FF247 Fantasy Football Site Team GW1
Knee deep in…
It seems like only yesterday that we were picking our GW38+ team… oh, hang on. Well, we might not be refreshed but we are certainly back regardless and much like many an FPL manager we have been struggling to find those dirt cheap defenders, whilst being knee deep in premium mids and wondering how on earth we then go about accommodating the Manchester contingent once they bother to grace us with their presence. Let’s go and see how we have decided to tackle it all, but first a quick recap on how last season ended for us:
2019/20 Result
Could have been better, could have been a lot worse. We wrapped up the season in GW38+ with 65 points. That saw us get a small red arrow but we only dropped a few thousand places. Overall we landed at 45,446th. Not great but not bad. Pre-lockdown we rose from about 165k to 45k so we were pretty pleased overall. That saw us with another top 50k finish, which we have now achieved in 4 out of our 6 attempts, and it’s also 5 out of 6 in the top 100k with 2 top 6k finishes in there. Again not bad, but nothing to write home about yet.
GW1 Musings
Goalkeepers
We’ve gone for two rotating £4.5mln keepers between the sticks. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but unfortunately there isn’t a clear set and forget £4.5mln option like Pope this season. Brighton’s Mat Ryan and Southampton’s Alex McCarthy rotate pretty nicely, giving us a fixture run of Palace, Newcastle, Burnley, WBA, Palace (again), WBA (again), Villa, NEWCASTLE, Villa (again), MAN UTD, *play each other*, SHEFF UTD, Fulham, SHEFF UTD (again), Fulham (again) and WEST HAM over the first 16 weeks of the season. Hopefully we can just leave them rotating and watch the clean sheets and save points roll in. All for just £9mln!
Defenders
Some of this is quite easy to explain, some not so much and other bits may require major surgery sooner rather than later!
The easy one is of course Trent, no explanation needed there. What we didn’t see coming was that he would have company in the (rather large) shape of Big Virg alongside him. One of our earliest votes was to decide which Liverpool assets to have with the intention of building from there. Rather surprisingly Salah was usurped by Andy Robertson leaving us knee deep in Liverpool defenders (quasi-midfielders). Which rather begs the question of how VVD got in there… Long story short, we needed a £0.5mln buffer in the bank to accommodate the arrival of said Mancs and so a downgrade was needed along the way (even that plan changed but more on that later..). Whilst considering a myriad of options our minds raced back to Kop’s Tips Article and his preference of VVD over Robertson. The rest is history.
With that pair set to be two of our intended back three every week we sort of lost interest in the others (as you’ll soon begin to notice) as only one of them will ever be called upon, barring any disasters. So cheap and cheerful was the order of the day. Burnley usually offer good value at the back and so Charlie Taylor got the call up. Ruben Vinagre is one of the cheapest ways into the Wolves defence, that’s assuming he doesn’t get sold soon as per the rumour mill. Young Tyrick Mitchell makes up the numbers at the back for us. He’s another potential timebomb but at £4.0mln we shall ride his wave until such a time as Van Aanholt returns and then he can go take his rightful spot at the back of our bench.
Midfielders
Having already decided on no Mo, or indeed Mane, our premium slots went to Aubameyang and Bruno. And to an extent Havertz. By way of explanation: we had an initial plan which seemingly involved lots of transfers to bring in the likes of Bruno and KDB. Including the former in our squad from the get go, and benching him, cut those down a bit. Havertz snuck in at the last minute at the expense of Alli. Essentially he ate up our aforementioned £0.5m buffer but with Bruno already in and KDB likely to come in for Auba in a few weeks, freeing up another £0.5mln, we felt comfortable with the switch, certainly more comfortable than we did with no Chelsea coverage.
Now that Allan Saint-Maximum has an actual forward to aim his crosses at rather than simply a deckchair, we felt he was worthy of a spot, especially as he was one of the more outstanding players during the ‘restart’ period.
Tomas Soucek managed to make his way in and out of our team at least 6 times during the final meeting. He clung on in there, although we expect he may be on our bench more often than not after this week given the above quartet. Truth is that had Bruno been playing this week we would have probably dropped him to a £4.5-er.
Forwards
We had Timo Werner in every draft until yesterday evening. It was then suggested that Leicester had better opening fixtures than Chelsea and with Vardy a ‘tried and trusted’ Premier League scorer we saw an opportunity to grab some ground on the 48% of managers who currently own Werner. We may well look to get Werner in GW3 or thereabouts once Chelsea have got their visit of Liverpool out of the way. It’s a gamble not going with Werner from the start but one we expect (hope) may just give us a slight edge early doors.
Joining Vardy are Callum Wilson and Aleksandar Mitrović. Wilson has decent top flight pedigree having recorded 14 goals and 12 assists in 2018/19 and though he struggled in a faltering and disjointed Bournemouth side last season, we feel his move to Newcastle could well rejuvenate his career, especially as he is joined at the Toon by his old mucker Fraser and will also have ASM and Almirón teeing him up. Newcastle play West Ham, Brighton and Burnley in their first four matches which should give Wilson the chance to reward our faith. If not, there are others at similar price points gagging for the chance to please us.
Mitrović also had a decent 2018/19 as he scored 11 goals and four assists for a relegated Fulham side, while last season he scored 26 goals to win the Championship Golden Boot. The Cottagers have a mixed start and are expected to struggle but if Fulham score, the Serbian is generally involved. Home fixtures vs Villa, Palace and West Brom coupled with an early trip to Leeds certainly give Mitro the chance to extend his reputation as a goal scorer.
Captain – Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
A clean sweep of the votes here, again it probably needs little explanation. Vardy is vice.
Our GW1 team in full…
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Is diet a starter for spurs ?
I think he’s starting
draft #2 – any suggestions?
No problems for me! I like it Rein!
nice to hear ! thanks bro.
All good here mate. Solid team. All the best!
thanks!
How does this look if plan is to WC in GW3 to get Mancity and Manunited players?
Should do very well, KP! I’m seeing a lot of love for DCL but I want to see how Everton play first. Rodriguez is on my radar though!
Get Justin ahead of KWP if you wildcard GW3.
As it stands, your defence fixtures for GW2 are three from fixtures against Chelsea, Man City, Southampton, and Spurs.
Make it easier for yourself – Leicester have Burnley at home
Everyone is familiar with the site team, but for those wondering, that team is picked by a very selective group; Init, Kop, Cookie, Mito, Floydeth, and new signing GP, they do a great job, but is it truly representative of the site?
Behind the scenes ‘the others’ (Matt, AT, DMC, Elle, Rosco, Jamessimmo, Smash, Guy, Swirls ) started making noises (dull grunts) we felt left out, we even set up a What’s app group called The Outsiders. Well, In truth it was a group set up for the writers who didn’t make the FF247 cup.. semantics. I digress, we decided to give the site team some competition. At best we will run away to victory and show those in power never to doubt us underlings again, at worst we’ll be a laughing stock. We’re ok with either. So, here’s the team, we’ll not go into details, but feel free to ask questions. If things go well, we may even make it into the article proper.. we can but dream.
What a cracking side. Obviously with cash in the bank to turn Son into Bruno
Great idea :hippo:
BEST TEAM I’VE EVER SEEN! EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD JUST GIVE UP TRYING RIGHT NOW! :friends:
You realise that about 6 layers below your estimable selves there’s another lot of us craving a site article?
We came up with this:
Lol Kralin
Wow.. fire!!
It’s the fkg shit, man.
I’d get Minamino in there somewhere Kralin! Got to get those Asian profits
Yes I fear he may be the one who got away. There’s always one. In the main though I think I’ve balanced the side quite well and will replace it with the City side next week.
:rofl:
To be fair, I like this team. Nice effort!
You should set a H2H league against the site team.
Good call!! :good:
Oooh I like this idea!
Here to help :drinks:
Interesting. Very brave with that midfield selection…guessing De Bruyne is a swap for Aubs ASAP too.
Mitrovic is wasted money imo. But on the plus, the first time I’ve seen Pereira, who I like a lot!
Good luck and good work!
Just say what you really think :hippo:
Peasants.
Let’s go!
You won’t get within 50,000 places of the site team you jokers
We are happy to try :jester:
The ‘revolution’ has started.
Ha ha ha ha ha!!!
Right so that’s the autopick team or what?
You’ve changed
Promotions change people, Rosco! :punish:
New number
Who dis?
:hippo:
Who dis… again .. proper lol!!
Cracking Team Rosco!!! i for one believe you guys will give the site team a run fot its ..waiger a bet with site Team :butcher:
Thanks man! We shall see !!
Couple or 4 take-aways from this if I may begin to unpack it so publicly (you did), so let’s go:
1. – “we felt left out”… Erm, where to begin? (Boo hoo, perhaps?) I truly appreciate what you guys do week in week out. Multiply that by 10 and add about 100 and you’ll still be nowhere near what I and said committee have to do every week to keep this ship afloat and as slick as it is.
Two points on that then:
– Having established the site from scratch and having run it so consistently for so many years I think we have earned the right to do that
– Having a committee of 5/6 is difficult. Having a committee of 15/16 would be near on ridiculously impossible
2. “In truth it was a group set up for the writers who didn’t make the FF247 cup”
I wouldn’t put that on your CV :wink2:
3. – “show those in power never to doubt us underlings again”
We don’t. See the answer to point one above. It’s not a snub, it’s just impractical and goes against what we set out to do
4. “If things go well, we may even make it into the article proper.. we can but dream”
If things go well you won’t. Whenever it goes tits up though you’ll be in the headline pronto :manic: :rofl:
In truth, it’s a great idea to include it, as a sub-section, but let’s see how it evolves in the comments. Last thing we need right now is more work. And it dilutes the impact of the article. I’ve read some today with 6 teams or more on and I lost interest.
Good luck to the rouge team this season, good to have some friendly competition. Lines drawn, shutters down.
GP transverses both groups. Poor bloke has just inadvertently become the Kylo Ren of FF247. Who can actually trust him now?! I converted him to the good side over the summer but can he be tempted back by Darth Rosco and his faceless stormtroopers?
Will he kill Cookie on a bridge?
Will he be tempted to join Matt in confusing numbers and letters?
Will he be tempted to join Smash in using the word ‘ain’t’ instead of ‘isn’t’?
Will he be tempted to join Elle in shagging sheep and spouting Anti- Everton nonsense as he… (can’t finish that sentence)
Will he tempted to join DMC and James in suddenly not knowing what day it is whenever their deadline has passed?
Will he be tempted to join AT at Oxbridge, nakedly lashing his future employers?
Swirly is your version of Luke. He’s next in line for promotion so it’ll be interesting to see which path he chooses….
Shall we say that the losers have to go and write for FFGeek for a season?
1. We didn’t, it was just a good narrative, chill.
2. Ok
3. As i said it’s just a narrative, in jest if you will
4. Now we’re getting into banter, I like it!
Let’s not pretend this wasn’t ran past you, and let’s not hang me out to dry for being the one who posted on behalf of the group.
I’ve done Robertson to dier and lulanna to havertz any thoughts
Like I said on another team, I’m not sure on the DCL love just yet but it could pay off! Let’s all hope Vinagre stays in Wolves
evening all,
getting close to decision time.
so this one
or this
Option 2 for me