Fantasy Football Tips Gameweek 1 Where have the last three months gone? May 13th only seems like yesterday. It was a summer dominated for much of us by events in Russia. England won a penalty shoot-out and football nearly came home. The likes of Germany and Spain disappointed while the French eventually triumphed. But that’s all in the past. It’s been an interesting summer in the Premier League. Of last season’s top 6, Chelsea and Arsenal have new managers. Jose is still moaning. Spurs are yet to add to last season’s squad. Liverpool have spent a fortune. And, City are still the ones to beat. Elsewhere, Everton have spent £50m on a player who disappeared last season. Mike Ashley continues to be a favourite amongst the Geordies. Last but certainly not least, Colin is back! All of this and m...[Read More]
Fantasy Football Captain Picks Gameweek 1 Finally, GW1 one is upon us and brings with it fresh hope for each and every one of us with new teams, new players and a renewed sense of belief. Anticipation, excitement, everybody’s happy, well everybody aside Jose Mourinho, but he’s never happy so don’t let him bring you down. Picking a successful GW1 squad is a lottery at the best of times, throw in a World Cup and we have so many variables to consider, it’s enough to make even the most astute FPL manager lose their damn mind. You can study every pre-season game, fry your brain with endless stats and you’ll still be kicking yourself for ignoring at least one player ‘who you had’ in at least one of your 1001 pre-season drafts, sadly, that’s just how it is. So what can save you from instant FPL-i...[Read More]
After a long wait the Fall season finally started, but its arrival brought both pleasure and pain to fantasy managers. While those with underperforming teams may have been glad of the opportunity for a fresh start, everybody else felt robbed as they lost the luxury of their massive bank balances. It was a day of levelling when all managers woke up with a reset budget and newly priced players with some of them repositioned. It was an equal challenge for all to pick a decent squad, with only grim prospects of switcheroos due to affordability. Nevertheless, it was an exciting round with some surprising results. The highlight went to the Houston Dynamo vs Sporting Kansas City game, which saw 3 red and 8 yellow cards (including the ejection of the host team manager)! Gameweek 23 Review After a ...[Read More]
Fantasy Football Fixture Analysis Gameweek 1 We’ve spent the last few weeks studying the promoted teams and new transfers but now it’s time to get down to the business end and prepare for GW1 and beyond with the Fixtures article. As we are all aware, a positive flying start to the FPL season can stand us in good stead for the rest of the season, whereas falling behind early doors can lead to a long campaign of chasing points and rank. So preparation is key, knowledge is power as they say. In that regard let’s kick off the build up to GW1 with a look at who has a favourable start to the season and who may be better off avoided for now. Favourable Fixtures Liverpool – West Ham (H), Crystal Palace (a), Brighton (H) Pre-season seems to have gone well for Klopp and his disciples. Midfielders Ke...[Read More]
Barry and Paul’s Predictions GW1 Welcome to Barry and Paul’s Predictions GW1. We hope you’ve all had a smashing summer and you’re feeling refreshed and ready for another season of FPL and of course Premier League predictions. Thanks again to all of you who took part in our World Cup edition, and congratulations again to Horse for the win. A special shout-out to last year’s winners – Coys and DenPerryDitIt, hopefully both of you will be back to defend your title this season. We have a lot of new members on the site with more joining every day, welcome to each and every one of you, we hope you’re all going to get involved! For those of you new to the competition, the premise is pretty straightforward; each week we’ll post the following weeks fixtures at the end of the article, cu...[Read More]
New Fantasy Premier League Transfers 2018/19 Max Meyer, Alfie Mawson, Alexsandar Mitrovic and Yoshinori Muto Welcome to New Fantasy Premier League Transfers 2018/19 – Max Meyer, Alfie Mawson, Alexsandar Mitrovic and Yoshinori Muto. This edition is very much the ‘M’ edition so is probably why they recruited me to write it. M is the 13th letter of the Alphabet and this certainly feels like my 13th article of preseason but c’est la vie! Here we have two familiar faces and two not so familiar ones. AT was a bit premature on his Fulham article as they have gone and signed two names that are experienced in the Premier League in Alfie Mawson and Aleksandar Mitrovic. The other two names you may not know too well and that is Max Meyer to Crystal Palace and Yoshinori Muto to Newcastle. Each of these...[Read More]
New Fantasy Premier League Transfers 2018/19 Lukasz Fabianski, Jack Wilshere and Felipe Anderson Manuel Pellegrini has been a busy boy since taking over from Moyesie at West Ham. A re-invention of the squad was required after a season of underperformance last season and this article will focus on three of the Hammers ‘newbies’. Keeper Lukasz Fabianski was so desperate to leave Wales that he not only travelled the length of the M4 but half way around the M25 too, Jack Wilshere took the slightly shorter route from North London to come ‘home’, while Felipe Anderson decided that he’d rather ply his trade in Stratford than Rome. It’s a strange old world but the lure of Pellegrini was clearly strong for all three so let’s have a look at all three to determine if any are viable FPL possibilities....[Read More]
New Fantasy Premier League Transfers 2018/19 Alireza Jahanbakhsh and André Schürrle Hello and welcome to New Fantasy Premier League Transfers 2018/19 Alireza Jahanbakhsh and André Schürrle. A couple of relatively budget friendly but potentially also relatively good value midfielders wondered into our FPL lives this week. One is a household name, the other not so much. For many reasons. One is a World Cup winner who has played here before and actually won the league with Chelsea (despite being somehow unaware of doing so!). The other has just featured in the World Cup recently in Russia but we doubt anybody actually noticed. From that snappy synopsis it appears one is a shoe-in for our FPL teams and the other you should just forget about. But don’t let history fool you, necessarily. H...[Read More]
New Fantasy Premier League Transfers 2018/19 – Andriy Yarmolenko, Bernd Leno and Florin Andone Welcome to New Fantasy Premier League Transfers 2018/19 – Andriy Yarmolenko, Bernd Leno and Florin Andone. Omne trium perfectum. Perfection comes in threes. ‘The rule of three’ being of course a widely adapted writing principle, whether in comedy, advertising, or some other third thing. So why should Fantasy Football be any different? After trawling the breadths and depths of the Premier League transfer pond I handpicked the very best trio of recent FPL inductees. Unfortunately they were already taken by other writers, so here are three blokes you’ve never heard of. Andriy Yarmolenko | Midfielder | West Ham United | £7.0m I remember what it was like getting my first Star Wars figurine...[Read More]
New Fantasy Premier League Transfers 2018/19 Richarlison and James Maddison Hello and welcome to New Fantasy Premier League Transfers 2018/19 Richarlison and James Maddison. We continue our look at new Premier League transfers by focusing on two promising mid-priced attacking midfielders, namely Everton’s Richarlison and Leicester’s James Maddison. Richarlison you will likely remember from his time at Watford last season while you may not know so much about James Maddison unless you followed the Championship. Both midfielders are priced at 6.5mln and would appear to offer good value for money. They both also have the advantage of starting the season at their new clubs with decent looking fixtures. Richarlison Everton FPL price: 6.5mln Many of us hold fond memories of early seas...[Read More]
After a few postponements, the Spring season is now finally over and we will be entering the Fall season starting this week. Despite the many delayed kick-offs (due to freaky summer weather conditions) we witnessed another exciting round with 51 goals scored, including two hat tricks. Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored his first MLS hat trick and his ex-Manchester United team-mate Wayne Rooney scored his first MLS goal. Elsewhere, Bradley Wright-Phillips netted his 100th goal and became the fastest player to score a century in MLS history. https://twitter.com/MLS/status/1023781778308378625 Gameweek 22 Review The second edition of El Trafico finished in a similar fashion to the first. LAFC were 2-0 up until the 82nd minute when the Galaxy came back, this time to draw the game. Vancouver demolished M...[Read More]
Fantasy Premier League Promoted Teams Analysis FPL 2018/19 Wolves We look at the reigning Championship winners Wolves who lit up the second tier of English football by winning 30 of their 46 games, scoring 82 goals and conceding 39. This saw them finish on 99 points and so close to breaking the 100 mark. The Wolves ownership have been showing their intent and ambition in recent seasons with the big-name signings of Diogo Jota, Ruben Neves, Rui Patricio and Joao Moutinho so a similar season to last wouldn’t be too much of a surprise. This team is full of youth and is led by Nuno Espirito Santo, a Portuguese manager, who has organised a well-oiled machine and I would hazard to call them the poor man’s Man City (no disrespect intended!). What I mean by this is Wolves are a side that plays att...[Read More]