Fantasy premier league first draft teams – the FFGeek team

Fantasy Premier League, ffgeek teams

Here’s our fantasy premier league first draft teams article where I outline a first go at a FFGeek team for the season.  It will change but it may help your thinking around approach and players

Fantasy premier league first draft teams – the FFGeek team

So here’s my first draft team for the FPL season.  It will change but you may find it useful for your initial drafts.  You may also find it useful to see Joseph Crilley’s first draft team

Approach

You may have read my article about players returning from the World Cup and the affect on our GW1 teams.  Essentially I have ruled out any players who have been involved in the quarter finals or further whether they have been playing or not as they will still be training to play at a high level.

I have also resisted the temptation to fix a wildcard date in advance to get players back.  That has come at some cost but essentially a post GW4 wildcard over the first International break would be the natural time to get the World Cup returners of Hazard, Sterling, Lukaku, Kane, De Bruyne, Vertonghen etc.  However to me I don’t want to be pinned into that corner and would rather set up my team to have the choice to wildcard to get them in rather than be forced to wildcard as the team is filled with temporary players.

 The team

Here’s the team:




Fantasy premier league first draft teams

The GKs

I’ve gone for 2 rotating goalkeepers in West Ham’s Fabianski and Wolves’s Patricio.  Fabianski for his save points potential and Patricio as I believe the Wolves defence should be strong through further investment.  They seem to rotate ok initially.  I have thought about a single GK with his back up as an option as it makes week to week choices easier.  Sometimes the easier clean sheet option isn’t always the best option too as it can be a goal conceded with very few save points.

The defence

I personally think that £5.5m/£6m defenders return better than similar priced midfielders and forwards so I’ve gone for a premium back 4.

Otamendi is the only safe long term Man City defender who will start at the beginning of the season with Stones, Walker, Kompany and Mendy still at the World Cup.  £5.5m Laporte I’m sure will play a few games at either CB or LB but it will be short lived I fear.  I would personally prefer Mendy but even though he hasn’t been playing I can’t believe he won’t be due a few weeks off but it is worth monitoring.

With Jones and Lindelof late at the World Cup I feel Bailly has to have a good chance of starting and at £5.5m he represents decent value for a United defender and could make the position his own.

The Liverpool defence was transformed by Van Dijk and I’m hoping with GK signing that they will be even stronger.  I’ve read that the manager wants to give £4.5m Ward a chance to be number 1 and while he would be great value I can’t help but feel it’s some front to show they aren’t as desperate as I’m sure they are.  It’s Robertson’s attacking ability that gets the nod for me

The last premium defender is Bellerin of Arsenal.  It was a choice between Chelsea and Arsenal.  Arsenal have 2 tricky fixtures to start but I feel that given the disregard seemingly to defence before hand that surely defence can be improved by the new manager. Chelsea also only had Christensen as the £5.5m option which I’m a bit relucatant over having been burned last season.

Then the last  was filler £4.0m Cardiff RB Peltier.  He isn’t nailed on to play but I’ve put him in at the moment to make the numbers work.  You can see more of him and others in the promoted teams in my article on them

Midfield

I firstly started with Salah as my  week to week captain option with Aguero.  Salah is the only player in the 40% ownership bracket and at 47% close to 50%.  If you imagine now that the 400k teams playing at the moment are some of the more obsessive and therefore likely successful FPL managers then given this and his captain popularity then he’s a player not to be ignored

Next is Ramsey who I’m a huge fan of.  He maybe a CM but his box to box ability, awareness on the counter and ghosting into good positions in a structured attack means he breaks the rules on such players.  His contract position isn’t great and I hope it isn’t a distraction but he’s just too good to ignore for me.  There is also the possibility of him playing further up the field if Torreira sits next to Xhaka.  Whether that’s good or bad I’m not sure.

Sanchez is next and the most difficult pick for me due to his price and his poor performances for United last season.  On the positive side you’ve got a guy who could play CF given that Lukaku will be late back from the World Cup.  He’s also had a rest with no World Cup for the first time in umpteenth seasons.  He’s Sanchez, the guy in 16/17 got 264 points for Arsenal.  He also allows an easy swap if required for the likes of Sterling,  Hazard or De Bruyne.

On the negative is his borderline pathetic performances for Man Utd since his arrival with him saying things like he struggled with the system backed up by awful underlying stats.  A negative counter attacking manager.  The “positive” possible position of CF wasn’t a total success for Arsenal.

Next is Deulofeu who just looks good value at £5.5m and lastly is the bench player of CM Gunnarson for Cardiff.

Forwards

First up is the alternative captain option of Aguero.  I expect Jesus to return late.  Whether Pep will play 2 up front or 1 up front only he knows (hopefully anyway!).  Personally I can’t see him doing it as given the wealth of attacking midfielders added to by Mahrez it just could end up with a ridiculous amount on the bench especially if he plays 3-5-2.  However every City player comes with rotation risk but going with out one is a frightening prospect as you can see from the fixtures in our fixture ease article

If you came on the site last season you’ll know that I am a massive Charlie Austin fan.  There’s nothing like a guy who’s entire objective is to score goals and who doesn’t move wider than the width of the penalty box at anytime during the game.  Mark Hughes seems to understand that slightly better than Puel or Pellegrino did but he’s still not guaranteed to start.

Lastly again you’ll see from the promoted teams article that Jimenez had a fantastic record when on the pitch with Benfica even allowing for the fact that it was mainly as a sub.  He was in the Mexican World Cup squad but hopefully they went out early enough for him to play in GW1.

The Sanchez question





Sanchez is the big block of risk money in the team.  I have had an alternative team with David Silva in it and Tosun and Austin up front and Tomkins as the cheap defender.  So he comes at a cost even if he does allow a far easier midfield flip to the returners.

Still plenty of time to tinker and procrastinate though so no harm done now

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