The Offside Fantasy League: Expect The Unexpected

By: Daryl | August 23rd, 2007

Sibierski It’s been an unpredictable start to the Premiership. Manchester City are top of the league, Wigan Athletic (Hutchings, Bramble and all) are third and Manchester United languish in 16th place with just one goal in three games. Which means that very few people could have successfully predicted the state of The Offside Fantasy League after the first two weeks. Consider the following quite remarkable fantasy league facts.

Antoine Sibierski is the best player in the Premiership. Not good enough for Manchester City, not good enough for Newcastle United. Three goals in three games (one as sub) for Wigan make him SquadGod’s current leading points scorer with 70 points.

A good many might not have heard of him (I’m not going to pretend that I had) but Reading’s Cameroonian defender Andre Bikey is – points wise – the best defender in the Premier League, despite only starting one game. Bikey came on and was gifted a goal with his first touch against Chelsea, and was then part of two clean sheets against Everton and Man Utd.

Wigan’s defence is fantastic. Despite containing Chris “glass-bones” Kirkland and Titus “Titus Bramble” Bramble, they’ve conceded just the single goal in three games. Kirkland is currently SquadGod’s top keeper and while the aforementioned Bikey and the colossal Micah Richards are the top two defenders, the next four are Wigan’s back four: Mario Melchiot, Anderas Granqvist, Titus Bramble and Paul Scharner. If you’ve spent big money on defenders like Rio Ferdinand and John Terry, then my commiserations.

Manchester United’s attack is impotent. Who could possibly have foreseen this? Rooney and Ronaldo should have been points in the bag, but instead it’s been all hairline fractures and headbutts, Tevez looking short of sharpness against Man City (how did he miss that header???) and Nani looking like the young Ronaldo (flashy but ineffective.)

Blue is the colour. The top five teams: Manchester City, Chelsea, Wigan, Everton and Portsmouth all wear blue and have players (eg Siberski, Utaka) in top form. If you selected your fantasy league team on the basis that blue teams are the best, then you’re probably sitting pretty right now.

So the Premiership is impossible to predict. But like the brave little fantasy league soldier that I am, here are a few predictions for the coming weekend:

Yakubu has had a dreadful start to the season. I know this because I signed him up for my team and have been frustrated ever since. The Yak has talent, pace and power but his efforts for Middlesbrough have been lacking in, well, effort. Seems he’s been waiting on a big move away from the Riverside. And seems he’s got it, because word is that he’s on the verge of completing a record £11.25 million move to Everton. This has me thinking that a newly enthused Yak could make a goalscoring start to life at Goodison Park when Blackburn visit this weekend.

Middlesbrough have replaced Yakubu with another often lazy one-name forward in Mido. Mostly thanks to an abysmal error from Fulham keeper Tony Warner, Mido scored on his ‘Boro debut, which should give the big Egyptian a nice boost of confidence going into the North-East derby with Newcastle.

Steve Davis joined Lawrie Sanchez’ Northern Irish revolution at Fulham from Aston Villa in the summer, and faces his former employers this weekend. He hasn’t done a lot for the Cottagers yet, but he may be out to prove a point to Martin O’Neill.

Something has to happen when Manchester United face Tottenham at Old Trafford. United need to stop the title-race disappearing out of view altogether, and Martin Jol needs a big win to improve his job security. Maybe Carlos Tevez will get his act together and get on the scoresheet, or maybe Paul Robinson will make up for his dodgy England display with a string of reflex saves, or maybe Paul Scholes will take advantage of Robinson’s dodgy positioning and let rip one of those long range rockets.

If you still haven’t signed up for The Offside Fantasy League then it’s not too late to get involved. If you have signed up then good luck guessing what’s going to happen this weekend.