Captain Picks Fantasy Football Game-week 6

Captain Picks Fantasy Football Game-week 6 – Fantasy Premier League 2015/16

In literary terms, there is a device that is often used called the “unreliable narrator”. You’re probably familiar with it — the person giving the view in the story tells you everything they think you need to know, and they tell it with absolute confidence. As the reader though, you quickly start to get the feel that the narrator can tend to exaggerate — or even not know when he’s wrong — but through it all, the narrator believes his story as being true. And so, due to his earnestness, the reader believes the story as well.

I tell you this because my captain picks have been correct each and every week. You should know that right off the bat. The fact that my captains failed me during their matches has nothing to do with my ability to choose the proper cappo, it simply means that my very correct picks failed me during the game. I put the failure on the player — not the fantasy owner. Years ago, when I started playing fantasy football, my very first cappo was a goalkeeper. That was my first, and my last, incorrect captain pick. Since then I’ve been pretty spot on.

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With that preface, welcome to my first FPL Captain Picks article! I’m sure you’ll see that I can be a bit more than just the “MLS guy”. Though I haven’t gone through all of the archives, I imagine it’s a rare occurrence to have an American give this most trusted piece of advice. Please don’t hold the fact that I’m American against me — after all, I had the benefit of being raised very close to the Canadian border. So even if you think that my advice is absolute rubbish, my Canadian-influenced good nature makes me impervious to your jeers and taunts. I learned that the cure for scorn and animosity is just a bit of maple syrup over some pancakes. And believe me, I didn’t start to write this article without a little Bisquik batter ready to go…

So, now that you know I’m bullet-proof and a completely nailed-on captain selector, let’s get to making your points double this week.

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#1 – Riyad Mahrez (The ‘Most Obvious’ Pick)
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[/three_fourth]Truly, I’m starting to resent my parents for not naming me Riyad. But I forgive them because how could they have known that such a name even existed? Riyad Mahrez: he sounds like a towering champion from a fantasy novel or something. And not only does he have the very greatest name in football right now, he’s also the most in-form, in-demand fantasy pick out there.

On Mahrez’s credentials alone, he deserves to be considered a captain pick. When you consider that he’s the FPL’s leading scorer with 47 points, it’s hard to look past him. After five weeks, Mahrez can’t be written off as a fluke anymore. He’s the real deal.

We don’t yet know if Mahrez is ‘fixture-proof’ or not, but that really doesn’t matter for this round. Leicester are going away to Stoke, and Stoke have been absolutely awful at the start of this year. Not only do Stoke have a -4 GD, but they’ve already lost both of their home fixtures and currently sit in the relegation zone with only 2 points on the year. If you can’t captain Mahrez under these conditions, I don’t know what else you’re waiting for. This could be the perfect storm.

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#2 – Andre Ayew (The ‘Swan That’s Not a Panther’ Pick)
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[/three_fourth]Swansea play at home against Everton this week, and as a die-hard Everton fan, it pains me to pick Ayew here. But if you take away Ayew’s last fixture, which was a blank on the road, you have to consider him a legitimate threat to get back on the scoring pace at home this week. Ayew has had a wonderful start to his campaign with three goals and an assist, but more impressive for him is that fact that he’s already taken six bonus points on the year.

And that’s the reason I’m taking Ayew over Gomis for a captaincy possibility this week. Even though Gomis scored a goal in each of his first four matches, he was only able to net a single bonus points from all of that effort. Ayew is much more dynamic, and he really makes the most of the games he decides to go after.

Now a more rational person would tell you that this isn’t the week to take a chance on a Swansea player with Everton coming to town. After all, Everton have played a pair of away fixtures and earned clean sheets in both of them (against Southampton and Tottenham). But those people that are lauding Everton right now just can’t fathom how inevitable a pair of goals seems to be for Swansea right now. As a fan, I’ve been down this road before. I fully expect Everton are capable of getting a result in this match (dare I say a win?), but it would just be mathematically foolish to think that they start the year with three straight clean sheets on the road. I am pegging Swansea to score in some capacity, and I really do think Ayew is a the center of it all.

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#3 – Aleksandar Kolarov (The ‘Are You Really Taking a Defender?’ Pick)
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[/three_fourth]Every single time I think that Kolarov can’t possibly fit more points into the start of his year, he goes off and scores just a few points more. I said above that Mahrez is the leading scorer in the game — well, Kolarov is your #2 man in the list. It seems almost absurd that a defender has 46 points on the year through five matches, but that’s exactly what Kolarov has managed to do.

I know that everybody is going to say that eventually Man City are going to concede a goal, and that chasing a clean sheet with a captaincy is foolhardy. Well maybe it is. But if you look past the clean sheets, you would also see that Kolarov already has 10 bonus points on the year as well. Think about that for a second: Man City have gone five games, scored eleven goals and conceded none. That means that Man City are scoring an average of 2.2 goals a game. And of the 30 bonus points available to Man City player on the year, a defender has already snatched up 10 of those. Quite simply, Kolarov is the most active defender in the game, and his points reflect that.

Kolarov only trails Bournemouth’s Francis for Chances Created on the year; Kolarov has 8 and Francis has 9. But when it comes to getting forward in the attack, Kolarov leaves all other defenders in the dust with his level of production. No other defender has as many crosses as Kolarov does (10), and no defender has matched his number of attempts on goal (9).

This could be a tough week for Man City, I’ll concede that. With a midweek Champions League match and then a tough test against a fairly decent West Ham side, it could pose a problem or two for the entire squad. But Kolarov has the benefit of being in a squad that has attackers putting the opposition on their back foot for the entire match. If you really think about it, Kolarov isn’t the worst choice this week if you were looking for a surprise pick in a head to head match.

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#4 – Alexis Sanchez (The Superstar Pick)
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[/three_fourth]I figured I had to add in at least one superstar into this article, it’s almost obligatory. I couldn’t in good conscience recommend Hazard though — Chelsea are a mess right now. I couldn’t recommend Rooney or Aguero, both seem to be nursing injuries and aren’t certain right now to even start their matches this weekend. So if you need to cap a superstar, I think Alexis is your man.

It’s not a bad strategy to captain superstars exclusively, people do it all the time. I have a friend who actually only captains the most expensive player on his roster each week. The theory goes that if you’re going to tie up all of those funds, that player then has to be entrusted to produce the points. It makes sense in some ways. It doesn’t follow the current trends, but for the course of an entire year, it does pencil out.

I think if you’re in that camp of people that only captain players based on price and name recognition, Sanchez has a great chance to produce points for you this weekend. Granted, Arsenal are away and they have to play Chelsea. But this year’s edition of this clash has to be decidedly in Arsenal’s favor. Chelsea are just lost right now. Costa looks disinterested, Courtois is injured and Hazard is having a hard damned time pulling everything back together.

If Steven Naismith can notch three against Chelsea, you’d have to give the nod to Arsenal to be able to do something at least close to the same. I know that all of the Chelsea faithful are waiting for Mourinho to get into Wenger’s head and have this match be their ‘rebound’ game, but I just don’t see it. Arsenal haven’t lost since the first week of the year, and they’re on a two-game win streak right now.

The best that we can hope for is that Sanchez takes the helm of the Arsenal attack and finally gets his first goal of the year. And there is no time like the present to pounce all over Chelsea in the form that they’re in.

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There you have it folks, four picks to choose from. All I can say with any certainty is that I’ll be capping one of these four players myself – I won’t give advice that I don’t personally follow. And now this unreliable narration is at an end.

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Triple Captain Chip
Just a quick word on the new feature this season. It pretty much does what it says on the tin and trebles your points for your captain on whichever game-week you choose to deploy it. We shall touch on this as and when we feel the opportunity presents itself to use it effectively (not last week Potty! He was away to Pardew after all you fool 😉 ) but this in all likelihood is one to save for when we encounter double game-weeks later on in the season.

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Thanks for reading Captain Picks Fantasy Football Game-week 6. This article was written by Guy Sanchez (FootyFantastic)

Follow @Guy_M_Sanchez

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