La Liga Striker Club Review – Athletic Bilbao

With us having already covered Athletic Bilbao’s goalkeeper, defender and midfielder performances this season, time to round up their club review with a check on how their strikers got on this season!

As a quick recap, they had a pretty good time in Serie A – they finished seventh for the second time in three seasons, but earned a higher points total than the previous season when they finished fifth. Since the end of the campaign head coach Ernesto Valverde has departed for Barcelona, and has been replaced by José Ángel Ziganda.

Now, on to the men charged with scoring the goals for Los Leones! The strikers did a decent job, scoring 29 of Bilbao’s 53 league goals this term, and the top scorer – both for goals and EuroFantasyLeague points – was Aritz Aduriz. That is perhaps no surprise, as at a 9.00m valuation there were certainly plenty of high hopes for the 36-year-old, currently in his second spell at the club.

16 goals from 32 appearances (27 starts, 5 as a sub) put him at the top of the club’s scoring charts, and gives him a Performance / Price (P/P) score of 6.8. That isn’t too bad, but is of course hampered by the fairly high valuation. Seven bookings and one sending off kept his score down as well. While his talent has been evident for years, given his age it remains to be seen how attractive a fantasy squad inclusion he proves to be next term.

Williams was the next best points scorer of Bilbao’s strikers. He was some way behind Aduriz, scoring 28 – five goals and six assists contributing largely to his final score. He was a cheaper alternative though at 6.50m, but his P/P didn’t quite stack up to that of his aforementioned colleague. He ended up on 4.9, so while he was a solid selection for the 1% of managers who had him there were perhaps cheaper and more hungry alternatives out there.

Just behind him on 25 points was Iker G. Muniain, who faired well with seven goals and an assist. He scored 25 points over the course of the season, hampered slightly by his five bookings. 28 starts and seven sub appearances shows he saw plenty of game time, but he was often deployed on the left wing. While that partially explains his goal tally, he could arguably have bumped his score up for a few more assists.

Sabin was most likely the biggest disappointment from the club’s strikers. Valued at 7.00m, he managed to nab only six points all season. Those points were cleaned from only five starts and eight sub appearances, so there is a reason for the low score, but with a 7.00m price tag he seemed to prove a costly error for 1% of our fantasy managers. His P/P of 0.7 was among the lowest in the squad.

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