Fantasy Premier League

GW8 Forwards #4: Romelu Lukaku

By The Scout 6 Oct 2017

Despite testing fixtures, can managers afford to ignore FPL's most popular player?

As we face a forward crisis in Fantasy Premier League, The Scout is looking at six candidates to help managers pick their attack.

Romelu Lukaku (MUN) £11.8m

The form

Consistency has been key to Lukaku’s FPL appeal.

The Manchester United striker has scored in all but one of his seven Premier League appearances, supplying seven goals and an assist.

But his two biggest scores (13 and 12) both arrived at home and has yet to score more than seven points away from Old Trafford.

That could be a concern given that he scored only nine of his 25 goals for Everton last term on the road.

The statistics

Lukaku’s numbers are impressive across the board, and he ranks second only to Harry Kane (£12.7m) for a range of key metrics.

His shot accuracy and goal conversion are also almost identical to his output of 2016/17.

Lukaku has fired 48.4% of his shots on target, converting 22.6% into goals. Last season these figures were 48.2% and 22.7% respectively.

But the difference has been the quality of chances coming his way.

His average of 1.7 "big chances" per match is more than any FPL forward, and is up from 0.7 with Everton last season.

Lukaku in 2017/18

	Total	FPL forward rank
Goals	7	1
Shots	31	2
Shots in box	25	2
Shots on target	15	2
Big chances	12	1
ICT Threat	457	2

The prospects

The upcoming fixtures appear to hand Lukaku his first real test, facing Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea in the next four Gameweeks.

While that might usually cause concern, with both Sergio Aguero (£11.5m) and Alvaro Morata (£10.3m) suffering injuries, managers may choose to retain or turn to the striker over this spell.

His ownership is a big factor. Lukaku is in 60% of squads and has been the most popular captain pick in each of the seven Gameweeks.

While there are perhaps stronger candidates for the FPL armband over the next four Gameweeks, omitting Lukaku altogether is a risk given his popularity.

Much depends on Man Utd’s ability to feed him big chances against tougher opponents.

But the fixtures turn again from Gameweek 12, from which point seven of his next eight home matches score no more than two in the Fixture Difficulty Rankings (FDR).

The Scout's verdict: Lukaku’s consistency will be put to the test. He may not fetch big scores over the next four Gameweeks but owning him ahead of the run of opponents from Gameweek 12 looks wise.