Poll of the Fortnight: Who'll Be The Top Pointer For 09/10 Season?

Hi guys, on every week I'll post a poll result and a discussion topic alternately, and I'll begin with poll of the fortnight first.

Since the opening of this blog there's a poll on the sidebar in which you can vote for the top pointer for 09/10 season. And the results are as follows:

Andriy Arshavin (29%, 32 votes)

I wasn't surprised for this. Arshavin led for most of the time in my poll by a significant amount of difference with runner-ups. In fact I think everyone is impressed with his superb 4 shots 4 goals performance at Anfield. His power is proven, but with Fabregas good fitness condition currently, will his portion of performance shared with Cesc?

Frank Lampard (27%, 30 votes)

As a CAM in the diamond midfield formation of Ancelotti this season, most of us expect him to contribute more in offense, which led to his position of first runner-up in my poll. I've never doubt for his attacking prowess, but with today's Drogba's spectacular performance, will his glow be covered up by Didier?

Steven Gerrard (21%, 23 votes)

Stevie G is always the great collector of fantasy points, but he might be slightly demoted this season. With the spectacular performance of Lucas currently and the ex-Roma ace Aquilani who can run between the lines, the shared burden of Gerrard might proved to reduce his fantasy points as well, which makes the result sounds logic.

Wayne Rooney (10%, 11 votes)

A lot of people hold their view on Rooney. While he's the team ace now, he's not the type who is able to score 25-30 goals per season. He's much more like a striker who draws attention and helps his teammates to score by his great runs. A top three for him is reasonable for me, but the top 1? Still long way to go.

Fernando Torres (8%, 9 votes)

Due to existence of Steven Gerrard, the casting of vote towards him are pitily low. Basically Gerrard's form will be always better than him and also since Gerrard scores 5 points for every goal compared to Torres' 4, favour will always go to Gerrard. Better luck for this season.

Others (2%, 3 votes)

While the above 5 will always be the hot pick for this year, there's still people voting for other potential man. Well, I don't know where did the 3 votes go to, maybe Droga, Adebayor or whoever, but miracle does exist. So lets just wait and see.

So what say you?

Pre-Match Analysis: Gameweek 1

3 days from the new season of EPL. I guess you guys just couldn't wait any longer don't you? And now I'll analyse the games 1 by 1, and the possible fantasy player of the week!

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15 Aug 09

Chelsea vs Hull City (Stamford Bridge, 12.45pm)

Ancelotti will be delighted to start his league debut with such an inferior opponent, not to be mentioned the Blue Lions will host the game. Carlo simply cannot afford not to take 3 points from this game as the first match is important for this new coach to boost the morale of his squad. Therefore, I expect the Tigers to suffer greatly on this very first match of them.

Key injuries (Hull): Bullard

Expected score: 3-0

Fantasy heroes: Lampard, Anelka, Drogba

Aston Villa vs Wigan Athletic (Villa Park, 3.00pm)

Wigan's selling policy will eventually punish themselves through their very own first game. This potential relegators simply can't match the disciplined Martin O'Neill's squad. They will suffer, although not much.

Key injuries (Aston Villa): Petrov (doubtful), Downing

Expected score: 2-0

Fantasy heroes: A Young

Blackburn Rovers vs Manchester City (Ewood Park, 3.00pm)

The billion army is set to destroy whoever who try to stop them from taking 3 points this season. Blackburn's squad will be killed by City's big lump of cash.

Expected score: 1-2

Fantasy heroes: Adebayor

Bolton Wanderers vs Sunderland (Reebok Stadium, 3.00pm)

A 50-50 game. Sunderland doesn't look like they will be bullied, while Bolton has the home advantage.

Key injuries (Sunderland): Gordon (doubtful)

Expected score: 0-0

Fantasy heroes: Jaaskelainen

Portsmouth vs Fulham (Fratton Park, 3.00pm)

Portsmouth is greatly weakened this season, but Fulham doesn't really have a good away record.

Expected score: 0-1

Fantasy heroes: Schwarzer

Stoke City vs Burnley (Britannia Stadium, 3.00pm)

Stoke will more than happy to play with this league newcomer. If Burnley can't win this game, they'll surely take the last position of the table at the end of August.

Expected score: 1-0

Fantasy heroes: Beattie

Wolverhampton Wanderers vs West Ham United (Molineux, 3.00pm)

While Wolves offense looks incredible, West Ham is set to punish them with their counterattacks.

Key injuries (Wolves): Kightly

Expected score: 2-3

Fantasy heroes: Cole, Ashton

Everton vs Arsenal (Goodison Park, 5.30pm)

One of the big clash of the week. Everton's strong defense might pour the cold water to Wenger's hope of clinching the title with his young squad, while Arsenal will try their best to protect their status as Big Four.

Key injuries (Everton): Jagielka

Key injuries (Arsenal): Nasri, Rosicky

Expected score: 0-1

Fantasy heroes: Fabregas

16 Aug 2009

Manchester United vs Birmingham City (Old Trafford, 1.30pm)

Even without Ronaldo, Birmingham will be crushed easily at the Red Devils' Dream Theatre, especially when Birmingham's defense is flooded with injuries. The only question is by how much.

Key injuries (Man Utd): Nani (doubtful), Van der Sar

Key injuries (Birmingham): Ridgewell

Expected score: 2-0

Fantasy heroes: Rooney, Valencia

Tottenham Hotspur vs Liverpool (White Hart Lane, 4.00pm)

Another featured game of the week. I have to edit this due to Tottenham's series of injuries at the back. A great attacking game should be happened on this match. And the 2 main CBs absenties will prove to bring a lot of damages to Redknapp's first game of the season.

Key injuries (Tottenham): King (doubtful), Bale (doubtful), Woodgate

Key injuries (Liverpool): Skrtel (doubtful), Agger (doubtful), Gerrard (doubtful)

Expected score: 2-3

Fantasy heroes: Defoe, Torres, Lucas (if Gerrard is absent)

Note: Time are stated in local England time.

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Recommendations from the Pundit:

1. Valencia - 90% confident with him. He'll be playing against two promoters from the lower division and this is definitely easy for him to do some assists or even score.
2. Bent - 80% confident with him. I believe his ace status at Sunderland will give him a lot of chances to score.
3. Johnson - 40% confident with him. Liverpool's doubtful defense currently will not bring him any benefits.

Monthly Express: August

Okay guys, fantasy premier league is just 5 days from now... Lets get it started!

In this post I am going to guide you on picking your players for the month of August, as well as to evade some of them. Firstly, lets analyse by teams first...

Teams to Pick

Chelsea - A very easy month for them.

Manchester City - Easy month as well, although they play no games at GW2.

Manchester United - Three easy games before a big clash against Arsenal.

Tottenham - They have Hull and Birmingham to bully this month.

Stoke City - They played against two promoters during August.

Teams to Avoid

Arsenal - They'll be absent on GW2 and fight with Everton and Man Utd at August.

Bolton - They have two games fighting Arsenal and Liverpool.

Burnley - A doomed fixtures for them this month. Almost guaranteed to bottom the table this month.

Everton - They've back to back games with Arsenal and Man City.

Fulham - They don't play at GW2 and will fight Chelsea and Aston.

Portsmouth - They'll fight Fulham, Arsenal and City.

Wigan - A quite bad calendar for them.

Basically by following the fixtures you'll reduce the risk of earning low points.

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Now lets talk about the players...

Potential Players of the Month

1. Lampard - With all those weak opponents around, the chances for him to seal more than 20 points this month is very high.
2. Cech - Clean sheets expected.
3. Bent - Sunderland's best player ATM.
4. Lucas - He's the best player of pre-season for Liverpool. Has a high chance of playing as CAM instead of Gerrard.
5. Robinho, Adebayor - I expect at least 3 goals from them this month.
6. Beattie, Fuller - I expect the same thing from them.
7. Stoke's defenders - They might get 3 clean sheets if they are lucky enough.
8. Milijas, Ebanks-Blake - All of their opponents' defense aren't that tough.

Be ready for surprises from him.

The "No"s of the Month

1. Liverpool's defenders - They are having a sloppy pre-season with series of injuries.
2. Gerrard - I'm still unsure of his position: CM or CAM?
3. Man City's midfielders - The line-up remains a mystery.
4. Man Utd's defenders - With Foster/Kuszczak behind, this is risky.

Long Injuries (Key Players of FPL)

1. Van der Sar - 1 month
2. Aquilani - 1-2 months
3. Nasri - 2 months
4. Rosicky - 1-2 months
5. Downing - 4 months
6. Jagielka - 3 months
7. Bullard - 1 month
8. Hargreaves - 1 month

Note: The period stated may fluctuate according to the players' conditions. Short injuries will only be listed on gameweek pre-analysis.

Gaming Strategies

Fantasy premier league isn't a hard game to play, but it needs some skills to master it as well. In this post I'm going to teach newbies on how to take advantage on some general rules of the game.

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Captaincy

As you can see from the meaning of the word itself, captain has a big role in FPL - it doubles the score that particular player earns. So basically if you captain a man who earned you 20 points for a particular gameweek, your performance will be very good as you earn 40 points from one single person! As I mentioned before, get several expensive big guns who'll always have high possibility of earning double figures and captain them to maximise your score, and always give the priority to the one who has the best fixtures, i.e. playing against weak clubs.

Not to be forgotten that there's now a emergency captain feature in FPL which means that you'll not have big trouble if your assigned captain is injured or drawn out of the game on last minute. You can choose for highest value and best form for this, and my suggestion would be stick to the former one. Players with higher value will earn you at least 1 goal or assist most of the time while a cheap player with great form might suddenly lose his firepower.

Your biggest decision of the game.

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Transfers

As real as reality, FPL also emphasises on your economic intelligence. As a player's price fluctuate according to his performance in reality, a good buy and sell move can potentially earn you more money to invest and improve on your team. By thus, buying all the big names in one team isn't possible.

The thing that I wanted to warn you here is to increase on the quality of transfer, but not quantity. One to two transfers per week certainly doesn't harm you much, if you make a correct move as it'll give a good future to your squad. However, a giant number of transfers for one gameweek just because all of them only get 2-3 points for that particular week is silly. Any transfers beyond one (or two if you didn't swap for anything on the previous week) will deduct you 4 points, and if you do that everyweek basically you're out of any title race. So be rational and wise - think thrice before making any move.

And now the economy aspect. Every rise of £0.2m based on player's buy-in price will give an extra £0.1m bonus on sell. For example, if you buy Rooney on £11.0m and his price rise to £12.0m after one month, you can sell him for £11.5m. While the price increment might be tempting, I advise you not to sell those price hikers for no reason unless their form are dropping significantly or there are other better potential price hikers. Note that price drop from player's buy-in price will not half your loss in selling though.

For those who wanted to gain advantage in terms of team value, here's the guide. Grab the players (especially the cheaper ones) who get double figures at that gameweek as soon as the game ends (or whenever you sure of he'll get 10++ points). As a player's price fluctuates due to both his performance and all the gamers' transfer movements, the early birds will get their rewards. However, I don't encourage you to make all those transfers just to maximise the team value unless you wanted to be a cash team, i.e. on the top of the team value table.

The new rule for this season is the accumulated free transfer, which means that you can transfer two players for free if you didn't make any transfer during the last gameweek. What a good news to all gamers.

Spend smartly.

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Wildcards

A wildcard is a special weapon in FPL where you can do unlimited number of transfers for that particular gameweek. There's no particular golden period in using your wildcard except for this following conditions:

1. Your team is totally out of form.
2. Your team has a lot of injured players.
3. There's a far better combinations of players which score much higher scores with the same price.

Use it when you're on trouble.

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Double the Game, Double the Score

How is it possible? A team will have double fixtures for one gameweek if they are forced to delay a game for any particular game due to cup matches, bad weather etc. So this means the players from that team will have two times of playing time and thus, higher probability to get extra goals and assists. Even if they doesn't, at least 4 points is secured instead of 2 (unless there are any cards). Hence it's a great chance to maximise your score by taking in all the players with double fixtures and captain the best among them. However this only applies to on form teams or big clubs. You won't risk your points by taking in relegation battlers to your team right?

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Substitutions

A lot of people are underestimating the benchers of their team, but they can make a big difference. Substitutions will be in your team whenever your starters are rested, injured or banned from a game, so you can't simply make fun of them. I'm not saying that you should get some expensive players into your team to become substitutes, but please don't fill in your last few players with no character but only cheap. At least bring in some substitutes who are consistent starters for their team and able to deliver goals and assists occasionally and yet cheap. If you don't know who are them, just navigate to my team picking guides and team-by-team analysis!

A small pawn can make big changes.

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And that complete's my final part of basic guides. 5 days now from 09/10 season and my fantasy lists of August will be released soon. Stay tuned!

Hard Copy for Players' Price

Well, in case you need it for reference, visit this link and print it out.

http://fantasy.premierleague.com/playerlist.html