This round comes with a ton of caveats. We’re knee deep in leagues cup, and with that comes rest, rotation, and injury affecting league play. We’ve already seen some big names come off early in a leagues cup match. The biggest name, in fact. You’ll notice I’ve left Lionel Messi off the rankings this week due to his injury and the near impossibility to find any updates beyond ‘he’s being evaluated’, but it should go without saying that if his injury isn’t serious and ends up starting that he would be in his usual spot at #1 in both the forwards and captaincy rankings.
On top of any rotation for leagues cup, we could also see debuts from new transfers. Some, such as Rodrigo de Paul, already have a start under their belt and should be expected to play a significant role moving forward. I thought about including some more Orlando defense in the rankings due to my assumption that Messi will miss, but de Paul is quality and shook me of that delusion quickly. With starting XI’s for a lot of teams likely getting some amount of shake up, it will be super crucial to check lineups as they drop this week.
It was also super tricky to rank forwards this week, and not just because I didn’t include Messi. There are a lot of good options with good matchups, with several strikers in solid form. You could easily shuffle the ten players on my list into just about any order and it would probably feel just as right, and there’s another handful of names that could have easily made the cut. I primarily let home-field advantage determine the final placements then made some gut-based adjustments, and I’m looking forward to the debate about it.
Note:(?) means the player might not start due to injury, lack of fitness, availability status or loss of starting spot. (OOP) means the player is expected to play out of position.(YCW) means the player is one caution away from suspension.
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