PLFantasy

Four weeks in and I'm already ahead of last year's team. I played my wildcard in week 3 last year after picking too many risk-reward players that didn't pan out. The season turned out okay and I ended up 7,000th overall, after briefly flirting with the top 100 in mid season. The lesson being of course that playing your wildcard early in the season isn't necessarily a bad thing. Let's look at a couple of strategies you might want to consider for your wildcard: Play it early on It is essential in fantasy football to be near the top of your league early on as it becomes increasingly hard to make up ground on the opposition as the season unfolds. Teams tend to converge and often employ 5-8 players that seem to be present on most teams (see Ronaldo, Lampard, Gerrard, Vidic, Bosingwa and Schwarzer in 2008-09). It therefore makes sense to get your team right early on before it is too late. A further advantage to playing your wildcard early on is that you can buy the hot pl...

I've been using my favourite new analysis tool to look at some of the weekends performances to see if we can draw some conclusions on the future success of fantasy players. The analysis and fantasy impact for several key fantasy prospects can be found below: Andrey Arshavin I spoke about Arshavin after the Portsmouth game , where I concluded that despite the lack of shots, the Russian magician was sufficiently involved in the action to still give value for money. However, with zero shots this week and only assist and no goals to his name despite Arsenal scoring 10 in their opening two games, I am a little concerned about his production. His passing analysis from the Portsmouth game is below: Arshavin played very deep - around the halfway line - and only played one ball into the box from his right sided position. His total pass total of 38 is okay as it shows that he isn't running the game as one might expect but is involved regularly none the less. I am far from ready to give...

The new fantasy season is upon us, and a few thoughts initially spring to mind: Rule changes Not too much to note here, aside from two interesting tweaks to the rules: 1. "If you don't use your free transfer then you'll be able to make an additional free transfer the following gameweek. These saved transfers don't accumulate and can only be used the following gameweek". This allows for a build up of two free transfers for one gameweek which make double gameweeks even more valuable. 2. Creation of the 'emergency captain' selection tool. This suggests that if your captain does not play your most valuable/in form player will take the armband from him. This is not a major issue, as there are very few times when a marquee player does not play without us knowing with sufficient time to the make the adjustment. Position changes A couple of interesting classifications here that could lead to decent value being found: Andrey Arshavin (M) - Rightfully moved from a F...