Greetings all and welcome to a new weekly feature entitled ‘The Last XI’ in which I will detail the ups and downs of the final 11 gameweeks of the 2016/17 Fantasy Premier League season, I will attempt to vigorously explain my own obsessive musings as I try to achieve the highest rank possible as well as offering my unqualified advice to you wonderful readers, and today we begin with a nervy preamble to the potential carnage that is GW 28.

The Story So Far

So to start off we must explain my current situation. Having made the questionable step from ‘filthy casual’ to ‘waking up in a cold sweat dreaming of my captain blanking’ in the spring of last year, this has been my first full season of taking this game unhealthily seriously, and for the large part I am satisfied with my work.

I have failed to drop lower than 400k rank all year I’m sitting comfortably top of both my friends and family mini-league, meaning that I can passive-aggressively ask Uncle Mark how his team is doing at Weddings and Funerals knowing full well that he’s eating my fucking dust. With some shrewd ahead-of the curve transfers and giving the armband to Lukaku on that gameweek I find myself sat at 86k with my wildcard and bench-boost still intact and a Triple captained Sergio Aguero yet to play (or not play god help us all) against Stoke as I write this. My target pre-season was top 100k but who knows top 10k might be realistic if I play my cards right.

My team value of £103.0 Mil (£101.0 sell value) is respectable but nothing to brag about, which may become an issue when wild carding but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there because this week it’s all about managing the harsh mistress that is a blank gameweek.

Gameweek 28 AKA ‘I guess hull have some exciting midfield options?’

The active and switched on fantasy manager will have bookmarked gameweek 28 as an important one many weeks ago. The leagues coexistence with the FA cup combined with players’ inability to be in two places at once (barring Ngolo Kante) means that this weekends Premier League menu has been reduced substantially and what remains is largely unappetising. The unprecedentedly bite-size schedule is as following.

Bournemouth vs West Ham

Everton vs West Brom

Hull vs Swansea

Liverpool vs Burnley

So there we are, just 8 teams out of 20 is obvious cause for concern, however hopefully most of you reading this will have taken appropriate action weeks ago. Ever since the innocent days of GW22 my transfers have been manipulated by the fear of this weekend and my team currently looks like this.

So as you can see I currently have a maximum potential of 9 players for the week, although we can basically call it 8 as every week is a BGW for James Collins (Although with Winston Reid limping off yesterday a man can dream). Every other week of the year this would be a disastrous red alert but thanks to a Reddit post from user enterprisevalue it is reassuringly apparent that this number is above the average of the top 10k (6.8 players).

I have one free transfer left to populate my team, but before I ponder that here are some things to consider before choosing that may also be helpful for your team…

The GW28 free transfer is more likely than not going to be a short term transfer, but unless you plan on using your wildcard in preparation for GW29 (I currently plan on waiting till GW30) then I suggest you look further than the weekends fixtures, here are the GW29 fixtures for the 8 teams concerned

West Brom vs Arsenal (Not good)

vs Arsenal (Not good) Everton vs Hull (Great for Everton, not so good for Hull)

vs (Great for Everton, not so good for Hull) Sunderland vs Burnley (Good but Burnley are dogshit away, I’d avoid them)

(Good but Burnley are dogshit away, I’d avoid them) West Ham vs Leicester (I don’t fucking know anymore, for the sake of argument it’s good)

vs Leicester (I don’t fucking know anymore, for the sake of argument it’s good) Bournemouth vs Swansea (Good for both, prefer Swansea)

vs (Good for both, prefer Swansea) Man City vs Liverpool (Very bad but Liverpool love playing the top sides)

If your players for GW 28 have a favourable fixture GW 29 then you can breathe easier and allow yourself more time to be flexible coming up to wildcard season (assuming you still have it).

With this in mind these are the teams that in my opinion you can invest in and still be the most confident in their points potential the following week; Everton, West Ham, Swansea.

Everton

I already have 3 Everton players but just to clarify if you don’t have Lukaku by now you should look no further, 6 goals in his last 4 games and two appealing home fixtures imminent. There is value to be had other than the big Belgian striker and that comes in defence, shame to say I am one of the egg-faced Baines owners who has bitterly watched Seamus Coleman spend 90% of the toffees’ games in the opposition box and score goals and assists for fun, it is now painfully clear that the right back is the better option despite his meatier pricetag. Baines remains a solid pick but I have learned the hard way that a defender on penalties for a team that doesn’t get penalties equals… a defender.

West Ham

The Hammers inconsistent form has made them a minefield in the game all year, a plethora of midfield options capable of a big score, but how do you pick which one. Antonio is top scorer for the side with 8 goals and comes back from suspension in time for the Bournemouth game, although has been known to fluctuate from anything between Striker to Right Back which could be setting yourself up for frustration, especially with a certain Geordie striker supposedly returning. Manuel Lanzini is a player I’ve always admired and is by far West Ham’s most in form player managing at least 9 points in 4 of his last 7 games (and ruining my fucking Alonso clean sheet on Monday the Argentine bastard), he seems to have benefited from Payet’s departure and is making a good claim to filling the open position of London stadium’s new poster boy. Robert Snodgrass and Sofiane Feghouli are intereting sub-£6mil options but personally they haven’t shown enough for me to consider them. Finally for the Irons it’s the big front man Andy Carroll who for my sins I have been strongly considering since his 90 minutes on Monday night. With a body seemingly made out of glass he will always be a risky pick but whenever this man has put together a string of starts there have been some high scoring performances. Besides Lukaku I genuinely think when fit this man is the best striking option going into the next 2 gameweeks, especially against the defences of Bournemouth and Leicester. I am heavily considering bringing him in despite being in full knowledge of how I most likely will want to rip his ponytail from his scalp this time next week.

Swansea

Siggy Siggy Siggy can’t you see, sometimes your points just hypnotise me. The Icelander is perhaps my most adored player right now, every game he seems to pull off something magical and return points, not blanking in his last 6 games in a revitalised Swansea side, I need say nothing more about the man, if you don’t have him yet you’re doing it wrong. The Welsh side have also recently emerged some interesting defensive options in Martin Ollson and Alfie Mawson, this forward venturing duo are priced £4.5 and £4.6mil respectively and have scored 5 goals between them GW 20, Ollson the more conventional forward thinking full-back while Mawson just seems to have an unholy knack for getting on the end of crosses, even hitting the woodwork twice at the weekend. Both of these picks are great IMO however I don’t think I’ll be looking at defence this week so these two are out the window. Finally is Swansea’s last minute hero Fernando Llorente, or should I say Wworente because this man turns L’s into W’s (I’m so sorry). The Spanish striker has an impressive tally of 11 goals this season however beware of his patchy form as 8 of those have come in just 4 games. It is impossible to predict which Llorente will turn up on the day but when he get’s it right he seems to get it very right.

Transfers and captains

Ok so having looked at my squad and my targets my potential transfers look like this (in order of most likely to least likely.

Aguero & Anichebe > Llorente & Carroll -4 (£5.5mil ITB)

Aguero > Carroll (£7.6mil)

Aguero > Llorente (£7.4mil)

Eriksen > Lanzini (£3.2mil)

Despite the -4 I really like the look of bringing in the two strikers, it’s one of the less risky point hits you can take as providing the two play 60 minutes each, you’ve already made back your 4 points. I will wait until just before the deadline before confirming my transfers because injury could easily change my plans, but it looks like Llorente and Carroll are going in, and it’ll be a beautiful sight to see Victor Anichebe gone from my team for good.

For captaincy this week I’m scratching my head, I think my two players with the highest ceiling are Mane and Lukaku, the fixture favours Mane on paper, but Liverpool have given me trust issues this year. Firmino is also worth a punt but his Senegalese teammate seems to be in greater form and more explosive in front of goal. For the time being the armband is with Mane but that could easily change. I feel as though all this hard planning could be put to waste by a bad captaincy choice, but all I can do is go with my gut.

Your Questions

So that’s enough of me waffling on about my own team it’s time for some questions submitted by the lovely users of reddits Fantasy PL sub, I received some great questions and promised to answer all of them so we’ll see how we get on.

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A FPL GOD, I JUST LIKE TO THINK I AM

What do you do when the guy closest to you in your mini league has an almost identical team and you’re struggling to gain any points on him? – CatFoodBeerAndGlue

Props for the thought provoking question, double props for the Always Sunny username. OK so this one is difficult to answer as I believe it’s very dependent on the distance between the two, if you are say… 20-40 points behind your rival then let nature run it’s course, there is still just under a third of the whole season to go and lots of transfers will happen between now and then, you won’t have the same team for too long and a couple good weeks will see you on top. As frustrating as it can be when even when you have a good week you aren’t making up any ground, you still both have those players because they are the players you think will get the most points, if you try to pick players solely because your rival won’t think to pick them then sure you might get lucky and get points that he/she won’t, but you’re more likely to be opening yourself up to falling further behind by trying to be too clever and not owning some obvious big scorers. Obviously if you are 100+ points behind your league leader and that is all that you’re playing for then perhaps it’s time to go a bit nuts and try the high risk high reward stuff, and to be honest I imagine there is nothing more fun than watching captain Troy Deeney score a hattrick.

Could you do an article on when to play the wildcard (I’m planning on GW 33 just before the DGW) and maybe what you think would be the optimum team or the must have players in different price ranges? Thanks 🙂 – Sinovius

Very very good question which I will no doubt go into great detail about in the next few weeks, and to be honest I’m not yet certain if I’ve got the right idea yet myself, but these and my thoughts on the matter.

For maximum effectiveness the Wildcard should be used in order to give yourself as many DGW’ers as possible, we already know all the teams that have DGW’s and how many, what we don’t know is how soon these games will come and this is important. One thing that may begin a chain reaction of information is this weeks FA Cup quarter finals, with no replays the games will definitely be decided on the weekend meaning that by Monday night we will know who the Semi-Finalists are and who consequentially will have a GW34 fixture moved to a DGW. The reason this is so key is that after these fixtures are moved then the FA will know the full list of games to be rescheduled and the appropriate slots in which these games can go, meaning simply that sometime around GW29 we should be able to know when the DGW fixtures are, and how early the next one comes.

Personally I have planned to use my Wildcard in the build up to Gameweek 30, as stated in detail I believe the fixtures work out so that your GW28 heavy team can survive in GW29, and GW30 comes right after a big long international break which gives you plenty of time to assess the situation (and also something to do in between watching England beat Lithuania 1-0).

While I can’t be sure what the best team is before I know when the fixtures are, something to keep in mind early on in terms of who to get is how many blanks to these teams have and how difficult are the fixtures. There are three teams that definitely have two DGW’s coming up; Man United, Arsenal, Southampton. Despite their DGW fixture not being great, in my opinion you should be doubling up if not tripling up on all of these teams, players in good form or good value currently are…

Man United (MCI, SOT) – Ibrahimovic (after the ban), Valencia, Martial, De Gea

Arsenal (SOT, LEI) – Sanchez, Cech, Koscielny, Welbeck

Southampton (ARS, MNU) – Gabbiadini, Tadic, Ward-Prowse, Cedric

Teams of note that have a single DGW include Spurs, Chelsea and Man City, so it would be wise to include any of Alli/Eriksen/Kane, a Chelsea defender if you can afford one and one of Hazard/Costa and perhaps one of Sterling and Sane, I don’t believe Aguero is worth his pricetag considering the other striking options.

Make sure to watch out for future posts as I will explain my thoughts on WC in greater detail once more is revealed.

What sort of research do you personally put in when deciding on transfers, wildcards, building your team at the beginning of the season, etc? In other words how to do you go about making your decisions? I know there are all kinds of tools out there that have helped me this season (first FPL season) but for me a solid manager can’t rely on those alone. – Scrotas_Crotum

Personally I think the only real (and perhaps apologetically patronising) answer to this is watching as much football as I can. I’m aware there are some very good players who just enjoy fantasy sports, they go by stats and don’t watch too much and that’s fine and probably eliminates some of the heart over head decisions, but honestly pretty much all of my good decisions this year have come from watching a match and thinking ‘blimey Holebas is getting forward a lot’ (believe it or not that was a good transfer a while ago). There are lots of things the stats don’t tell you and watching the games do. Obviously I can’t watch every minute of every game and that’s where the wonderful FantasyPL subreddit helps me out, the ‘how did they play’ thread is particularly useful.

This blog over the weeks will hopefully explain my thought process better than ‘watch more football’, but it does vary and safe to say I have made some absolute shiters this year too.

I’d like to see an article about balancing building TV with scoring points early season. – jszko This also could you do a write up explaining how to gather a team for GW1. – Lallanas_Penetration

It’s all about trying to find the players that the game has valued wrong, for example at the start of the season Kyle Walker, and player with huge attacking potential and on one of the leagues best defences was priced at £5.5mil when realistically he had the scoring potential of a £6.5mil player, if you grab these bargains before others realise that they’re bargains your team value will skyrocket and you’ll essentially get the best bang for your buck. If the players you have are rising in price it’s because they’re also scoring points.

Quickly on the start of the season – other than obviously picking players from teams with good fixtures the golden rule is to check the lineups of the last pre-season friendly against a good team (or Community shield), this will more likely than not give away their starting XI for the first game and how they’re set up as a team, perhaps a midfielder is playing as a striker or a defender on the wing etc. They’ll want to have at least one games practice as a unit before they play the games that count. Go with the proven players who finished last season strongly and could potentially be even better this year. A personal rule of mine is not to include more than 2 newly signed players in your squad, too many factors of uncertainty and if they start getting points then you can get them later.

I’ll make sure to do a big post pre-season on team selection.

I’m gonna rant here I’m sorry. I’ve been on my phone for the past 2 hours checking if I should get mane for hazard. I decide to and then I’m reading some stuff on this site, when I login, bout 5 mins ago, his price had gone up. I’m soooo pissed – Harvardsports

Not a question but I feel your pain, if you haven’t already download Fantasy Football Fix on your phone, it’s great for monitoring price rises. I believe the cut off for daily drops and rises are Midnight GMT.

Should I bring in Mane/Firmino or Sanchez, cos if I bring in Mane/Firmino this week i won’t have cash for Sanchez for the remaining GWs – Forever_Blue8

Definately Mane/Firmino, Alexis blanks this weekend so it would be a waste of a transfer now, and surely if you can afford Alexis now then you can go Player to Mane to Alexis for GW29, then you can have your cake and eat it too. Also it should be mentioned that there is a chance that Alexis is dropped after rumours of a big row with Wenger, I’d avoid until more is known.

Where should I focus my funds for the WC? Since Sanchez, Hazard and Alli have the most points, would it be wise to spend more in midfield and just get one premium striker going forward? – DonRonaldo

See Sinovius’ question above. Midfielders have the most ways of scoring points, 5 points for goals instead of 4, potential clean sheet points, when one starts a run of scoring their points potential can be deadly and I think having all three of the above mentioned players is a rare combo that could really pay off but don’t discredit the strikers. In the last month alone Lukaku and Kane have scored 21 and 20 single gameweek scores respectively, personally I think having just one of Kane, Costa, Ibra, Aguero, Lukaku leaves you missing out on A LOT of points every week and very rarely will you have the highest scoring one. It’s personal preference but after wildcard I will almost certainly have 2 premier strikers, I think it’s certainly affordable to do that and include one of Hazard/Sanchez and Alli.

Final thoughts

Ok well that was long but fun to write, hopefully you enjoyed it and remember this is my first one of these so make sure to let me know if you like the format or what you didn’t like, and perhaps what you like the see going forward.

Good luck this weekend and for those fellow Aguero TC’ers good luck on Wednesday (we’ll need it).