Fantasy football tips for gameweek 23: Captaincy conundrum with Mohamed Salah still absent

Let's start with the captaincy for gameweek 23, and with Mohamed Salah still absent for Liverpool it's far from a straightforward choice.

At the moment, it's still a single gameweek — though there has been some discussion within the fantasy football community that Aston Villa could potentially double up, either with a home game against Burnley or a trip to Leeds to add to their scheduled fixture at Everton.

As I've previously mentioned, @BenCrellin is the man to follow on Twitter to keep you up to date with all the news on that front, with this week's Fantasy Premier League deadline at 18:30 GMT on Friday.

If it happens, it would make Aston Villa, Leeds and Burnley players potential captaincy options for us, particularly with Leeds at home to Newcastle in their first game.

Raphinha is the obvious choice there — still superb value at just £6.5m and having provided attacking returns in seven of his past 10 appearances. He could easily have trebled his tally of six points in the 3-2 win at West Ham in gameweek 22 — he rattled the crossbar with one free-kick and would have had the assist for a Mateusz Klich goal had the ball not unfortunately hit Rodrigo in an offside position on the way in.

He's already owned by 15% of managers in the game so the differential choice would be hat-trick hero Jack Harrison at £5.5m and just 1.2% ownership — he's been pretty quiet until now but don't forget he was a star performer last season with eight goals and 10 assists. If Leeds are genuinely rediscovering their form, he could be a great signing.

It will also be worth listening to what Marcelo Bielsa has to say about the fitness of Patrick Bamford, who will hopefully be returning to first-team action very soon.

As for the Aston Villa assets, new