Is Foden a risk to own in FPL?

As the start of the season looms in on us many will be hoping to finalise their squads ahead of the Gameweek 1 deadline. Managers have been scouring the assets available and Foden is one player creeping into drafts within the community, but is he a risk to own in FPL?

Manchester City are one of the best teams in the world. This means that they are a constant attraction for FPL managers but finding attacking options unscathed by rotation has proven difficult over the years. Because of this finding out if Foden is a risk to own in FPL could be crucial at the start of the new campaign.

Fixtures

Below we can see the fixture ticker is ordered from an attacking point of view for the first six matches. Manchester City rank second behind Chelsea – they face games against Burnley, Newcastle, Sheffield United, Fulham, West Ham and Nottingham Forest.

The fixtures suggest that investing in the Manchester City attacking assets could be very beneficial to fantasy managers – other than the obvious, Erling Halaand (£14m).

Manchester City

Manchester City continued their brilliant domestic domination last season after securing the Premier League title ahead of their closest rivals Arsenal. One of their best attributes from the last campaign came in their attack. In fact, amongst all teams they ranked:

Third best for chances created (466).
First for goals (94).
Third for attempts on goal (600).
First for big chances total (132)
Second for shots on target (214).

Taking the above into account reinforces the appeal to invest in another Manchester City attacker and that player could well be Phil Foden (£7.5m).

Phil Foden’ attacking output

17/18 – Five features – One assist.
18/19 – 13 Features – Three starts – One goal.
19/20 – 23 features – Nine starts – Five assists and one goal.
20/21 – 28 features – 17 starts – Nine goals and five assists.
21/22 – 28 features – 24 starts – Nine goals and five assists.
22/23 – 32 Features – 22 starts – 11 goals and five assists.

We can see that Foden has progressed a lot through his years at Manchester City. Not only has his attacking output increased but his gametime has also risen. This shows signs that Manchester City are utilising Foden more, increasing his reliability in terms of minutes.

That may be the case but it still isn’t enough to suggest that Foden could become a more reliable asset.

Manchester City departures

Manchester City have sold some key players over the summer – Both Ilkay Gundogan and Riyad Mahrez have left the club with Bernardo Silva also rumoured to be departing. This is a huge factor to consider when judging the reliability of Foden. This is reinforced with the fact that there are now two positions available for the midfielder, left centre-midfield and right-wing.

Pre-season

In the three pre-season friendlies Manchester City have played so far, Foden failed to start the first two but still featured and picked up an assist. In their final pre-season friendly Foden started the game along with key first team members like Erling Haaland, Jack Grealish, Ruben Dias, John Stones and more. This could again suggest that Foden is well and truly amongst the managers plans for first team football.

Is Foden a risk to own in FPL?

Whilst his increasing minutes and output is a good sign and the departures of other key attackers also adds to his expected minutes for the season ahead, there is not telling what Pep Guardiola will do. The transfer window is also still open so it could be worth monitoring potential incomings as well. Owning Foden looks like it holds some risk but less so than in past seasons so he could be worth an inclusion in our fantasy teams.