Kolo Toure's injury will come as a blow to around a quarter of a million managers in Fantasy Premier League, including our own team. At £5m he proved a super way into Liverpool's accomplished defence.
He's rated on FPL with a 50% chance of playing in GW3 versus Manchester United. The sounds coming from Liverpool are a little more ominous and we think it extremely likely he'll miss the weekend's game.
We've heard people are starting to take 4 point hits to replace him, having already used their first transfer of the week. With another of our defender's Luke Shaw still struggling with his pre-season knee injury we may even end up having to field Hull defender James Chester versus Man City.
We are in no way contemplating a 4 pit hit to replace Toure at this point and here's why.
- Toure is still 50/50 for the weekend. But he's not out for the season and there's the international break for him to recover. We might not have played him anyway against Man Utd for GW3 and in GW4 Liverpool visit Swansea.
- His price is safe. He's received 20,000+ transfers in already this season so his price is buoyant enough for the a week or two at least.
- We have useful bench players in Shaw or Chester to step up and this is what they are for. You never know what will happen in any single game. Both Hull and Southampton have shown they can defend already this season so picking up a point or two from either this weekend is not a great stretch of the imagination.
- Most importantly, 4 point hits rarely pay off, especially for defenders. On average a defender like Toure will score 4 points-per-game (PPG), players like Shaw and Chester more like 3 PPG. Elite players score 6-7 PPG and point hits should be pretty much reserved for elite players and captain options where fielding a cheap sub instead of your injured £10m striker makes a big difference to you potential points.
If the prognosis on Toure's injury looks like he'll be out beyond GW5 we'll probably have to use a transfer. Until then though we can sit tight, keep an eye on the physio reports, and trust that our squad can cope with what, at the end of the day, is not an injury to a vital component of our team.
