Fantasy football: Is now the time to stock up on Manchester City and Arsenal players?

We're now over the tricky hurdle of gameweek 12 with the Arsenal and Manchester City blank - so I hope your squads are in good shape to attack the next four gameweeks before the break for the World Cup.

That probably means you'll want three Arsenal and three City players given their form and fixture runs through to gameweek 16.

Joao Cancelo, Phil Foden and Erling Haaland look like the optimum picks on the City front, but there might be a little bit more variation with Arsenal.

Bukayo Saka should definitely be your first choice. Then it's a question of whether you go with two more attackers from a choice of Gabriel Martinelli, Martin Odegaard and Gabriel Jesus or you put a defender in there instead, whether that be William Saliba, Gabriel or Ben White, who's the cheapest option at £4.5m.

Phil Foden has scored four goals for Manchester City so far during October

I think you'll want at least one Liverpool player in your ranks as well, although the choice of attacker is trickier than it was when Mohamed Salah was justifying his status as the most expensive player in FPL.

Managers flocked back to him in gameweek 12 after his winner at Manchester City last Sunday but he drew a blank against West Ham and looked less dangerous wide on the right again with Darwin Nunez starting through the middle.

The Uruguayan costs £8.8m, has scored two goals in his past three games and is a great asset when you own him because he has loads of shots on goal even when his team-mates are sometimes in a better position to score.

Then there's Roberto Firmino, who is priced at just £8.1m but still as important to Liverpool as ever, particularly with Diogo Jota out injured, and enjoying a very productive start to the season with six goals and three assists.

Will Liverpool's Roberto Firmino or Darwin Nunez find their way into your team?

Salah is going to get the most minutes on the pitch out of the three and is also on penalties, which still gives him the edge. But you have to decide whether that is worth an extra £4m or more, which is going to weaken your team elsewhere.

If you're going to captain him in the next couple of games, against Nottingham Forest and Leeds, then he's definitely worth the money. I'm still planning to go with Erling Haaland as skipper right through until the World Cup, though.

So in that case, I would opt for Darwin Nunez as my Liverpool attacker - although if you're after a punt on a differential, you could go with one of Fabio Carvalho (£5.4m) or Harvey Elliott (£5m) fully in the knowledge that you are taking on a risk on the amount of minutes they will get on the pitch.

Annoyingly, I can't find an easy route to get Trent Alexander-Arnold back in my squad and I might have to decide whether I want to prioritise signing him or one of those Liverpool attackers.

Jurgen Klopp's side have now kept clean sheets in back-to-back league games so if they can keep that going and Alexander-Arnold adds an attacking return or two as well then he could bring in a heap of points. In fact, if you know you're definitely not going to captain Salah, then I would put Alexander-Arnold at the top of my Liverpool wanted list going into gameweek 13.

Other teams you might want to consider investing in, looking at the fixture schedule in the run-up to the World Cup, are Crystal Palace and West Ham.

Eberechi Eze scored in Crystal Palace's 2-1 win over Wolves on Tuesday with the Eagles having a favourable set of fixtures coming up

So, who to pick? Well, that Palace player doesn't necessarily have to be Wilfried Zaha, even though he does have the added bonus of being the penalty-taker. Eberechi Eze has racked up 23 points in the past three gameweeks thanks to goals against Leeds and Wolves - and costs almost £2m less than his team-mate. Odsonne Edouard is now Patrick Vieira's first-choice striker, and at £5.3m is a good budget alternative to Bournemouth's Dominic Solanke, who faces West Ham and Tottenham in his next two games.

Jarrod Bowen and Gianluca Scamacca would be my top two picks at West Ham although I would be slightly concerned about the possibility of the Italian rotating with Michail Antonio after the midweek football. Besides, I keep getting tempted by Mason Mount at Chelsea, who has started every single game under Graham Potter - but I know the week I sign him is the week that he will get a rest!

Finally Marcus Rashford looks an absolute steal at the moment at £6.6m - he would have had a gameweek 12 hat-trick had it not been for the brilliance of Hugo Lloris, with Manchester United very impressive in that 2-0 win against Tottenham.

Alistair Bruce-Ball presents the Fantasy 606 podcast alongside former Premier League winner Chris Sutton and Statman Dave. The latest episode is available on the BBC Sounds app and the code to join the Fantasy 606 league is 'ahrsf2'.