Advice to help you finish top of your Super League!

The Sun’s ‘2011/12 Premier League Dream Team’ is one of the most popular fantasy football games and we wanted to offer readers some friendly advice which will hopefully help them win their Super League. The season is now four games old and we have provided a few tips to try and help readers have a season to remember!

CHOOSE WISELY

The Dream Team game allows you to make a maximum of nine transfers throughout the course of the season – three in October, three at the end of January and three at the end of March. This means that you’ll have a minimum of two players who remain in your team from beginning to end. Treat these players as bankers, although it’s even better if you can get a core of seven or eight players which means that you rotate the few that might not be performing too well. If a player has a track record of being injury-prone, it might be advisable to steer clear, no matter how much quality he has!

EUROPE COUNTS FOR A LOT

The simple fact is that you need plenty of players who are featuring in Europe this season. That’s because the Champions League and the Europa League count towards the scoring. It’s the former competition where there are generally more points up for grabs, especially as top English clubs like Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal have a strong recent record. Manchester City will also play in this competition, while Tottenham, Fulham and Stoke City feature in the competition formerly known as the UEFA Cup.

GO FOR TRIED AND TESTED…

Yes, the world and his wife might be selecting Frank Lampard in their Dream Team and the temptation might be to avoid picking the Chelsea midfielder and Steven Gerrard in a bid to steal a march on the competition. However, the above pair have been scoring big in the Dream Team game for several seasons and it’s probably worth being a sheep in this regard. There’s nothing going wrong with obvious picks, which will give you a platform to win the mini-league.

….BUT STICK YOUR NECK OUT

Go ahead and pick eleven players for your team and calculate how much the total valuation is. It’s likely to be well over the £50 million mark and now the fun starts in terms of trimming it down to the required amount. Certain ‘must’ players have to make way for cheaper options and its here that you can stand out from the crowd. Go through the lists of goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and strikers carefully and see if The Sun have put too cheap a price tag on a player that’s been performing well in pre-season.

PICK PLAYERS WHO ARE GOING TO GET GAMES

You might well fancy a player like Javier Hernandez or Daniel Agger, but unless you can be certain that they are likely to get plenty of time on the field, selecting them is a risky business. You don’t want every Saturday to arrive with news that they’re on the bench and so make sure you are picking guys who are going to start most games for their particular team.