Chelsea’s Morata – Shut Your Face??

Sep 27

Fantasy Premier League: Gameweek 6 Review

Written by @NiallHawthorne

As a kid one of the earliest songs that stuck in my head was the Joe Dolce 1980 classic ‘Shaddap You Face’, a song about a fictitious rebellious Italian boy. You may look back on it now (or listen to it for the first time) and wonder what all the fuss was about – it was clearly a ‘novelty’ song with faux-pigeon-English (and in this modern world may even be considered a tad on the ‘Trump’ side of racist), but did you know that it kept the classic Ultravox hit ‘Vienna’ off the top of the charts for three straight weeks? Altogether now…’Oooooohhhhh Viiieeennnaaaaaaa’.

The chorus of ‘Shaddap You Face’ puts me in mind of those FPL players who haven’t yet jumped on the Alvaro Morata Bandwagon, many of whom could be heard crying into their cocoa on Saturday night muttering about how they couldn’t have seen that coming, that he’s largely unproven in the Premier League and it’s probably just a flash in the pan. Well to all the Morata owners among us, join me in my version of the ‘Shaddap You Face’ chorus as we sing…

What’s Morata to you? Hey! Gotta no respect
What-a you t’ink you do? Why you look-a so sad?
It’s-a not so bad
It’s-a nice-a place
Ah
Shaddap-a you face!

Time for a rare side-note rant: The fact that so many pundits / fans of the Premier League don’t rate Morata is because so many just don’t understand the concept of young players moving abroad to improve themselves, to develop and enhance their careers. How many young English players can you identify as having taken the ‘Morata’ route? Real Madrid Ressies – Juventus – Real Madrid First Team – Chelsea. This young man now has 36 league goals from 46 league starts across three of the top European leagues, is just 24 years old, and so many still wonder if he has what it takes to cope with the English Premier League. Strewth!

If you’re like me and are questioning the sanity of those who question Morata then you are probably going to join me in questioning the sanity of those 4.4% of FPL players who selected Sané this week. Don’t get me wrong, those FPL psychics were handsomely rewarded with a total haul of 16 points, but you must be inSané (sorry, not sorry) to choose Leroy regularly. Saturday was his first full 90 minutes of action and aside from his 13 point haul when he took advantage of a prostrate Liverpool defence (keep your ‘when are they NOT prostrate’ gags to yourself), he’d done nothing of note this season. Ah, don’t mind me, it’s not like I’m bitter or anything.

Regular readers of this column will know that I sometimes struggle with the spelling of certain player names, so let’s just say that the Chelsea defender they call ‘Dave’ did very well indeed with a clean sheet, double assist, two bonus point haul, linking up again and again with his Spanish comrade as the Stoke Armada met their Waterloo at the Britannia Stadium. How’s that for an insanely inaccurate historical metaphor?

Speaking of Gunners, Alexander Lacazette finally kicked into gear this season with a two goal haul against the Baggies, rewarding those who kept faith with him in the face of a potential Pulis defensive masterclass. However a single assist and five point return for Alexis Sanchez wasn’t quite the ‘differential’ many had tipped him to be, especially considering his eye-watering price-tag.

Honourable mentions go to Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling and Philippe Coutinho but my final hero of the week is Oumar Niasse of Everton who showed what he’s still got in his proverbial locker and saved Ronald Koeman from having to clear out his own locker, all this despite the fact that Koeman considered Niasse so surplus to requirements that he didn’t even give him a locker. Some people don’t deserve such serendipity, but those 0.8% of FPL players who believed in Oumar richly deserve arguably the most unlikely 11 points of the season so far.

As for the Villians Of The Week, we need to firstly travel to the London Stadium to take a long, hard look at Serge Aurier, a name so French that when it’s pronounced by a passionate Frenchman three gallons of phlegm coat those standing opposite. Grim. Not as grim as his brain-dead performance against West Ham though as he repeatedly kicked Hammers players all over the pitch culminating in a lunging tackle on Andy Carroll which brought the inevitable red card that the astronauts in the ISS saw coming.

The only other player in negative territory this week was Jeffrey Schlupp of Crystal Palace who conceded five and picked up a yellow card for a -1 score. 0.2% of FPL players have Schlupp in their squads, which I thought was surely his family and one or two loyal (too loyal really) friends. But then I did some math and discovered that 0.2% of the current total playing FPL this season is 10,223 people. TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE!!! Consider my flabber to be well and truly gasted.

Our final villain of the week is Jamie Vardy who despite scoring against Liverpool (big deal, who doesn’t?) managed to miss a penalty AND pick up a yellow card to notch up just 3 points in GW 6. If someone had told you pre-match that there would be 5 goals and that Vardy was starting against a Liverpool defence featuring Lovren and Moreno, you’d have put your house on him bringing in more than three points. Shame on you Jamie. Shame.