Rate My Team: FPL & Fantrax EPL GW-2

Wow wow wow! Those are the only words to describe the experience of GW-1. It encapsulated every reason why the Premier League is the best and most competitive league in the world. From the return of fans to the shock defeat Brentford handed to visitors Arsenal to Tottenham’s victory over Man City, the experience was simply breathtaking. Amidst all of the brouhaha, we still had fantasy managers on the edges of their seats hoping and praying their players repay the faith shown in them.

Fantasy favorites Bruno Fernandes of Man United and Mo Salah of Liverpool began the season in style, garnering 20 and 17 FPL points respectively. The two were the most captained players in GW-1 which led to a high game-week average score of 69. United’s Paul Pogba also deserves a mention for his faultless performance that provided a whopping four assists against Leeds.

---

Official FPL GW–1

Day one of GW-1 was unimpressive for me as I couldn’t even bring myself to open the FPL app to take a look at my team and its current position. I had Arsenal assets Nicholas Pepe in midfield and new signing Ben White in my back line. My high hopes for a clean sheet were dashed less than 40 minutes into the match as Brentford grabbed the opener. Nicholas Pepe also failed to have any meaningful impact at the other end of the pitch, which left me with just four points at the end of Friday.

Saturday of GW-1 was the exact opposite, my players rising to the occasion to throw me into the top 200,000. I had big hitters Bruno Fernandes and Salah in my team, which made my points skyrocket within hours. I also had Liverpool’s Konstantinos Tsimikas and Diogo Jota plus Aston Villa new man Danny Ings, which meant an additional 22 points. My only downside on Saturday was seeing Leeds Luke Ayling score while languishing on my bench.

I was slightly confident moving into Sunday as my midfielders had elevated me from a bad gameweek to average with two more strikers yet to feature. Newcastle played host to West Ham and I had the striker on each side, so when Callum Wilson opened the scoring and Micheal Antonio notched a goal plus two assists, it honestly couldn’t have gone any better.

My prolific players saw me end the game-week with a whopping 100 points, placing me among the top 400,000. I was also able to make it into the top 700 in NMA’s private league.

---

Official FPL GW–2

For GW-2, I have no plans to incur a minus in a quest to bring in new players as I believe it’s still too early and there’s no crisis. After the Gunners’ below-par GW-1 performance and their impending fixture against a strong Chelsea team in GW-2, I’d had plans to replace Pepe straght up with Man United’s Mason Greenwood (both had been priced at £7.5m). But I was caught ball-watching, which tied my hands when Pepe’s price dropped to £7.4m. With this latest change, I have decided to leave my team as it is, which means I will have an extra transfer for GW-3 to aid my pursuit of Chelsea new signing Romelu Lukaku.

There has been a switch in my back line, with Ben White dropping to the bench and Leeds’ Luke Ayling taking his place in the starting eleven. Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford also drops to the bench so Watford’s Daniel Bachmann can start. A majority of my back has somewhat easy fixtures, offering me hope for two or three clean sheets.

My midfield remains the same due to my earlier indecisiveness. All of my strikers delivered in GW-1 and have one more week to distinguish themselves before somebody makes way in my mission to acquire Lukaku at all costs.

---

Fantrax NMA – 11

This is my first time playing Fantrax. To be honest with you, I’m still not sure I really know what I’m doing. Jeff’s article on Fantrax gave me insights into what to expect, rules and how points are calculated, but unless I want to go back and read NMA’s Fantrax articles from the last four years, I guess experience really is the best teacher.

I had an encouraging GW-1 — hey, I was nowhere near the league’s bottom ten, which is a huge achievement for me! Although in the greater scheme of things my results were slightly underwhelming, as a newbie I was impressed with my 68.5 points which placed me at 123rd on the blog.

I plan on maintaining the same squad for GW-2 as I didn’t pounce on high-performers before salaries recalculated, and I’m not sure I know the right players to select for GW-2 now that prices have adjusted. I will be relying on comments and input from readers to identify “must-have” deals. So please examine my team and let me know what you think in the comment section; I will be happy to take your advice and inputs on board.

---

Fantrax NMA – 17

Like NMA-11, this is also my first time playing NMA-17. I basically focused on selecting 17 players with prices low enough to fit into my overall budget.

Surprisingly, I'm faring much better in NMA-17 than NMA-11, unexpectedly finding myself in the top 50 with a whopping 119 point score for Round 1.

My GW-1 score means I might be paying a little more attention to NMA-17, so once again — transfer suggestions for GW-2 are very welcome!

~

How do you rate my Fantasy teams? What do you think about my Fantrax teams? What advice do you have for me? Will you make any last-minute changes? Please let us know in the comments!

~