Captain Picks Fantasy Football Game-week 8

Captain Picks Fantasy Football Game-week 8 – Fantasy Premier League 2015/16

Let’s talk numbers. 12% of managers were happy this week. 1.7% of managers were ecstatic this week. 88% of managers looked at how they could transfer Sanchez in this week. 1.7% of managers laughed at 88% of managers and toasted themselves with a celebratory glass or two on Saturday evening… A captain often makes or breaks a game-week. Nail it and you are usually looking at a 20+ point haul. Fail it and you spend the week staring blankly / maniacally at your team with a 2 point captain trying desperately not to meet your gaze for fear of being axed or worse. Once in a while you not only nail it, you bloody well drill it in, industrial wall plug’s ‘an all. To illustrate the impact it can make, one FF247 member (Pancho), reported no less than a rise of over 1 million places on Saturday night as a result of captaining a certain Chilean. 1 million! Ok, so that’s an extreme example, your captain won’t often be a midfielder who scores a hat-trick and nets you a cool 40 and you won’t always get such a rise in rankings but it serves to emphasise the point – this is probably the most important choice you make all week…

[clear]

Sergio Aguero – home vs Newcastle – The obvious pick..
[three_fourth padding=”0 20px 0 0″]

[/three_fourth]Ok so this one may take a Sanchez sized leap of faith given his scores so far (1, 6, 2, 2, 1, 5 and 2) and with just the one goal, the one assist and zero bonus points but hear us through. Interestingly, prior to GW7, he was tied with Sanchez for points scored. They had 17 apiece so perhaps this illustrates that what has gone before is not necessarily an indicator of what lies ahead. What does lie ahead is a very tantalising home game against Newcastle and despite last week’s strange defeat at Spurs this does match up the side in second place against the one second from bottom. The corresponding fixture last season was as recently as February and saw City go 3-0 up within 21 minutes, ultimately cruising to a 5-0 victory. All logic points to another comfortable City home win and an opportunity for the ‘Sanchez within Aguero’ to be awoken. After all we have been waiting in earnest for the ‘big guns’ to suddenly explode and one certainly went off last week. Let’s hope it may have startled Sergio back into action. He’s the obvious pick this week, perhaps for the wrong reasons but with the right fixture. Whatever that means.

[divider_1px]

Kevin de Bruyne – home vs Newcastle – The sensible pick…
[three_fourth padding=”0 20px 0 0″]

[/three_fourth]If Aguero’s form is still making you uneasy this guy’s certainly shouldn’t. Any latecomers to the de Bruyne party cannot say they were not warned. He was Bundesliga fantasy gold last season and he’s seemingly transferred that form straight into the EPL with 2 goals in each of his first full 90 minute appearances. It may just be goals so far, but he’s an assist machine too. He hasn’t provided a league one just yet – but he was renowned for them prior to his arrival so he has that in his locker to unleash as well. Last season he’s credited with an astonishing 20 league assists which amounted to him assisting 28% of their 71 goals. Add in that he scored 10 of those himself and that stat shows that he was involved in 42% of their goals scored. In fact in all competitions he grabbed 28 assists in just 51 games. All indications are that this could be a monster of a fantasy player and he may become a must-have sooner rather than later.

[divider_1px]

Jamie Vardy (& Riyad Mahrez)- away vs Norwich – The form pick(s)…
[three_fourth padding=”0 20px 0 0″]

[/three_fourth]Speaking of form and Leicester, it’s difficult to ignore Jamie Vardy right now with stats like five goals in his last four games. Clearly any striker, who is both on such a hot streak and also playing for a team who are quickly becoming reminiscent of Newcastle circa Kevin Keegan, is worthy of your consideration. Vardy is sitting pretty as the leading striker in the game with 43 points but even he trails team-mate Mahrez by some distance. A full 17 points better off with 60 in total, Mahrez is the highest scoring player in the game overall thanks largely to his five goals and three assists. One other area where he does particularly well in comparison to Vardy is bonus points. For all his goals Vardy has a miserly four bonus to his name whereas Mahrez has fourteen. In five of his seven games so far Mahrez has posted double digit scores which is exactly what captains are made of. We should at least mention their opposition this week but in all honesty Leicester seem intent on attacking regardless of who they face as their fifteen goals so far puts them joint leading scorers with West Ham. For their part Norwich have conceded the joint 3rd most with twelve against, five of those coming in just three home games.

[divider_1px]

Dimitri Payet – away vs Sunderland – The ‘playing Sunderland’ pick…
[three_fourth padding=”0 20px 0 0″]

[/three_fourth]Speaking of West Ham and goals they play Sunderland this week! No team has conceded more (16) and so we see the leagues joint leading scorers up against the leagues worst defence. Sounds like a captain pick made in fantasy heaven. Payet leads the way for the Hammers in terms of fantasy points with 49 to his name and is in fact 2nd only to the aforementioned Mahrez overall. Last time he faced a team from the North East he gobbled them up to the tune of 16 points with two goals against Newcastle. He’s been Mr Consistency this season with three goals, three assists and eight bonus points. In fact he’s been involved in 40% of all of their goals so far. Sunderland are just stumbling around from one defeat to the next whilst West Ham are flying high and particularly away from home. Wins already at Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool would point to this being a formality for the Hammers and if that proves to be the case we’d expect Payet to have a big hand in it.

[divider_1px]

Alexis Sanchez – home vs Manchester United – The risky pick…
[three_fourth padding=”0 20px 0 0″]

[/three_fourth]“This could quickly be a high-scoring match, in which case Sanchez is likely to be seen among the goals. While he has not delivered so far, it looks like bad luck more than anything as he has been getting plenty of chances, finding himself in superb positions in front of goal and taking several shots. If you are willing to give the big names another chance before abandoning ship for the upstarts, give Sanchez some consideration.” Tekno-Kun, GW7. Ok so we’ll gloss over picking Pedro (1pt), Aguero (2 pts) and Mahrez (2pts) last week but credit where credit is due. Now Alexis won’t be up against a defence as leaky as Leicester’s every week but we do feel he is one of those players that once he gets going he’s hard to stop. This weeks opponents are new league leaders Man United who have only conceded five goals this season but the good news is that four of those have been away from home. This would be a classic case of following form over fixtures which is basically the opposite of going for one of the Man City boys mentioned above. Can the Chilean carry on where left off last week? We wouldn’t bet against it but, given the opposition, he would actually be classed as our risky pick this week despite his heroics last time out.

[divider_1px]

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 but this in all likelihood is one to save for when we encounter double game-weeks later on in the season.

[divider_1px]

Thanks for reading Captain Picks Fantasy Football Game-week 8. This article was written by Inittowinit

Follow @AdamalcockFF247

[divider_1px_dashed]

[row][span6]

Vote on our Captain Poll Now

[/span6][span6]

[/span6][span6]

Fixture Tracker

[/span6][/row]

[divider_1px]

FANTEAM.COM – FANTASY BETTING

It’s time for your fantasy manager job to finally pay off.
Gather your friends and foes and see who has the best strategic skills in fantasy football!