A return to Swansea City in the summer of 2014 helped re-establish Gylfi Sigurdsson (£7.5million) as a Fantasy Premier League force.
The Iceland playmaker put a difficult two seasons at Tottenham Hotspur behind him to emerge as a viable candidate for our five-man midfields, serving up scores of 154 and 158 points over the last couple of campaigns.
Sigurdsson has in particular benefited from the arrival of Francesco Guidolin at the Liberty Stadium midway through 2015/16.
Having scored four goals in the first 22 matches of the season, Sigurdsson netted seven times in the final 16 rounds of fixtures – a tally bettered only by Sadio Mane (eight) from midfield.
Furthermore, after Guidolin’s arrival, Sigurdsson was ranked fourth for attempts on goal (40) and joint-third for shots on target (14).
While on the pitch, he scored or assisted 56.3% of his side’s goals under the Italian compared to 27.8% before Guidolin took charge.
After helping his country to the quarter-finals of UEFA Euro 2016, Sigurdsson was late back for pre-season duties. As a result, he was fielded as a second-half substitute in last weekend’s 1-0 win at Burnley, affording him time to build up his match sharpness.
With another week of training behind him, he now looks poised to be handed a start as the Welsh side play host to Hull City on Saturday.
The Tigers will roll up in confident mood after defeating champions Leicester City, though Swansea’s fine home record under Guidolin bodes well having beaten Chelsea and Liverpool and drawing with Manchester City in their final three Liberty Stadium fixtures of 2015/16.
Swansea will also be encouraged by their Gameweek 1 showing at Turf Moor. Despite only winning 1-0, they registered more attempts on target (eight) than any other team and were second only to Liverpool (11 to 12) for efforts inside the box.
Centre-forward Fernando Llorente (£6.5m) produced four of those accurate attempts.
The Spaniard earned the assist for Leroy Fer’s (£5.0m) winner and registered six efforts against last season's Championship winners, with five inside the box. With club-record signing Borja Baston (£7.0m) still short of fitness, Llorente looks to be in line to retain his start against the Tigers.
Swansea are braced for a testing run of fixtures from Gameweek 3 onwards, which makes picking up points this weekend all the more crucial.
With a six-match run against Leicester City, Chelsea, Southampton, Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal to follow their Hull encounter, Guidolin will be looking for Sigurdsson, and indeed Llorente, to deliver before the schedule turns against his team.