Rate My EPL GW-20 FPL and Fantrax Teams

As we approach GW-20, please note that we have different deadlines for our two fantasy formats:

Fantrax wrapped GW-19 back on Jan 5, so it kicks off GW-20 with Thursday’s Fulham v Chelsea game on Thursday (deadline 15 minutes prior). Fantrax managers will enjoy a 3-match (6-team) DGW-20 with confirmed lineups for two of those DGW-teams.

On the other hand, FPL has held GW-19 open for eight long days to encompass the Fulham-Chelsea game (FPL managers cursing Mitrovic all the while for his yellow card suspension), so FPL’s GW-20 deadline is on Friday (less than 24 hours after Thursday’s match), one hour before the Aston Villa-Leeds game.

In addition, a GW-7 match postponed by the queen’s death (Crystal Palace v Man United) has been plopped into GW-20 for both formats, so there are now four teams with doubles in Official FPL and six teams with doubles in Fantrax.

The upcoming slate of fixtures includes a couple of tasty local derbies, with the Manchester teams squaring off at Old Trafford while Tottenham hosts North London rival Arsenal. Among the clubs with doubles, in Fantrax Chelsea perhaps has the easiest looking fixtures (at Fulham and home vs Crystal Palace), although the Blues are not in great form at the moment and have a lot of injuries.

The other double-game teams don’t have very attractive matchups, so the trick will be to balance high scoring single-gamers and those who play twice (especially in Fantrax, where discounts also come into play).

For Fantrax F-11 managers who enjoy our cup competitions, this is the week that will culminate in qualification for the start of NMA-11 Cup (your overall season ranking at the end of this game-week). So if you can push your Fantrax team up in the standings, you might find yourself in a higher cup ‘league’ (seeding). Of the 300+ Fantrax teams in NMA-11, you need to be in the top 156 to qualify for this cup.

For more details see the cup article here.

Below is my plan of attack for the week.

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Official FPL

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My team from GW-19 actually looks better to me now than it did then, partly because I missed the last deadline. As a result, I have two free transfers and £0.7 in the bank. I’m not all that attached to Cucurella, so could move him to the bench. I’ll see how Thursday night’s game goes first, since on paper Chelsea have a better fixture than Arsenal. Or I may chose to use a transfer on him in order to bring in Shaw. Shaw has a double, so would go into the team, leaving a pretty strong bench. I can’t seem to learn from previous failings, and have left a lot of points on the bench for the past couple of weeks, but despite missing out on White’s 7 points in GW-19, he may stay there.

I can’t see much to be gained by any other transfers so will probably roll one over.

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Fantrax NMA-11

That’s a rather disappointing GW-19 team, with some dodgy picks once again partly due to the fact that I missed the deadline (I thought the week’s first game kicked off half an hour later than it actually did). Still, at least that oversight prevented me from loading up on Liverpool players who would have made this even worse.

I had already made some transfers before the announcement about the Palace - Manchester United game was made, which meant I lost a discount on Rashford that I shouldn’t have. But since he seems to be on penalties now (he took one and scored it comfortably in the FA Cup match against Everton despite Bruno Fernandes being on the pitch) I paid up to bring him right back into my team.

I picked up Son and Norgaard on the barn door, and regret not swapping out Mitrovic for Kane before Kane’s price rise. I foolishly thought Mitrovic had a double week, not realizing that he had picked up a fifth yellow card to be suspended.

I can’t afford to keep retail Mitrovic for a single game, but to fit in Kane now, I would need to downgrade significantly at defense and midfield. And I’m not too sure about doubling up on the Spurs attack for games against Arsenal and Man City. DGWs always throw up something you don’t expect though.

So I have nine double-gamers. Trippier is in everyone’s team super-cheap, status quo until he gets injured. Norgaard has been putting up impressive points and could be a good investment for at least the next few weeks at his low price, and this week against Bournemouth looks very promising. Havertz is to some extent a filler, but I expect him to get plenty of game time. Willian is in partly on the chance that he’d be on penalties when Mitrovic is out, but he should more than cover his cost regardless. I’ve had Lenglet for a few weeks now and he’s been returning OK, especially considering his price of $4.06. I still have $6.32 in the bank though, so more tinkering is likely.

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Fantrax NMA-17

I suffered a mediocre week here too, mainly thanks to a disappointing forward line.

I brought in Kane and Son late on the barn door, while initially retaining Mitrovic for the misguided reason I explained above. To facilitate this, I swapped almost the entire midfield, concentrating on double-gamers and losing discounts on my United players (Grrrr indeed).

Post-barn-door and with the Palace-United game confirmed, I’ve made further changes. Mitrovic has gone for Havertz, leaving me budget to improve midfield and defense. Ziyech is a filler with some potential upside. Rashford is back. I’m still not sure about Foden — he hasn’t been getting much game time, but he could easily score well this week.

In defense, I still have three single-gamers because of enormous discounts(Mee and Trippier) and $1.23 Thomas a terrific enabler. I really want to bring in Pinnock, but I couldn’t justify even his barn door price for the single gamer.

So I brought in Tete instead, and I’m hoping that two games for him will pay off. Anderson is my nod to the Palace double — He should have plenty to do against tough matchups, and his returns have been remarkably consistent.

I hold my goalkeepers at huge discounts. Even though their performance long-term has been quite disappointing, there is nobody available now for $2.60 and $2.80 that I’d prefer. At least Lloris has a double game, even if it could easily result in a double negative performance (but hey, a double negative is a positive, isn’t it!).

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Where have I gone wrong with my teams this week? How could I improve them? How many double-game players do you plan to include this week? Please log in and leave your comments below!

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Stats and info for this article were sourced from premierleague.com

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