Fantasy Football FF247 Team Gameweek 8

Fantasy Football FF247 Team Gameweek 8

It seems an age away now, but GW7 was a pretty good gameweek for the FF247 team. We managed to beat the average score again, amassing 62pts vs an average of 51pts. Our score was very much built around the performance of our midfield and strikers, which in all honesty was the same for a great many fantasy managers this week. Firstly captain Aguero notched his 5th goal in seven games this season, scoring the 2nd of City’s goals at Villa, although he had us nervous for most of the match! A bonus point just made it sweeter, meaning a 14pt return. Other decent returns on that Saturday were Siggy’s two assists vs Newcastle and Sterling’s assist for Liverpool’s winner home to West Brom. Taylor and Moore disappointed in defence, but c’est la vie. Mannone chipped in with 3pts home to Stoke – his save points echoing memories of last season. Onto Sunday and Di Maria was the star – scoring the first for United, assisting the second and collecting three bonus points courtesy of his well-deserved man of the match performance. Spurs goal meant no clean sheet for Alderweireld as thoughts turned to Chelsea and that man Costa. Mixed emotions before the game – of course we want our players to do well, but with many captaining Costa, we didn’t want him going crazy – even a brace would of damaged our ranking! Well, just the one goal and no bonus points justified our decision not to captain him, while reliable Fabregas set up his goal. So all in all, satisfying, the green arrows appeared and we now find ourselves sitting pretty in 13,682 place – a comfortable position to be in at this stage of the season.

Transfers for GW8
Well it’s all change this week as we have used our two free transfers. We explained our plans last week and the lack of injuries over the international period has meant that those plans haven’t changed…much. There is however a slight personnel change. We have:

Sold Stoke defender Marc Wilson and Liverpool midfielder Raheem Sterling

and bought Everton defender Leighton Baines and Southampton midfielder Dusan Tadic.

Baines we feel is difficult to ignore in FPL – if he only played in a side that kept more clean sheets, he really would be a genuine “must have”. Just one clean sheet in Everton’s first seven fixtures may also lead some to question us spending 7mln on the defender, especially when it means selling Sterling to finance it. Our reasoning is this – Baines is as much about his attacking prowess as his defensive stability – he is on all set pieces for the Toffees, including penalties – indeed, already this season, in those first seven games he has contributed one goal and three assists, picking up six bonus points in the process. He is consistently one of, if not the, highest scoring defender in FPL. Need more? Ok – in these first seven games, Everton have faced the firepower of Chelsea, United, Liverpool and Arsenal. Everton’s next six home games are against Villa, Swansea, West Ham, Hull, QPR and Stoke, while in the same period they also travel to Burnley and Sunderland.

Selling Sterling was a much harder decision, but in the end something had to give and at this stage we are very happy with the remaining midfielders and strikers. Despite Liverpool’s attractive looking short-term fixture list, they are, in Rodgers’ own words, “still in transition” and, of course, Sterling has very recently complained about felling tired. Throw in constant Champions League action including two ties with Real Madrid and all this makes us feel we can live FPL life without Sterling for now. That’s not to say he won’t do well in the meantime and the return of Sturridge may well reinvigorate him, but Baines is the priority.

So we have bought Dusan Tadic. In all honesty, we really wanted Saido Mane, but the African returned late from international duty and Koeman didn’t fill us with confidence that he would play this weekend. Given there is another international break in a few weeks, plus the African Cup on Nations in January, we feel Tadic is probably the safer pick. Southampton’s fixtures are pretty appetising and we felt some Saints attacking coverage will be important these next few weeks.

Captain
Our captain for GW8 is Angel Di Maria – a unanimous decision. Three double-digit scores out of four shows how quickly the midfielder has settled in to Premier League life and also illustrates his class and form. With Falcao and RvP also finding the net recently for United, confidence is high for the Reds at one end of the pitch at least. There are of course other great options this week: Aguero home to Spurs, Costa at Palace, Welbeck home to Hull, Siggy in great form at the moment, Pelle at home to Sunderland and of course even Baines as Villa travel to Goodison. But there’s nothing quite like a strong Monday Night Football captain and when many have already counted their double points for the weekend, we’ll be hoping ADM carries on his recent trend as United travel to West Brom.
Our vice captain is Diego Costa.

Here is our team in all it’s glory this week then –

And in text format as promised –

Krul

Alderweireld Taylor Baines

Di Maria Fabregas Sigurdsson Tadic

Welbeck Costa Aguero

Subs – Mannone Boyd Moore Hutton

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