Fantasy Football FF247 Team Game-week 1

Fantasy Football 247 Team – Fantasy Premier League 2015/16
FF247 has finalised its selection for its squad in this our second season. Coming off a strong showing last season with a final ranking of 5921, we hope that we can go a bit better this time as we had a strong season and looked good for a top 1k finish for so long but just ran out of gas at the end! After seeing how our discussions went last season over transfers and team selection we were naturally more prepared. It was smooth as heck…well, more like long as heck. We started discussions several days ago and only came to a conclusion after the knives came out. Let’s just say the one with the biggest knife seemed more logical to the rest of the group. So with the season upon us, have a gander at the official FF247 team and our reasoning behind our team selection and captain choice.

Formation…

Goalkeepers
Thibaut Courtois
With Cech gone to Arsenal there is no longer the doubt over the starter that was hanging around at this time last season. With Chelsea being the best defensive team over the last couple of seasons, Thibaut fit in like a glove on a cash strapped side. We know we wanted some sort of CFC defensive cover and thought at 5.5 why not take the cheapest route in.

Wayne Hennessey
Price was the biggest factor in this selection, as we don’t expect to be sitting our number 1 Courtois anytime soon. However with Speroni being injured and a presser that some of us interpreted as Pardew leaning towards Wayne as his starter, we decided that he might actually be a 4.0 playing keeper. With that information in hand he became the stand out back up keeper to hopefully never see a game for us.

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Defenders
Per Mertesacker
Every decent FPL side needs a slow German. And if he plays for an Arsenal side with nice fixtures to start off with, well even better. Looking for a safe cheap-ish way into the Arsenal backline, we decided Per was our man. We would love the Frenchman Koscielny, but the 0.5 matters a heck of a lot when only working with a 100m budget.

Cedric Soares
The Saints are a canny lot – they build a star and then hitch their skirt and the scousers can’t resist. And then just go out and buy a replacement for a fraction of the price who looks better. So whilst young Cedric has a year to house-hunt in the suburbs of Kirby he will in the meantime be causing havoc down the flanks in Southampton much in the same way as his predecessors have. That’s the theory anyway as he looks an exciting prospect with assists in his locker and hopefully the odd goal. That allied to playing in one of last seasons best defences made us go all bleary eyed and well… scouse.

Robert Huth
Having helped Leicester stay up last season after a successful loan spell (they won 7 of their last 9 after his arrival) Huth looks like a mainstay in that defence and to help matters it was new boss Ranieri who originally signed him for Chelsea. Their opening 6 games are relatively kind so we are happy to find a German companion for big Mert.

Sebastian Coates
Bit of an odd one this as in all honesty anytime we’ve seen him in action previously he’s looked like the rear end of a pantomime donkey but apparently he’s found his feet a bit at Sunderland and we wanted a piece of his teams attractive looking opening fixtures.

Reece Oxford
Let’s call young Reece our ‘enabler’. He’s £4.0m. That’s pretty much all you need to know really but to expand slightly – there aren’t many (if any) in that price bracket that look like starting. He’s started a few pre-season and Europa games and actually played out of position in midfield so whilst we won’t hang our hat on a 16yr old getting game time there is an outside chance, especially as West Ham fielded a weakened team in the Europa last night and he wasn’t a part of that farce. If he looks like starting then happy days come GW2 & 3 given the fixtures. If not then he’s back to being an enabler.

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Midfielders

Eden Hazard
Not sure we have to explain this one. It’s fairly route one. Best player on last seasons best team. He will be one of, if not THE top fantasy scorer this season. Ignore at your peril!

Santiago Cazorla
We probably need to explain this one. Not in terms of us grabbing Arsenal cover but simply ‘why him over the others’. Simple answer is we’d have happily gone for Ramsey. Or Ozil. Or Walcott. Cazorla is on penalties and some free-kicks and he’s pretty good at both. We observed the Community Shield too and he interchanged positions with Ramsey with one going forward and the other holding.

Raheem Sterling
We wanted City cover from the off. The fixtures aren’t perfect but this is City and they usually produce regardless. Silva was considered and is a great choice. We just felt that Raheem’s pace would suit their style of play perfectly and with Aguero possibly still out for a week or so, there is a chance he may get pushed forward but either way we are happy to go with him. Plus he’s already showed in pre-season what he can do with the likes of Silva providing the ammunition.

Sadio Mane
Given his previous stats we expected a strong start to his Southampton career and Sadio duly delivered, culminating in ‘that’ hat-trick and we expect him to continue in a similar fashion this season as he looks hungry for goals as 11 of those and 4 assists in his virgin season would suggest. Their fixtures look good and we hope he will prosper accordingly.

James Milner
Oh, James! We hope to be repeating the infamous 007 saying a few times in the opening fixtures. He’s looked great in pre-season – scoring, assisting and being generally all over the place. It was a close call between him and Henderson and we could have gone for either. Hendo may have pens, we don’t know for sure. He certainly doesn’t look natural at them. Milner was the king of all set-pieces when at Villa. Either way we’ve opted for James and if he gets the set-pieces then all the better but his new lease of life and the fact that he has a target man in Benteke to work off suggests he may well once again start to deliver the returns he did at Villa.

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Strikers

Wayne Rooney
Back up top where he belongs. Last time he played a full season as an actual striker he got something like 34 goals. Hopefully that trend continues as we are putting faith in him to deliver something similar. Well ok, at least until Kun returns and United sign another striker and he’s shunted back to midfield to cover for the perrenially injured lot there!

Jermain Defoe
This is the one that may raise a few eyebrows. We get that, but bare with us here. Leicester, Norwich, Swansea, Villa and Bournemouth in the first 6 games hardly looks frightening. Defoe had half decent returns last season and much of that was from wide positions as he was forced to ‘do a job for the team’. With Wickham gone he should be instilled as the main striker and with his eye for goal and the addition of Lens to supply ample support we feel he is worth a small punt to begin with.

Diafra Sakho
This is where the forward planning comes into effect! We don’t want Sakho for an away game at Arsenal, but we are more than happy to have in come in for GW’s 2 & 3 with some decent home games in those and a strong midfield 5 in place for GW1. We will let him ride our bench and then decide who else sits in GW2 as that one looks like a nice headache that is building up already!

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Captain
HAZARD
He won a 4-1 vote amongst a 6 man committee. Don’t ask! Either way he’s our main man this week. Probably on the strength of what Chelsea did to the Swans last season in their two meetings. Out of interest the ‘1’ vote was for Rooney and he was our choice as Vice Captain.

Forward planning
We feel this is key and as such didn’t just pick a team for GW1. We picked a team / squad that we felt was good to compete for at least the first 3 GW’s but also with a plan in place for Aguero at the very least. Our plan for him is to downgrade a midfielder with a saved transfer in GW3 and upgrade a forward.

Thanks for reading Fantasy Football FF247 Team Game-week 1.

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