Hi fella Fisoers,

What a strange season this has been for me in Daily Mail Fantasy Football. I love this game and for the last 3 seasons I have consistently finished within the top 50 and back in 2009/2010 season almost won the competition (it was known in metro fantasy football then) until my team ran out of steam in the last 2 weeks and for Andy Edwards to finall emerge victorious.

This season however, with the new format and 15 man squad, i find myself struggling severely and have all my 5 teams roughly positioned between 2900 and 4000 in the country, ranging from 792 points to 775 points. I have to admit I have struggled tactically this season with this new format. At first I thought it was obvious that you try and have all your 15 players playing every week so tryed to derive a team around this. Now this is not always possible, but when it has been, it has barely payed dividends. More often than not, playing all 15 players in a given week this season has lost me points.

Now I can see from the leaderboard, that some of the old pros (Richard Stirland, Bruce Baer, Russell Cane etc) have made very good starts. Without giving too much away, I was wondering if you guys had concentrated more on having a very strong 11 players rather than trying to have a solid 15 man squad and trying where possible to utilise every player each week?


We

By the way, great job guys on getting rid of the Prossers this season.... I see the witch hunt paid off. Not that he was a serious threat to any of the pros in this game

Solid 15 man team for me rather than 11 Superstars

Was 12-13 each week up until now, with a few tweeks this weekend sees a 15 man team up until new year bar the keeper for 2 of the next 9 weeks

Have been very lucky with my starting squad/captain choice

An old pro? It's only my second season in the Mail

Hi

It is far too early for talk of throwing in the towel after only 10 games, you should not be disappointed with your start 5 teams between 2,900 - 4,000 position is decent in a game in which there are at least 126,000+ teams. Things can change very quickly and rapid gains can be made with the right captain changes at the right times, so keep going and be positive and you can still improve on your decent start.

I have been fortunate enough to have had a good start and reached the top 100 with my best team it is now in joint 100th position just off the leaderboard having sneaked onto the bottom before last nights game, and my second best team is in the top 200 as well, as I referred to good calls/striking it lucky on my captain changes have probably made the difference as I started with Rooney as captain in one of these teams and am probably not giving too much away in saying switched him a few games ago to a certain Arsenal striker. The hattrick against Chelsea was an unexpected bonus by the way.

Also be prepared to make bold moves, it can pay off, hopefully I will not regret my decision not to bring in Ba yesterday evening too much.

Looking back on the history of these teams I have probably fielded on average 13 or 14 players most weeks, so don't feel that you have to have all 15 playing each week. I set my teams up early around Man City players, partly because they are good and also in part due to the way their fixtures worked and also looked to Europa league teams to include players from those teams to maximise point scoring opportunities in my squad as there games fall on Sunday.

I hope I am not teaching you to suck eggs here but goalscoring midfielders, identifying midfielders who can score goals over the course of the season and keeping them season long where possible due to the extra points for a midfielder goal over a striker goal means that goalscoring midfielders are worth paying for, although some of them are underpriced Essentially 12 midfield goals are worth approximately 20 striker goals.

Again, not meaning to teach you to suck eggs again but players from teams that can win games, 3 points for a players team winning keep the points ticking over even if the said player doesn't do much else in a game.

Good luck for the rest of the season with those captain changes and transfers and I am sure you can make progress.

Sorry not an old pro, how about a wily fox

For your second season you are doing great.

nbbbee10, thanks for your advise on the attacking midfielders and the how the points per goal for a midfielder is far superior to a striker And you are teaching me to suck eggs but I apprecaite it

Hello

OK, these were my tactics- I just picked what I felt was the best squad I could get, treating it as a 15 man game. Although I didn't worry about fixtures, I picked more balanced squads than I would have done for more rotation of players. eg. last season I started with several block defences, this time I never had more than two defenders from the same team.

I went 4-4-2 with at least one cheapy (but still decent) in each position including Demba Ba who I then took out of all teams the week before his scoring run started Once the Sky fixtures up to Christmas were announced I made a few transfers with maximising the squad use in mind so I think I only have to leave one player out from now til new year (keepers not included).

It's far too early to give up. My team on the leaderboard was 6000th four weeks ago and my worst side went from 30,000 to 1500 in the same time. The first year of this game I has a side around 30,000th at this stage finish around 60th. You can make up ground quickly and there's a long way to go.

Good Luck!

Don't throw the towel in, it's such a high scoring game I firmly believe any team in the top 5 or 6 thousand can still win this.
Not even a third of the way through the season yet, and then you've got the extra FA Cup games to take into consideration.
As for strategy, I aint got a clue Doing quite well with one team but I didn't use a different strategy with the others which are not doing so well!