Gameweek 5 Preview + transfer tips

After a week's break EPL will be back on action again this weekend. However bear in mind that we still have a round of international duty this midweek. Be sure to check on players' form and health status.

I used to play in "I know the score" game (also run by Official Premier League site), however it seems that I'm not so good in predicting the match score. (Or the game has become more unpredictable?) If you are a good score predicter, it surely helps you to be a good fantasy manager! You can practise to predict scores and see how well you can do. (I'll practise mine as well! let's do it together.)

Anyway, let's have a quick view on the coming fixture.

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Gameweek 5 fixture: (Unguaranteed predictions in bracket)

Blackburn v Wolves [1-0]
Liverpool v Burnley [3-0]
Man City v Arsenal [1-2]
Portsmouth v Bolton [0-1]
Stoke City v Chelsea [0-4]
Sunderland v Hull City [2-0]
Wigan v West Ham [0-0]
Tottenham v Man Utd [1-3]
Birmingham v Aston Villa [0-1]
Fulham v Everton [0-2]

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Bear in mind that when you bring in a player, take into account whether you are having short term plan or long term plan.

Short term plan means you are sure a player will score high for a specific game, but will flop again for the games to follow, and you're going to switch him away again. This usually applies when you think you already have an almost perfect team, say 10 season players and 1 uncertain player. This will be a more difficult decision to made as your change has to show result in just one game. After that you know you won't benefit from him again and have to change him again.

There is another condition when people will consider this plan: when a "Derby" team shows up. People tends to buy the the player whose team is facing the weakest team for the gameweek. Of course you have a high chance of getting a correct hit, but, make sure you really did. Else you're losing big. Getting a fringe player into your team, score none, become a burden, and you have a few other badly selected players to change, how's that.... Eventually you'll be force to make multiple changes.... (I knew it because I've been in the same condition many times before)

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Long term plan means you want to bring in a player and keep him in your team for long, as you have other changes to made, in order to gradually transform your team into a stronger line-up (We are doing it slowly to avoid being deducted points for extra transfers made in the same gameweek).

To identify suitable choice for your long term plan, you need to take into account a player's past games performance, and more importantly, his opponents in the coming few games (usually 3 or more). The difference to short term plan is that even though in the first game you bring him in he didn't score, he still have chance to make up the loss in the next game and the next next game. Example, this player gets 2pts for game1, then 12pts for game2, and 5pts for game3, does this considered good buy? Yes, since in 3 game he brings you 18pts, which means average 6pts a game. But, make sure you don't sell him just after he played game1. And, from here we know the best timing to bring in this player is game2. By doing more observation you'll gain experience and make better selection at better timing in the future.

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Back to the main topic.

So have you managed to identify the player for short term and long term at this moment? It will help a lot if you refer to the fantasy stats. Player with higher score always give you more confidence, right?

Let's identify teams with clear advantage first. I'll have my choices in bold:

Blackburn v Wolves
Liverpool v Burnley
Man City v Arsenal
Portsmouth v Bolton
Stoke City v Chelsea
Sunderland v Hull City
Wigan v West Ham
Tottenham v Man Utd
Birmingham v Aston Villa
Fulham v Everton

Now we have 3 teams that looks really good for three points this week. Next we'll check on every team for their coming fixtures and look for teams capable of delivering collective results. I'll show out what I gathered:

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Big4: Must take a look!

Ars - MC(A),Wig(H),Ful(A),Bla(H),Bir(H).
Che - Sto(A),Tot(H),Wig(A),Liv(H),AV(A),Bla(H).
MU - Tot(A),MC(H),Sto(A),Sun(H),Bol(H).
Liv - Bur(H),WH(A),Hul(H),Che(A),Sun(A).

Looks good. Each team have at least 3 good fixture coming up. Personally I suggest you to bring in Chelsea or Liverpool players as they have easy game right away. I bet you don't need me to tell you which player to look into.

For other teams:

Sun - Hul(H),Bur(A),Wol(H),MU(A)
Eve - Ful(A),Bla(H),Por(A),Sto(H),Wol(H),Bol(A)

Two good teams for your reference if you're short of money. Both teams look like having a bright chance to shine. For Sunderland, by looking at total points, Cattermole(5.0), Jones(7.1) and D.Bent(7.2) look like the best candidate, with Malbranque(6.0) an unproven option. For Everton, Baines(6.3), Pienaar(6.5) and Saha(7.0) are the obvious choice. Cahill(8.3) and Fellaini(6.9) are more expensive yet unproven this season, so will be riskier. You can have a shot at Rodwell(4.5) too, considering he's available at cheapest price.

Reverse Way:

Por - Bol(H),AV(A),Eve(H),Wol(A),Tot(H).

This is, provided you believe that Portsmouth will continue to flop for the rest of season. You can continue to invest in their opponent and earn some fast points.

For Bolton, defenders can be good option(but only for short term). For attacking option, you can try Taylor(6.8) and Davies(6.7). Anyway, personally I do not recommend Bolton players, as they are not good choice for long term.

If you're planning to bring in Aston Villa players this week, it's a good choice too. Generally you can select anyone in Villa as they looks equally good, but Ashley Young(8.3) will be my best pick, added with the fact that he's 0.2 cheaper than starting price. (I have him in my team right now)

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How about the unmentioned team? Not meaning you must neglect them, but you have a relatively lower chance to hit it right. Every transfer is precious so let's invest on something you can have higher confidence.

We'll have a topic on form players after wednesday's international round, from which we will try to identify form players where we can ingore whoever opponents they are playing against. (I bet you already have a few names in your mind right now. Yes, you're becoming smarter now.)

Get 11 stars for your first team, would you?

I've spent two years observing the dream team chart, and guess what I've found, they always provide you with a GW score higher than 50pts!

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Following is the Dream Team after GW4:



Have you tried to add up the GW4 points from the dream team? No? Here you are. It's 87pts! (Form 76.6) Plus captain's score it could have been a 3-figure points!

Yeah I know some of them just jumped in soon after GW4, since the season just started not long. However based on what I observed for the past 2 seasons, it can't be wrong. Buy all the "star" players (Dream Team players are labelled with a star above their name) and you are assured with a fine score every gameweek! Of course the Dream Team change from time to time, so you also need to adjust your selection accordingly.

Why is it important to raise your team value? It's because you want to fit all the star players in your line-up and don't have to make those meaningless transfers every gameweek anymore! Who else you want when you have Rooney, Torres and Drogba as your strikers, or when you have Gerrard, Lampard, Arshavin, Fabregas all in your team?

Here is one of the playing method and proved to be useful: Try to raise you team value and ultimately aim to own all 11 Dream Team players! Make the minimal changes to your team for the rest of season and watch the points flowing into your pocket. Though practically you may not possible to get all, but it's possible to own 8 or 9 of them (minus the most expensive one) since the dream team not necessarily consists of the most expensive line-up. Last season the likes of Ireland(5.5) or Bosingwa(6.0) also made it into the dream team at some stage.

I bet you have an idea now on who to bring into your team. Oh, I forgot another important tips. If the dream team members are to change, who do you think they will be? Yup, those right behind on points! Check whose has the easiest fixture ahead, he'll be the best man to replace the out-of-form DT player. So do keep an eye on the likes of Upson, Toure, Ballack, Kuyt, Hunt, Adebayor, Torres, Jones, and many more. You might find a real gem out of them.

Learn from the world's best fantasy manager!

What human is most capable of is the "Copy exactly" ablilty. We always learn from other people by doing exactly what they do. It's the fastest way of learning, isn't it?

The August month is over with 4 GW past. We've seen some fantasy managers get really excellent result, and some also looks good from coming gameweeks. How did they achieve it? Because they had picked a correct line-up at pre-season (and some used their wildcard already to switch into a form team). Are you doing well too?

You must be wondering how they manage to pick such a perfect combination and can do so well for every gameweek. Now lets take a look at the team of August leader, Liverpool's No. 9.:

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Here you will notice most of them already did well in the previous gameweeks, except for Baines, Jimenez, Jarvis(sub) and Bent. This means he had 7 players capable of delivering. Also prior to GW4 9 of his starting players have a form of above 4.0.

Now for his transfer history:

Out	In	GW
Shawcross (4.6)	Baines (6.3)	4
Evra (6.6)	Warnock (4.9)	4
Mullins (4.5)	Jarvis (4.5)	2

Looking into his transfer history, not too impressive. Jarvis doesn't bring too many points, Warnock has not played a game since his Transfer to Aston Villa. Baines did score 11pts but Shawcross and Evra scored 7 altogether so after minus 4 for the additional transfer he didn't earn anything, instead let go Shawcross who is potential of further value up.

Now what's the success story here? Though without any significant transfers he keeps an average GW score of 79.3. This is because he picked a team capable of delivering points over the first 4 GWs. 3 Liverpool, 2 Chelsea, 2 Stoke, 2 for Bolton, 1 each for MU, Portsmouth, WH, Sunderland, and Birmingham. For Liverpool though he didn't pick Gerrard, still picks 3 players delivering more than 20pts each. A very wise choice. Meanwhile Sorensen and Shawcross are top2 point scorers for Stoke. Cole and Drogba also top2 point scorers for Chelsea so far (excluding out Lampard is again a good bet!). Ok, I bet you already see it by now. This team only have one of the 5 most expensive players (in Torres). Therefore he has a lot money to spend on moderate players such as Kuyt, Lennon, D.Bent and also good defenders like Evra and Johnson. A good distribution of team value that you might want to emulate!

Now let's look at another team, ThunderFrogs, who leads the chart for GW2 and GW3 before dropping into 4th on GW4, 27pts behind leader. Yes, we'll try to understand why he couldn't hold on to his lead.

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First let's check his points history:
GW1 94
GW2 84 (wildcard used, 10 changes made)
GW3 55
GW4 57

Changes made after GW2:

Out	In	GW
Fletcher (5.5)	Duff (5.5)	4
Jerome (4.5)	Blake (5.5)	3

Picture shown above is his GW4 result. Just 2 changes made from the GW2 team but why the points go down so much, while Liverpool's No. 9.'s team continued to get high points?

You can easily understand why he used his wildcard at just GW2. He started his team with 2 Arsenal, 2 Wigan, 1 each from MU, Chelsea, Stoke, Fulham, MC, Liverpool, West Ham, Villa, Sunderland, Everton and Birmingham. Obviously he spread his selections over teams, HOWEVER note that 6 of his starting line-up during GW1 does not play on GW2! And yet these 6 players had already brought him 48pts (including Fabregas 22pts). Yes he get his investment paid back, but with an additional price of wildcard, an inevitable one. Had he not do a total rebuild he would have only 5 first team players left.

Now there follows another clever move. he used his wildcard. Means the conpensation of buying in players who miss GW2 is taken off! And this combines with player stats gathered from GW1! He knows who is the form player, he knows who is likely to get a value up. He knows he can make very good transfers based on the infos. Now let's see who he brought in:

Player	GW2 score
Jerome (4.5)	1
N'Zonzi (4.5)	sub
Fletcher (5.5)	sub
Defoe (8.5)	17
Palacios (5.5)	7
Lampard (12.5)	10 (made captain)
Bassong (5.0)	2
Wilkinson (4.0)	--
Johnson (7.5)	18
TOTAL POINTS	55 (65 with captain score)

Pretty accurate, right? With 2 successive good GW result he straight went top of the overall table. BUT, not too good right after this. Drogba becomes his only real point scorer at GW3 and only Lampard reach double figure at GW4. He also made bod choice on captain selection on GW3 (could have scored 9pts more). 55 and 57 may not be a bad score, right? But COMPARATIVELY it was low among the people ranked right below him (an average of around 75pts per GW). Thus, he lost his lead and fell quite far behind in points, albeit still in a very good 4th place.

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Given both fantasy managers do not change their team, who would have a better run onwards? Well, it's really hard to tell at the moment. The points gap made out from GW3 and GW4 doesn't really give us the conclusion. What we can learn from this is two different pre-season approaches that can bring you good starting result.

The game had provided us the convenience to spy on other manager's team. So let's make good use of this ability. Spy as much as you can! Stop complaining why other can get high score while you get a petty one. You can become a team to be spied on too.

EPL 2 weeks break: time to make BIG decisions!

Usually Premier League season will start with a double-game-week and then go for a 2-weeks-break. This is one of the most critical time in fantasy game. How important is it? Let's find it out.

Agenda:
1) Prefect time for wildcard
2) Check out players' international performances
3) Should you wait until the deadline to make transfer?
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1)Perfect time for wildcard

Yes. Why not? When you found yourself too far behind after just 4 gameweeks, and having a shit team not look like going to provide you any points for the coming fixture, why not rebuild your squad with the informations gathered from these 4 gameweeks? For my own experience sharing, I was ranked 417834 after GW3, then entered 2 weeks break for internationals. I used my wildcard immediately after GW3, refreshed my squad, and gained 1.7 in team value by GW5! My ranking also rose to 25557 by GW6, and went steady for the rest of season. (peaked at 6901 on GW13 and finished 18042, my best finishing so far) It's a great gift that the game introduced wildcard, a magic item that secures your season when you think you had a poor start and feeling hopeless.

Oh. And now you know the importance of picking your starting squad. It's the best if you are able to continue with confidence on your current team, saving the wildcard for the worst.

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2)Check out players' international performances

No rest in getting infos for the improvement of your fantasy game! International games provide good info of players' form too. This also makes early transfer comes with a risk: players might get injured with national team, or even loses his current form after a poor international outing. That would cause you to have made a useless transfer. So, don't miss the coming 2 matchdays!

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3)Should you wait until the deadline to make transfer?

Unless you're waiting for my tips...ha ha...
If you're trying to snap up hot item, like for now (Bracket shows transfers in GW so far) Lennon (80k), Hunt(51k), Shawcross(36k), Johnson(29k), Defoe(24k) and others, better get it as soon as their last match ended. With 2 weeks to go before next GW their price tag are likely to go up 0.2 and more. Combine this idea with wildcard you can make a great fortune, and they are equally good buys.

Another reason to make quick transfer: when the player you're going to dump is rapidly losing popularity which means price drop is inevitable. Rather than losing your team value, dispose them as soon as you could. Of course this should combine with a good buy, not another rubbish. A transfer must be made quickly when a player is no longer a first choice, get injured for long period or get suspended.

Note that I say, "player that you're going to dump". If you feel that a player, though losing popularity, is going to bounce back in next game, keep him and you may me making an edging move! The last thing you want to see is the player you've just sold score a hat-trick in the following game (that happens to me numerous times in the past). A good example here is, a nett total of 21071 people gave up Rooney after GW2, what happens next? Rooney grabbed 2 goals and 3 bonus points! Imagine how much you lost by switching him away. (You should put him captain too)

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Yes. We got a lot of things to do for the coming 2 weeks! Keep an eye on the fantasy transfers condition, check the fixture list, view the player's form, come out with the best transfer choices. And I'm going to provide you with a few more tips in coming week to help improve your game.

Pre-season team build-up: How important is it?

Check out what had you missed in the first 4 gameweeks.

Having a good start means alot of things. You won't have to make extra transfer to adjust your squad; you gain price-up for form players in your team, you can save your wildcard for better use. You don't make unnecessary changes due to player not selected in first team or missing out through injury. While other people rushing to purchase hot items, you are setting a good example for others to emulate. It always feels good to be up front in the title race, isn't it?

Let's look back again to how you prepare your squad during pre-season. There are a few things to look out:

1) Which of the big 4 teams have the easiest opponents in the coming 3 games?
2) Which of the outsider teams have 1 or more sure-win games coming soon?
3) Which teams will be missing a mid-week game due to European participation?

Well, the first two criterias apply for the whole season too. The third one means to remind you to make the best use of the fixture list.

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Yes, we're not selecting our favourite player, we're selecting players that will help us get points. When you build your team always start by determining the key players, who usually cost the most but are sure to bring you a lot of points. Who will they be? Of course the big 4 teams players. They don't dubbed big 4 for nothing. They score more goals, have better defense, and are more consistent in performance. Let's make use of the fantasy stats and see if I'm correct.

Team score after GW4:
*1 240 Chelsea
*2 197 Man Utd
*5 183 Liverpool
*7 167 Arsenal (1 game less)

It's pretty clear. The big 4 are performing well so far! So you get great score by selecting players from big 4 teams. BUT...out of these 4 teams, which one to choose? So let's check out who their opponent was:

Chelsea: Hul(H),Sun(A),Ful(A),Bur(H).
Man Utd: Bir(H),Bur(A),Wol(A),Ars(H).
Arsenal: Eve(A),------,Por(H),MU(H).
Liverpool: Tot(A),Sto(H),AV(H),Bol(A).

You have to agree with me. The bolded fixture are considered easier game for them. Note that Chelsea have the most easy opponent among the 4 teams. This means that you get the maximum advantage by having 3 Chelsea players in your team. Meanwhile Man Utd face all three newly promoted in the first 3 game! This is clear enough: You should own maximum numbers of Man Utd players in your team as well! Life is easy then.

Why not Arsenal or Liverpool? Note that Arsenal will miss a game in GW2. This is a big disadvantage as Arsenal players don't come cheap and it's a very wrong move to have your key players sitting on the bench at the early stage. What about Liverpool? They have a stiff test against Tottenham in the first game and it's harder to judge their form afterwards. A buy-in during GW2 will be more recommended (yes, a home game against Stoke City is considered easy meat).

So how accurate am I on this? We already saw just now that Chelsea and Man Utd are currently top 2 fantasy point scorer. While Arsenal are 7th because they played 1 game less. Liverpool DID predictably fared less impressive compared to the others. So far we're getting the expectations correct.

Now let's look at the predicted and the unpredicted:

Predicted:
- Chelsea won all 4 games, with 4 goals from midfielders and 5 goals from forwards.
- Man Utd played around Rooney with him scoring 4 times.
- Rotations occurs more often at Arsenal as they plays in Champions League qualifier.
- Liverpool played around Gerrard and Torres, scoring 5 times between them.

Unpredicted:
- Man Utd lost at newcomer Burnley. Many people placed their captain bet on Rooney that particular gameweek.
- Arsenal win 6-1 at Everton, compensating for the 1 game missing.
- Chelsea failed to keep clean sheet for the first 2 games, causing some people to lose confidence on their defense.
- Liverpool, one of the best defence team, conceded 7 goals in 4 games.

Now what do you see? Working on the predicted items and it's sounds easy. Right? And what about the unpredicted? The risk are fairly high and you might possibly lose out big meat or fire blanks by betting on it. We have other sure things to bet on. Let's read further.

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Outsiders. Yes. We're referring to those teams that are not so likely to challenge for the league title this season, mainly because of the lack of consistency. While fantasy game is all about form, we have to make the most out of it and buy the cheaper players at the best timing.

How to determine which outsider teams or players to invest on? Two things to check, one is by player, another is by team. Both methods coming with some risk.

By player: every team will have one or two key players that can make differents, even in disadvantage situation. How to identify them? Even beginners can figure them out. Yup, just check out their last season's performance. A few examples: Young(AV), Gamst Pedersen(Bla), Matthew Taylor(Bol), Cahill and Arteta(Eve), Dempsey(Ful), Jones(Sun), Carlton Cole(WH). You will also notice that they are usually the most costly players in their team (Because they worth it!) With this you know which players to look for when you pick on a team.

By team: check the schedule. Look out for easy meat. Identify the relegation favourites and pick players from the teams that face them. Now lets get an example from the fixture list of first 4 gameweek:

AV: Wig(H),------,Liv(A),Ful(H)

Yup, you will easily think that Villa will excel in the bolded games. Well, not quite accurate for this one, as they lost to Wigan but won at Liverpool. But basically that's the idea we're looking for. Let's say that we judge Villa to have easy fixtures coming soon. Who will you invest on? Pick the cheapest from first choice defenders, and then influential players, which, in this case, Young, Agbonlahor, or Milner.

Other teams that I judged to have relatively easier fixture in the first 4 gameweeks:
Tot: Liv(H),Hul(A),WH(A),Bir(H)
Sto: Bur(H),Liv(A),Bir(A),Sun(H)
Por: Ful(H),Bir(A),Ars(A),MC(H) (Alright, wrong judgement)

Worth a bet, right? You know who to pick.

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Missing fixture. Yup. Every season we have the same dilemma. You have some players you really wish to choose. But they miss second gameweek due to European matches, which, for this season they are: MC,Ars,AV,WH,Ful,Eve,Bla, and Bol. In my opinion, it's a wise decision not to pick from these teams until GW3. It's good if they score. But if they don't, You'll lose further in GW2 and nothing to compensate, as half of your team will not be playing. Not worth it. definitely.

Anyway, there's still teams from the lists which performs extremely well. Man City and Arsenal. Excusable as they are considered big teams. But for the rest, the risk is too high.

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Now for the wrap-up.

Maybe you had heard people said this before: "Don't put all eggs in one basket." Does this applies here? I've seen people buying Cech, Terry and Bosingwa in the start of last season and went on to win lots of points, as Chelsea got 10 clean sheets out of first 14 games (Bosingwa scored a few goals too). And remember Man Utd once went 14 games without conceding a goal. This is an exceptional case. When you do it right you get an edge over teams who spread their eggs. For this season we saw a good example on Stoke City and Burnley. Nice and cheap, aren't they? 4.0 each for the defence and then save the rest for star players. How nice! It might be risky to invest on Burnley(You don't even know who's playing) but Stoke City did have an easier fixture ahead. Discover it earlier and you are in front of many others. HOWEVER, do not think that you can hold on to them forever, unexpected situations happens. Make necessary change when time comes.

What choice had I made for the season-start? I picked 3 Chelsea, 3 Man Utd, 2 Portsmouth, 2 Stoke, 1 Liverpool for my first team. Chelsea, Man Utd and Stoke players are doing great, while Portsmouth and Liverpool are wrong bets. Add it up I still get a fine score. Would have fared better if I trust on Stoke more. Failing to identify Man City and Tottenham as great season-starter also costs me a lot.