How You Doin'?

There will be plenty of changes to how the league looks between now and May, but with almost 20% of the campaign already completed we are definitely getting an idea of the sides set for success and the those set to struggle.

Chelsea, Manchester United, Manchester City, Everton, Tottenham Hotspur, West Bromwich Albion and Arsenal are looking pretty good at this moment in time but it's a different story for Queens Park Rangers, Norwich City, Reading, Southampton, Aston Villa, Wigan and Liverpool, seven teams averaging less than a point per game.

With the international break interrupting the schedule I felt it was a good time to ask our readers how the season has started for their fantasy teams.

I'll kick things off; my Yahoo season has been a disaster thus far and I can't put my finger on why. I'm recommending the right players in my weekly Player Picks post but I'm not making the right selections for my final XI. It hasn't helped that I've missed the majority of 'barndoors' due to other commitments and therefore find myself priced out of some of the form players, but I'm sure this is a common experience for many other fantasy managers who are impacted by their time-zone, so I can't use this as an excuse.

Frustratingly I could've had a very good Week 7 but at 11:55am I decided to "try something different", which led to me trading out Branislav Ivanovic and Fernando Torres for John Terry and Mario Balotelli. This cost me 31 points alone and meant I ended the week with 89 points instead of 120.

So, my team AM FC [@NMA_Blog] is flapping around in 5,070th place overall (out of approximately 250,000 teams) with 658 points, which is by far the worst start I've had since I started playing Yahoo's Fantasy Football game back in 2003. With a gap of almost 200 points between myself and the leaders, my hopes of another Top 50 finish already look bleak and I actually have a lot of work to keep up my record of never finishing outside the Top 500.

Thankfully I'm having a better time of if in the Official Fantasy Premier League game, dedicating a little more effort than I have previous years (it's the game of choice at my place of work and we have a rather competitive private league in progress).

I made a big mistake in Week 1 by loading up on Reading and Chelsea players for their two matches (consequently having to make multiple transfers for their blank Week 2) but I've been steadily moving up since and find myself in 16,000th place overall (out of almost 2.5 million teams) with 430 points.

One of the main reasons for the strong start was my decision to bring in Demba Ba for Grant Holt in Week 3 to form a Tevez, Torres, Ba forward line (currently the top 3 strikers in the FPL game) with Ashley Cole, Eden Hazard, Michu and Santi Cazorla offering great support. I've also got my captain selections right a few times so perhaps my disappointing Yahoo season will have a silver lining as my luck swaps over to FPL? I'm top of my work private league and the winning pot is £250, so I won't be too disappointed if that is the case!

Now I'll leave it to you to brag about how you're all doing better than me ....

Please feel free to add the [@NMA_Blog] tag to your team name to help us identify blog readers on the leaderboards.