Samba FPL: Is He Worth Buying After The Move?
Short answer — Samba to Man City: the £4.5m trap that isn't even a trap — it's a wall A new name at the Etihad always gets the template twitching, and Samba has landed at Manchester City priced at £4.5m as a midfielder. Cheap City midfielder, favourable fixtures — I can see why the finger hovers. Take it off the button.
Start with what we actually know, which is honest and brief: not much. I hold no record of Samba in this division — no minutes, no starts, no returns to lean on. That's not a hedge, it's the truth, and a reader deserves it plainly rather than dressed up as insight.
Now the part I can measure. On my numbers there are eleven City players ahead of him in the pecking order. Not two, not three — eleven. That's why my six-gameweek projection for him rounds to nothing at all. He doesn't take set pieces either: Haaland has penalties, Cherki has corners and free kicks. So the two ways a £4.5m punt usually pays — sneaky minutes or dead-ball scraps — are both closed off.
Yes, the fixtures are lovely. After MUN (A) and LIV (A), City get SUN (H), IPS (H), AVL (A) and BHA (H) — exactly the run you want exposure to. But get that exposure through players who'll be on the pitch. My list in that price region runs Foden first at £7.0m — comfortably my best pick here, good for a strong return most weeks over this stretch — then Anderson at £6.4m, Semenyo at £8.5m and Ndiaye at £5.9m. Even Ndiaye, £1.4m more than Samba, projects for a proper haul of points where Samba projects for zero.
Nobody owns Samba — genuinely 0 in 10 managers — and for once the crowd has it exactly right. If he starts forcing his way into City's XI, I'll flag it and he becomes an interesting cheap route into those fixtures. Until then he's a bench body who never comes off your bench.
Verdict: leave alone. Want cheap City coverage? That player doesn't exist yet. Want City coverage? It's Foden.