Fantasy Bundesliga Tips – Rob Reids team and general thoughts

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Here’s our fantasy Bundesliga Tips article where FFGeek Contributor Rob Reid shows us his fantasy Bundesliga team and shares his general thoughts on the game and players

Fantasy Bundesliga Tips – Rob Reids team and general thoughts




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Hi everyone – hope you are all doing ok and are coping with the all the challenges you are presented with at the moment, wherever in the world you are.

Here’s a short article I’ve put together about Official Bundesliga Fantasy Manager (OBFM.) First of all a disclaimer: I have no prior experience of this game! I’ve entered it as a bit of fun to fill a bit of the void left by FPL. With it already being GW26 in the game, there are of course no aspirations for a high overall rank. However I’ve entered the Fantasy Football Geek OBFM league and if nothing else I’ll give it a go and have a bit of fun doing so. So here goes!

Initial Thoughts on Die Bundesliga

First up, I thought I’d give a few thoughts on what I know about Die Bundesliga to give it it’s official name. It’s a league I have followed in the past, though I’ve not seen so much in the last couple of seasons, mainly due to time constraints on the amount of sport I can actively watch and actually try and maintain a normal life and job at the same time! What I would say though, is that it’s a league I always found entertaining. I’ve watched other European Leagues in the past (most notably La Liga and Serie A) and I’ve found the entertainment value a bit more limited. I always found the pace of the game very slow in Serie A and while Real and Barcelona were always pretty entertaining in La Liga, I found other games to be quite stuffy for want of a better word.

Bundesliga is a little different and probably closer to the Premier League in terms of pace. What I like about it is that teams like to attack and there are usually of plenty of goals. The downside is that (like many other European Leagues) the league is very top heavy and indeed has been utterly dominated by Bayern Munich in recent years – they’ve won it for the last 6 seasons.

Looking at this season, Bayern have been challenged a bit more. Most notably by Borussia Dortmund and also by the recent emergence of RB Leipzig who have risen in the last few years, bankrolled by Red Bull. Not too far behind are Borussia Monchengladbach (I’ll try not to have to spell that again in this article) and Bayer Leverkusen. This is important as, like the EPL the first 4 teams qualify for the Champion’s League so there is a bit of a fight for these places. The 5th placed team will get a Europa League spot, as will the team placed 6. This now gets interesting again as teams number 6-15 are seperated by just 11 points! So a good run by a team in the bottom half of the table like Eintarcht Frankfurt or Union Berlin could shake things up.

At the bottom – 3 go down. There’s a 4 point gap between 15th placed Mainz and Fortuna Dusseldorf in 16th with Werder Bremen surprisingly a further 4 back and Paderborn bottom on 16 points, 10 from safety. So if we’re looking at teams with things to play for, then there’s plenty of food for thought.

The other thing to note is that there is a very big discrepancy in Goals For at the top of the league. The top 3 of Bayern, Dortmund and Leipzig have all got significantly higher Goals Scored tallies than the rest. This could be important when considering fantasy team selection. Similarly at the back, the top 5 all seem to be leaner in defence along with Wolfsburg in 7th. So with all that in mind, lets look at how OBFM is scored. Be prepared, its complicated!

OBFM Scoring

Where I think of FPL as a game of few events, OBFM is rather different. There are the usual points for goals scored and assists, with defenders and midfielders scoring progressively more points than forwards for both. There’s also bonuses if they score more than one goal, up to 3 goals in total. Clean sheets aren’t so profitable at only 3 points and are for goalies and defenders only and there are points off for goals conceded and save points for keepers. Then there’s the usual points off too for bookings, red cards, own goals and penalty misses. Ok so far? Now it gets interesting.

There are points for ‘every 2 passes to a shot’ – what we’d know as an attempted assist I guess. Then there’s points scored for every 5 ‘duels’ won (is this UFC?!), points for every 2 shots on goals, scoring the winning goal and for finishing on the winning team. On the negative side you can also lose points for finishing on the losing side with this being worse if you lose by more than 2 goals.

Finally, there are no Captains and Vice-Captains but you can appoint 3 Star Players – one defender, one midfielder and one forward. They score 1.5 times the normal points tally. Confused? Good. Now here’s another curveball. You can sub players in a gameweek between matchdays – a bit like in the World Cup or Champion’s League games. You can also change your Star Players within this, but bear in mind any players you sub out will lose their points.

In terms of prices, there’s a 150m limit for a squad of 15 and an unusual system where players prices go up and down which I have to admit I don’t quite understand! Obviously entering late in the campaign is a disadvantage for team value, but that will be level for all of us in the FFG league. Similarly there are some players priced at 1m which can be used as fillers.

Tactics – a few thoughts

First of all it would seem to make sense to load up with attacking players from the top 3 teams. Lewandowski and Werner are well ahead in the goal-scoring charts for forwards, with Sancho leading the way for midfielders and also ranking highly in assist stakes. The problem is that owning these 3 alone will set you back nearly half your budget so you’ll have to scratch around elsewhere and put some cheapies in.

It would also make sense to me to spread value throughout the squad with there being the option of having a star player in defence. In fact, defenders look a good investment and looking through the ranks there’s guys like Kimmich and Hakimi for example who are up there near the top of the list of the high overall scorers. Next, I think cheap keepers look like the way forward – the more expensive ones don’t seem to match up to other players in different positions in their price range. Finally, having players that play across different game days gives you the option to rotate out players who don’t score points in a game.

My Team

Ok here’s who I’ve gone for. Again please bear in mind, I’m a novice at this game as well! I’m going to go top down for my run through as it seems the most natural way to do this.




fantasy BundesligaTips

fantasy bundesliga tips

First up – covering the 3 biggest scoring teams. Lewandowski, Gnabry, Werner and Sancho are the highest scoring players in the game and I think need included. They burn a lot of my funds up but I think are worth it and give me plenty of star player options. The good news is I think I’ve managed to jiggle my funds enough to get another 2 attacking players from the top 3 teams so I’ve gone with Nkunku and Haaland; they look good value despite a price tag that is still well into double figures.

I also need a premium defender, so I’ve gone with Hakimi from Dortmund rather than Kimmich from Bayern. This gives me a bit more money which means I can get a second fairly decent defender in Sven Bender. He also has the advantage of playing on Monday this week meaning more potential for switching Star Player in this position. I do like Angelino at this price point as well though and I could see me making a swap in a week or two here.

Now it’s about filling in the gaps. 2 cheap keepers in Schubert and Kastenmeier – I’ll play the latter one this week most likely, with Schubert facing Dortmund. I also love the fact I’m able to buy these 2 keepers for the grand total of just 2m – I just hope one of them plays! Katterbach and Jakobs from Koln look like they should get minutes in defence and are also very cheap so that fills the squad out a bit along with the also-cheap Hoffman who has a favourable fixture against Paderborn this week. My remaining 2 mids are Bodzek from Fortuna (again plays bottom-placed Paderborn this week) and the likely non-playing Barreiro of Mainz.

So for my team this week, I’m loading up with the 7 players from the top 3, then will fill the rest with cheapies for Saturday and bring Bender in on Monday. I’ll use Star Player on Werner and Sancho on Saturday and if they blank, I’ve got Lewandowski and Gnabry to gamble on for Sunday. The tricky decision will be if the former 2 get single returns – do I then take a punt on Bayern? Hakimi will get the defender Star Player slot, but I’ve got Bender to come in on Monday if he blanks.

So that’s me. I’ll have a final look at things on Saturday lunchtime – any changes and I’ll put them out on a Tweet. Good luck everyone and hope you have fun!

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