Fantasy FPL Fixtures – the first 6 weeks
Welcome back! The good people at FPL towers teased us a little yesterday by releasing a player list and they did not disappoint by then launching the game we love in it’s entirety a few hours later. And so we have about a month to pick, re-pick, swear, curse and laugh at our at our teams until the deadline. Having seen many a gallant attempt at a feasible team yesterday we felt that the main thing missing, and the one thing that would be of the most immediate help to managers, was a quick fixtures overview for the first few weeks. As ever we are happy to oblige and so here is how the land lies for the initial 6 GW’s and our take on who has a favorable start and who may find life rough to begin with…
Let’s begin with the tracker itself…
We have colour coded the fixtures in a simple fashion to allow you to judge your transfer and team selection plans accordingly:
[highlight_green]Green[/highlight_green] – We deem these to be winnable fixtures for the given team and should, in theory at least (!), harvest good fantasy points for you in the opening games. Aim to have a good nucleus of these players in your initial squad.
[highlight_yellow]Yellow[/highlight_yellow] – These are the fixtures that could go either way and do not stand out as being either particularly good or poor. If you have a player from a team in this category then do not be afraid to play them but take a considered view that it may not be an explosive week for them.
[highlight_red]Red[/highlight_red]- These are the teams that we consider to have a difficult fixture and as such may be best avoided from a fantasy perspective. Aim to minimise any players that have a run of reds in the opening games.
FAVOURABLE
Chelsea
Any established Premier League team that starts the campaign against two newly promoted teams has to be deemed to have a good chance of getting off the mark well but given Chelsea’s pedigree allied to some fantastic summer business with the purchases of Costa, Fabregras and Filipe we feel that Chelsea investment will be near vital given their opening fixtures. They face a couple of toughies in GW’s 3 and 5 with trips to Everton and City but the other four are definitely winnable as they face Burnley, Leicester, Swansea and Villa.
Manchester United
David Moyes had a right moan about United’s opening fixtures last season. We don’t expect you will be hearing such nonsense from Van Gaal this time around though for two reasons – he’s too smart to give the players any excuses and quite frankly their start is glorious! They begin with Swansea at home and then travel to Sunderland and that’s about as tough as it gets in the first six as they then have all three newly promoted sides back to back and end the sequence with a home game against West Ham. If LVG had hand picked his start he couldn’t have done it any better himself.
UNFAVOURABLE
Aston Villa
To be fair Villa’s first three games aren’t all too bad facing Stoke, Newcastle and Hull and it would be hard to pick a winner from all of those but it is GW’s 4 to 6 that worry us. Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea on the bounce smacks of zero points in that period.
Leicester
New boys Leicester are actually the bookies favourites to go straight back down and their opening schedule will do nothing to help them in that respect. Everton, Chelsea, Arsenal and Man Utd in the first six will probably see them languishing at the foot of the table come the end of August we feel.
There’s plenty to ponder given the fixtures so be sure to post your teams and your comments below as ever as we build toward the first game.
Thanks for reading Fantasy FPL Fixtures – the first 6 weeks – This article was written by Inittowinit
What’s everyone’s thoughts on Dzeko?.
Ant, same old, same old really on Dzeko.
On the face it he faces severe competition from Negredo and Jovetic, who you would expect to do better 2nd time around. Aguero as we know is made of glass, so there will be plenty of opportunities for the 3 of them to shine. And Dzeko is a proven finisher. Be prepared for him not to play every game but over the course of the season, he’ll likely do a decent job for you at 8.5mln. Whether someone like Bony, at the same price….or J Rod or Bambi (cheaper options) give you more starts and thus more security and less annoyance remains to be seen.
This is the best team I’ve come up with so far.
————–I De Gea I———-
—- Cahill —– Shaw —– Vlarr
Fabregas — Tadic — Barkley — Mata
—- Giroud. — Sturridge — Dzeko
Bench– Myhill, Upson, Bruce, Albrighton
Best team I’ve seen so far Ant. Liking Dzeko.
Hey ant, no RVP helps make this a very balanced healthy team, pretty nice.
Myhill is second goalie though? If De Gea does pick up an injury you have no goalie.
Raz
Hi mate.
In fairness he could change de Gea to any other GKP (apart from Chelsea) in the league if he does get injured.
de Gea if selected by Ant would play most weeks, especially at the start of the season with Utds kind fixtures. I’m talking myself in to bringing him in here . . .
Please RMT guys
Mannone (Krul)
Terry, Huth, Walker, (Dummett, Bruce)
Sanchez, Hazard, Arnautovic, Lallana, (Albrighton)
Rooney,Dzeko,Jelavic
dlynton,
I think your front 8 are decent picks and I fancy Dummett may see more gametime this season and is worth the risk at 4.0M. I think you need a defintie back up defender though and would maybe see about upgrading Bruce (who does have a number of other defenders at Hull vying with him) by downgrading Walker in some way. How about Fonte of Southampton? Nice fixtures at the start of the season.
Yes not a bad team not sure about how much Terry will play
That’s what we all thought last season and he clocked over 3,000 minutes. Would expect him to start.
Anyone know when Costa will be added.
Nobody knows. 😉
Hey guys, my team at the minute (15 millionth draft)
De Gea
Gibbs, Cameron, Lescott
Hazard, Silva, Barkley, Ramsey
Rooney, Giroud, Long
Krul Puncheon O’Shea Rosenior
Trying to pick guaranteed starters for the initial weeks and stay away from guys who had long world cups until we know who are the cheeky stars, the up comers (Barkley last year) and who will be back fit and raring to go. For example, Alex Ox is still on holiday (his instagram) even though he didn’t play in Brazil, so trying to pick guys that have already started their pre-season (Ramsey, Gibbs etc).
Unsure on Silva, the entire defence and no Liverpool coverage, but other than that I’m all good…
50
I reckon that’s a decent stab.
I’m currently sitting with almost the same forward line (I have Naismith intead of Long).
As a suggestion – how about Silva down to Nasri and Barkley up to Coutinho to cover Liverpool?
I’m a wee bit unsure on Gibbs’ time on the field owing to Monreal being liked by Wenger at times.
Cheers GP,
Great suggestions. I think the major problem for anything for the first few weeks is calling the sides, I suppose if I’m sticking to my earlier point of world cup players, Coutinho and Nasri are both that will of had full pre-seasons.
I personally think Wenger does like Gibbs, just he’s always got a decent injury in him per season. Although if he’s getting a full pre-season and the club are performing the correct weight sessions with the players (I’m an S&C Coach who works in professional rugby), this can be reduced massively.
Where’s the Chelsea coverage?
Hazard…Sorry,my mistake. Good enough team mate. Debuchy in place of Gibbs. Almost confirmed to be an Arsenal player.
Hazard at 10M is expensive imho. Has he even scored for Belgium? I think he did nothing.
Anyway, I am considering Hazard because Mou will always play him.
Hazard? But you’re right. Depending on how United and Chelsea look I will get 3 United players and 2 Chelskis for the first games. Problem with Chelsea is that you never know who will play (apart from the defenders, but they just bought another leftback so even Azpi isn’t certain of a spot). Hazard, Costa, Courtois and ummmm Cahill are the only options for me.
Lol, this is so f-ing useless. I keep changing my team but all changes are quite irrelevant. Since it will all be changed again. 😛
Thanks for the article by the way. Seems people are expecting a lot from United. 😛
King Louis to the rescue. Without Vidal/Strootman I don’t see them win anything this season though.