Man City assets to haul v Caicedo-less Chelsea - FPL team of week

Half the FPL season is in the bag and we're coming off one of the worst weeks of the season, with hardly any highly owned assets returning.

Don't panic though, FPL has given us a fresh set of chips to attack 2026 with.

So take a look at our team of the week for a bit of inspiration, to give you a flying start to the second half of the campaign.

The team of the week is selected based on current FPL prices to fit within a £100m budget, as if you were playing a Free Hit.

Don't miss our FPL special Q&A with expert FPL Heisenberg, live on the BBC Sport website on Friday, 2 January at 15:30 GMT.

Abysmal! It was a bad week for most managers but when Alejandro Garnacho's four-pointer is your highest-scoring asset, you know it is bad.

A measly 28 points.

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.

Bruno Guimaraes, Newcastle, £7m - Crystal Palace (h)

The Newcastle midfielder is a funny player to analyse. He has six goals this season from an expected goals (xG) of just 2.9, which suggests he won't carry on scoring.

But then again, he has had more shots on target (13) than any other Newcastle player this season.

Five double-digit hauls this season makes you stand up and take note - worth a gamble.

Morgan Rogers, Aston Villa, £7.5m - Nottingham Forest (h)

Another player where the statistics don't necessarily match his production, but Rogers has a nice home fixture to bounce back from two one-pointers in tough games at Chelsea and Arsenal.

Rogers has scored seven this season from an xG of 2.24 but he's Villa's talisman and scored 15 FPL points in his last home game.

Phil Foden, Manchester City, £9m - Chelsea (h)

Foden can be a big-game player and the absence of the suspended Moises Caicedo at the base of managerless Chelsea's midfield will allow him that bit more space to make an impact.

It's hard to overstate the importance of Caicedo to Chelsea - they've only won 25% of games without him in the team.

Foden is on a run of blanks, but he and City need a big performance after the dull draw at Sunderland.

Erling Haaland (captain), Manchester City, £15.1m - Chelsea (h)

Chelsea have conceded two in each of their past three league matches so the chances of a clean sheet against City's stellar attack is slim.

And if City score two, you know Haaland is likely to be among those goals.

Danny Welbeck, Brighton, £6.3m - Burnley (h)

Only five strikers have more points per 90 minutes than Welbeck and he could have had his third double-digit haul of the season at West Ham, had he not missed one of his two penalties.

Eight goals in 12 starts is a fantastic record and he has a juicy match-up this week.

Jarrod Bowen, West Ham, £7.6m - Wolves (a)

Bowen continues to chug away with eight FPL returns in 19 games. If West Ham are to score at Wolves - and every team does - then chances are the England forward will be involved.

He has a goal involvement of 38% for West Ham this season.

Martin Dubravka, Burnley, £4m - Brighton (a)

Granit Xhaka, Sunderland, £5.2m - Tottenham (a)

Anton Stach, Leeds, £4.9m - Manchester United (h)

Conor Bradley, Liverpool, £5m - Fulham (a)

Team total cost: £98.8m