Earlier in the week we posted about our updated Point Projections. The above team is the projected best XI for GW8 determined simply by sorting the Projections table by GW8 and bringing the players in accordingly.
We did stick to the unspoken rules of doing a team of the week like this, and that is only picking a single player from any team's attack or defence in order to broaden the picks. If we hadn't you would have seen Cech, Ivanovic, Giroud/Bony and Ramsey in the team instead of Begovic, Baines, Remy and Hazard.
The projections are entirely determined by underlying stats. Basically we've combined our Player Ratings with the Fixture Analyser.
It looks a pretty good team, yeah? The big omission is one of either or Rooney or Van Persie and this is for one reason really - Southampton's strength in defence - which has seen them concede just twice so far this season and sitting 2nd in our defensive rankings (behind Chelsea). Rooney and Van Persie have near identical projected scores and one of them (Rooney) would be next in line for this team after Remy.
As you can also see, it's Lukaku who has the highest overall points forecast for Everton's home game with Hull and wears the statistical armband. More about him (and Michu) in our final post of the week when we look at the Captain Picks for GW8.
