Rate My Team: FPL & Fantrax EPL GW-8

Wake up! The Premier League is back. It has been a boring 7, 8, 9 or is it 10 days without club football, and I really just can’t wait for kickoff on Saturday (which should be about an hour after Liverpool shows us a confirmed lineup, giving us a chance to tinker before the Fantrax deadline). At this rate, we might just have to petition FIFA for fewer international breaks during the season.

Just like every other international break, FPL managers have to deal chopping and changing due to players being injured while on international duty. Well, before we go into that, lets do a recap of how the last game-week unfolded.

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FPL GW-7 RECAP

The last game-week was a terrible one for me and probably 70% of other FPL managers as we had to deal with captain blanks. My decision to trust Romelu Lukaku with my captain’s armband proved to be a popular choice, but the end result wasn’t so popular. Just four points from my Captain and another one point apiece from my two other forwards wrote disaster all over my team.

My midfielders fared a little better due to a 13-point masterclass from Salah plus three points each from Martin Odegaard and Raphinha. My defense is where I have the biggest regret because I had players with much better points on the bench. My decision to bench Livramento and Shane Duffy spectacularly backfired as Antonio Rudiger and Joel Matip gave me only three points while the benched duo combined to produce ten.

At the end of it all, I accrued just 42 points, still slightly above the GW-7 average but below my expectation as a manager looking to break into the top 500,000. I’m currently ranked 1.2m worldwide, which means I need to overtake at least 700,000 managers to get into the top 500,000. Game-weeks such as last week won’t get me any closer to my short term goal.

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FPL GW-8 Strategy

Now to this weekend: As you can see my team is still the same from the previous game-week, the only difference being my decision to exchange players between the bench and the starting line-up. The decision not to make any transfer this game-week is due to the lack of clear-cut easy fixture for a big gun, and I have plans to make elaborate changes to my squad next week.

Leeds’ Raphinha drops to my bench due to uncertainty surrounding South American international’s availability. Watford’s Emmanuel Dennis also drops to the bench as a result of fixture difficulty (the Hornets welcome Liverpool to Vicarage road).

The changes made leads me to a back five, which means I will be on my knees all through the weekend praying for clean sheets. My captain’s armband returns to Salah due to his perceived friendlier fixture and fabulous form. Big hitters Cristiano Ronaldo and Romelu Lukaku lead my front line this game-week and battle it out for who gets to stay in my team next week. My bench will be a little bit shorthanded this week as it looks like Emmanuel Dennis will be my only active bench player.

I will be eagerly awaiting updates from Thomas Tuchel’s Friday press conference regarding the conditions of Lukaku and Rudiger — negative updates on both players will definitely alter my transfer plans.

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FPL Moving On

Unlike a lot of managers who’ve already parted ways with Ronaldo, I decided to keep him for at least another week due to Leicester’s porous defense that has just one clean sheet this season. Extremely tough upcoming fixtures for Man United means Ronaldo is the most likely player to be dumped after this game-week with either Antonio or Vardy replacing him.

Odegaard is another player that will be out of my team by next week with Everton’s Andros Townsend replacing him. Then there’s the issue of injuries disrupting plans, but I hope it doesn’t.

That will be all for now, I wish you guys the best of luck with your teams this weekend.

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Fantrax NMA-11

I really need to pay more attention to to my Fantrax teams. My first season as a Fantrax player has been one filled with a lot of procrastination when making changes to my team, which is ironic since Fantrax allows unlimited transfers.

Well, maybe updates from NMA Blog Cup gave me the extra boost I have always needed to pay more attention. Despite the fact that I hadn’t been paying attention to my team, I eagerly read the names of the teams that survived, and thankfully I had coasted into round two.

Moving on, the plan is to pay more attention to my team so as to at least make it to the final 20 in the Blog Cup. So please tell me what you think about my NMA-11 team in the comments below.

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Fantrax NMA-17

Despite not paying much attention to this team either, I'm faring much better, currently placed 44th. When compared to NMA-11 where I'm 133rd, it might be wiser for me to pay more attention to NMA-17. Once again, take a look at my team and tell me what you think.

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What do you think about my teams? What do you think about my transfer plans? Will you be making use of any of your chips this week? Please drop your comments below.

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