Pure Juice Wildcard

I played my wildcard this week and a few readers on Twitter asked where I finally landed. Here's the new team and the rough thought process behind each player.

Goalkeepers
Vorm kept his place and is almost undroppable at this point as (a) he's awesome and is one of the best value players in the game and (b) it'll cost me 0.6m to get him back if I sell him. Barring injury he's on board until at least GW36 (his last two game are tough so if I'm desperate for GK health I could ditch him).

I almost went with Lindegaard, and may well land there long term but decided that at least in the short term, Mignolet was the better pick. Even after this week's clean sheet, Sunderland still get Nor (H), Sto (A) and WB(A) in the next four weeks so Mignolet should prove to be a nice mid-term option.

Defence
I stuck with Jose Enrique, Richards and Assou Ekotto as I couldn't find too many premium options to warrant the loss of money I'd suffer ditching any of the above. That said, I don't think either Enrique or Richards are now undroppable and can see the argument behind ditching either. If the fixtures had fallen more favourably for Man Utd, I may well have dropped one of the pair for Evans to free up cash to use elsewhere. Cahill was also a consideration but it seemed premature to grab him before (a) he's played a game and (b) we're sure Chelsea are going to get any better at the back (ironically they went and kept a clean sheet without him).

The new arrivals were Bardsley and Kelly, though the former would have been Brown if I was more certain he would play. I will likely make that move next time I have a spare transfer to use. As mentioned above for Mignolet, Sunderland are a great medium term play and while I'm a bit nervous to double up, I figure I will often be playing Vorm anyway. It's going to be rare that I play five defenders so I wanted a budget option here with Simpson and Evans getting strong consideration. I held off on Evans due to United's tough couple of upcoming fixtures but will probably go there long term. Similarly with Simpson, I didn't see enough value there to warrant grabbing him when the upcoming games were so tough. I'm not crazy about Fulham's defence but Kelly is a decent fifth option who might get the odd game.

Midfield
Silva was the only holdover here and I envision him holding a first team place all season. He brings an almost unrivaled combination of upside and consistency and I wouldn't consider dropping him, no matter who the opponent.

This was the area I struggled most with as I had two objectives (1) try and avoid chasing points and (2) save enough cash so I can afford whichever two forwards I want. All things considered I decided that Bale was the midfielder I wanted most after Silva, but given his tough fixture this week (there's no way he scores against City, right?) I wanted a different one week option, with the intention of swapping him out for Bale next week. With Van der Vaart and Nani facing relatively tough opponents, the only man I really considered for that role was Dempsey.

[I think there's an important point to emphasize here. Generally people make one of a couple of mistakes when wildcarding. One, they overly gear their team towards the short term, loading up on players with one or two good games or with short term playing opportunities, thus requiring multiple transfers in the near future. Or, two, they setup their team purely looking to the future and then get to next week with no use for their free transfer. The best method for me is to set your overall team, then find someone who has a bad fixture this week and replace him with a one week 'loan' to be dumped next week. Just make sure you have sufficient room in your budget to cover any price rises].

The American obviously proved to be a good pickup and with him getting West Brom at home next week, and Bale getting Wigan, I now have another tough decision to make which I didn't plan for (a good problem to have though). A lot of managers were all over Sessegnon and Walters but for me the decision in that ~6.5m range wasn't close. Sessegnon's underlying stats are much more impressive and I feel he has a much better chance of matching his first half success than Walters does. I like Sinclair too thanks to the set pieces but Swansea's midfield looks crowded and half the teams in the league still haven't yet won 4 pens, so it's tough to see him matching that total again in the second half.

That left me ~10.5m to fill my final two midfield spots so I had to decide whether to go with a couple of 5 million guys or 4.5 - 6 combo. I opted for the latter based on the fact that I knew I'd play my forwards almost every week and was happy with my defence, thus meaning I only needed four reliable mids (and could therefore go super cheap with one of the picks). I struggled with both picks, looking at the likes of Ben Arfa, Pilkington, Henderson, Drenthe, McLean and a host of Swansea players before settling on Murphy and Surman. Murphy was the pick due to his set piece duties and relative consistency (7 games with 5 or more points this year) while I like Surman's recent underlying stats, most notably his key passes. Aside from the aforementioned potential Bale move, this is the area of the team I am least satisfied with and I would imagine I'll use a couple of transfers in this area over the coming weeks.

Forwards
No need to talk about Van Persie who was always going to hold his place. Long term I will probably target Ba, but in his absence I love Fletcher who is cheap enough to let me grab another elite option. With Chelsea looking fairly average I decided Sturridge wasn't worth the extra outlay so Fletch got the call. That left a final decision of Rooney or Aguero. Again, long term I might go for Ade (so I can keep Bale and Dempsey in midfield) but with him out and for the week I didn't want a ~10m asset sat on the bench as soon as I played the wildcard so he was out of contention. Rooney and Aguero have both gone quiet in the past couple of weeks but I'm sure both will be fine and found it hard to find anything to distinguish them. In the end then, it was simply a case of value for money, and it's tough to argue that Rooney is 1m better. Given my team isn't particularly valuable, I can't afford to waste cash and thus Aguero got the call (I then captained him which was the only real downer on a good first week with the new team).

It was a good start this week but I'm a bit concerned that I haven't gotten enough differentiation in the team and will probably end up using my other wildcard sooner rather than later (aiming for GW30). With the elite options dominating it's tough to not try and grab as many of them as possible, which then limits what you can do elsewhere. We'll see how things pan out in the coming weeks, but at least so far, I'm ahead of where I was.