Gameweek 25 Preview

Another average week in the books for Pure Juice and I'm strongly considering drastic action. I'm out of the cup now and find myself 38 points adrift in my work league. I have Hart, Sorensen, Fabregas, Milner, Bent and Tevez who are all owned by at least 28% of all managers. None of these players have had much joy in the past few weeks and I particularly frustrated by Milner, Sorensen and even Bent's form. Add this to the fact that Valencia's place in the United team might be in jeopardy and suddenly my team looks weak. I think Fabregas is too good to drop while Tevez gets a double gameweek in week 26. The others are all on the block and I am looking to move to players held by 10% of managers or less over the coming weeks, ready for the late season push. For that reason I will be featuring players' ownership every time I mention them from now on.

Clean Sheet Rankings

1. Man United
2. Birmingham
3. Stoke
4. Tottenham
5. Burnley
6. Liverpool
7. Sunderland
8. Chelsea
9. Wolves
10. Bolton
11. Man City
12. West Ham
13. Hull
14. Aston Villa
15. Fulham
16. Blackburn
17. Arsenal
18. Portsmouth
19. Everton
20. Wigan

Man United are a great pick this week and I like Wes Brown (2%) as the safest and cheapest way to get access to this solid unit. Differentiating is less important for defenses as you a buying a unit more than a player but due to rotation issues, United are generally underheld and only Evra (26%) is owned by more than 5% of players. I therefore rate Brown as a buy for the week as with Ferdinand suspended for another couple of games and Vidic still injured, he should be safe for another couple of weeks. Birmingham defenders are underheld but Hart (28%) is a starter for many teams and will surely be started by most of them this week. Still, Dann (3%) and Ridgwell (3%) remain very good, cheap options and with good fixtures ahead you could do alot worse than rolling the dice with two Birmingham defenders over the next few weeks.

Despite their reliability this year, the Villa defense will make it hard for you to gain ground on your opponents due to Dunne's (41%) ownership. With a schedule that includes @Tot, MNU, Bur, Bye it might be worth ditching them now before re-signing them for the double gameweek in week 30. Everton have 3 straight clean sheets but they now face @Liv, Che, MNU, @Tot so I wouldn't jump on that bandwagon if you haven't yet.

Captain Rankings

1. Wayne Rooney (43%)
2. Steven Gerrard (16%)
   
3. Carlos Tevez (29%)
   
4. Didier Drogba (20%)
   
5. Darren Bent (32%)
6. Patrice Evra (26%)
   
7. Frank Lampard (28%)
   
8. Emmanuel Adebayor (3%)
   
9. Cesc Fabregas (35%)
   
10. Nicolas Anelka (12%)
    

I'm finding it really hard to recommend many captains this week, nevermind those held by less than 10% of owners. I really like Adebayor as a player than could outperform his ownership and with the double gameweek coming up as well as a good fixture this week (@Hul) now might be a good time to buy. Despite my concerns over Bent, Sunderland have the best fixture of the week (Wigan surrender 2.82 GPG on the road) and so he is a great option this week. Rooney's fixture is actually harder than you'd think (1.40 GPG) but he is in such good from its hard to look elsewhere. Arsenal's struggles last week along with another tough game this week mean that Fabregas finds himself the lowest he has been in the rankings for some time.

Differentiators
I don't like these players enough to warrant captaining them, but they might be worth a look if you are looking for someone a bit different this week. In no particular order:

1. Cameron Jerome (5%)
2. Sanli Tuncay (0.2%)
3. Nani (5%)
4. Danny Murphy (5%)
5. David N'Gog (1%)
6. Kevin Davies (2%)
7. Peter Crouch (6%)
8. Sotirios Kyrgiakos (1%)
9. Chris Eagles (2%)
10. Wes Brown (2%)

As always, stay tuned tomorrow and before deadline time @plfantasy for the latest injury news. Until then why not post your rotation and transfer questions below.