PLFantasy

Looking back at last season Just 5 clean sheets last year, better than only West Brom. GPG conceded at home (1.58) and on the road (1.89) were both fairly disastrous. Roger Johnson is an upgrade but this team still lacks the talent to provide every week defensive starters Big difference when playing at home or away. At home they failed to score just 3 times and averaged 1.58 GPG , better than Villa and Sunderland and tied with Spurs. However on the road they managed just 0.84 GPG and were shutout 7 times. Keepers ranked 19th in P90 but there low cost allowed them to register a respectable 14th ranking in P$. I still struggle to see how they can be owned this year though The defense was a similar story with a 16th ranking in P90 but a P$ rank of 12th. Again, it's hard to see owning these players other than for a short loan spell when the fixtures are particularly good (and home heavy) The midfield was a useful source of fantasy points last year with a 13th ranking in P...

The Juice scored a solid 53 points this week, hindered somewhat by the Benitez-like blunder of benching not just James Collins (10 points) but also Michael Turner (6), instead favouring Cole (0) and Assou Ekotto (1) at the back. A look down my local league showed a sight familiar from last year, but unexpected at this early juncture: consistency. Now this can mean one of two things: either everyone is suddenly making great individual decisions each week, or teams are starting to merge and its becoming harder to differentiate yourself. I think we can safely say that option A is the likely truth. Up front, Drogba (32%), Bent (31%) and Torres (30%) have all cracked the 30% ownership barrier along with Fabregas (31%) and Sorensen (42%). Gerrard (28%) could well be there on return from injury while the likes of Shawcross (27%) Lennon (26%) are also knocking on the door. Injuries to Rooney, Torres and Gerrard along with the continuing struggles of Lampard could well see ownership of Drogba a...

This category is always a tough one, though because we only need three strikers, the need for budget strikers is not so important. That being said, in recent years, premium strikers have not proved to be great investments, and so money saved here can allow extra to be spent on the big name midfielders. A quick look at the value (2008-09) of the big name midfielders and forwards illustrates this point well: Further analysis on where best to spend your money will be done in a later post, but for now, the main point is that top line strikers can be very hit and miss, and so bargains can be extremely valuable if selected well. Without further ado then, the best bargains I like for the upcoming season are as below (a budget of 5.5m has been set): Sylvan Ebanks-Blake (5.5m) Wolves The England Under-21 international will get his chance to shine in the big leagues this year, having led the Championship in scoring for the past two years (with 23 and 25 goals respectively, including this absolut...