PLFantasy

Following on from the earlier piece on what we can expect from the promoted teams , it's time to delve into the individual players and see who might have a fantasy impact this year. In the last couple of seasons we've seen the likes of Charlie Adam, Michel Vorm and Gylfi Sigurdsson emerge from relative  obscurity to become fantasy forces with close to must own status. Will we see the same this year? On first glance, I think everyone's assumption will be no. Though they weren't perhaps household names, Adam and Sigurdsson were fairly well respected around the game having already enjoyed big seasons in the UK (Sigurdsson scored 17 goals with Reading in 2009-10 while Adam had enjoyed a couple of successful seasons with Rangers). This year's promoted class is a combination of unknowns and somewhat uninspiring familiar names with few players enjoying the kind of huge upside we can dream on. That said, I believe there is value here and it's highly likely that a cou...

I am somewhat disappointed to admit that I don't follow the Championship as I used to as some of my favourite footballing memories come from Bolton's time spent chasing promotion from the old First Division*. Alas, the move to Canada and the availability of countless other sports to fill the hours have taken their toll on my viewing hours. * Incidentally, you can get an idea of someone's age in England by what they call the second tier of English football. To youngsters it's the Championship, to anyone in their late 20s - 30s it's the First Division and beyond that it's the Second Division. So it's with each new Premier League prediction season that I approach with some dread the issue of the newly promoted sides. I generally don't know much about teams unless they have yo-yoed back from a couple of years ago, and even then my knowledge of the individual players involved tends to range from decent familiarity (particularly with Allardyce's Bolto...

With 8 weeks gone, all three promoted sides find themselves in solid mid-table positions and in the past few weeks, each has started to provide the fantasy options we thought they might. As was shown this week, it's vital to have a reliable bench filled with players who bring guaranteed minutes along with some fantasy upside and the promoted sides can be a great source for such players. There remain a few question marks over some of the players below, but we can at least get a decent grasp on who should be targeted or avoided right now: Norwich City Despite their low price, and the fact that the back line now looks settled with De Laet on the bench, Norwich have failed to register a single clean sheet to date, despite playing a decent schedule at home (Stoke, West Brom, Sunderland and Swansea). Their 11 goals conceded isn't too bad (T11th) and suggests that they will at least register some clean sheets this year, however, I'm not sure we can wait on ...