MLS GW28 Tips – Fantasy Major League Soccer

The week of turmoil and hand-wringing is now behind us. GW27 produced some monster scores, but now we have to plan for the reintroduction of the league’s superstars and for the typical MLS staples of bye weeks and DGWs. Even if your roster was kind to you last week, it won’t be a viable roster in the weeks to come in its current form. Hopefully you were able to spare a few roster spots for some of the teams coming back into play this week — some people did a great job of that, and others simply built the best team for the game at hand. Whatever your situation, we have some work to do.

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#1 — Know your DGW teams

This week gives us Colorado and Sporting Kansas City on a double. They definitely aren’t the sexiest teams in the league, but they’re what we have to work with nonetheless. Colorado have typically been known as the defensive team to buy, but they haven’t been shutout in three matches now, so we’ll have to pay attention to their offensive side as well. And SKC? Well they’ve transformed themselves into Forest Gump’s figurative box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.

Colorado v VAN (A), DC (H)

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[/three_fourth]On the defensive side, you have to start with their man between the pipes, Clint Irwin. Irwin continues to be Colorado’s leading fantasy scorer with 125 points; and with a 45 point cushion over the next highest scorer, it’s not even a question who their fantasy MVP is this year. The problem with Irwin is going to be his price of $5.4. At that price, he’s going to cost you a ‘proper’ roster spot and can’t be viewed as a budget acquisition in any sense (his DGW counterpart is $4.9 for reference). But is he worth it? Considering that Colorado have actually only kept one clean sheet in the last five weeks, he could be a bit of a gamble. The positive thing about Irwin though is that he continues to post decent scores even without the clean sheet bonus; he’s still averaging 3.75 points per game over his last four matches that didn’t have a shutout. Irwin represents steady points at his position, and if you’re willing to pay for that, he’s your man.

In front of Irwin, the situation isn’t as budget friendly with the suspension of Sjoberg in the first match of the round. Bobby Burling is an option for you if you’re desperate, but despite his $4.7 price tag, he is never a guarantee to play both fixtures in a DGW. If you really want a Colorado defender (as well you should), you may have to up your price range to accommodate Sean St. Ledger. Since joining Colorado from Orlando, St. Ledger has really carved out a place for himself. In his last four matches, he’s not only been afforded the chance to play the full 90 minutes, but he’s posted an average score of 4.75 points per game. He could reasonably hit the 10 point mark this week in a double, but he’s going to cost you $7.9 for that chance.

The midfield for Colorado is a bit murkier. Dillon Powers should be the number one man in their midfield, but he hasn’t played a full 90 since Round 17. And on top of that, his average score over the last five matches is a dismal 1.8 points per game. So where do you look? Marcelo Sarvas is cheap at $7.5, but his average over the same time frame is only 3 points per game — and one of those games was only a 45 minute appearance. Can you trust a recently returned Lucas Pittinari? After five rounds of being out, he finally came back for 11 minutes in his last match. So a DGW probably isn’t the best time to think he’ll log you any serious minutes. The best option? Skip the midfield for Colorado.

Up front, you have a dilemma. Do you pick Vicente Sanchez or Kevin Doyle? Sanchez costs $7.0 and has been productive lately; he’s averaging 6.4 points per game over his last five matches. The problem with Sanchez is that he’s only averaged 58.4 minutes in each of those last five matches. He’s expected to give a ‘feast’ portion of points in a ‘famine’ amount of time. Thus, he’s a huge gamble this week in a double. And Doyle will cost you a bit more at $7.4, but he’s played 90 minutes in every game since Round 18. And of course, being the complete inverse of Sanchez, he gets more minutes but has only produced a 4.4 point average over his last five matches. I give the upside to Doyle though since he’s just now rounding into form with a goal in each of his last two matches.

SKC v POR (A), ORL (A)

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[/three_fourth]Sporting Kansas City probably have the worst DGW travel schedule of anybody we’ve seen yet. Going from the midwest to the West Coast and then jetting down the East Coast is going to be a rough ride. But does that mean that you should overlook them defensively? I don’t think so, at least not completely. Something happened to SKC four matches ago when they faced Vancouver. SKC conceded three goals and remarkably came back to win by a margin of 4-3. Everybody celebrated until the next week when a traveling San Jose team beat them to the tune of 5-0. And after that SKC conceded another five goals over two matches in away fixtures.

What we, as fantasy players, have to decide is this: are SKC broken, or did they simply need a bit of rest to get their ducks in a row? I’m going to take the bold step and say that SKC needed a bit of rest. This same squad was rattling off clean sheets and dominant victories earlier in the year, and they made it look easy. For this reason, I think that Tim Melia is a decent pick at $4.9 — and that’s even with the back to back road games. Chasing clean sheets is always the wrong way to play fantasy, so investing less money in the back and putting more money forward is never a bad thing.

I don’t see either SKC or Colorado keeping a clean sheet in their first matches. I think Colorado going to Vancouver is going to be problematic, and I think SKC traveling to Portland will be equally as tough. But if Melia is even able to average 3-4 points per game this round, I consider that a win for his price.

Moving further up, you can spend as much as $9.6 for Besler, or as little as $6.5 for Ellis from SKC’s backline. Since SKC are going to follow up this DGW with another one in Round 30, pick whoever you think you can afford to keep for at least three rounds. In reality though, nobody on SKC’s backline has shown much difference in scoring to justify the higher prices, so I’d aim a bit lower on the totem pole if you’re able.

The midfield is the big question for SKC. Do we trust Benny Feilhaber again? At $10.4, he would require a great deal of trust to make buying him worth it. But it’s undeniable that as Benny goes, so does the rest of his squad. I’m really hoping that a week off was enough to recharge his batteries. Buying Benny now will mean that you’ll have him for five matches over the next three rounds — and the smart money says that at least a pair of those games will be exceptional for him.

And at forward, you have your pick of Kristian Nemeth at $8.4 and Dom Dwyer at $10.4. Dwyer has scored fewer fantasy points than Nemeth has to this point in the year, so I really don’t see how paying an extra $2.0 on him does you any good. If you have a good feeling about Dwyer, by all means buy him up. But in looking at their scoring and in watching their games, I can’t see enough of a difference between these two to justify the extra $2.0. But because these guys are going to play five matches in three rounds, feel free to buy either of them with the confidence that you have to have one of the two forwards under these conditions regardless.

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#2 — When do you buy Drogba?

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[/three_fourth]Unless you were living under a rock this weekend, you must’ve caught wind that Didier Drogba scored a hat trick in his first start for the Montreal Impact. If you haven’t seen the highlights yet, I encourage you to go to YouTube and watch them. Drogba’s passion when he scored the goals was almost more beautiful than the goals he scored. By the hype the man brought to the game, you would’ve thought that he just scored a hat trick in a Champion’s League Finals match.

And even more encouraging, Drogba played all 90 minutes of the match. It appears that Montreal were keeping him on the shelf until he was fully ready to participate. So many teams bring players in for for a half hour of work for about a month to get ready (re: Portland Timbers and Lucas Melano), but Montreal let the biggest player in their history play the full 90. Good on them.

And you have to feel good for Ignacio Piatti. Not only did Piatti get an assist, but he also gets the freedom of not being the man that the the opposition can key in on exclusively. If Montreal can keep these two players healthy, the sky’s the limit for what they can bring to your fantasy team.

My advice is wait until GW29 to bring in Piatti and Drogba. This week they go to LA to play a tough road match. But starting in GW29, they’ll have back to back DGW’s. Sure, the triple game week was cancelled for Montreal, but they’ll still play seven matches over three rounds — so there will be plenty of time to cash in on their potential.

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#3 — Superstars returning from international duty

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[/three_fourth]This is a tough problem to solve. When players return from international duty, nobody really knows if they’ll be afforded rest or not prior to playing for their club. Robbie Keane, for example, just played a half of football for Ireland on Monday, so he should be ready by the weekend. But he also could be rested or given fewer minutes in his first game back. It’s all conjecture and guessing when it comes to these situations.

The safe play is to wait until GW29 to start bringing your superstars back in earnest. Not only will they have had a week to get settled, but six teams will be on a DGW in that round. The best bet is to move in players who can maximize this DGW and take another chance on some of the players you already own.

While we’re speaking of returning superstars, it should be noted that maybe you won’t even want some of them back with the schedule we have remaining. With the seven rounds we have left of MLS Fantasy, the teams that won’t have another DGW are: Columbus, DC, LA, Orlando, Philadelphia, Seattle and Vancouver. Think about that for a minute. Players like Keane, Kaka, Kamara, Dos Santos and Dempsey will not have the added benefit of a DGW for the rest of the year. When viewed through that lens, you can safely ride out another week without fretting about who you’re missing from your squad this round.

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#4 — Rapid Fire

– Sebastian Giovinco is still listed as ‘out’ with an adductor injury. This is a real shame since Toronto still have two DGWs remaining and could desperately use his services. This does free up quite a few funds for fantasy players though. Until he’s listed as healthy, you can really take more chances with your DGW squads.

– Only Montreal and SKC still have three DGWs left to play. Toronto and NYRB still have two. All other teams have one remaining (except for teams listed above in Point #3).

– Did you buy David Bingham last round? Only San Jose and Toronto have six home fixtures remaining, more than any other team. While nobody would recommend that you load up on Toronto defense, the San Jose defense is still a good buy.

– Don’t be afraid to buy as many DGW players as needed in the next couple of rounds, we still have two wildcards in the game coming to us in GW32 and GW33 to fix all of your problems.

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#5 — Captain Picks

The Top Tier: Benny Feilhaber. Feilhaber has upset a few people in the last few rounds, but of the two teams available to us this DGW, who has more class than he does? Not only will he be the safe play, but you’ll probably get a leg up on the competition that will try to rationalize why they can’t ‘trust him’ ever again.

The Second Tier: Kevin Doyle. Put it like this, if you take away the name but just looked at his stats over the last two weeks, you’d feel pretty good about captaining a guy who’s producing as steady as he is going into a double. If you’re in that camp that can’t stomach another Feilhaber captain after he got a red card in his last DGW, then Doyle may be your man.

The Differential Pick: Bradley Wright-Phillips. I don’t know how many people will still own BWP at the start of the round, but he’s probably been sold off of many squads until he reaches his DGW. But if you had a bit of foresight and picked him up ahead of the crowd, the NYRB at home against Chicago looks too good to pass up.

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MLS GW28 Tips – Fantasy Major League Soccer This article was written by Guy Sanchez (FootyFantastic)

Follow @Guy_M_Sanchez



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Don’t forget that Guy does have his own MLS blog and we highly recommend a visit as it expands even more upon the current GW – http://www.footyfantastic.com/