PLFantasy

The pre-season is the most hectic time for this blog, as setting a good initial lineup is a big - though not essential - step towards a good season. I had hoped to be able to take it easy for the first few weeks, assess some potential targets and start crunching numbers again after we've seen a few trends. Then all hell broke loose. There's no need to rehash the week's events but the end result is basically a press of the reset button with a few people enjoying an advantage of having a decent opening week (personally I was able to make the changes I wanted and just made a couple of picks that didn't work out). In case you missed any of them during the week, I will shamelessly plug the previous pieces on week one lineup lessons , a bit of chalkboard analysis , contrarian views to the most targeted players and potentially cheap links in team defenses . With that behind us, let's get onto this week. All the below rankings are for this week only so if you're s...

We are all prone to a bit of overreaction but normally after GW1 you have but one transfer to help rectify those moves you have already cast into history as monumental mistakes. Perhaps you ditch the benched Drogba for the penalty taking Luis Suarez or switch your mid-price Villa defender for Smalling who suddenly looks like he's guaranteed to play. The unlimited free transfers for the week messes this dynamic up and it's going to make many teams very similar as managers around the world react to the GW1 events. Gameweek one is very useful. It gives us an indication of who a team's strongest lineup is (though this is by no means guaranteed) and hints towards tactics a manager might use for the season. I think we can derive more negatives than positives tough, perhaps suggesting that Drogba's value has taken a hit as he suddenly looks droppable or Dempsey's deeper role makes him overpriced at 8.5m. Where most managers look though is who performed well, and this ...