Well that was not a good week for me. Although the Yahoo rankings seem messed up (how could the #1 Global Team actually drop one place?), a paltry 90 points for me after a so-so week 9 has seen me drop out of the Global Top 50 to what Yahoo currently says is #316.

Best Possible Team

Since we have some time before the next GW, I thought I would break things up a bit this week and post several different analyses. The first gives you an idea of the team I WISH I would have chosen. Based upon my calculations, the best possible team you could have chosen this week was:

Some of these were highly unlikely for anyone to pick (Bacuna? Brown?), but many were possible choices. My only realistic regret (e.g. one I realistically considered but backed away from) was including Lallana instead of Oscar, although this only would have netted me 10 more points. Glen Johnson got 16, and I did consider him, but thought he was too expensive (went with Terry instead, who was almost as expensive, so that was not a smart move, huh?).

Interesting to see that the best formation was a 4-3-3. I have just started calculating these "best teams," but last week it was also a 4-3-3. In both cases, however, you could have had a 3-4-3 that only cost you a point or two. This week, for example, Ireland or Fer got 15, only 2 less than Vertonghen, the worst defender. Still, as many have seemed to notice this year, defenders can bring decent returns, and midfielders have, for the most part, been less valuable it seems than in the past.

A look at the total points list confirms this. You can see the Top 25 players by position below. While many of the defenders are toward the end of the list, there just are not that many high scoring midfielders. The next midfielders are close to the top 25--Townsend (28th), Jedinak (29th), and Oscar (30th)--but Szczesny (26th) and B. Davies (27th) tops them.

Forwards: Aguero, Sturridge, Suarez, Rooney, Giroud, Remy, RVP, Hazard, and Lambert (9)
Midfielders: Ramsey, Gerrard, Lallana, and Yaya (4)
Defenders: Baines, Lovren, Debuchy, W. Reid, Caulker, C. Davies, Vertonghen and Walker (8)
Goalkeepers:Mignolet, Lloris, Boruc, and Howard (4)

I find it very hard to ever choose a 4-3-3 formation, but one could make an argument that doing so makes some sense this year IF you can make the right choices in defense.

So, there is the team of the week, and while looking back is interesting, we obviously did not have the above team. Many would say that picking at least some of those players would just be chasing points. Later this week, however, I will have more player analysis that might help you going forward with the top players at each position in average points, phantom points, and points per pound.

Professor M