Fantasy Football FF247 Team Gameweek 16

Fantasy Football FF247 Team Gameweek 16

[alert style=”1″]Breaking News: Due to a muscle injury to Thibaut Courtois we have transferred in the safe hands of Joe Hart for a 4 point hit on Friday after the article was announced.Further details were promised and here they are…

We were faced with the prospect of no keeper and playing with 10 men. Hardly a disaster and we could have left it be but we are nothing if not thorough so we delved into the detail and decided an extra hit was justified even if it was for minimal gain. The theory was that our keeper situation meant that we would score zero points as it was. If we took a hit we would lose 4 but also gain 2 from the replacement playing a standard 90 minute, uneventful game. The plus side was that if we picked the right one (clean sheet, saves etc) we could gain on the deal. A standard 90 minutes plus clean sheet would see us up by 2 points. Not a lot we know but as we said we are forensic about our fantasy football and hence we decided Hart was the best bet to deliver us this. Add in that we don’t really know the extent of the Courtois injury just yet and how long he will actually be out for, we are happy to have Hart for the upcoming fixtures as they are very kind to City.[/alert]

A few days ago we opened our team article with this statement. “It’s a happy and chipper FF247 camp that brings you this week’s Team review and plans for the future as we had a great GW14.” Yeah ok, that seems like a distant memory now. Like many of you, our team was struck with a litany of bad luck via injuries or dumbassedness from our now suspended players. However not all is doom and gloom, as our two newest squad members (bought in GW13) once again got us some valuable points. Downing and Sanchez have certainly been welcome additions to our team, if for no other reason than the fact that they are healthy and not suspended. The rest of our midfield was disappointing, with Siggy scoring his usual 2 pointer when he plays away from the Liberty Stadium and Cesc picking up his fifth yellow. However any strong frowns have to be reserved for our line of forwards. What a number they did on us and the FPL community in general. Charlie Austin while delivering 6 points only managed to snatch that from what seemed a certain 12. The red card he saw was only compounded by the disappointing display put in by the Brazilian-looking Spanish forward Costa. The nightmare though was not over as our triad up top wanted to close the show with an epic bang. Enter our captain and the EPL’s best player. Exit 6 minutes later our captain and the EPL’s best player. Enough said…well at least until the transfers portion of this article.
Everton, Leighton Baines…what went wrong? Yeah, we used that phrase last week, but why the heck change it when it works so well? That is 4 points from our star defender in the last 4 game-weeks. You over-cooking my grits Leighton, you over-cooking my grits. Courtois had a day off, but he can be forgiven as we are still confident that Thibaut will repay us with many a clean sheet over the coming weeks. Our Swan defender Bartley brought in one point, probably because he didn’t want to show up half our team by scoring two, what a great teammate! We saved our game-week hero for last. Usually bench fodder Alan Hutton came in and saved the day, to the point where it was his points that pushed us over that magical border into the top 1K.

We climbed 419 places and now sit in a global position of 976 – Our careful planning last week has left us in a better position than most teams with two free transfers. Hopefully we will make the correct decisions this GW and continue to see green arrows like we have 9 out of the last 11 weeks.

Transfer(s) for GW16
It is with great sadness that I present our departees this game-week. Two loyal hard working individuals will leave our squad, Cesc Fabregas and Sergio Aguero, get the tissues out boys. The case of Cesc was a difficult one because he has been with us from the start. His consistent returns led to some debate about whether benching him was the wiser move. However we felt that since we had saved a transfer last week and Chelsea was playing Hull City, that this was a chance we could not pass up. So yeah, we decided to go a bit sideways on this transfer, but we think the flashy Belgian Hazard, will prove over time and hopefully this week in particular that he is well worth it. A bit more on why Hazard was the transfer choice will be made more obvious in our captaincy section. So Chelsea mid for Chelsea mid, so what did we do with the other transfer? We continued the theme obviously, as we decided to go City forward for City forward.
Ohhh the controversy, all owners are likely to sell Aguero this week, but it is a bit of a risk to then turn around and buy Edin Dzeko. We have our reasons though so hear us out. Let’s start with the fixtures part of the argument, they play Leicester, Palace, West Brom, Burnley and Sunderland in the next five. That right there should almost be enough to end the argument really considering they are all bottom 10 teams and their goals allowed and lack of clean sheets on average is atrocious. Another part of our reasoning is that the Bosnian plays on the second most prolific team only 2 goals behind Chelsea. The fact that we have no other City cover on the team and his price tag also made him appealing. We do however know that he comes with a bit of risk and a ton of lazy. He is just returning to 100% fitness, but how fit do you really need to be to stand in front of goal and push them in? Considering the lack of forwards at City right now and that the only real competition is a guy (Jovetic) who could keep Ben Dinnery busy all day just updating his injury status alone, we feel that Dzeko’s risk vs reward is worth it.

So to confirm our transfers we have –

Sold Cesc Fabregas and bought Eden Hazard

Sold Sergio Aguero and bought Edin Dzeko

We should probably mention that Charlie Austin will retain a spot in our team during his one game suspension. Part of it is his cheap price tag, but a bigger part is his home form and the opponents in 2 of his next 3 home games. Charlie is averaging 8.2 points over his last 5 home games, managing 5 goals and 3 assists. We feel that this is enough to earn him reprieve from getting the axe for now. But after his red card trickery this past gameweek the leash is a very short one and we will be expecting immediate returns for our compassion in keeping him.

Our team in full…

We have decided to go with a 3-5-2 formation.
In goal Thibaut Courtois will start as Tim Krul is out, not that we would ever start him over the baby face shot stopper.
Leighton Baines will be expected to finally break out of the funk he has been in as the Austin-less QPR side come in for a visit. We have decided to give Hutton a start as we feel he offers a slightly better chance than any of the Swansea defenders for a clean sheet. The last spot in our back line has been reserved for Toby Alderweireld as there are reports he could make it back on time for his tasty fixture vs Burnley. Plus one of our site team board members has been swearing all season long that Toby is on the verge of scoring a goal, so with that analysis how could we not play him?
All five midfielders get an outing with Austin being suspended. To be fair, four of them would play over Charlie even if he wasn’t. Good fixtures are the theme in our midfield. The biggest stumbling block we had was deciding whether Boyd or Taylor would start. In the end we decided to go with one of our GW14 stars in Boyd. We felt that Spurs despite their general lack of “Cojones” always find a way to get a couple past Swansea. In the 4 games in the EPL they have played, shockingly enough Spurs have won all 4.
Diego Costa and Edin Dzeko will lead our line and will also cause us to refresh our twitter feed every 2 seconds when team sheets are on the verge of being out. They better start!!

Captain

Our captain this week is Eden Hazard

Fixture and home form made Hazard stand out as the best candidate in our eyes. He has scored in his last 4 at Stamford Bridge and all 5 of his goals this season have come at home. His minutes seem secure and the cream on top is that he takes the pens for Chelsea. Our Vice Captain this week is Alexis Sanchez.

The team in text format is –

Hart
Alderweireld, Hutton Baines
Boyd, Sanchez (vc), Hazard (C), Sigurdsson, Downing
Costa, Dzeko

Bench: Krul. Taylor, Bartley, Austin

Thanks for reading Fantasy Football FF247 Team Gameweek 16.

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