Fantasy Premier League - Best Picks Gameweek 3

Fantasy Premier League - Gameweek 3 Picks

As the transfer window deadline draws closer, teams are looking to wind up their business and focus on tactics to put all the pieces together and unlock the jigsaw. Amongst Premier League teams, it looks like Arsenal and Man Utd may be in the market till the deadline day; Arsenal would be looking to strengthen their front line as Giroud will be out of action till 2015 with strike load to be shared between Podolski, Campbell and Sanogo. Man Utd on the other hand may be looking forward to bring in defensive and midfield reinforcements after a dismal start to the season under Louis Van Gaal.

Fixtures Analysis:

Gameweek 3 puts forth a set of tight fixtures for most teams. However, Arsenal, Man City & Man Utd will be facing relatively easy opponents. Champions will be hosting the Potters at the Etihad. Man City have won 6 and drawn 4 of their last 10 games with Stoke, and going by the current form, they look set to maintain their stellar performance against the Potters. Gunners will be making a short trip to Leicester while Man Utd will be travelling further up north to the Clarets and Van Gaal will leave no stone unturned to snatch his first premier league victory. Elsewhere, league leaders Spurs will take on the Reds at White Hart Lane and Chelsea will be facing a resurgent Everton at Goodison Park. 

Goalkeeper Picks:

Thibaut Courtois has not failed to meet the expectations set forth by Jose Mourinho and has adapted to the Premier League swiftly but his skills will be put to test at Goodison Park. Krul, Fabianski, Lloris and Guzan constitute for good choices of keepers for this round.

Defender Picks:

Its a no-brainer that Eric Dier & Ivanovic make up for good buys at this juncture, looking at their positive starts to the season. Dier especially is still available at a bargain. Aston Villa defenders have picked up two clean sheets from two games and although they may not be playing the most entertaining football in the league, it may still be wise to keep a defender from the Villans team. 

Budget Defenders: Danny Rose, van Aanholt, Andre Wisdom, Alan Hutton. 

Captain Choice: van Aanholt

Midfield Picks:

Arsenal man Ramsey remains the top pick amongst Premier League midfielders, with 45% of FPL managers opting for the Welshman, followed by Sterling, Fabregas and Sigurdsson. Spurs midfielder Chadli notched up a brace against a lowly QPR but shrewd FPL managers may wait for another week to see how the midfielder fares against the Reds at White Hart Lane. The infusion of "Fideo" in Man Utd may seem like an exciting prospect and given that the red devils will be facing a side yet to open their points tally in the Premier League, it may be a worthy risk to swap Di Maria for Yaya Toure and also utilize the surplus for galvanizing the defence.

Budget Midfielders: Fernando Reges, Sebastian Larsson, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Jack Rodwell.

Captain Choice: Aaron Ramsey

Forward Picks:

Diego Costa may be doubtful after picking up a hamstring injury. Therefore, it is advisable to get in either Didier Drogba, Aguero or Jovetic in place of the injured striker. Liverpool have done a fantastic job at replacing one intriguing personality with another as Balotelli comes in to fill the void left by Suarez. While Super Mario is accustomed to Premier League, it will be interesting to monitor his performance for a couple games under the new boss Brendan Rogers. Man Utd will seek a boost from Real Madrid talisman Di Maria, and he will look create goal scoring opportunities for Wayne Rooney and RVP upfront. Finally, Arsenal may look at either Sanogo or Campbell to solve their problems as World Cup winner Podolski still seems to be uncertain about his future at the Emirates.

Budget Forwards: Emmanuel Adebayor, Andreas Weimann, Yaya Sanogo, Samuel Eto'o.

Captain Choice: Wayne Rooney

Watch out for my next blog... "To use or not to use THE WILDCARD?"

Fantasy Premier League - Best Picks

 Its that time of the year when millions of Premier League fans across the globe are busy selecting their best squad for the first game-week. Its been a busy year for footballers with the World Cup in Brazil and the plethora of friendlies leading up to the opening game of the season. The transfer window has also been rampant with players moving across various leagues. If we closely examine the transfer business conducted by Premier League clubs up to 15th August 2014, the numbers reveal that La Liga is only second to England when it comes to providing talent pool to Premier League clubs.

This season will bring about another set of superstars and emerging talents across the twenty teams in the English top flight but what remains to be seen is how much more business will the Premier League clubs conduct before the transfer window shuts in a fortnight. Teams like Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea seemed to have secured their transfer targets and the new incumbents also look to have blended into the team tactics pretty snugly.

All that said and done, with so many new players on the block, the fantasy premier league managers face a selection dilemma which seems to be more stern than what Carlo Ancelotti may face to pick his best 11 from the available Galacticos. 

Fixtures Overview
Let us take a look at how the top 7 teams from the last season line up for the first six games of this years campaign.

Chelsea and Spurs have an easy run of games to start the season while Man City will be facing Liverpool, Arsenal & Chelsea in their first six games. Liverpool, Arsenal and Everton have mixed bag of premier league heavy weights & the relatively weaker teams which they will take on in their first 6 fixtures of the 2014-15 campaign. Man Utd on the other hand in their first half a dozen fixtures, will take on all the three promoted teams Leicester City, Burnley & Queens Park Rangers. 

Thus, it is quite likely that players from Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal & Spurs may excel at the start of the season. The rationale behind analyzing first six fixtures of the season is to gauge the best performers across the twenty clubs and then tweak your FPL team accordingly.

Let us now dive into the business and look at the ideal picks across various positions on the board.

Goalkeepers

The likes of Szczesny, Courtois, Howard look set to earn clean sheets, while these may be good first choice keepers, a few other budget shot stoppers that you can include are Tim Krul for his wonderful performance in the World Cup which he will look to emulate at the St. James Park. Sunderland's Vito Mannone is another good budget goalie, his 11 cleans sheets last season are a testimony of his commitment towards guarding the post for the black cats.

Defenders

Well its a no-brainer that any fantasy premier league manager will look to pick goal scoring defenders to earn maximum points for his team but its good to select players who are sure to get a start and have consistently been on top of their game. Looking at last season, Leighton Baines, Seamus Coleman & Steven Caulker top the list of goal scoring defenders (Skrtel scored seven with 3 own goals) while City duo Kolarov and Zabaleta have provided the maximum assists. Hull City's Alex Bruce is good budget defender & so is Stoke City's Geoff Cameron. Two interesting defenders to look out for this season will be Dejan Lovren & Mathieu Debuchy. Also, Phil Jones looks like a lucrative buy considering United's easy run of fixtures. 

Midfielders

FPL Managers will be in a tight spot here as most of the big buys during this season's transfer window have been midfielders. One important factor to consider is the fixture lineup which will ease out the selection quandary and help you pick wisely. A prudent manager will look to pick midfielders across various teams to maximize his gains. Yaya Toure's dream form from last years campaign may look bleak as the midfielder seems a little disgruntled with the way proceedings have taken place in the blue half of Manchester. Fabregas' return to the Premier League seems like an interesting prospect with the Chelsea manager also reinstating his faith in the blaugrana talisman. Arsenal star signing  Alexis Sanchez, & Man Utd's Herrera may take sometime to adapt to the premier league style of play and therefore opting for Ramsey or Mata may be wise choice. Liverpool duo Sterling and Coutinho will look to build upon their scintillating pre-season form as they take on a depleted Saints side at Anfield. A few other interesting midfielders that have been ignored by FPL Managers this season include Oscar, Adam Johnson, Erik Lamela, Adnan Januzaj, Hatem Ben Arfa & Aaron Lennon. It may be a worthy gamble to keep one of these names on your team sheet. As far as the budget buys are concerned, the likes of Puncheon, Jedinak, Arnautovic, Shelvey & Lampard (yes Frank Lampard) can be considered.

Forwards

The usual suspects dominate the selection scenario here. One thing to be mindful of while picking forwards is the formation that you have chosen for your team. Wayne Rooney, Daniel Sturridge & Chelsea target man Costa have all exhibited their brilliance during the friendlies. Another man who has caught the eyes of FPL managers recently is Steven Jovetic notching 5 goals during pre-season friendlies. Bojan Krkic, Yaya Sanogo, Brown Ideye & Shane Long make up for good budget buys.

Formation

This is another key element that is ignored by many managers in FPL. Your scoring will vastly vary from your competitors depending on the kind of formation that you have selected along with your captain choice player. 

A 3-4-3 or a 3-5-2 formation with focus on good midfielders can prove to be instrumental in the success of your FPL team at the beginning of the season.

All that said and done, finally it comes down to the Manager's acumen and instinct of picking the right players and handing over the captains armband accurately before the start of every gameweek.

Thats it for now folks. Hope this article helps in you making better selection for your FPL teams and once again all the best for another new season full of hope, excitement, drama, action and most importantly GOALS!!

Ought to prove their worth!

It’s been couple of weeks, since the summer transfer window closed on 2^nd Sep’13. A total of 10,454 players were transferred globally this summer and the total spending by the European clubs alone is estimated to be around 3.34 billion USD; just an indication that the frenzy football spending continues to grow even though the economies of some of the European nations are shrinking.

It weren’t only the players that shuffled clubs this season but also a lot of Managers who moved across various clubs within Europe. This may yet again be an indication of the altered playing styles seen at some of the top flight clubs across Europe.

A few notable changes at the helm of various clubs are highlighted below:

Sr.No.	Name	Old Club	New Club
1	Jose Mourinho	Real Madrid	Chelsea
2	Carlo Ancellotti	Paris Saint Germain	Real Madrid
3	Pep Guardiola	--	FC Bayern Munich
4	David Moyes	Everton FC	Manchester United
5	Gerardo ‘Tata’ Martino	Newell’s Old Boys	FC Barcelona
6	Manuel Pellegrini	Villareal	Manchester City

As European club soccer recommenced yesterday, after the international break; all eyes were on the star signings of this season.

While players like Gareth Bale, Mesut Özil, Junior Neymar, Gonzalo Higuain and Radamel Falcao made notable contributions, others like Edinson Cavani, James Rodriguez, Borges Willian and Mario Gotze did not feature in the starting eleven for their respective clubs.

Here’s a roundup of the biggest transfers that took place in Europe this summer:

Sr.No.	Name	Club From	Club To	Price (US$)
1	Gareth Bale	Tottenham Hotspurs	Real Madrid	121 Million
2	Edinson Cavani	SSC Napoli	Paris St. Germain	83 Million
3	Radamel Falcao	Atletico Madrid	Monaco	79 Million
4	Junior Neymar	Santos FC	FC Barcelona	75 Million
5	Mesut Özil	Real Madrid	Arsenal	66 Million
6	James Rodriguez	FC Porto	Monaco	59 Million
7	Luis Fernandinho	Shakhtar Donetsk	Manchester City	53 Million
8	Borges Willian	Anzhi Makhachkala	Chelsea	50 Million
9	Mario Gotze	Borussia Dortmund	Bayern Munich	49 Million
10	Gonzalo Higuain	Real Madrid	SSC Napoli	49 Million

If we take a look at the club wise spending this summer, Real Madrid tops the chart again, spending close to 242 million USD to bring in Isco Alarcon, Asier Illaramendi and of course Gareth Bale; their fifth Galactico signing after Ronaldo, Kaka, Zidane & Figo.

The next club in line after Los Blancos is AS Monaco; with the total spend amassing to 222 million USD in 2013 summer transfer window, the newly promoted French outfit got players like Radamel Falcao, James Rodriguez, Joao Moutinho, Ricardo Carvalho and Eric Abidal. Riding high on their strong financial backing led by the Russian Billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, AS Monaco would be looking to mount a serious title challenge this season and would also be eager to book a Champions League berth next season.

Third club on the top spenders list this summer is Tottenham Hotspurs. It seemed as though the Spurs Chairman Daniel Levy had foreseen the Bale deal getting through and decided to bring in reinforcements to the likes of Paulinho, Roberto Soldado, Christian Eriksen, Nacer Chadli, Erik Lamela and Etienne Capoue. With the total summer spending of the North London club amounting to 165 Million USD, the fans and the chairman must envisage a top 4 finish in the English top flight this season.

The other two clubs to spend in excess of 130 Million USD in the market are Manchester City and Paris Saint Germain, with the French champions making the second most expensive move of the summer to acquire Edinson Cavani for 83 Million USD, while the 2012 English champions landed Jesus Navas, Luis Fernandinho, Alvaro Negredo and Steven Jovetic this summer.

Top spending European clubs in 2013 summer transfer window:

Sr.No.	Club	Total Spending
1	Real Madrid	242 Million USD
2	AS Monaco	222 Million USD
3	Tottenham Hotspurs	165 Million USD
4	Manchester City	155 Million USD
5	Paris Saint Germain	168 Million USD

In the league battle, English Premier League tops the league wise spending list with around 1 Billion USD being spent over the summer while the Italian Serie A and the Spanish La Liga spending over 539 Million US Dollars.

As the UEFA Champions League campaign kicks off from Wednesday 18^th September 2013, it will be interesting to see which of these top spending European clubs would reap the maximum benefits from the investments made and reach the pinnacle of glory at the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon come 24^th of May 2014.

Owing to the massive changes that various clubs have undergone over the past few months, the 2013-14 season of European club football promises to be one of the most prolific, unpredictable and exciting seasons ever.

However, the challenge that now lies ahead of all these players and their managers is to prove their worth to the fans and to the entire football fraternity across the globe!!