With four gameweeks in less than two real life weeks and with bigger potential headaches than a New Year’s Day hangover, Christmas can be a stressful time for Fantasy Football managers. We’re here to help.
Gameweek 16 Review
We foolishly thought that a tough-looking trip to White Hart Lane might be the ideal time to take the captain’s armband off Luis Suarez for a while and then he made us look nearly as stupid as the Spurs defence when pouncing for two goals, two assists and yet another brilliant haul of 22 points at the weekend.
Suarez was by far and away the highest scorer in a Dream Team that unsurprisingly contains quite a lot of red after victories for Liverpool and Manchester United and with Arsenal scoring three goals despite losing by the same margin against Manchester City.
Fernandinho was next best after posting 15 points for his brace against the Gunners, two more points than Theo Walcott, who scored in the same game, Everton’s Leon Osman and Suarez’s team-mates Jon Flanagan and Jordan Henderson, both of whom hit the net against Spurs.
Danny Welbeck was something of an unlikely presence in the Dream Team after doubling his goal haul for the season with a brace against Aston Villa for 12 points, a point more than what West Ham ‘keeper Jussi Jaaskelainen and Cardiff’s Peter Whittingham could muster.
Elsewhere, the XI was made up by Cardiff’s Ben Turner on nine points and our own Seamus Coleman on ten, after his season continued to go from strength to strength with a goal against Fulham on Saturday.
The J-League
Most of the teams at the top end of the J-League wisely ignored our advice and went with Luis Suarez as captain at the weekend, resulting in every member of the top five bar one scoring in excess of 80 points on a bountiful weekend all around.
The one manager who failed to make the 80 mark was Sean O’Donoghue and his Celtic D’s outfit are just about clinging onto top five status, where Mark Colley’s Ferncourt FC shot to prominence with an excellent 102 points.
Stuart McGoldrick’s Champions 2013/14 remain on top with a quite comfortable cushion of 40 points over Brian Ruane’s Dukes of Hazard, with Paul McInaw’s Poppycock Wednesday and Anthony Murphy’s Sea Dogs putting the pressure on in third and fourth place.
There will be four gameweeks between now and the next time we update the table, so those outside the top five will never have a better chance than they do now to get their name up in lights in, statistically, one of the best performing leagues on the official Fantasy Premier League site.
If that doesn’t motivate you to meet every deadline over the Christmas we don’t know what will.
J-League Top 5:
- Champions 2013/14 – Stuart McGoldrick: 1,153 points
- Dukes of Hazard – Brian Ruane: 1,113 points
- Poppycock Wednesday – Paul McInaw: 1,110 points
- Sea Dogs – Anthony Murphy: 1,108 points
- Ferncourt FC – Mark Colley, Celtic D’s – Sean O’Donoghue: 1,106 points
And so this is Christmas, what will we do?
Despite the best attempts of the powers that be to go all Bob Cratchit and demand multiple columns in return for only a shiny penny over the festive season, the Fantasy Football column is *assumes Italian-American accent* “outta heeeee” from now until the New Year.
With the games coming thick and fast over the Christmas period, that’s four whole Gameweeks we’ve to try and fit all into one so this latest column includes general titbits of advice to cope over the next few weeks rather than the *cough* in-depth and unrivalled analysis *cough* that y’all are lucky to be served up on a weekly basis.
Here’s what you need to know.
Deadlines
Get ready to set the reminders folks – we’re deadly serious here, by the way – the times and dates you need to know in regard to the deadlines for the Gameweeks over the festive season are:
Gameweek 17: 21 December, 11.30am
Gameweek 18: 26 December, 11.30am
Gameweek 19: 28 December, 11.30am
Gameweek 20: 1 January, 11.30am
You might be best served looking after affairs the night before – particularly for the New Year’s deadline – but be sure to check in for a minute or two before every deadline, even if it’s just to take out an injured player or change the captain.
Transfers
The big issue for a lot of managers right now (one in five at the time of writing) is how to replace Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero, who is set to be sidelined for approximately a month and will miss the entire festive period. With RVP gone too and Luis Suarez in every Fantasy team at this stage (if he’s not he really should be), there are a few pretty simple solutions.
The first is to make a straight swap for his strike partner Alvaro Negredo (£9.5 million), who is just under £3 million cheaper and has scored seven goals this season, including in his last five outings at the Etihad. Alternatively, if fit, Wayne Rooney (£11.3 million) will assume the mantle in the Man United attack in RVP’s absence and is facing into a decent run of games.
Wildcard
One disastrous gameweek will bring with it the temptation to make wholesale changes but this is inadvisable for a number of reasons. For a start, managers should remember that four gameweeks in quick succession allows for four free transfers in a short space of time. Also it is not an ideal time to be bringing in players because of the rotation policy that will be forced on managers trying to make maximum use of their squad in such a busy period.
Finally, the January wildcard comes into play next month and although managers (the January wildcard can be used by all managers, even those who have used it already) can use it as soon as the Gameweek 20 deadline closes on January 1, the transfers won’t come until effect until Gameweek 21 on January 11. Just think before you go making any rash decisions, OK?
Captain
The way he’s playing, selecting Luis Suarez as captain for the entire Christmas period doesn’t sound like a bad strategy at all but managers should bear in mind that Liverpool have to play Manchester City and Chelsea away from home over a three-day period.
That aside, if your hectic social life permits, keep an eye out for players in form and for any bits of information that might come in handy – injury doubts, managers hinting at rotating the team etc. – when it comes to selecting your skipper, or you could just follow our helpful guidelines on who should be captain below.
Captain’s Picks (injury permitting of course):
Gameweek 17: Luis Suarez
Gameweek 18: Eden Hazard
Gameweek 19: Alvaro Negredo
Gameweek 20: Luis Suarez
All in all, as long as you commit just a few minutes on the dates in question to all matters Fantasy Football you should cope just fine without having your head wrecked too badly, although that won’t sound as comforting when you forget to make Luis Suarez captain on the day he bangs in another hat-trick.
Finally, we’d just like to take the opportunity to thank you all for reading in 2013, to wish you all a very happy Christmas and New Year and to say we’ll be back with more absolutely brilliant occasionally insightful Fantasy Football advice in 2014.
