Will Fabregas be in your fantasy team?(credit:
wonker)
Beat your friends and work colleagues to win your Super League
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The new football season is just around the corner and the Daily Telegraph have now gone live with their 2010/11 fantasy football competition. There is the princely sum of £50,000 for the manager that finishes top of the overall league, although most of us will settle for finishing top of their Super League and earn the bragging rights over our friends, family and work-mates.
Below are some tips which should help you avoid making costly mistakes and hopefully give you the added advantage next season.
1) Be flexible with formations
Once again, the Daily Telegraph have four available formations for managers to select. So which one of the four do you go for: 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 3-5-2 or 4-5-1? My initial hunch is go for at least two strikers on the basis that they score the most points in this game and it's likely that Didier Drogba, Carlos Tevez and Wayne Rooney will all score at least twenty goals again. However, the winning manager will undoubtedly switch formations throughout the course of the season, so it’s important to be flexible in this regard.
2) Don’t burn your transfers too early
While there’s nothing wrong with some early-season tinkering, it makes sense to budget roughly how many transfers you make every month. You have 30 transfers in total and it’s generally a good idea to get to Christmas with at least 18 still in hand. OK, so you might have a player that’s out for a week or two, but does it really merit burning two transfers, ie one to swap him out and one to put him back in?
3) Take advantage of a team’s extra games
It’s well worth making a note of the Premier League and FA Cup fixture list. There are occasions when Chelsea might have three matches in a week, while Liverpool have had a match postponed. Over the Christmas period, there are often occasions when you get “3 for 0’s” or “4 for 1’s”, where it might be worth using two transfers to bring in a player who has a glut of games coming up. This is something that most people aren’t aware of, so providing you can execute this well, this should gain you extra points.
4) Don’t be afraid of picking an ‘enabler’
The budget is £50 million and this isn’t enough to select a team consisting of Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal players! Therefore, you need to pick one or two cheap players (at least), and this is just as important a process as selecting Drogba, Torres, Gerrard or Lampard! After all, lots of managers will have top players, but part of the skill is including that £3 million midfielder who is going to be picking up 2 points for a starting XI appearance and landing the odd assist / goal. Try to avoid players who are prone to collecting bookings, ten yellow cards over the course of a season will cost you 20 points.
5) It’s a marathon, not a sprint
The person leading the Super League after Week 1 will almost certainly not be the winner at the end of the season. If your team doesn’t get off to the blazing start you’d hope for, the worst thing you can do is start tinkering and shipping under-performing players out. Instead, try and take a long-term view – there’s nothing wrong with taking out a player after they do nothing for two matches, only to then see them get amongst the goals and assists!
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