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Looking at the statistics there are some interesting things to note. Chelsea has kept seven clean sheets. The next best is Sunderland and Manchester United with three. You are better off selecting Chelsea and United players for their firepower but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take some Sunderland defenders.
Tottenham has only had one clean sheet this year. You would have thought a side that is doing as well as them would be doing better with regards to this. The crazy thing is that Spurs have conceded just eight goals but there has been one in every game bar one.
Are you familiar with the name Chris Brunt? He plays for WBA and has six assists. This is second in the whole league behind Nani. Peter Crouch of Tottenham hasn’t been scoring that many but has five assists as does Matthew Etherington of Stoke.
You just don’t want to be picking all the big names. 20 clubs means lots of players to choose from.
You could get away with selecting your fantasy football side from just four teams but what would the fun of that be?
You can be seduced by the names such as Drogba, Lampard, Berbatov and Tevez. Sure you would be crazy not to select these players just because they play for the big teams but there are many quality players with the lesser teams who get overlooked.
For instance, how many fantasy football players would have Bolton’s Johan Elmander in their side? He has five goals for the season. That is the same as Solomon Kalou.
It is still only October but Manchester City look to be the real deal. They are playing good football both domestically and in Europe. They are sitting in second place on the Premiership, just two behind Chelsea.
Their game against Arsenal this weekend is an intriguing clash of the old versus the new. Arsenal are still in the top four so won’t be a pushover but instead of playing like an upstart, Manchester City are filling the role of the established side.
Clearly the man of the moment is Carlos Tevez. He has seven goals in the league and is the form of his career. Emmanuel Adebayor hasn’t yet scored in the Premier League this season but after his hat-trick last night in the Europa League has he refound his goal scoring touch?
The defence is also in good form and has only conceded two goals in league matches at home.
For Arsenal, Cesc Fabregas still has a way before returning to the stellar heights he hit last year. For now, it’s the new names for Arsenal that are doing the job. Samir Nasri and Marouane Chamakh have three goals each. Of course Theo Walcott had scored four from three games until injury struck.
Away from home this year, Arsenal have a record of five points from four games with four scored and five against. In terms of personnel, Arsenal will be without the suspended Jack Wilshere while Bacary Sagna, Thomas Vermaelen, Robin van Persie and Aaron Ramsey are all injured .
Elsewhere Tottenham vs Everton looms as an entertaining match. Even though Spurs lost 4-3 to Inter Milan they came back from a man down and a four goal deficit. So they will be on a high of sorts while Everton have won their last two after a very sluggish start.
Tim Cahill, Mikel Arteta and Gareth Bale are all worth inclusion in your fantasy football side. Rafael van der Vaart didn’t play midweek and is definitely worth including. He is a major part of the reason why Spurs are doing so well.
Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool are all playing in lower-profile matches. Against Stoke, Wolves and Blackburn respectively. The games are all important for their own reasons. United as they need to make a statement of the Wayne Rooney drama of the week.
Liverpool would love Rooney for taking the limelight off them that they hogged this week. They host Blackburn and obviously the points are critical to them. Then there is Chelsea who are trying to stay ahead of the pack.
Back to City, when they hosted Arsenal last year, the man of the moment was Adebayor. Will it be that way again?
How are you feeling after the latest round of fantasy football? As euphoric as David Moyes’ after Everton’s first win of the season or as low as Roy Hodgson after another loss leaves Liverpool in the bottom three?
As fired up as Roberto Mancini with a win that took them to second or as despondent as Arsene Wenger after their loss to Chelsea?
This week was an interesting week. There were goals to Didier Drogba, Carlos Tevez and Tim Cahill. Rafael van der Vaart scored twice for Tottenham and he looks to be a quality signing for Spurs. Likewise, he would be a great selection for your fantasy football side. With three goals, he is their leading scorer in the league.
With an away win and a clean sheet, it was a great weekend for those who selected Everton players. Not so much for Liverpool players especially Fernando Torres who limped off with an injury of sorts.
Manchester United had a frustrating 0-0 trip to Sunderland. The same kind of tenacity that Steve Bruce had as a player, he now has as a manager.
International games means there is a week off until the next round of matches. Already the standout looks to be the Merseyside Derby which will be taking place on Sunday at Goodison Park. With both of these sides on six points and in the bottom four of the ladder, a loss to either couldn’t come at a worse time. For Roy Hodgson, he could be facing the sack should they lose to their blue rivals. That’s how high the stakes are.
Stakes are always high in fantasy football but as a manager, that is something you don’t have to put up with.
Reports have emerged today that Manchester City have losses of £121 million. This is what it would be like to play fantasy football in real life – simply buy any player you want. Even in fantasy football there are rules. Last year Manchester City bet the house on making the top four – they missed out by the narrowest of margins and that would have been one of the most expensive failures in the history of sport.
Still they are continuing on from where they left off last year with big signings and are currently in fourth spot. They are home to Newcastle this week in a game they would be hopeful of winning. They have a massive squad but they need it because of injuries. Pablo Zabaleta tweaked his hamstring in the game against Juventus; Jerome Boateng looks to be over his knee injury but would need to be given some game time. It would be a risk to throw him straight into the fray. Then you have Mario Balotelli, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Wayne Bridge and Micah Richards all suffering from various ailments.
For City, it will feel like deja vu, given the similarity in tops between Juventus and Newcastle. Carlos Tevez is leading the way with four goals and you should pick him for your fantasy side. He is playing well and should be good for either a goal, an assist or both.
The big game of the weekend is the Chelsea – Arsenal one. Both sides had good wins in Europe midweek and now is the time when teams have to shuffle between domestic and European play. These games are always feisty as this clip demonstrates:
Again you need to take injuries into account. Chelsea will be without Frank Lampard while the likes of Salomon Kalou, Jose Bosingwa and Yossi Benayoun are doubtful. The Gunners will be missing Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott, Robin van Persie, Thomas Vermaelen and Aaron Ramsey who all leave big boots to replace.
Manchester United are away to Sunderland who are a difficult nut to crack at the Stadium of Light. United will be without Wayne Rooney, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs while Michael Carrick is doubtful.
Steven Gerrard is back for Liverpool after being rested for the European tie. He is definitely worthy inclusion in your side. Just ask Manchester City!
When playing fantasy football you can go for your Gerrards, Lamapards, Giggs, Fabregas’s, Drogbas and the like but what is the fun of that? It should be more than your three Chelsea and three Manchester United players against his three Manchester United and three Chelsea players. If you are prepared to do some research and look a little deeper into things you will find some players who can really provide great fantasy football value.
You don’t hear much about them because the media concentrate on the big clubs. Spend some time at the 11 Kicks Stats Center and it can prove quite beneficial.
Have you heard of Birmingham City’s Sebastian Larsson. The Swedish midfielder has three assists. This is the same number of Matthew Etherington who plays for Stoke.
Do you know who else has three assists? Fernando Torres, Andrey Arshavin, Cesc Fabregas and Paul Scholes.
Picking a player from a smaller side is a doubled-edged argument. There is less chance of someone else scoring the goals or making the assist but then there is also less chance there are goals to be scored or assists to be made. It is no coincidence that the two players with the most assists are Didier Drogba and Nani – both of whom have five. No clues guessing which teams they play for.
But therein lies the rub of the green. You have to make sure you select them in the week they do the assists or score the goals.
The more you play fantasy football; the better your gut instincts will be.
Not the best weekend for the big 5 teams (Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham) with them just taking two of a possible 15 points.
That meant that from a fantasy football point of view it wasn’t a case of the usual suspects except maybe in the case of Steven Gerrard who scored again.
For the first time this season, the incredibly reliable and consistent Chelsea failed to deliver. In their loss to Manchester City, obviously they didn’t keep a clean sheet, but what was even worse than that was that they didn’t score a goal.
Did anyone have Samir Nasri in their side? Although Arsenal lost, he was still good for two goals.
Among the goal this weekend were Michael Owen, Emil Heskey, Carlos Tevez, Dirk Kuyt and Darren Bent. Bent started off slowly but with another two goals against Liverpool his tally has grown to five. This is as many goals as Didier Drogba and just one behind the six of Demitar Berbatov and Florent Malouda.
There were only 24 goals on the weekend which is an average of 2.4 per game. While this isn’t a small amount most people were probably relying on goals coming from the Big 5 clubs who only scored 6 goals between them. This wouldn’t have been the expectations given their opponents were Bolton, WBA, Sunderland, Manchester City and West Ham.
This again shows why fantasy football isn’t just about making the right decisions; it’s about making them at the right time.
Like who would have thought that Nani would be capable of scoring a goal like this?
We are only 6 weeks into the new season and already there are more players in the physio’s room than on the training pitch. In turn you have players who will play under the duress of an injury and who haven’t been training during the week.
When it comes to your fantasy football side, you have to do everything you can to monitor the status of your players. If you hear or read that someone picked up an injury of some description then you need to be on top of that. There could be the chance that he doesn’t start or that he plays and has next to no impact on the game.
Taking a look at the injury lists can see that the likes of Frank Lampard, Asamoah Gyan and Tim Cahill have niggles of some description. So take the extra few minutes – it could be extremely beneficial to your fantasy side.
Looking at this week, Manchester City – Chelsea looms as the big match. First plays fourth and the game is the early Saturday one. Could City be the first team this year to take some points off Chelsea?
With Arsenal playing West Brom; Manchester United against Bolton and Tottenham against West Ham you will most likely be picking the majority of your players from these three sides.
Liverpool is at home to Sunderland and this would normally be penciled in as a Liverpool win but given the problems Liverpool have been having followed by the midweek loss, things aren’t going so swimmingly at Anfield. Still Steven Gerrard is in such scintillating form, you can select him without any second thoughts.
Will the Liverpool faithful be wishing back to days like this when they defeated Sunderland in the 1992 FA Cup Final?
Things used to be so much rosier back then.
So Dimitar Berbatov silenced the critics yesterday. It only took the beginning of his third season and 69 matches at Manchester United but good things comes to those who wait. The Bulgarian had 21 goals in his first 64 league matches for the Red Devils. This year he has six from five. A remarkable turnaround.
There were five goals at Old Trafford and all were scored by two players – Berbatov and Gerrard.
Elsewhere there were four more goals for Chelsea as well as another clean sheet.
Carlos Tevez scored his third goal of the season while there were also goals for Darren Bent, Cesc Fabregas and Roman Pavlyuchenko. It was a rough week for Arsene Wenger who can’t seem to take a trick.
Everton continued their horribly slow start and weren’t able to build on the good finish against Manchester United. They aren’t scoring goals and this continues to plague them.
After five weeks of the season, the cream has risen to the top and the top five teams are the familiar faces of Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City and Tottenham.
Likewise, the likes of Wigan, Stoke and West Ham are already heading in a southward direction. You aren’t likely to pick a player for your fantasy football side from one of these sides. For the most part, your side is going to be dominated from players from the top five sides. Of course you may make an exception for someone like Steven Gerrard. It isn’t a good start to the season for the Merseyside teams with them having seven points between them from 10 matches.
How did your fantasy football side do over the weekend?
The week rolls by so quickly and here we are again at the doorstep of another round of fixtures. Seven games on Saturday followed by the three on Sunday. The big game of the week is the monster clash between Manchester United and Liverpool. Whenever these two sides meet, it is a massive contest. Sometimes the goals flow and sometimes it can be a snorefest. So just go with your gut on this one. With both sides loaded with talent, goals can come from anywhere.
United will be licking their wounds after a tough seven days in which they drew with Everton and then played out a frigid 0-0 draw with Rangers. Liverpool had a good win last night against Steaua. At least they get Joe Cole back after his suspension for his red card in the opening match.
Like with most fantasy football, you just have to go with your instincts. Who is to say if there will be goals or not?
Elsewhere you should go with your mandatory three Chelsea players. They are up against Blackpool and should be good for at least three goals. They scored four against Zilina so will feel like they are in good goal-scoring form. This is despite the fact that Blackpool are in fourth spot.
Manchester City has a good win against Red Bull Salzburg last night and would be feeling confident against Wigan. Arsenal blasted six past Braga in their midweek Champions League match so select a couple of Arsenal players for the trip to Sunderland. Speaking of Sunderland, Asamoah Gyan could be worth a start in your fantasy football side.
Other than that it is just your regular mixed bag. Fulham are away to Bolton but don’t win away games so you may want to be selective of which if any Fulham players you select.
But the match of the round is United – Liverpool. They played this game nearly 30 years ago. Will we be thinking the same thing in 2040?
What is with all the 6-0 scorelines? Twice to Chelsea, once to Arsenal and now to Newcastle? Are we in a new era of free-for-all scoring?
Thus far, there have been 61 goals in 19 matches which is an average of 3.2 goals a game. Chelsea scored six, but ironically Didier Drogba didn’t score any, although he did have a couple of assists.
Because of all of the goals, you need to pay special attention to the defenders and goalkeeper you choose. Only Newcastle, Chelsea, Blackpool and West Brom kept clean sheets this weekend which is going to be the difference when it comes to fantasy football success and failure.
For Blackpool it was a case of agony to ecstasy as they experienced a 10 goal turnaround between their first and second match in the Premier League. There can be a tendency in the media to be carried away with what just happened and discount or forget everything that has happened previously. In 87 matches for Arsenal, Theo Walcott had scored a total of nine goals. This is his fifth season at Arsenal and the most goals he has scored in one season is 4 which he managed in 2007/08 from 25 matches. Now he has three goals from two games which is the same as he managed from the whole of last season in 23 matches.
Now everyone who selected Walcott against Blackpool will be euphoric and everyone who didn’t will be kicking themselves, but don’t expect Theo to produce like this every week. History tells us, that he would be hard pressed to score another goal this year.
You want to select guys who are going to be consistent producers such as Tim Cahill and Paul Scholes – two players who are never far from the action. Then you have Gareth Bale who started scoring last year and scored twice against Stoke this weekend. He is someone you want to keep in mind especially if he keeps playing like this.
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