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The last two months of 2010 were strange times in fantasy football. Regular big scorers like Frank Lampard, Fernando Torres, Didier Drogba and Wayne Rooney – the men you could build your fantasy team around – were suddenly unreliable. Lampard was injured, Torres was exhausted after a busy World Cup-winning summer, Drogba was still recovering from that bout of malaria and Wayne Rooney the trifecta of marital, contract and goalscoring problems. None were good picks for your fantasy football team.
I imagine all four footballers were glad to kiss 2010 goodbye, and even more pleased to welcome 2011 with a goal. Lampard banged home a penalty, Torres scored that beauty of a volley from a Steven Gerrard pass (just like old times), Drogba got himself a goal AND an assist, while Wayne Rooney finally scored a goal from open play.
It’s probably too early to start thinking about these four as solid fantasy football picks again. It’s not 2008 anymore and new faces like Samir Nasir, Rafael van der Vaart, Gareth Bale and Nani have stepped in to fill that gap. But don’t be surprised to see Rooney and Torres scoring with a little more regularity, Lampard hitting the net from both 12 and 25 yards again and Didier Drogba intimidating defences once more in 2011.
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The Beeb are reporting that Frank Lampard is going to start for Chelsea against Manchester United on Sunday. If you’re a fantasy football manager, that’s big news. Because an in-form Frank Lampard is fantasy football gold.
In 11Kicks, goals from midfield are worth four points, and assists are worth three. If Lampard’s playing, he’s going to be registering one or the other, or more likely both. And though Lampard stepped aside for Didier Drogba to take Chelsea’s penalty kick against Spurs last weekend, he’s more than likely to resume spot-kick duties after Drogba’s effort was saved:
“I trained two days with the lads this week and haven’t practised a penalty in three months,” Lampard said. “I always like to practise them and I thought it would’ve been wrong for me to come on and try to take personal glory scoring a winner on my return rather than Didi take it, who’s been fit and playing and practising and scoring them.
“Listen, I could easily say I would’ve buried it but that’s not the case always – we can all miss them – and credit for Didier for stepping up. Hopefully, I can practise some in the week and get back on them.”
Personally, I’m very tempted to pick Lampard. The fact that he only played twelve minutes vs. Spurs worries me a little, as does the fact that Chelsea face tough opposition in Manchester United. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see him getting either a goal, an assist, or scoring a penalty on Sunday.
– Want to play against the 11 Kicks House Team this weekend? Enter the 11Kicks Challenge League, using access code: q9CKs
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.
The opening round of the Premier League season has come to an end. How did you fare in terms of fantasy football? Joy for the owners of Didier Drogba, Florent Malouda, Ryan Giggs and Frank Lampard. Not so much for the owners of the Liverpool defence, Joe Cole and any Wigan players.
There were only three matches in which there wasn’t a clean sheet so if you missed out on clean sheet points, you probably would have struggled unless you were able to make those points up elsewhere.
It looks like the high powered Chelsea offence of last year is continuing from where it left off. The big surprise though is obviously Blackpool. They scored 4, kept a clean sheet and Marlon Harewood was dominant up forward scoring twice. They are flying high but its a long season and by December this great result could be nothing but a distant memory. Take it with a grain of salt as they were playing Wigan. Let’s see how they do against Arsenal.
Elsewhere it was another memory why the Premier League is such a great competition.
Ryan Giggs is timeless and maintained his record of scoring in every Premier League season. His goal was the icing on the cake for a Manchester United side that simply had too much class for Newcastle. The Magpies may have dominated the Championship last year but they quickly learned about the gulf in skill between the two divisions.
Class is permanent and form is temporary. You don’t want to be seduced by players who shine one week and crash the next.
Now that the World Cup is over, you could say that the off-season has begun. Clubs are all over the world making their tours. Everton are in Australia, Chelsea are about to go to Germany and Manchester United are in America. European Competitions have already begun. They actually started during the World Cup but the teams involved were so minor, very scant attention was given to them.
The Premier League doesn’t kick off for another four weeks. Till then there will be an interesting number of fantasy football questions to ponder:
Will the World Cup flops be able to rebound?
As written during the World Cup, some players seem better suited to club football, others flourish at the international game and others seem to do just fine at both. You couldn’t expect Wayne Rooney to perform for Manchester United as he did for England in South Africa. Similarly, Gonzalo Jara will have to rebound from playing for a quality side like Chile to a low-level side such as West Bromwich Albion.
Who will emerge from anonymity?
There are over 250 players to choose from every week when picking the XI for your fantasy football side. Is it going to be the same old usual suspects such as Lampard, Evra, Fabregas and Gerrard? That is most likely the case as just as the Big 4 dominate the League, they also dominate the fantasy football points. Players from Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal will score more goals, will have more assists and will keep more clean sheets.
Tottenham finished fourth and so members of the team such as Peter Crouch and Gareth Bale provided good fantasy value. Same with the players from Manchester City and Aston Villa.
Darren Bent provided fantastic fantasy football value with his 24 goals for Sunderland.
But from the lower two-fifths of the table, you aren’t likely to give any of those players a second look, no matter how well they played at the World Cup.
Speaking of Darren Bent, here is a montage of his fantastic season:
Tonight England hosts Mexico at Wembley. Will Fabio Capello be able to do what no-one has been able to do since 1966? Every World Cup winning manager becomes an instant legend but if Capello succeeds he will go to an even higher level.
For England the problem has always been peaking at the right time – that and penalty shootouts. They were eliminated in 1990, 1998 and 2006 due to the dreaded shootout. They have never won a penalty shootout at the World Cup.
In a group containing Ukraine and Croatia they qualified easily. They won their opening game and then lost to Ukraine which knocked out their nemesis Croatia.
Capello has named a 30 man squad consisting entirely of players who are in the English Premier League. He needs to cut it by seven to 23 at month’s end. Wayne Rooney will be their even though he may not be 100% due to injury.
The stars are going to be the usual suspects such as Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard. Up front, Darren Bent should get the nod. It would have been good if Bobby Zamora would haev been fit enough to been selected. Elsewhere will Aaron Lennon be fit enough to make an impact?
Following the Mexico game, England will play a friendly against Japan in Austria. Then its off to South Africa where they will take on USA, Slovenia and Algeria. England should top the group in which case its next assignment would be against the runner-up of Group D which contains Germany, Serbia and Australia.
The key for England is to play aggressive, attacking football. They should want to win the game in 90 minutes and if not that, then in 120. If they can avoid penalties they should. They have the talent to go all the way – they just have to believe in themselves and take their chances.
Every now and then it can all click – just like this:
Chelsea travel to Anfield on Sunday knowing that a win will basically assure it of the title. It’s final game of the season is against Wigan and they are unlikely to put up any resistance, especially at Stamford Bridge in such party mode. Liverpool are fresh off their Europa League elimination. They won the night 2-1 but a 1-0 loss in the first leg sees them bow out on away goals.
So Liverpool would seemingly be battered and bruised both physically and emotionally – do they have anything to play for? Strangely enough yes but it will depend on the earlier results. If the Manchester City – Aston Villa match is a draw and Tottenham draw their match against Bolton than a Liverpool win could see them fly up the table into fourth spot. Having said that, both City and Tottenham have a game in hand which they will play on Wednesday.
Where are the goals going to come from for Liverpool. Fernando Torres is out. He scored 18 goals for Liverpool in the league this season. The next best is Steven Gerrard and Dirk Kuyt who both have nine.
It could be a volatile match and that means plenty of cards being shown. Javier Mascherano and Leiva Lucas have both received nine yellow cards for the season so be wary before you select them for your fantasy football side. For Chelsea, John Terry is making his return after a one-match suspension for receiving two yellows against Tottenham. He has the most yellow cards for Chelsea with seven and Didier Drogba is just behind him on six. There could be penalties so that means you should select the guys who take them for both sides.
Both of these sides have 16 cleans sheets for the year, one behind Manchester United who with 17 has the most. Given the string defences of both sides, how will this affect your thinking? Will offensive weapons such as Frank Lampard, Gerrard, Solomon Kalou and Nicolas Anelka be kept in check? No. A 0-0 draw or draw of any sort is of no value to Chelsea. They need to win and will be well aware of that – this means they are going to be throwing caution to the wind in an effort to score goals. Because of this they will be vulnerable on the counter-attack.
Such being the case, you should select attacking players from either side but you shouldn’t be choosing defenders or the goalkeeper because there will probably be plenty of goals happening.
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For your defence pick from the likes of Tottenham, Everton and Wigan. I didn’t include Manchester United in there as they are playing Sunderland where Darren Bent will be keen for more goals.
Most of the Fulham players will probably be rested after their magnificent victory in the Europa League tie last night. They probably won’t be playing much more in their final three matches so try steer clear of any Fulham players. Because of this, you could pick some West Ham players this weekend, not withstanding how bad West Ham has been this year.
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