Here’s my Barclays fantasy premier league team for gameweek 2. I can see its going to be a more difficult week this week than GW1 which started reasonably well.
By the way I had already made my early transfer of Ross Barkley in for Ravel Morrison. See article link at the bottom of the page
A few tricky decisions. At the moment I’ve gone for RVP as captain with Soldado as vice. Ideally I would have liked to have gone fora City player and in my captain choice article (link at bottom) you will see Aguero was my number 1 pick. However any City striker would be a good pick after the pretty poor defensive performance from Cardiff against a West Ham team without Carroll and Maiga leading the line. City are the overwhelming match favourites of any game with William Hill at the moment at £1.44 with (Spurs 2nd interestingly) at £1.61. However in absence of Pellegrini emailing me which striker is going to start (I think Aguero is pretty certain and I think although no one can be certain Negredo will start). Added to that Silvas last year return consistency was 34% so I’m going with RVP. Soldado just needs to prove a little more at the moment as does Spurs at home and Spurs generally in breaking down teams who just sit there.
As far as defence is concerned it was tricky. My 2 nailed on starters were Chester of Hull home to Norwich and Dawson of Spurs home to Swansea. They were first down. then it was a choice of West Ham away to Newcastle and Chelsea away to Utd. I was going no where near Cardiff and Ben Turner home to City. Although the atmosphere will be white hot with it being the first home game in the premier league I cant see a clean sheet for Cardiff in a month of Sundays, as my mum would say.
With Anelka being given compassionate leave I’ve then got 3 players for 2 positions:
Kim Cardiff v Man City H
Collins West Ham v Newcastle A
Ivanovic Chelsea v Man Utd A
Looking at those and the attacking output of Kim against West Ham I decided there was more likelihood of a West Ham clean sheet or Ivanovic returning than Kim so I’ve gone for a 4 man defence.
There are certain theories among fantasy premier league managers that you shouldn’t have people from teams playing one another in your fantasy premier league team if ones in attack and ones in defence. My theory is as above in that you pick the players most likely to return for your fantasy premier league team during that gameweek. It’s a bit like picking players at school! I can understand the theory that you never pick an attacking player and a defensive player from teams that will play each other as it means you can never maximise your returns from that gameweek. To me that’s just a bit too much eggs in one basket and too high risk. If I could predict the outcome accurately of what would happen in football matches I wouldn’t be working, I’d be writing this from my hill top house in the South of France. To me its a balance of probabilities and getting the people most likely to return.
Lastly you’ll notice I’ve got Anelka in my line up even though he’s been given compassionate leave this weekend and there are stories that he’s retired from football all together. The reason I’ve done this is that history has given me too many examples of when someone is supposedly injured or not going to play and I’ve put him on my subs bench and then they miraculously get up off their sick bed or whatever and score. So now if I would have played him if he wasn’t injured or whatever I play him and let the substitutions sort it out at the end of the game week
So after all that here’s the team. Good luck to everyone in fantasy premier league gameweek 2
Fox Sports EPL fantasy: League name: fantasyfootballgeek League access code: (10513-1773)