PLFantasy

No league games this weekend but we do have midweek action so I'm putting the rankings up now. Clean Sheet Rankings (clean sheets home/away - opponent failed to score home/away) Man Utd (7 - 5) Man City (4 - 4) Liverpool (5 - 4) Sunderland (7 - 5) Chelsea (3 - 2) Arsenal (4 - 3) Fulham (5 - 2) Blackburn (5 - 2) West Brom (1 - 6) Bolton (2 - 4) Birmingham (4 - 4) Blackpool (0 - 6) Wigan (3 - 2) Newcastle (3 - 1) Everton (2 - 2) Tottenham (0 - 2) Stoke (2 - 1) Wolves (1 - 3) West Ham (0 - 0) Aston Villa (0 - 0) Attacking Rankings Man Utd Blackpool Arsenal Blackburn Bolton Man City West Ham West Brom Fulham Newcastle Tottenham Liverpool Wigan Chelsea Wolves Everton Sunderland Stoke Birmingham Aston Villa Captain Stats It's almost impossible to look past the United pair of Berbatov and Nani this week. United score more goals than anyone at hone while Villa boast the league's leakiest road back line. After his hattrick last week, B...

This could be a big week for our fantasy teams as the double gameweeks start rolling in , new arrivals start playing and the teams start to sort out who are contenders and pretenders. Plenty of owners will be looking to play their wildcards this week so I thought I should get the weekly rankings up as soon as possible which along with the aforementioned double gameweek analysis, should give everyone plenty of food for thought before they plan their final assault on the league table. Along with the standard weekly rankings, I have included the rankings for the next 6 weeks and the remainder of the season. Clean Sheet Rankings (GW24) (clean sheets kept and opponents' failed to score in parenthesis) Man United (6 - 3) and (3 - 0) Arsenal (3 - 5) Fulham (4 - 3) and (3 - 1) Everton (3 - 6) Blackburn (4 - 5) Blackpool (0 - 4) and (0 - 3) Liverpool (2 - 1) and (4 - 4)  Wigan (3 - 2) and (2 - 5)  Aston Villa (4 - 3) and (0 - 3) Wolves (2 - 4) Man City (4 - 3) Bolton (2 ...

I have touched on the double gameweeks earlier but I think we need more analysis if we are to fully enjoy the fruits of them when playing the transfer window wildcard. Let's look at every team who has one or more double gameweeks coming up, who looks set to benefit and how you can maximise the opportunity: Arsenal Who they play and when : GW27 - Wolves and Stoke Who are the best plays : Arsenal look like a very good play both defensively and offensively. The Wolves fixture alone would likely rank Arsenal as the top defensive pick of the week and the addition of another sub-1 GPG team makes them a great play. They've only kept 3 clean sheets at home so I'm not crazy about paying the big bucks for a Thomas Vermaelen (if fit by then) but I would rate Fabianski as a very good pick and Djorou as sensational value if still in the first team. As we know, Arsenal are always a good option to score goals and my prediction tools have them scoring 4.7 goals in the two fixtures. I ...

Clean Sheet Rankings (clean sheets kept - opponents failed to score) Man City (7 - 4) Sunderland (7 - 2) Chelsea (7 - 2) Birmingham (4 - 5) Liverpool (4 - 3) Fulham (3 - 3) Stoke (3 - 3) Arsenal (3 - 1) Tottenham (3 - 2) Wigan (2 - 4) Bolton (0 - 3) West Brom (1 - 5) Blackpool (5 - 2) Everton (2 - 1) Man Utd (2 - 2) Newcastle (3 - 2) Aston Villa (0 - 4) Wolves (1 - 3) West Ham (3 - 2) Blackburn (0 - 1) Attacking Rankings Man City Arsenal Chelsea Birmingham Tottenham Stoke Sunderland Blackpool Fulham West Brom Man Utd Blackburn Bolton West Ham Wigan Everton Newcastle Aston Villa Liverpool Wolves Captain Stats I keep suggesting it could be a statistical anomaly but Van der Vaart continues to crush mid level teams (between 1 and 1.5 GPG conceded) for 9.57 PPG. Given that he is also averaging over 7 PPG at home and 8 PPG over his last 4 games, he remains an excellent option at home this week despite the tricky fixture on paper.  Despite th...

The basic premise behind the goalkeeper rotation strategy is fairly simplistic but for further clarification please see the earlier post here . The best pairs for the remainder of the season, ignoring price - to the extent that I only include 'keepers who cost 5m or less (actually 5.2m now Foster's value has gone up) - are as follows: Gordon / Fabianski (9.3m) Gordon / Begovic (8.8m) Gordon / Harper (8.8m) Gordon / Jaaskelainen (9.1m) Gordon / Schwarzer (9.3m) Schwarzer / Fabianski (9.6m) Gordon / Green (9.3m) Fabianski / Begovic (9.5m) Gordon / Foster (9.7m) Fabianski / Foster (10.0m) You might start getting the idea that Gordon is pretty good value using my stats. This to be expected given the fact that Sunderland lead the league in clean sheets with 11, with no other keeper above having more than 7. Given the lack of clean sheets this year and the unreliability of most of the defenses in the league, I would understand if some owners wanted to spend as little a...

It seems that the majority of things I have done wrong this season revolve around Fabregas. I have been on the Fabregas band wagon since his stunning appearances in the U-17 World Championship back in 2003 and this sometimes perhaps clouds my judgment. I am therefore only going to make statements below that are based wholly in fact. Arsenal's run in By my calculations, Arsenal don't face a single game from here on in where they are expected to score less than one GPG and only two games (@Tot and @Bla) are less than 1.5 GPG. They have 6 games in which they are expected to score at least 2 goals. Compared to the other top teams, we see Arsenal are very well placed: Expected games scoring 1.5 GPG or less: Arsenal 2 Man United 4 Tottenham 8 Chelsea 8 Man City 9 Expected games scoring 2 GPG or more: Chelsea 8 Arsenal 7 Man Utd 7 Newcastle 6 Tottenham 2 Man City 1 When you consider the fact that Chelsea's goal scoring numbers are massively influenced by their in...

As we approach the final third of the season, a few issues stand out that should play a major part when settling on your final wildcard lineup: Where will Arsenal's goals come from? Whatever the doomsday merchants say , Arsenal are an elite scoring team, currently ranked second in goals scored (39) and have a league leading 20 goals away from home. From a fantasy point of view though it's hard to know where a steady flow of fantasy points is going to come. I received criticism for suggesting Nasri might not be the answer to all our woes and while his minutes have been solid (he was dropped against Wigan) in the last 5 games he's added just 15 points to his total. Five players have four or more goals for Arsenal, and that doesn't even include van Persie or Fabregas. It seems that Chamakh is the odd man out in the front five, having been dropped for three of the last four games. Arshavin also seems to be out of favour and behind Walcott on the depth chart. With van P...

Goalkeepers No one has more quality games (12) than Joe Hart . He does, however, also have 10 bad games . In fact, in 20 of 22 appearances, Hart has scored either 7 or more, or 2 or less points. He is the only keeper to have more quality games than bad games. Steve Harper has more quality games and clean sheets (3) as Tim Krul , despite playing 8 games less so far this year. Extrapolated over the full season to date, adjusting for schedule, Craig Gordon would be the second best 'keeper in the league (110 aPoints ), after Joe Hart (114). Having happened just once between GW14 and GW20, four keepers have now recorded back to back quality games in the past two weeks ( Hart , Gordon , Fabianksi and Harper ). Defenders Over the past 5 gameweeks, Seamus Coleman has 27 points and a PPMS of 1.350.  Phil Bardsley however is the only man with 3 quality games and has 26 points over the same period. Bardsley also now leads the league in aPoints for defenders with 109. Ove...

No time to breathe or dwell on GW 21 (which was fairly successful by recent standards) as the EPL action continues on a short week. The highlight for most will be the double gameweeks for Blackpool and Liverpool, who both also enjoy a double in GW24 (some thoughts on them below). Clean Sheet Rankings The rank order is based on the normal form adjusted expected goals per game. In parenthesis you can find the number of clean sheets (at home/away) by the listed team and the number of times the oppositon has failed to score (at home/away) Man Utd (6 - 3) Blackpool* (1 - 3) and (1 - 4) Blackburn (4 - 4) Bolton (2 - 5) Newcastle (2 - 5) Aston Villa (4 - 4) Chelsea (2 - 1) Fulham (3 - 4) Tottenham (0 - 2) Liverpool (2 - 2) and (2 - 0) Man City (3 - 1) Everton (3 - 2) Wolves (1 - 4) Arsenal (2 - 2) Sunderland (3 - 2) West Brom (0 - 2) Wigan (3 - 2) Birmingham (2 - 0) West Ham (0 - 2) Stoke (2 - 0)  *double gameweek Team Goal Rankings (form adjusted) Man City Bl...

2010 has not been the best fantasy year for this humble blogger having lost his mini league on the final day of the season back in May, and then suffered through a miserable 2010/11 season to date. A few resolutions for 2011 are therefore required: I will not make double transfers that cost 4 points. I have done this twice this year and failed both times to even get my 4 points back. The only allowable exception is if a player faces a double gameweek and will start both games. I will not listen to the Telegraph or Guardian's team news ever again to make my lineup decisions. The latest blunder was suggesting that Rooney would sit versus West Brom , one goal and one assist later, it's shaping up to a another week of 'what if'.  I will not use rational thought to pick my team. I will assume that whatever has never happened before is almost certain to happen. Of course by then being predictable, it will itself not then happen. I just went cross eyed. I will play defende...