The Offside Fantasy League: Sell Your Strikers

By: Daryl | September 20th, 2007

Sell you strikers Just like the Premier League, The Offside Fantasy League is beginning to take shape. And there’s a gigantic trend going on. If you look at more or less every team in the league, including everyone in the top 10, then there’s only one conclusion: Strikers are useless.

If you have a look at all the teams in the top 10, none of their forwards are scoring points. Fruit is still in first place, despite strikers Andrew Johnson and Fernando Torres scoring just one point between them last weekend. 10th placed Zara United had 5 points from from Tevez last week and none from Heskey (you don’t get anything for breaking your metatarsal unfortunately) but that was enough for the team to have the best performing strikers in the top 10.

Seems the majority of points are coming from influential midfielders like Cesc Fabgregas and Clint Dempsey who’ve been scoring for fun lately, and miserly but goalscoring defenders like Nemanja Vidic and Joloen Lescott. We also saw last week how defenders like Gael Clichy can rack up a lot of points through interceptions, tackles and passes.

It’s not that all strikers are useless. It’s juts that the expensive one are failing to hit their usual highs. £15 million men like Didier Drogba and Wayne Rooney have been injured, while the likes of Fernando Torres have shown flashes of how good they are, but are victims of squad rotation. Others like £13 million Dimitar Berbatov just haven’t performed as expected, and so aren’t good value for money. What I would suggest is not having all your big money up front. Trade in your expensive forwards for some more cost effective fellows who might not score many points, but will at least free up some extra cash you can spend on point scoring midfielders.

The only striker doing the business so far is Nicolas Anelka, and it’s easy to see why. He’s Bolton’s main man so they’re not going to rotate him, and he’s fit so he’s been playing. But even he will have dry patches, especially as Bolton aren’t exactly sweeping all before them. At £11.5 million, he’s not the cheapest option, but he’s getting the job done.

One to watch this weekend might be, wait for it… Andriy Shevchenko. He cost £12.2m and has so far scored 2 points, so that’s £6.1 million of your Fantasy League money per point. Expressed in less mathematical terms, he’s been shit. But now Jose Mourinho’s gone, it’s entirely possible Chelsea will start playing to his strengths (ie to his feet) and goals could come. Don’t bet on it though.

One thing you probably can bet on is Arsenal beating Derby at home. Yes Derby got a great result against Newcastle on Monday, but Arsenal aren’t Newcastle. Good bets include attacke minded midfielders like Cesc Fabregas, Tomas Rosicky and Alexandr Hleb to get forward and get involved with goals, assists and plenty of passing, and fullbacks Gael Clichy and Bacary Sagna to get a clean sheet and get forward a bit. And – if you still think strikers are worth your money – then gamble £10 million on the reasonably priced Emmanuel Adebayor to score some more goals like this one.