PLFantasy

Milner really bailed my team out last week, thus keeping me in the running for my office championship. I hope your teams are still alive and with 3 weeks to go there is still time to score some major points and make up ground. This week is pretty vanilla with just the 10 standard games and with Ars-MnC and MnU-Tot squaring off, it makes fantasy selections tough again this week. Villa, Liverpool and to an extent Chelsea have good fixtures though the continued absence of Torres and Fabregas along with the uncertainty around Drogba , make it tough to field a dominant side this week. Defensively there are quite a few good options and I can see several team playing 4 or 5 at the back to maximum their exposure to the clean sheet opportunities. Clean Sheet Rankings (projected goals conceded in parenthesis) Chelsea (0.34) Everton (0.55) Wolves (0.55) Bolton (0.56) Man U (0.67) Aston Villa (0.68) Burnley (0.84) Blackburn (0.90) Hull (0.98) West Ham (1.04) Liverpool (1.05) Arsenal (1.17) Portsm...

The end is in sight and the window to make up those final points is closing fast. Though far from controversial or particularly insightful, Villa players having the double this week will give you a chance to make up some ground on your league and it might be worth paying 4 points to bring a couple of these players in. The Manchester and London derbies (Che-Tot) take away alot of the value to be found in the league and Liverpool's (well, Torres) attention seems to have turned to Europe so he cannot be relied upon from here on in. Hence this week's rankings are a bit up and down and several players I have cut out could end up having decent games if they prove their fitness. I am simply not willing to have another 8m player on the bench after suffering through this several times over the past few weeks. Clean Sheet Rankings Aston Villa (1.01 and 1.18) Birmingham (0.30) Liverpool (0.49) Fulham (0.57) Sunderland (0.64) Stoke (0.66) Arsenal (0.73) Blackburn (0.77) Tottenham (0.88) Hu...

Last week was a bit of a let down for many fantasy owners, with many - including me - struggling to top 40 points. The big name players continued to hurt owners with Torres sitting this week to join the likes of Rooney and Fabregas on the sidelines. With Liverpool all but out of the Champions League race and Torres focused on facing his former club Athletico in the Europa Cup, I am skeptical as to how much he will figure in the league from now on. Rooney might return this week but is a risk due to both the unpredictability of big games (nevermind big derby games) while Drogba and Lampard face a tough derby of their own as they travel to Spurs. The team of the week is therefore Villa by some distance who not only enjoy a double gameweek but also have two decent fixtures - @Portsmouth and @Hull. While I am not condoning selling Rooney for Carew straight up, if you have a high priced player and a scrub, it might be worth splitting your cash and getting a pair like Young and Agbonlahor. Th...

Big afternoon of Premier League football today with title, relegation of course, fantasy implications galore. What does that all mean I here you cry? A running diary of course. Thankfully, we start with just 15 minutes of the awful Wolves-Stoke game to go. I have managed to see intermittent 'highlights' of it online but I think my computer is trying to help me out by disconnecting me as much as possible. Suffice to say, its been rubbish. We'll start therefore at Old Trafford where they've just kicked off and 5 uneventful minutes have been played. 13:39 Eight minutes gone at Ewood and a decent header from Chris Samba forces a save from Van der Sar, who always had it covered. The big news for the game of course is the absence of Wayne Rooney but fantasy owners will be more frustrated by the absence of Evra, inexplicably rested for the game by ' Fawlty Ferguson '. I presume he realises they lie second in the table, and that United have no other fronts to challenge ...

It's starting to get serious now. With Chelsea's win at Old Trafford and Arsenal's last minute winner against Wolves, the title is race is fully on with all three teams have a legitimate chance to win it. With the cancellation of the Stoke-Fulham game, gameweek 34 becomes a standard 10 game week, though with no top of the table clashes, there should be points on offer so long as we don't suffer any more big name casualties. Clean Sheet Rankings Liverpool Wigan Stoke Wolves Chelsea Hull Aston Villa Man City Tottenham West Ham Man Utd Portsmouth Blackburn Everton Arsenal Sunderland Birmingham Fulham Burnley Bolton The stats suggest that no less than 8 teams will concede - on average - less than a goal this week which makes for some potential gains from our defensive lines. Liverpool, Wigan and Stoke are a cut above the rest this week and it would be wise to try and get at least three of these in this week. Normally I would stay a million miles away from Hull but with a gr...

As our attention turns to the Champions League tonight and tomorrow, I will be focusing heavily on the week's EPL action following last week's disastrous preview column. It was perhaps bad luck to go on holiday the week that Rooney, Fabregas , Arteta and Arshavin among others sat out through injury, but nevertheless I dropped the ball on a couple of those players after blowing the Rooney call last week. I hope you will be patient and stick with me through the end of the season and hopefully we can bring some mini league titles hone in the final weeks.

Due to a lack of time I am going to cut short this week's preview to give you an idea of which players to target this week. Clean Sheet Rankings Birmingham Stoke Liverpool Tottenham Man Utd Everton Portsmouth Arsenal Fulham Sunderland Aston Villa Burnley Man City Bolton Hull Chelsea Blackburn West Ham Wigan Wolves Captain Rankings Bobby Zamora Mikel Arteta Samir Nasri Danny Murphy Matt Etherington James Milner Carlos Tevez Fernando Torres Didier Drogba Frank Lampard The choice this week is really between your elite players against a top side (see Chelsea and United) or your form players against weaker opponents (see Arteta and Zamora). The exception is Arsenal who get Wolves at home but with Fabregas and Van Persie out, it's tough to be totally sold on any of their fantasy prospects. As always, why not post your thoughts below or @plfantasy .