored by 
, check out blocktrades.us for easy and fast crypto exchange and consider voting him for witness!
