GW8 Differential Picks: Foden, Evanilson and the Best Creator Nobody Owns

Last week’s three differentials returned 11, 10 and 2. Luka Vuskovic set up a goal and kept a clean sheet in Brighton’s 5-0 win over Crystal Palace. Marcus Tavernier scored in Bournemouth’s 2-0 win over Sunderland and picked up another clean sheet. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, flagged as the riskiest of the three, managed two points as Everton lost at home to Chelsea. Two from three is a good week for this column, and the market noticed: Tavernier was the second most-bought player in the game this week. This week’s list is a midfielder, a forward and a wide man, each owned by fewer than one in twenty managers.

The best time to own a differential is the week before it stops being one.

Phil Foden (Manchester City, away at Aston Villa)

Foden costs 6.8m and is owned by 2 percent of managers, which is a strange number for a City midfielder in a season when City have won all seven league matches. The reason is minutes. A three-match ban cost him three games, and he has started only four of seven. When he has played, the numbers have been good: 2.23 expected goals and 1.42 expected assists in 293 minutes, a rate few midfielders in the league can match. He scored a hat-trick and added an assist against AEK Athens on Tuesday.

Two things have changed in his favour. Antoine Semenyo is out for around eight weeks, which opens a place in City’s attack, and Enzo Maresca said on Thursday that Foden and Rayan Cherki can play together. The caveat is the one that has always applied to Foden. Maresca rotates, and a midweek hat-trick can be followed by a Saturday on the bench.

Evanilson (Bournemouth, away at Manchester United)

Evanilson scored one and set up another against Sunderland for 12 points, his second straight gameweek with a goal. At 6.1m and 4.6 percent ownership, he has two goals and four assists, and only Haaland matches his 9.5 form rating among forwards. The fixture is the other half of the case. Manchester United have not kept a clean sheet in seven league matches and have conceded ten, and they played Como in Europe on Wednesday. Evanilson does not take Bournemouth’s penalties, and Eli Junior Kroupi, who does when fit, is back in training and could get minutes at Old Trafford, per Marco Rose. That is a threat to the penalty duties, not to Evanilson’s place.

Alex Iwobi (Fulham, away at Coventry City)

Iwobi scored the only goal against Hull on Saturday for 11 points and is owned by 1.1 percent of managers at 5.4m. He has one goal and no assists this season, which undersells him: his 2.34 expected assists are the most of any player in the game, and the gap between that number and his output is the kind that closes. Coventry are 17th, have conceded 14, and by expected goals against only Sunderland and Newcastle have defended worse. The official game rates the fixture a 2.

This is a one-week pick. Fulham’s next three are Aston Villa away, Newcastle at home and Manchester City away, and this column has tipped Fulham’s soft run once already this season, to little effect.

None of these is a rebuild. They are last-slot punts that pay well if the crowd is late. Ownership moves quickly before a deadline, and this deadline is early: 18:30 BST on Friday, 23 October, ninety minutes before Ipswich host Nottingham Forest. City’s team news on Friday is the one to watch before committing to Foden.