Having featured in just 4 Premier League games under Slavisa Jokanovic, Aboubakar Kamara wasn’t on many fantasy radars. Once Claudio Ranieri took over the £4.3m striker was afforded more game time and goals against Leicester and Man Utd boosted his appeal as a budget enabler for many managers to move funds elsewhere in their squads.
The Penalty incident
Then things went downhill. Having won a penalty in a huge 6 pointer against fellow strugglers Huddersfield, Kamara refused to give the ball to the designated penalty taker and missed the resulting penalty.
"I wanted to kill him."
There could be an awkward conversation between Aboubakar Kamara and Claudio Ranieri after the Fulham striker took penalty duties.and missed against Huddersfield. More: https://t.co/fg96YN4iW0 pic.twitter.com/s5sMXJzeQ6 — BBC Sport (@BBCSport) December 29, 2018
That looked like it could be the end for Kamara for a few games at least but in the following game against Arsenal he made a substitute appearance and scored. Hope yet that he could still be a budget option perhaps.
The Yoga Session
Things went from bad to worse with allegations of an alleged bust-up between Kamara and Mitrovic at a Yoga session of all places.
Kamara was ordered to train with the u23s and didn’t appear in the match day squads for the games between Burnley and Spurs.
Arrested
As if things couldn’t get any worse reports have now emerged that a man in his 20’s believed to be Kamara was arrested at Fulham’s training ground on suspicion of ABH and is now banned indefinitely from all club activities.
It looks like a loan move to get him out the door as quickly as possible is on the cards. Where does that leave the 11% of managers that own him in FPL?
FPL Options
Sideways
If you have no pressing issues with your team it might be an option to just leave him as your third sub for a few weeks and sort him out further down the line with your wildcard.
There aren’t many other options in that price range so if you’re stuck for cash the only other viable alternatives are a sideways move to Isaac Success who has one goal all season and whose minutes have dropped off of late so you’d have to ask yourself is it worth spending a transfer to bring in a player who won’t have much impact on your week to week scores.
It might be worth keeping an eye on Dominik Solanke £4.7m who just moved to Bournemouth but it looks like he will have competition for a place in the starting line-up.
Budget upgrade
In the £5m to £5.7m range, the options are limited but at least some of them play and have a chance of scoring.
The cheapest is new Cardiff striker Oumar Niasse £5.0m who went straight into the starting line-up. Cardiff played with two up front against Newcastle but Niasse didn’t manage a single shot in his 64 mins on the pitch. Cardiff play Arsenal in GW24 but have a decent run of fixtures after that.
Another option is Ashley Barnes £5.7m. He’s a regular starter for Burnley and has the highest number of goal attempts, shots in the box and big chances of any striker under £6.0m in the last 6 game weeks. He also has scored 2 goals in this period.
Finally, there’s Danny Ings £5.5m who managers will be hoping can keep free from injury having just returned. Hasenhuttl is doing a good job since taking over from Mark Hughes as manager and Southampton have favourable fixtures in the next 5 games.
Premium Upgrade
I suppose the other option would be to significantly upgrade if you have lots of Harry Kane money lying around. Or you could downgrade one of your premium midfielders and upgrade Kamara around GW27 when Man City, Everton, Chelsea and Brighton have blanks. Arsenal face Southampton to captain either Aubameyang or Lacazette.