Bart Verbruggen, Brighton, keeper, £4.5m – Burnley (h)
Brighton don’t keep a host of clean sheets – four in 19 games – but a home match against Burnley is as good a chance as any.
Verbruggen makes a lot of saves too – he has at least one save point in six of his past eight games – and his 11-pointer against Sunderland shows the upside if you do get a clean sheet out of him.
He earned three bonus points and two save points in that match, on top of his clean sheet.
Gabriel, Arsenal, £6.4m – Bournemouth (a)
He’s back and has already gone up in price, so FPL managers will be jumping on the Gabriel bandwagon again.
Clean sheets, huge goal threat, 16 bonus points so far. He’s an easy pick if you have the money.
Malick Thiaw, Newcastle, £5m – Crystal Palace (h)
Palace’s team xG was the fourth best among all teams until flying wing-back Daniel Munoz got injured.
Since then, from gameweek 15, they have been in the bottom 10 and goals have dried up.
Thiaw is Newcastle’s most reliable defender, the only one to have scored this season (twice) and has defensive contribution (defcon) points in five of his 16 starts.
James Tarkowski, Everton, £5.6m – Brentford (h)
Tarkowski got a whopping 19 defcons in the win at Forest and he has now earned the two-point bonus in 13 of 19 starts.
He’s super reliable for an Everton side with two clean sheets in a row.
Jeremie Frimpong, Liverpool, £5.7m – Fulham (a)
Bit of a wildcard pick this one but Frimpong is a defender playing out of position on the right wing for one of the best attacks – in theory – in the league.
He passed the eye test in Liverpool’s 0-0 draw with Leeds on Thursday, setting up the one big chance of the game.
