As part of FISO’s special series of weekly articles on FanTeam, Europe’s biggest daily fantasy football provider, we will actually be entering the team we write about each week into the game. Our article will focus on an Early Entry for their Fantasy Premier League tournament held each week in order to help you identify game rules, tactics and the most promising players per gameweek, so you can win some of that large prize money.

Our FISO team below will be entered into this week’s £18 entry (£67,500) prize pool) Main Event. The winner takes home a cool £6,750. FanTeam also offer a £1.80 entry Weekly Monster with a lower prize pool for those who prefer to play with lower stakes. Join the discussion on FISO’s FanTeam forum.

Before moving onto our team selection, we want to highlight a couple of FanTeam rules that they apply to their Weekly Monster competition and that represent some of the major differences when comparing the game to the FPL. Do though check out the Predicted Line-Ups for the Premier League clubs as well as the latest injury news (click on ‘Team’ to sort per club rather than the default ‘date’) before finalising your picks.

Number one is that FanTeam have a rule called the ‘safety net’. The safety net comes into play when a selected player does not start in the Weekly Monster, because the game will then automatically replace this player with the next lowest-priced player from the same position (GK, DEF, MID, FOR) in the same team. This is regardless of whether or not your selected player does take to the field later in the game. This rule helps people who have entered a team into the Weekly Monster not to worry too much about whether their selected players will start or not, particularly if they know there are cheaper players for that same club in that same position who should start instead.

Number two is that FanTeam also have a ‘stacking penalty’ for the Weekly Monster, which penalises teams that have selected more than one defenders/goalkeeper from the same club. The stacking penalty comes into play when you pick more than one defensive player (defenders or goalkeepers) from a particular club and this club records a clean sheet. The points awarded for this clean sheet will decrease by 1 point for each additional defensive player from the same club that you have selected. The stacking penalty has a maximum of minus 3 points. This rule helps stop multi-entrants from gaining an advantage by submitting block defence teams. A reasonable tactic can be to select two players from two different clubs for your Goalie and Defenders, which would see you incur just 2 single-point deductions if you nail both clean sheets correctly.

Gameweek 30 £67.5K Weekly Monster matches

Our team entered in the Weekly Monster in gameweek 30

Formation: 3-5-2

An International break always brings a bit more uncertainty into the mix (thankfully this was the last one of this season albeit a busy one with some Nations playing 3 times) added to which there are important Champions League quarter finals 1st legs on Tuesday for Man City & Liverpool (plus Chelsea on Wednesday whose early Saturday match is the only one not in the weekend’s Monster) and Europa League quarter 1st legs on Thursday for Arsenal & Man Utd (remember Spurs were surprisingly knocked out by Dinamo Zagreb). So with 9 matches to choose from, be aware there could be rotation tactics employed by managers depending on fitness levels and priorities.

The stand-out matches for large points hauls appear to be 6th placed Spurs (4 wins in their last 5 matches) at a 17th placed Newcastle side who have only taken 3 points in their last 5 matches partly due to injuries to key players and the 1st match of the Monster weekend, 11th placed Leeds (7 points in last 5 matches) at home to bottom placed Sheffield United (4 losses in their last 5 matches). 2nd placed Man Utd’s (11 points in 5 matches) home fixture against 16th placed Brighton (after 3 lossess have won their last 2) is another to keep an eye on. Kane and Bruno Fernandes should be the most favoured players for the captain’s armband whilst Bamford and Raphinha are likely to take a lot of Vice Captain spots given that Bamford looks to have recovered from his knock and the Leeds starting line-up will be available to check before finalising teams.

Our team utilises the two most expensive forwards and the two most expensive defenders for this weekend’s Monster plus a couple of fairly expensive midfielders – all 6 players from Leeds & Spurs – and then we hunt around for a bit of value.

Leeds

Bamford (VC), Raphinha and Dallas are quite rightly the most expensive Forward, Midfielder and Defender (playing in midfield) for Leeds who have won all of their 6 matches against the current bottom four and Sheffield United are the worst-ranked team of that small unenviable group. Raphinha is on many dead balls and was Leeds’ match-winner against Fulham in GW29 and over recent gameweeks, Raphinha ranks very high for chances created & shots.

Spurs

Kane (C), Moura and Reguilon are our choices. Hopefully Reguilon has recovered from injury as he is a threat going forward and rightly priced as the highest of the Spurs defenders. Whilst Son (12.8m) has been pictured training again perhaps he will only start from the bench giving Bale (12.0m) and the cheaper Moura (11.4m) the chance to make an impact. We’ve had to compromise a little with our budget for Moura but if he doesn’t start then Ndombele or Bergwijn will automatically replace him. At least Spurs don’t have the distraction of mid-week European football anymore.

Burnley

A resurgent 15th placed Burnley (on 33 points with only 1 loss in the last 5 matches) travel to 14th placed Southampton (also on 33 points but 4 losses in the last 5 matches) so we’re favouring the better priced Burnley players to keep out the Saints who may again be missing Danny Ings. England keeper, Nick Pope, and central defender Tarkowski are our picks.

Crystal Palace

Time to find a couple of budget players! Everton in 8th have had a poor time of it at home losing 5 of their last 7 matches whilst Palace in 12th have only lost 1 match in their last 5 albeit have a tendency to concede away from home. A couple of Palace midfielders, the exciting Eze and the penalty-taking Milivojevic could produce some returns on Monday.

Last but not Least

Jesse Lingard can seemingly do no wrong since signing for 5th placed West Ham on Loan from Man Utd and looks to be reasonably priced at 9.0m for the Hammers visit to 13th placed Wolves in the final game of the Monster (Monday evening).