Should we invest in Foden or Mount?

Ryan from Football Chatbox discusses one of the biggest talking points in FPL right now, who should we be moving for in midfield? Phil Foden from Man City or Mason Mount from Chelsea?

Gameweek 9 saw a lot of midfielders performing with 11 midfield players returning double digits compared to 4 defenders and only 2 forwards this week. 

Mason Mount (7.5m) and Mohamed Salah (12.9m) lead the group in terms of the points returns but can we expect these kinds of returns from these players going forward on a consistent basis? We have seen from Salah already that we can rely on him for double digit returns, but what we need to know is if there are other midfielders who can also return double digit returns on a consistent basis and warrant a place in our squad.

In terms of xGI based on the last 4GW’s we can see that five (Mason Mount, Mohamed Salah, Phil Foden, DiogoJota and Youri Tielemans)out of the 15 all returned double digits this gameweek. However, not all 15 on this list have good fixtures upcoming. 

Based on the season ticker for the next five gameweeks there are quite a few players that could be good options. For this article we will be looking at two main players that the community is talking about Foden and Mount.

Phil Foden (8.1m)

When I initially got Phil Foden in my GW8 wildcard it was with a plan to keep him for only 3GW’s and remove him ahead of Fixtures ahead of United, Everton and Westham with PSG also in the middle of those fixtures. However, his performances these last two GW’s along with Ferran Torres out injured for a lengthy period, has allowed Foden to play in that false 9 position and give some really good returns for his managers while also tempting more to get him. However how risky is he as a pick? Last season Foden played 28 games for Manchester City with 11 of those appearances being as coming on as a sub.  Out of those 11 appearances only twice did he get an attacking return (1 goal, 1 assist). 

Out of the 10 times that Foden didn’t play, six times it was because there was a champion’s league game either before or after the Premier league game, once it was because of an EFL cup quarter final against arsenal. The other two times was because of the tight turnaround of Prem fixtures that had a fixture in the middle of the week and a big game at the end (Sheffield – Burnley – Liverpool & Westham – Wolves – Manchester United) Foden ended up missing both Burnley and Wolves.

All of this tells me that Foden is a vital player for Pep with him being an ever-present name in city’s champions league fixtures. While it’s hard to predict Pep and his line-up, for the next 5 gameweeks at least based on history I would expect Foden to get benched against Everton the game before City take on PSG. Which means he will potentially get to play Palace, United, West ham and Aston Villa. Based on his current performances and the recent defensive performances of United and Villa, I am comfortable keeping him during this run and possibly until Christmas. After that we will need to reassess especially with Torres expected to be back after Christmas. 

Mason Mount (7.5m)

Mason Mount isn’t a player anyone would have expected to be scoring a hattrick and neither did he himself expect it as he revealed in his post-match presser. Out of his 54 appearances for Chelsea last season, he only ever had two attacking returns in a game only once against West Brom in GW3 that saw the game end 3-3. 

In his past two seasons in the prem he has only had 13 attacking contributions each season. He is currently on 3 goals and 3 assists this season. While I do expect him to possibly beat his previous seasons tally, I would not expect him to be getting significant attacking returns every week consistently.

For 7.5m he is still a good pick as a Chelsea asset especially with Lukaku and Werner out injured for the moment. However, if you have Havertz (8.1m) I probably won’t be getting rid of Havertz to bring Mount in especially with the next two fixtures of Newcastle and Burnley to come. 

There are, also a few other midfielders that I would keep my eye out for. Son, Mbeumo and Tielemans are all interesting picks with good fixtures upcoming. We also discussed these three players and a few others in more detail on the Football Chatbox Podcast this week.