Shoulda Woulda Coulda

On Saturday night I was set for the worst week of my Yahoo Fantasy Football managerial career (yes, career). Daniel Ayala's -5 combined with disappointing performances from my most expensive purchases - Steven Gerrard, Rafael van der Vaart, Emmanuel Adebayor & Wayne Rooney - left me on NINE points. The disaster seemed complete as Yohan Cabaye was stretchered off after 20 minutes, but Tim Krul and David Santon came through with 30 points between them to begin a recovery aided by my Manchester City trio of Stefan Savic, David Silva and Sergio Aguero last night.

61 points is never normally something to celebrate but it was enough to keep my on the cusp of the Top 500, suggesting it was a low scoring week for a lot of the teams towards the upper echelons of the leaderboard. There was a point on Friday when I had a team with Younes Kaboul, Antonio Valencia and Danny Welbeck in place of Savic, Cabaye and Rooney and if I'd stuck with the first combo I'd probably be closer to 250th right now, but our fantasy successes and failures are based on these split decisions and it's what makes Yahoo's game so up-and-down, like the game of football itself. It's also the reason I disagree with a manager running more than one YFF team as it allows you to negate the risk of these decisions, but that's a discussion for another day.

The barndoor was tricky this week with not a whole lot to get excited about, but this is what I currently have on my page:

I'm pleased with most of the players I've picked up but there will be some changes. I'm still holding Santon in Jonathan Woodgate's spot and I wouldn't mind a Chelsea player in there somewhere. I'm undecided on Sebastian Larsson or Matthew Etherington and it's very possible that I'll switch Van Der Vaart to Daniel Sturridge. That would leave me with around 2.50 to spend on upgrading my defence (ideally to get rid of Ayala). Krul, Savic, Gerrard, Silva, Clint Dempsey, Landon Donovan and Aguero will all stay.

Let me know how you got on in Week 21 and where you currently sit in the overall rankings. How's your Week 22 team shaping up?

I'm planning to calculate The Blog Cup 5th Round Results tonight so please keep checking back to see if you made it through. Week 22 Player Picks will be up tomorrow night.

Cheers, Nik