Gameweek 33 Sleepers XI: Draft EPL

Our Gameweek 33 Sleepers XI article provides Draft managers with a lineup of Fantasy EPL hidden gems. Our starting eleven of Draft Premier League differential picks will help you find a golden ticket to a big score this weekend! These hints and tips will give you a better chance of picking up an all-important victory, as any one of these under-the-radar picks could make the difference in a head-to-head game!

We'll be focusing on players that will bring us not only attacking returns or clean sheets, but also those players that score Ghost Points in the sophisticated and statistics based Fantrax Scoring System!

Fantasy EPL Gameweek 33 Sleepers XI

For this article, we use the percentage rostered calculation from Fantrax and Sleeper. Our only rule is that each player we highlight is rostered in 60% of leagues or fewer at the time of writing. Therefore, there's a good chance some of these players will be free agents in your Draft league! As always, we'll take form, fixtures, projected points, and a healthy dose of intuition into account to make our selections.

What a wacky double gameweek we just witnessed. Not only did Crystal Palace, one of the best defences on the road, concede 10 goals in 2 games, , even Leicester managed to score 2 goals! So I think we can excuse the middling 60.25 FPts score that our Sleepers XI earned. So what exactly happened? Well let's start with our GK. Given how poor Leicester were performing at the moment, we obviously went with Verbruggen. However, the Seagulls conceded twice, which left the dutchman with a humble 6.25 points from 4 saves. In defence we had 4 picks. All of our defenders started and played 90 minutes but only one of them kept a clean sheet. Mings scored 11.5 FPts with his clean sheet, Chalobah got 5.25 FPts after conceding twice, whilst Agbadou registered 7.5 FPts after conceding 2 goals to Spurs. That leaves us with our final DEF, Lewis Dunk. The English CB only score 1.5 FPts against Leicester, including a yellow card to boot. In midfield we also had 4 assets. Our only double gameweek performer, Lerma, scored just 5.25 FPts, but it should be noted that he got 2 yellow cards across his 2 appearances. Bellegarde unfortunately only scored 2.5 FPts after coming off early due to an injury, whilst Sulemana scored only 3 FPts in 60 minutes. Lastly, Baleba played the full match against Leicester and smashed out 11.25 ghost points! This meant that our forward line only had 2 players. Both Onuachu and Muniz started their respective games but they only lasted 45 minutes and 56 minutes respectively. Onuachu scored 0.25 FPts and Muniz got 6 FPts. One thing is for sure, the Saints assets feel like a massive avoid with Juric no longer at the helm. So let's take the lessons we've learnt and aim to get back closer to that 100 FPts mark.

The Sleepers XI table below includes a full team of Starters, as well as 5 Reserves - high-upside players with some question marks around whether or not they'll start in Gameweek 33. So keep an eye out when lineups are announced and pick them up if you see them starting, especially if you need to fill a spot on your roster. Read below for the rationale behind each of the Starter selections.

Alphonse Areola (G, West Ham)

Are Southampton even bothered to try and get a positive result for the rest of the season? It's really hard to see the Saints galvanising under interim manager Simon Rusk and breaking free of that shameful points tally record set by Derby. So why not just punt against them then? If we are to assume Potter has tightened things up at West Ham, then gambling on a clean sheet against the lowest scoring team in the league should be an obvious play. What could go wrong?

Chris Richards (D, Crystal Palace)

Surely Chris Richards isn't available in your league, but if he is, go get him! You might be hesitant after Crystal Palace just conceded 10 goals in 2 games (5 per match to be exact) but funnily enough Richards still came out in the positive. The goal definitely helped his score this gameweek, but he also nearly notched an assist as well after Eze missed the penalty that the American DEF won. Even without the goal, Richards would have still been closer to 0 than his other teammates who were drowning in negative digits and that's because Richards is still a ghost point machine. He was 2nd for ghost points (18 FPts) of all Crystal Palace assets in GW32. So he should still be a start in any roster for this upcoming double gameweek.

Connor Bradley (D, Liverpool)

When considering only the single game options during the double gameweek, it should come as no surprise that our fixture difficulty tracker has the Liverpool defenders with the 3rd best rating (7th overall) during GW33. Bradley was the only Liverpool DEF that kept a clean sheet against West Ham, and that's because he was substituted in the 68th minute for Quansah. There's a chance that Slot is just being careful with the Irish DEF as he's only just returned from injury but be warned, rumours have it is that Trent was back in training again so we could see limited starts for young Bradley ROS. However, we still expect him to start against Leicester and do well. He's been averaging 6-7 gPPS since the International break and has the potential to get both an attacking return and a clean sheet against a woeful Leicester team.

Ryan Sessegnon (D, Fulham)

Since Sessegnon's first start of the season in GW27 against Wolves, the English DEF has gone on a bit of points run, scoring 3 goals with an assist in 6 appearances (3 starts). You might be worried about his most recent game against Bournemouth and being substituted before the 60 minute mark but apparently that substitution was an error! During this same run of games, he's averaged just over 6 PPS and with the upside potential by playing OOP as a left-winger, Sessegnon could be a great option not only this gameweek but for the rest of the season.

Sepp van den Berg (D, Brentford) 

Since football resumed after the international break, Sepp van den Berg seems to have been given the starting spot in the Bees backline, ousting the likes of the legendary Ethan Pinnock. Sepp started all three games and has been averaging just over 8 gPPS, a great score for a DEF-2/3 for any roster in any given gameweek. There's also a chance of a surprise clean sheet against an out-of-form Brighton team at the moment. The Seagulls are the 18th worst team in the league over the past 4 games, having 0 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses. On top of that, they needed 2 penalties to get a point against Leicester, a team that had failed to score a single goal for 8 games in a row. I wouldn't mind starting him over an Aston Villa DEF, who has 2 extremely difficult fixtures against Champions League chasing sides.

Timothy Castagne (D, Fulham) 

It feels weird to suggest 2 Fulham defenders in the same article, especially against a Champions League chasing Chelsea team. However Chelsea are really out of form at the moment and aren't clicking in attack the way they were earlier in the season. A damning stat about the Blues is the fact that Cucurella has been their top scorer (3 goals) in the league since the turn of the year - CUCURELLA! - How sad is that! They even lost in midweek to Legia Warsaw, with the Blues only scoring 1 goal and guess who scored it. Over the past 3 gameweeks, Castagne has actually been smashing out the ghost points, scoring around 9 gPPS. So if there's a chance that the Cottagers do the double over their neighbours down the road, Castagne could cook.

Amadou Onana (M, Aston Villa)

After an exciting battle in the Champions League against PSG, Emery's men narrowly missed out on a semi-final spot against Arsenal, despite beating the Parisians 3-2 in the second leg. Although Aston Villa still have the FA cup to think about, they have been quite vocal about getting back into the Champions League next season. So we could see a regular and strong starting XI from the Villans for the rest of their campaign. One possible tweak to their setup to help them achieve this goal is going with a midfield-trio of Tielemans, Kamara and Onana. Onana has been averaging 6.3 PPS this season, so if he's going to start both fixtures in the double gameweek, you could be expecting around 10-12 FPts. He's even got some goal threat from set pieces.

James Ward-Prowse (M, West Ham)

James Ward-Prowse might have found his mojo again. He's dominating the set piece duty for the Hammers, taking the most free-kicks and has also taken over the corners completely. He actually notched his first attacking return for West Ham against Bournemouth in GW31 after Fullkrug got on the end of one of his corners. If Fullkrug stays fit and gets up to speed, James Ward-Prowse could really thrive from the German's aerial threat. JWP is facing one of his old employers in GW33 and the opportunity for FPts could not be higher for a single game option.

John McGinn (M, Aston Villa)

By no means has McGinn ever been an asset to rely on or consider this season, especially when he's scoring around 5.0 PPS. However, in the 3-2 win over PSG, the Scotsman notched a goal and assist, giving him 3 attacking returns in 2 games, with the third return coming off the bench against an already-relegated Saints side. You'd think that the captain of Aston Villa should start almost every game for the rest of the season, so he's not the worst MID-4/5 option to consider in a double gameweek.

Mateo Kovacic (F, Manchester City) 

As frustrating as McGinn can be, Kovacic feels like another similar asset. He usually either goes big or does nothing. However when you have 2 cracks at the gameweek, there's a chance you could get lucky. The Croatian has started the last 2 games for Man City and played nearly 90 minutes in both games. Although the 6.1 gPPS isn't too appealing, it's the upside that piques our interest. Kovacic has 5 goals and 2 assists this season, with his most recent goal coming against Crystal Palace in the comeback win during GW32. Man City seemed to have turned a corner slightly in their form with KDB seemingly fit again, so there might be more attacking returns on the horizon for Mateo.

Donyell Malen (F, Aston Villa)

Our final pick is also another Aston Villa player. After having such a dull and under whelming start to his career in the Premier League, Malen now seems like one of the most in-form Aston Villa players with 3 goals in his last 3 appearances. Despite scoring 2 of these goals off the bench, it's still a promising sign that you could gamble on him for a double gameweek. The only concern is that he seemed to be getting his starts in the league because he wasn't a part of the Champions League team. Now that Aston Villa are out of the Champions League, does that affect Malen's minutes? Maybe. However it's hard to ignore a FWD on such lethal form at the moment. A decent FWD-3 punt.

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