PLFantasy

Right off the bat, let's all dispose of our shock that this game didn't finish 4-3. Okay, those games happened almost 20 years but I really felt that Stan Collymore and Tino Asprilla would have a big impact on this game. In reality this game was along way from a classic, with two sides lacking something , quite what that is is hard to say. The optimist will say confidence while others will argue quality. I might argue Suarez and Cabaye. Liverpool The gap between Liverpool's dominance in possession (65%) and shot production (two SiB) is about as stark as I recall seeing and probably performs a reasonable summary for Liverpool's woes. I'm not going to make this 500 words on Balotelli's ineptitude as, simply, he just isn't a bad player. He is however not playing particularly well on a zero to Suarez scale and the system he's being used in does not seem to be working well for either party right now. The Italian seems to want to drop off the front, much l...

Looking back at last season Led all teams with 18 clean sheets including 12 at home. Only six other teams have 12 clean sheets in total. The final 13 gameweeks of the seasons saw City rack up an impressive 7 clean sheets including 3 straight to end the season. Their 0.63 GPG at home and 1.11 GPG away ranked 1st and 3rd in the league respectively Failed to score a surprising 9 times though 5 of these came in the first 13 weeks of the season. Through the first 13 gameweeks they managed to score just 15 goals (1.15 GPG). The remaining games saw them up the pace to 1.8 GPG . Led the league in goalkeeper points but ranked just 12th in P$ thanks to Hart's price tag Defensive P90 ranked 2nd at home with the unit coming in 5th in P$ . Thanks to the uncertainty around most positions the unit's prices haven't risen too fast making the unit very useful again this year. Up front the team amassed the third most points, which is incredible considering it was pretty much Tevez...

Well that went well. One of my better week of predictions is in the bag and Pure Juice sit 113th out of close to 2 million managers having managed six goals and four clean sheets on opening weekend. Unfortunately I don't think I have struck some sort of fantasy blueprint to be applied in all future weeks - more than I got a bit lucky and applied some fundamental principles that hold true for the coming weeks too: While I cautioned earlier about using minutes played as a sure fire barometer for future success, during these opening weeks when team selections are unsettled from prior season, it is essential to go with the sure things and try and avoid trying to discover the next big thing too early. That is why - as some of you have correctly pointed out - I somewhat deviated from my normal strategy of cheaper defenders and brought in Vidic and Terry for opening weekend (this was also due to saving some cash swapping Van Persie to Berbatov quite late on after it becam...