The Gameweek 24 Preview: The Year of the Dragon

Football never stops, not even for dragons.

Hello and welcome to the Gameweek 24 Preview here at Overthinking Football. For those who may not be aware, this weekend is the Lunar New Year. By the time this weekend’s fixtures come around, we will be firmly into the Year of the Dragon. Many of you will know that I’m temporarily living in Asia, so this is going to be a shorter Preview than normal, as I’ve got metric tonnes of food to eat and fireworks to witness.

Instead of deep-diving into a few topics, I’ll be going rapidly through each game and tell you what I’m going to be looking out for this week. So let’s get on with it:

Manchester City vs Everton

So many options, so few attacking spots on the team-sheet. Early evidence suggests that this is an Erling Haaland, Julian Alvarez, Kevin De Bruyne, Phil Foden and Jeremy Doku first-choice eleven. But we’ve only seen a small number of games with everyone healthy and we know what Pep is like. If you roster other City attackers (especially Jack Grealish) you are watching closely this weekend to see if there are any signs of it being a rotation. If there aren’t, it’s truly time to worry about Grealish’s long-term prospects (if you weren’t worried already).

Fulham vs Bournemouth

Who should we be expecting Bournemouth to play out wide? They’ve now got something of an embarrassment of riches in terms of wide options, with Antoine Semenyo and Dango Ouattara returning from AFCoN and Luis Sinisterra hitting form with a chance to get a run in the side. And that’s not to mention that Marcus Tavernier is still their primary set-piece taker. This is a pretty good matchup for whoever does start, so it’s one to watch. We’d probably assume they lean on Sinisterra and Tavernier for this one, given Semenyo left with a knock in the last game, but if the team-sheet comes out with a surprise start, this is an area you can probably find streamer value.