As Fantasy Premier League managers weigh up whether to join the stampede and transfer in Bernardo Silva (£7.6m), some might wonder if his goalscoring form is sustainable.
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Bernardo has seven goals this term and has never exceeded that total in a season. Meanwhile, when Manchester City’s five available mid-priced midfielders are ranked according to their Expected Goal Involvement per 90 minutes, the Portuguese is bottom with 0.4.
That data looks off-putting. But in the latest episode of the FPL Show, Fantasy expert Holly Shand says managers should park their doubts and jump on the bandwagon.
“You delve deeper into the numbers and it’s not necessarily Bernardo who’s doing the business in terms of short volume, which is a little bit of a worry, but he’s a bit of a stat-buster and he’s just getting those Fantasy points all the time,” she says in the video above.
“Sometimes in FPL you need to just ignore all your stubbornness and think, ‘There’s a player that’s firing, getting the minutes, getting the goals.’ You need to get him in.”
Holly’s fellow expert Mark McGettigan, better known as @FPLGeneral, agrees, adding: “It’s got to the point now where we’ve got to forget about what Bernardo’s done in previous seasons. He’s doing it this season. Just buy him, keep it simple.
“You can take stats to a certain level but what we don’t measure is player confidence. If there was a confidence chart [for City’s midfielders], Bernardo would probably be at the top.
“Stats [are useful] to a certain degree but as part of a bigger picture, watching the games, and most important for me is what Pep [Guardiola] is saying about him. That’s why I want him so much.”
