Verdict

  • GW8

Tavernier or Mbeumo to replace Saka

Saka was out. The 50/50 was how to spend the money: Bournemouth's set-piece taker with fixtures and cash to spare, or United's 90-minute man.

Published · Updated with result

Flipped live on FPL Shrine on 23 October, before the GW8 deadline (Friday 23 October, 18:30 UK time). One flip, recorded, never re-rolled.

Saka pulled up after ten minutes in Munich on Wednesday night, with nobody near him. Arteta said afterwards it "doesn't look good at all", and on Friday he confirmed Saka would miss Everton, with another scan to come: "We will know tomorrow." FPL now lists him at 0% with no return date. We went into GW8 with five free transfers, so selling him was the easy part. With three Chelsea players already, Palmer, the move most Saka owners were looking at, wasn't open to us. So it came down to two midfielders at very different prices.

Flip 1 · TransferTavernier or Mbeumo?

The dilemma

Saka out, and either Tavernier (Bournemouth, £6.2m) or Mbeumo (Man Utd, £7.9m) in. We were also upgrading Kinsky to Raya, so after the goalkeeper we had £8.9m to spend on the midfielder: £2.7m left over with Tavernier, £1.0m with Mbeumo. They meet at Old Trafford on Sunday, so GW8 is a straight head-to-head as well as the start of a long-term call.

The case for Tavernier

  • 42 points (6.0 per game) from four goals, and 10 bonus points, twice as many as Mbeumo.
  • Returns in four of seven games: 10, 10, 8 and 10.
  • First on Bournemouth's corners and free kicks.
  • £1.7m cheaper, which leaves money for the next upgrade.
  • The kinder run: after United away, it's Leeds (H), Ipswich (A), Forest (H) and Fulham (A).
  • The most-bought player of the week, but still in only about one team in ten.

The case for Mbeumo

  • 90 minutes in every game this season. Tavernier has been subbed off in every game since GW3, between the 72nd and 88th minute.
  • The better underlying numbers: 0.70 expected goal involvements (xGI) per 90 minutes to Tavernier's 0.63, and four goals and an assist.
  • Expected to lead the line with Sesko out with a shin problem, and second on United's penalties.
  • Bournemouth at home first. After that: Chelsea (A), Aston Villa (H), Liverpool (A) and Brentford (H).

Why it was genuinely 50/50

One has the fixtures and the cash, the other has the minutes. Tavernier's run is the better one, but Bournemouth play Villa in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday, and Rose hinted at rotation: "If you do it and maybe you don't play on Sunday, then you play on Wednesday." Kroupi is also back for "some minutes", and Bournemouth's penalties are being shared: Kluivert and Tavernier both scored one in Europe this week. Mbeumo has none of those worries but costs £1.7m more and faces two of the hardest away trips in the next four. FPL Focal, who was also replacing Saka, weighed up Gibbs-White against Mbeumo and went with Mbeumo, but Tavernier wasn't in his shortlist at that money. We couldn't separate them.

The flip

  • Mbeumo Man Utd v Bournemouth (H)
  • Coin's pick Tavernier Bournemouth at Man Utd (A)

The coin said Tavernier

The live flip for Saka's replacement, Mbeumo or Tavernier, recorded on FPL Shrine on 23 October. No sound. The coin lands on B and the result reads "Bring in Marcus Tavernier".

See this flip on FPL Shrine

What happened

The coin's pick and the one it turned down met at Old Trafford on Sunday, and Bournemouth won 3–0. Tavernier scored, kept a clean sheet and picked up 2 bonus points: 10 points in 86 minutes, all of them in our starting XI. Mbeumo played the full 90 up front and got 2.

GameweekTavernier (coin's pick)Mbeumo
GW8102
GW931
Total so far133

This one was a call for the day and for the long term. The two played each other in GW8 and Tavernier went straight into our XI, so the week counts as a head-to-head. It's also a squad move, so we'll keep updating the running total as the season goes on.

The verdict Right

10 points to 2 on the day, from the player who cost £1.7m less. The long-term part is still to play out: 13 to 3 after GW9.

What we didn't flip

The coin is for genuine 50/50s, so it stayed in our pocket for these:

  • Captain: Haaland. A foot knock had made him a doubt early in the week, but he was rested for City's Champions League game and Maresca called him "the only one 100 percent available". Eight goals in seven starts, on penalties, and in three in four teams. João Pedro at home to Spurs was the other real option, and some creators went that way, but with Haaland fit it wasn't close enough to flip. Haaland scored in City's 2–1 defeat at Villa for 8 points (16 as captain). João Pedro missed the game injured.
  • Kinsky to Raya. Selling Saka freed an Arsenal place, and Raya has four clean sheets and Everton at home. It also ended a clash: Kinsky's Spurs went to Chelsea, where a Kinsky clean sheet would mean a blank for Palmer, Rogers and João Pedro. (It closed the coin's GW4 call to keep Kinsky over Verbruggen, too: 14 points to 29 over GW4 to GW7.) Then the clash went the wrong way. Spurs won 2–0 at Stamford Bridge, and Kinsky kept a clean sheet for 9 points. Raya kept one too, against Everton, for 7. Our Chelsea trio managed 0 between them: Palmer was sent off (−1), Rogers got 1 and João Pedro didn't play.
  • No new defender. We'd been weighing up N.Williams for Van Hecke or Muharemović. Leeds had players missing, so we kept N.Williams and rolled three free transfers into GW9. Leeds kept a clean sheet at Sunderland anyway, and Muharemović got 9. Van Hecke got 7, and N.Williams 8.
  • N.Williams starts, Barry to the bench. Everton went to Arsenal, the joint-best defence in the league, so we switched to four at the back, with N.Williams at Ipswich. He scored in a 1–1 draw for 8 points. Barry got 2 as Arsenal won 2–0.

What some well-known managers did

Four of the five own Mbeumo, and none of them own Tavernier. Four captained Haaland as we did. Let's Talk FPL went with Palmer, who was sent off, so the armband was worth −2.

ManagerCaptainOwned MbeumoGW8 points
FPL MateHaalandYes52
PrasHaalandNo47
FPL FocalHaalandYes45
Ben CrellinHaalandYes43
Let's Talk FPLPalmerYes42

From public FPL team data. Links open X in a new tab. These managers have no connection with FPL Shrine and are mentioned for comparison only.

GW8 in summary

  • 58Our GW8 points
  • 45FPL average
  • 61,725Our overall rank

A low-scoring week for everyone, and a good one for us: 13 above the average, and our rank went from 122,358 to 61,725. Konsa's goal and clean sheet (14), Haaland's 16 as captain and Tavernier's 10 did the heavy lifting, while Palmer's red card and the Kinsky clean sheet stung. João Pedro's injury brought on an auto-sub for 1 point. After eight gameweeks we've scored 577 against an FPL average of 461.

The Coin's record

  • 2Right
  • 5Wrong
  • 1Level
  • 5Long-term calls

After GW8. This week's flip was a straight head-to-head on the day, so it counts as right, and we'll keep tracking its running total as a squad move. A head-to-head flip counts as right if the coin's pick outscored the other option, wrong if not, and level if they tied. Long-term calls (chip timing, and squad moves where the new player didn't go straight into our team) play out over weeks, so we report what they've returned but leave them out of the right-or-wrong count. GW1 to GW5 were flipped pre-launch. See every Verdict.

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