All my FISO XI teams over the years have had a restriction to see how it will work over a season, and this season is no different. I see there are a number of team in the Open league with a restriction. Am I the original open FISO XI manager with restrictions? Probably

This season my restriction is to play throughout the season 451, and for my striker to be under £6m.

I think this could work as I see a lot of value in midfield this season, I also think that there are quite a few strikers in that sub £6m bracket that could do well, and it will give me the cash for a strong defence.

Woolster's FISO XI

Hart - Top keeper last season, think he will be again this season.
Baines - Pens, freekicks, corners, crosses, goals, assists, clean sheets, top scoring defender last season, good chance of the same this season.
Huth - 2nd top scoring defender last season, I don't think he will be again, but I still think he is good value.
Hangeland - 4th top scoring defender last season, same thoughts as Huth with regards to value, and I like Fulham's start to the season.
Terry - Had the cash and I like Chelsea's start to the season.
Lampard - Highest ppg of regular playing midfielders last season despite injuries. Price dropping significantly on the back of that looks like good value to me, and as mentioned, I like Chelsea's start.
A Young - Expect him to do well at Utd, and although there is competition for his place, I think he will be the winger who plays most.
Dempsey - Often goes under the radar whilst scoring well. Was 5th top scoring midfielder last season. I like Fulham's start and they should be fitter after longer pre season.
Downing - 6th top scoring midfielder last season. I expect him to be playing very advanced at Liverpool, in the front 3 of a 433 formation, so could be more involved than at Villa, where he was very involved.
N'Zogbia - A fantasy footy favourite of mine. Should do well at Villa, and with Bent to aim for in the box, could get a lot more assists.
A Johnson - See Dempsey reasoning above. Has done well in pre season.

Value - £48.6m. Got a fair bit left over, but this is to have some aside so the striker can go up to £6m in one transfer if I want, with a bit left over for transfers in other parts of the team. The tactic however will be to rotate the striker, the difficulty is that these types of strikers are often very patchy with their scoring so the timing will be the main issue.

The strikers I will be looking at depending on form and fixtures are Gervinho, Dzeko if Tevez leaves and he hits form, Odemwingie, K Davies who always ends up scoring well by the end of the season, Gyan, Ba, Defoe if he gets in the Spurs team, K Jones/Walters, Long, and Fletcher/Doyle, so there is plenty to choose from.

Interesting and pretty good looking line up. I agree a 4-5-1 is not at all a bad choice this season. Not sure about Johnson personally but not a terrible choice either by any stretch

I started going through this team's line-up of players (without checking what the restriction was) and was initially liking it...but then the further I went through it the worse it got .

It lacks 'teeth' IMO and as you can (IMO ) build teams with a defence & midfield as strong as this one without the need to exclude £6m+ strikers I really can't see you enjoying any success, with this particular team at least, this time around...sorry ...

P.S you did ask us to be more forthcoming this season regarding giving our thoughts/advice on everyone's open XIs so I'm only doing what you told me to...

Could be wrong but I seem to remember that someone (not sure who ) ran an open XI which, up to the 1st January, had a very tight transfers used restriction ...

Oh forgot to mention...there's a small possibility that this team might just need a bit more Man City coverage than it's currently got...

He certainly did well avoiding getting injured...fingers crossed he can repeat that miracle for the foreseeable future ...

Well, I do have another £1.4m to play with so could afford a striker up to £6.6m, and if I wanted a more expensive striker I would have someone cheaper than Terry. But my aim with this team is to try to show that you can do well without a big name striker if you are well balanced throughout the rest of the team.

I think we'll need an adjudicator to check the dates

At least I have the balls to have stuck with it

City won't win every game 4-0. I nearly went for Lescott over Terry, but other than him and Kompany, I think there is a bit too much rotation risk with the fullbacks.

In midfield I would only fancy Silva or Toure. I think Toure will in general be playing further back now that they have Aguero, and whilst I think Silva is a great player and will be involved in so much they do, I think he is overpriced as I don't think he scores enough goals for a £5m+ player. I could well end up being wrong in both cases though.

Indeed, but I am only looking for 8 to 10 games form him

Week 1

Will try to update as often as possible, but probably won't be every week.

Hart
Baines
Huth
Hangeland
Terry
Lampard
A Young
Dempsey
Downing
N'Zogbia
A Johnson

Points: 40
Overall Position: 65,941
FISO Open XI League Position: 13th
Value: £48.6m
Transfers: 30

Slow start but relatively happy. All defenders (that played) got a clean sheet, obviously no goals, but its only week 1.

But the point is you can be 'well balanced' with a big name striker or (gulp) even two ...so I really can't see the thinking behind your restriction.

You actually have quite a lot to answer for, originally the point of putting a restriction on your team was to enable you to learn a helpful discipline that under normal circumstances you had difficulty sticking to. But then you start putting on restrictions that would only make sense if you'd already won TFF two/three times and decided that you needed more of a challenge .

Now we've got every Tom, Dick & Harry coming along with increasingly bizarre restrictions (one player from each club, only one overseas player, only GKs, DFs & MDs under £3.5m plus strikers under £6m etc) and to be frank it's made a mockery of the competition...I hope you're pleased with yourself I really do ...

You may wish to lower your expectations slightly to avoid disappointment and maybe look for say...8 to 10 minutes ...

Update please ...

Whoa there! That may have been the point for you when you had your restriction, the point for me of my restriction teams has been to do the opposite of what the forum generally says and show that it can still work. First team(s) were well balanced throughout with none of the 5 most expensive players i each position apart from keeper (days when you had to have Henry, had to have Gerrard or Lampard, ad had to have Terry), I finished in the top 500 or there abouts. Next was block defences, as supposedly it is too risky, well for me it proved to be too risky... Last season was 3 enablers because supposedly it does not have enough balance with just big players and so many enablers, won the FISO XI league in about 300th overall from memory. Perhaps the mockery is the fact I beat you all with such restrictions

And what everyone else has done has got nothing to do with me. I'd blame Hoppy, I think he over emphasised the possibility of restrictions somewhat

Week 4


Hart
Baines
Huth
Hangeland
Terry
Lampard
A Young
Dempsey
Downing
N'Zogbia
A Johnson

Points: 149
Overall Position: 137,610
FISO Open XI League Position: 18th
Value: £48.6m
Transfers: 30

Doing shit so far, but I don't actually think it is due to the restriction, as it is actually my 2nd best team... behind my egg team, how rubbish is that

Of course I went for the wrong sub £6m striker, Dzeko from the start would have seen me significantly higher. However, apart from Johnson and N'Zogbia, and maybe Lampard, I am still relatively happy with my team even if they haven't scored great.

I am planning on doing Johnson to Agbonlahor for a few games (at the mo, seems like Dzeko will play Champs League games), not sure whether to do it for Saturday as Jonson didn't start the last Prem game and I'm not sure if Johnson can play twice in a week having played toight, but he did score, or try to get 2 games from him and do it next week

N'Zogbia will become Nasri on Sunday.

If I have missed any 'n's, its because the n key is not working properly

I think this still falls under the heading of 'helpful discipline' i.e not following the FISO herd but at some point you lost your way & look where we are now ...

There is no way you can win this year Woollyboy, in fact I will go as far as saying you will be in bottom three.

This year you need the big guns and you have limited yourself to 6m or less depriving yourself of pretty much all of them.

Good luck with that. I will eat my own "insert item here" if I don't finish ahead of you.

This team needs Adebayor/Dzeko ASAP ...

I like this team it has most of the mistakes which I have avoided

Adebayor will be coming in at some point soon, I went for Agbonlahor as he's done well and I liked his games with the plan to get Adebayor in at some point. Was going ok until
Liverpool were reduced to 9 men. Will probably do it after the wigan game.

Week 7

Hart
Baines
Huth
Hangeland
Terry
Lampard
A Young
Dempsey
Downing
N'Zogbia Nasri
A Johnson Agbonlahor

Points: 201
Overall Position: 164,212
FISO Open XI League Position: 20th
Value: £49m
Transfers: 28

Team is doing even worse

Agbonlahor came in has done ok getting a goal in his 2 games. Obv Adebayor has outperformed him in those 2 games, and as mentioned I do plan to bring him in, but Agbonlahor will get 3 more games as I prefer his fixtures and he has shown some form.

Looking further ahead, will probably down grade Lampard to upgrade Downig or Dempsey.

Week 10

Hart
Baines
Huth
Hangeland
Terry
Lampard
A Young
Dempsey
Downing
Nasri
Agbonlahor

Points: 287
Overall Position: 114,322
FISO Open XI League Position: 18th
Value: £49m
Transfers: 28

Moved up a reasonable amount, although still lagging behind in the FISO XI Superleague. I think Huth will be going out this weekend, maybe for Enrique or Bosingwa. I think Hangeland may go soon as well, he was brought in for Fulham's good start, well now their run of games is not so good. Lampard has earnt a stay of execution. Will probably do Downing to Mata this weekend. Dempsey may be transferred for same reason as Hangeland. Finally Agbonlahor will become Adebayor, perhaps this weekend as well.

Quite a few transfers, but not sure when I am doing them all yet

Week 12

Hart
Baines
Huth Enrique
Hangeland
Terry Shawcross
Lampard
A Young van der Vaart
Dempsey
Downing Mata
Nasri
Agbonlahor Adebayor

Points: 336
Overall Position: 80,758
FISO Open XI League Position: 13th
Value: £49.1m
Transfers: 23

So, as discussed, made a few transfers over the last couple of weeks. 2 weekends ago I did the Huth to Enrique, Downing to Mata and Agbonlahor to Adebayor.

Last weekend I decided I wanted to get VdV in, and decided that Terry's time was up as he was only meant to be in for the start of the season anyway and it meant I could raise the funds to get VdV in. Went for Shawcross as I like the look of their games coming up. Hope his injury isn't too bad. The original plan was for VdV to come in for Dempsey, but with him scoring well and Young injured, decided to transfer out Young instead.

Still not doing great, but at least continuing to improve.

Looking forward, gonna see how Nasri plays, that's if he plays. I could daisy chain from Nasri to Silva. The other option is to get Silva in for Dempsey. I still don't like Fulham's games, despite Dempsey playing well, but to do Silva to Dempsey I would need to downgrade Hangeland, perhaps to Bosingwa.

Unfortunately I seem to not time my strikers well, with players on my radar like Dzeko, Ba, even Johnson after I sold him scoring hat-tricks. Could be doing a lot better if I had picked them right.

Week 15

Hart
Baines
Enrique
Hangeland
Shawcross
Lampard
van der Vaart
Dempsey
Mata
Nasri Bale
Adebayor

Points: 461
Overall Position: 60,642
FISO Open XI League Position: 8th
Value: £49.2m
Transfers: 22

Team has seen a gradual move up the overall table, which is good, and up to 8th in the SL, which is not too bad either.

Only change since the last update is Bale coming in for Nasri which I did before the international break. Original plan was to daisy chain from Bale to Silva this weekend, but Bale is on a hot streak and City have what would be termed for most teams as a difficult run, so think I will hold fire there.

I was planning to bring in Walker last night for Hangeland to give me a bit more cash to play with after getting Silva in, but having a baby got in the way. I think I will look to do this in a few weeks or for Micah Richards. Can get a extra game for it this weekend, but as I say, City have some tougher games, so might be best to wait on that one as well.

Week 22

Hart
Baines
Enrique
Hangeland Richards
Shawcross Jones
Lampard Nani
van der Vaart
Dempsey
Mata
Bale
Adebayor

Points: 791
Overall Position: 45,893
FISO Open XI League Position: 8th
Value: £49.0m
Transfers: 19

No update for a while, been busy with getting married, Xmas, NYE and what not.

Since the last update I have made the above changes. The team has moved up the overall league quite well, although remain in 8th in the FISO SL, although I hope Dempsey's should hat trick will move me up a place or 2.

Happy with the team now, however looking ahead, Adebayor will be missing the City game and will then have a relatively tough little run, so I will be looking to start the daisy chaining of my striker to pick up extra games. I had decided that the best bet was to probably bring in Helguson next weekend after Spurs play Wigan as QPRs games are ok and his ppg has bee decent, with Leon Best my 2nd choice, but today's result and the replay that comes from it I think has sealed the deal.

Week 23

Hart
Baines
Enrique
Richards
Jones
Nani
van der Vaart
Dempsey
Mata
Bale
Adebayor Helguson

Points: 875
Overall Position: 38,339
FISO Open XI League Position: 9th
Value: £48.0m
Transfers: 18

Team has moved up 7k or so in the overall, so pretty happy with that. Disappointed to drop a place in the FISO XI league though. However I just checked out last season's FISO XI league to see how I was doing at the same stage, and my team was in 43k with only 1 transfer less used. That team ended just outside the top 500, so there is still all to play for, although I think last season's team had a bit more flexibility, so I am not expecting that kind of outcome again.

Unfortunately (so far), I picked the wrong striker as I went with Helguson and Best got the goal, but that's the way it goes some times. As I have said in the QPR 3 for 0 thread, I thought he would be a sub in tonight's game anyway, but as long as Helguson starts the next game against Wigan and doesn't lose points, I won't be too unhappy. I think from these short term transfers you would hope to be getting 10 points per transfer for it to have worked out well, so 5 points from a 1 transfer, risk free punt won't be a disaster, but as its against Wigan, I am still hoping he could get a bit extra.

The next part of my daisy chain is likely to be Henry, thou shalt pick him after all, and after the Utd game they have a good little run and I think he might be ready to start games, although perhaps Arsene will wait until after the Utd game. I could wait for after the QPR v Chelsea game and still get the extra game rather than bring in Henry for the Utd game, but the risk is QPR get a new striker in that time, so I will probably do it this weekend, even though we won't know if Henry starts.

Nani has been disappointing since coming in, but I will wait for the outcome of the Liverpool cup game before deciding to get rid or not.

Week 26

Hart
Baines
Enrique
Richards
Jones Vermaelen
Nani Gerrard
van der Vaart Sessegnon
Dempsey
Mata
Bale
Helguson Sturridge

Points: 1001
Overall Position: 25,286
FISO Open XI League Position: 6th
Value: £46.4m
Transfers: 14

Team is at its highest position this season, so it has been a decent few weeks. Helguson got me those 10 points, unfortunately he missed a pen so it could have been that little bit better. Henry was a doubt so I held on to Helguson, but with his injury last weekend, I brought in Sturridge for Chelsea's decent run coming up. I will probably bring in Ba down the line, but want to see if his position changes with Pappis Cisse. Perhaps I may brig in Cisse

With Nani being out for an unknown time, I brought in Gerrard for a few games as although he has some toughish games, can see him popping with a goal or 2 from dead ball situations, unfortunately he missed the Wolves games.

Jones also being out for an unknown time brought about another transfer and I brought in Vermaelen. Arsenal have a good run and he pops up with goals and I haven't seen him mentioned much and think he has been a bit overlooked. I thinkn he could do well and he has come into a lot of my teams.

With VdV coming off midweek, I decided I would go for some extra games from midfield rather than risk holding him and him not playing, and as I won't have that many chances with my strikers for extra game transfers I a feel, and with Sunderland having a replay and Sessegnon being bang on form I brought him in on Wednesday.

Apart from reversing the Sessegnon transfer at some point, with only 14 transfers I am planing to sit tight for a while, but we'll see.