The Offside Fantasy League: Do You Want to Know a Secret?

By: Daryl | November 23rd, 2007

Do you want to know a secret? The Premiership fixture list isn’t really a secret, to be honest. You can find it on the SquadGod website to name just one online location. But as we get deeper into the season with The Offside Fantasy League it’s worth paying close attention to who’s playing who and how many times. With attention temporarily focused on matters international this week, today’s a good day to snap back into club mode and tinker with your fantasy football team a bit. This gameweek there are three specific things worth thinking about.

1) Big teams vs little teams
Table toppers Arsenal play second from bottom Wigan, second place Manchester United play third bottom Bolton Wanderers, while fourth place Chelsea play rock bottom three points machine Derby County. Guaranteed wins for the big teams right? Probably. But Arsenal will be fielding a second choice (though still mostly foreign) midfield while Steve Bruce and his lucrative image rights will likely be taking charge of Wigan for the first time. This should still mean an Arsenal win, but maybe not another one of the spankings Wigan have been on the end of recently. Manchester United are still in fine form, but the Bolton game is a Lancashire derby, so expect the Bolton players to lift it a little. Derby on the other hand… it’s a Chelsea victory waiting to happen, possibly by a fair size margin too. So if you’re going to gamble on the big boys winning, go with Chelsea players, especially someone like Frank Lampard who always follows up shocking England performances with shiny Chelsea ones.

2) Aston Villa and Blackburn will be busy
Villa travel to Middlesbrough on Saturday, while Blackburn are away to Fulham, but both clubs then play each other on Wednesday night. So for any Villa and Blackburn players picked you potentially have two chances of them scoring points in Gameweek 13. Since both teams have a few high point scoring but reasonably priced players, you’d be crazy not to draft one of them into your team this week. Good picks from Villa would be bargain goalscoring defender Martin Laursen, (£5.5m, 189 pts) Scott “put Croatia behind you, son” Carson (£7m, 106 pts) or in form forward Gabriel Agbonlahor (£9.5m, 133pts.) Blackburn is even more fertile, with solid defender Christopher Samba (£7m, 161 pts) bargain striker Roque Santa Cruz (£7.5m, 134pts) and Stephen “probably better than Wayne Bridge” Warnock (£7m, 130 pts) all good value in a normal week, doubly so this week.

3) Cesc Fabregas is suspended
Thanks to his yellow card collection, Arsenal’s SquadGod points machine (he’s the best scoring player in the game with 284 pts) will have to sit out the game against Wigan. But he’s back for the following gameweek when Arsenal play once on Saturday against Aston Villa, and again on Wednesday against Newcastle. So do you take him out for this week to avoid having an inactive £12.5m player in your team, or do you stick with him because a) you’ll get an extra game to make up for it next week, and b) you don’t want to risk taking him out just in case you forget and then miss out on a Cesc Fabregas pointsfest? At the very least make sure he’s not your captain this week, because a bonus 50% of zero is still zero.