FF247 McDonald’s Fantasy World Cup Team 2014 – Last 16

FF247 McDonald’s Fantasy World Cup Team 2014 – Last 16

With the group stages now complete the good people of McDonald’s have given us all even more work to do but with it the chance to freshen up our squads and restructure according to who has qualified and who we feel has the best chance of success in the next round. From here on in you have unlimited transfers between each round starting with the last 16. The deadline for this is Saturday 28th June at 5pm UK time. Ahead of the competition we published our first ever official FF247 team and so we have great pleasure in now telling you how it has fared so far, what our squad is for the next round and a bit about the strategy behind our choices.

The story so far…
The team itself has amassed 315 points and we are pleased with our performance so far. Our general strategy last time out was to go a bit top heavy and try to maximise points from our strikers while having a more budget friendly midfield and defence but with plenty of options for changing each day. It’s fair to say that while Neymar and Messi pulled us out of a few holes the lack of Colombian midfielder’s kept threatening to bury us! Our choice to fill up with heavy forwards nearly bit us as Ronaldo was the other and while he looked like he was going to flop he just about did us proud with a goal in the final game.

The FF247 team found itself in Potstar B in Pottys Dodgy 32 competition and we are delighted to say that having led from the front we managed to maintain this form until the bitter end and we topped the group with no late dramas and so we progress to the last 16 with a tie against Jon 9838. Jon may have a slight advantage here strategically then with being able to see what we have picked but our attitude is simply ‘that’s our team – beat us then!’ We appreciate that there are a good many teams that bettered our total but still found themselves knocked out but that’s the luck of the draw and you can only beat what’s in front of you. (Wasn’t much!).

Our last 16 team

Strategy
We have tried to spread the team / squad out over the game days to give ourselves plenty of options each day and in particular to give us a viable captiancy option as many times as possible until we land on the one we like! In goal we like the prices more than we like the potential for clean sheets we must admit, but at £3m and £2m the combo of Cillessen and Karnezis was still hard to overlook and served us well in the qualifiers. In defence we have doubled up on Germany and when quizzed why the panel responded ”They’re playing Algeria, duh”, fair enough then. We opted for Sakho over Evra on the basis that “He’s got a lot more points, I think”. Scientific it ain’t but when pushed we were surprised, nay shocked – “I had a look at OPTA stats and he’s made most clearances and has made a serious number of passes”. In layman’s terms that translates to a shed load more points in this format so Sakho it was. Oh and Evra is still on a yellow card which counts going forward.

In midfield we have gone double Colombia which means a triple allied with Yepes at the back. When we asked if this was overkill the panels response was “please don’t mention Colombia and overkill in the same sentence”. We left it at that and backed away slowly. Our choice of Argentinian coverage was a tough one. We were surprised to find that Mascherano was  leading the scoring by some way and as such we have plumped for him rather then Di Maria. His ability to tackle and recover balls obviously stands him in good stead for the point bonuses in this game. A goal or two from Di Maria will ruin this theory in a heartbeat as you certainly won’t be hearing the words ‘goal’ and ‘Mascherano’ in any sentence this World Cup! (we secrectly hope we cursed that right there).

Up top we’ve gone fairly obvious here with Neymar and Messi as we suspect many will. There are a good few options for the all important ‘third’ spot namely Benzema, Robben, Van Persie and whisper it quietly Fred! Fred could well be the differential here as he started the Confederations Cup in similar fashion to this and ended up the top scorer. One for the brave though we feel and as such we have gone for Muller of Germany. Essentially not actually an out and out forward but he’s already shown that doesn’t really matter and we feel that Germany will have far too much for Algeria  in this one. We hope!

Thanks for reading FF247 McDonald’s Fantasy World Cup Team 2014 – Last 16- Good luck everyone!