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Fantasy Football Fixture Analysis Gameweek 2

Fantasy Football Fixture Analysis Gameweek 2

Fantasy Football Fixture Analysis Gameweek 2

Welcome to Fantasy Football Fixture Analysis Gameweek 2. And as quickly as that, it is all over. All the optimism pumped into you on these boards over the past few weeks has been shattered, all that boasting to your mates that they may as well just pay you the league winner’s money before the season starts has backfired, and all that time picking hidden ‘gems’ was wasted. Indeed, the only hidden gem we truly managed to find – Aaron Wan-Bissaka – was parked on our benches, sandwiched between reckless Enabler A and feckless Enabler B. I joke, of course. We are one week in. I will save you the patronising hare and tortoise, sprint and marathon rubbish in the hope that someone wildcards for the entertainment of the rest of the site.

Gameweek 1 will never go perfectly. I am presuming every single one of us said ‘I had him’ when someone we had three weeks ago rippled the back of the net or grabbed an assist. Some of us probably said it so many times that our mates made it a drinking rule at the pub! Unfortunately, this is fantasy football, and your squad cannot have 40 players in it (and even if it did I bet you would have ‘almost put him in’!)

Forget Gameweek 1; we have a week to pump up the optimism once more, to boast to our mates again, and to find another hidden gem or two. Luckily, I am not on Tips this week so I will just rattle off the teams that have nice, pretty green fixtures and save the hard work for a better man. Sit tight and don’t do anything knee-jerk. If you watched the games, the ‘eye test’ might justify a transfer, but following the crowds of people who get bored after six gameweeks when they have not won a copy of FIFA 19, a match ball, a rucksack and a mug yet is stupid. Furthermore, the prediction websites often get price change calculations wrong at this time of the year so do not let the ostensible hive of activity on those sites trouble you.

Favourable Fixtures

Manchester City – Huddersfield (H), Wolves (A), Newcastle (H)
No surprises here. Just like the site team’s justification for Mo Salah, Manchester City is Manchester City. They breezed past Arsenal 2-0 in their own backyard with even more quality left sitting on the bench. Not only that, but their next six fixtures are as good as you could ask for (I deliberately refrained from saying ‘as good as money can buy’) – the six promoted sides over the past two seasons, four of which will be played in front of a home crowd at the Etihad. Picking players immune to Pepotation – and, yes, that is the best portmanteau I could come up with – might be nigh on impossible, but going without their players over the coming weeks is surely playing with fire. During their 3-0 defeat at home to Chelsea, Huddersfield look much the same as they did last year; rubbish. Wagner’s men conceded 33 away from home, placing them 16th in that regard overall and, having failed to strengthen at the back over the summer (except making permanent signings out of two of their best, Terence Kongolo and Jonas Lössl), I doubt they will be able to put up much of a fight against a free-flowing City team who averaged a staggering 3.21 goals per home game last season.

Manchester City then come up against newcomer golden boys Wolves who looked a bit fazed by all the unwanted pressure that has been put on them against Everton on Saturday. City averaged 2.37 goals per away game last season, and Wolves did not offer enough against Everton to instill me with much confidence of a solid defensive showing against the Citizens.

To round it off Newcastle make their way to the Etihad the following gameweek. Unfortunately for Newcastle fans, House of Fraser is not a shiny new £90m striker but just another business for their owner to add to his mountain of things he cares about more than the football club itself. They conceded a poor 30 goals away from home last season and I doubt they will cause City many problems.

Did I mention that they then face Fulham (H), Cardiff (A), and Brighton (H)? One thing you can do to help you stave off using your Wildcard early doors is to triple up on last season’s champions. It probably won’t be enough in itself to stop you, but at least you won’t have had a total car crash before getting twitchy fingers on the Saturday of Gameweek 4.

As for City defenders – not that Mendy is even a defender – which may prove to be a more concrete way of getting regular starters from City into your side, they only conceded 27 goals in total in the last campaign and neither Huddersfield (0.63) nor Newcastle (0.95) managed to average even one goal per game away from home.

Fantasy Football TipsEverton – Southampton (H), Bournemouth (A), Huddersfield (H)
Defensively, Everton looked shaky against Wolves (perhaps understandably after Phil Jagielka’s first-half red card), although the late arrivals of Yerry Mina, Kurt Zouma and Lucas Digne should provide some degree of solidity. They conceded a steady if not impressive 22 at home last season, although Southampton’s measly 17 away goals last year coupled with Huddersfield’s 12 provides strong conditions for returns from Everton defenders. Bournemouth scored 26 at home last year, and will probably beat that tally this year if they start playing Josh King up front and giving him penalty duties (no points for guessing who forked out an extra £0.5m for Callum Wilson’s strike partner). Everton conceded a pretty terrible 36 away last season, which was only ‘bettered’ by West Ham, Leicester, and Stoke, so do not expect a clean sheet there, unless their acquisitions have a bigger (and quicker!) impact than expected.

Offensively, a brace from Richarlison was enough for Everton fans to decide that £40m was a bargain, which they proceeded to let every Liverpool fan on Twitter know about. They scored with relative ease at home last season (28) and the addition of Richarlison will likely see that total passed this time around. At the time of writing the severity of the Brazilian’s injury is unknown, although he seemed to be walking on it okay after the match and Marco Silva did not seem to make anything of it in his post-match interview. Bournemouth had one of the worst home defensive records last season, conceding 30.

Fantasy Football TipsLiverpool – Crystal Palace (A), Brighton (H), Leicester (A)
Two away games in their next three might make Liverpool seem a strange choice, but last season Crystal Palace conceded 27 at home, Leicester disappointingly let 22 past them, and Liverpool’s 39 goals away from home was second only to you know whom. Liverpool’s average of 2.37 goals per game at home last season should see them record a comfortable result against Brighton in Gameweek 3 despite strengthening in left and right-back through Bernardo and Martin Montoya, respectively.

It feels wrong, as with Manchester City (and I suppose Crystal Palace now!), to delineate Liverpool’s offence from its defence, but Crystal Palace were strong in front of goal at Selhurst Park (29) last season and Liverpool conceded 28 away, putting them on a par with the mid-table sides. They should have more joy at home to Brighton though, having only conceded ten at Anfield last year with some bolstering over summer, with the Seagulls scoring the joint lowest (10) away from home. It remains to be seen what sort of an impact marquee signing Alireza Jahanbakhsh will have on the club’s attacking returns having only come on as a substitute at the weekend, but he did come from the Netherlands…

Best of the rest
Arsenal and Chelsea would both have been included if it were not for playing each other this coming weekend. They both have a very favourable string of fixtures after their London derby, but like a terrible cliff-hanger in a soap opera, I will leave that for next week’s writer to enthuse you with.

Unfavourable Fixtures

Fantasy Football TipsNewcastle – Cardiff (A), Chelsea (H), Manchester City (A)

Newcastle’s next fixture against Cardiff seems relatively kind, although their away form has already been addressed above such that I would not be surprised to see the lads return from Wales disappointed. They then face a Chelsea side invigorated by trying to play ‘Sarri-ball’. I must admit, I did not really know what ‘Sarri-ball’ was. I watched the game, I still did not know what Sarri-ball was, although apparently they have not learned how to play it yet. I tried to find out what Sarri-ball is; ‘high intensity, passing football’, apparently. Ahh, right, sounds revolutionary that.

Whilst I do not think Sarri-ball is some newfangled style of football that will make Chelsea unplayable, I do think that Chelsea’s statistics from last season needs taking with a pinch of salt. Heck, maybe even as much salt as a portion of McDonald’s chips. Conte lost the dressing room before he had even managed to find it! They managed to keep hold of Hazard, which spells trouble for their opponents, although they failed to bring in a striker and have seemingly failed to inject their current striker with any confidence. At any rate, they still averaged 1.68 goals per away game and conceded just over one per game. I think it probably does suffice to say that Manchester City is Manchester City here, away from home of all places.

Brighton – Manchester United (H), Liverpool (A), Fulham (H)
The next two will not be easy for Chris Hughton’s men as they welcome Manchester United to the Amex before their most dedicated fans make their way up to Liverpool, unfortunately to play the ones that wear red, not blue. Liverpool has already been dealt with above, but Manchester United managed to concede just one goal per game on average away from home, so don’t expect your Brighton assets to be raking in attacking points, especially now that Mourinho has Toby Alderweireld Harry Maguire Diego Godin maybe, potentially, hopefully realised that the pairing of Jones and Smalling is not the answer. The visit of Fulham seems a long way away with these two fixtures before it, and even then Fulham appears to have a stronger side on paper than Brighton after a strong transfer window.

Thanks for reading Fantasy Football Fixture Analysis Gameweek 2. This article was written by AT


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348 Comments

  1. 25
    ImagineDragons says:

    Hi Guys, I’m new to this site. was on FFF..
    Any idea why no price rise last night? I could see at least five players with more than 100 target yesterday night..

  2. 26
    Kop Warrior says:

    Super stuff AT.

    I’m sat here contemplating Cairney to Neves. I realise it would probably be something of a knee jerk transfer so I’ll probably hold off on making it.

    Maybe I’ll wait for a ‘better man’ and his Tips article 😉

    • 26.1
      SdJ says:

      Would it be safe to say that most of
      have got very good Man City and Liverpool cover and the ones we doubt about are the “fringe” players.
      Is it a good idea to wait with this weeks transfer and have 2 next week when Chelsea and Arsenal’s fixture improve drastically and we try to fit it some of their players?

    • 26.2
      Rosco says:

      I’ve already made this move. I don’t normally make transfers so early but I’d considered Neves for this spot prior to GW1 and watching him play I think I made a mistake not going with him. Once he goes up in price I’d not be able to make the move and with Cairneys next fixture it seemed a good time. That and I’m also off on holiday on Wednesday and I’ll be 8 hours behind and probably a bit out of the loop come Saturday. I’ll take the consequences come what may!

      • Kop Warrior says:

        Ah Rosco!!!

        Now you’ve got me thinking about it again smile

        I haven’t watched MOTD yet so I haven’t seen Neves play. Might try to watch it tonight.

        • Rosco says:

          He looked good and I think at that price he can be a set and forget and think he’ll be up there with similar prices mids come the end of the season… hopefully!! Haha

      • AT says:

        Did you watch the game or just the highlights, Rosco? Some were saying he looked to be playing deep.

        And Kop, definitely wait for that laugh

        • Rosco says:

          Nah just the highlights, If he flops so be it, think I’ll give him till my WC and reavaluate, probably when Cairney has punished me for lack of patience!!

        • Frenchie says:

          I watched the whole game. Neves was playing deep sometimes but also moved forward a lot, and most importantly the game was going though him and he was trying to find long passes and crosses.
          He made me think of Pirlo, I mean as a deep playmaker.
          Clearly not as defensive as I thought he would be given the comments here.

      • Mr Bean says:

        Maybe I am in the minority but I thought Neves was pretty awful, passing was very wayward and he contributed little in attack besides his goal and assist. This may have been accentuated by how poor Wolves were going forward in general.

        Having said that, Cairney was even less threatening so if there are no other priorities, could be worth a move.

        • Colriles says:

          Hey Mr.Bean – On Cairney, we (I didn’t actually play 😉 ) had all the possession most of the day, just no killer instinct. That said, when the goals start coming they look more likely to come from Sess and Schurrle (who I thought was excellent, but taken off too early). I see Tom getting the assists but didn’t push quite far up enough for my liking.

        • Frenchie says:

          Obviouly I disagree totally with that given my comment above smile

  3. 27
    Rosco says:

    Great read that AT! I particularly enjoyed your Newcastle section! All sadly very true!!

  4. 28
    lsd1980s says:

    Sooo…earlier i said i wouldnt panic…but i ended doing a hasty Ben Davies to Ben Mendy – and knowing my luck…Davies is bound for a brace this week while Mendy would probably be subbed out at 58 minute injured with City ending up with a clean sheet.

    But i will resist the temptation to take a hit!

    Patricio
    Mendy/Shaw/Luiz
    Jota/Shurrle/Eriksen/Salah/Mane
    King/Aguero

    Bench
    Stele/Wan Bissaka/Peltier/Kamara

    Question: Should i sub Shurrle for Peltier?

    Cheers boys and Resist the Itch to Hit!

  5. 29
    eresh12 says:

    Hey,

    Cheers for this AT as always and well done getting over 90 points in Gw1.

  6. 30
    MrMajeika says:

    don’t mean this question in any sort of negative way but how much effort and attention is put in to the site team. is there just one article a week posted and will a transfer always be posted before the deadline.

    • 30.1
      inittowinit says:

      It’s a fair question. The answer is probably too much! It’s a 5 man committee and it’s debated heavily each week in private. Whether that’s to it’s detriment is a completely different argument but purely for purposes of your question the answer is a lot.

      Yes it’s just one article per week once the decision on transfer, team and capo has been made. Usually on a Thursday or Friday night depending on deadline and other articles etc.

      Performance wise it’s done relatively well, perhaps with last season being the outlier. Pic shows it’s results each season so far and you can see those and follow the team itself via the link below –

      https://fantasy.premierleague.com/a/entry/815/history

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