Goalkeeper - Ben Foster (Birmingham)
Defender - Paulo Ferreira (Cheslea)
Midfielder - Marc Albrington (Aston Villa)
Forward - Danny Welbeck (Sunderland)
Last week's Picks
Goalkeeper - Petr Cech (Chelsea) - 6 points
Defender - Stephen Warnock (Aston Villa) - 6 points
Midfielder - Frank Lampard (Chelsea) - 8 points
Forward - Darren Bent (Sunderland)) - 5 points
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
It is that time of year again. With just over a month to go to the new season, the attention of the world will turn to the epitome of the tactical duel, the pinnacle of on line procrastination. The Fantasy Premier League.
Over the course of 38 games, the competitors will not only be the world's finest players that grace 20 hallowed English grounds, but the 100,000 or more players that will do battle on line for the prestige, the honour, and the free all expense paid trip to a game of their choice.
I urge you all to sign up and get playing. For one thing, it allows you to become familiar with all of the teams in the league, increasing your knowledge of the game by some made up statistic, let's say 22%. It's also a way to pass the time at work, at school or when the real world just isn't doing it for you.
As part of a new experiment, each week I will post my picks of the week - based on countless minutes of research and expertise - and keep track of the points they score. Tips and predicted scores will also be available. Keep in mind that this is an experiment, if I'm wrong and you take my suggestions it's on you. However if I am right you know who to thank.
Fantasy Football Basics
Each manager is given 100 million pounds to purchase a squad of 15 players, 3 forwards, 5 midfielders, 5 defenders and 2 goalkeepers. Those of you who passed maths will immediately see that this works out to an average of 6.67 per player - not much. The objective is to garner as many points from your players each gameweek. Points are accumulated from goals, assists, clean sheets etc. I wont go into the details of points scoring, those can be found on the website.
1. Pick players that play - make sure you select players that regularly play 90 minutes, watch out for injury prone Ledley King types.
2. Pick players that score points - buying a defensive midfielder is a costly decision, you want defenders that keep clean sheets, midfielders that create plenty of opportunities, and strikers that finish like their life depends on it.
3. Pay attention to the fixture list - A decent player on a good team may have a good string of results if the fixtures are kind to them. For example, Chelsea has a fairly comfortable first few games so I would pick up a couple of their players.
Week 1 Transfer In:
Goalkeeper - Petr Cech (Chelsea)
Defender - Stephen Warnock (Aston Villa)
Midfielder - Frank Lampard (Chelsea)
Forward - Darren Bent (Sunderland))
