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 both this week’s £18 entry (£67,500 prize pool) and the £1.80 entry (£11,250 prize pool) Weekly Monster. The winner takes home a cool £6,750 (or £1,350 for the £1.80 entry lower stakes game) and brings excitement to the next 3 days of Premier League action. 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 3 Defenders, which would see you incur just 2 single-point deductions if you nail both clean sheets correctly.
Gameweek 34 Weekly Monster matches
Our team entered in the Weekly Monster in gameweek 34
The highest priced assets for the GW34 are from 7th placed Spurs who take on already relegated Sheffield United in 20th place who pulled off a long-awaited win against Brighton in GW33. We will take 3 from Tottenham with the obligatory Kane, the mercurial Son and the Ivorian right-back Aurier. Spurs will be desperate for a win to help climb into a top 4 position which is 5 points away. Rather than the obvious move of captaining Kane, we’re putting the arm-band on Son.
12th placed Wolves had a disatrous GW33 losing 4-0 at home to Burnley after two previous wins. In GW34 they face 19th placed WBA who have recently found some form in front of goal resulting in 2 wins and a draw in their last 4 matches. We are placing our faith in Wolves to bounce back with a clean sheet and a win and speed merchant Traore along with the highest prices Wolves defenders, Saiss and Semedo, help balance the budget overspend on Spurs assets.
Leeds are now unbeaten in their last 5 matches moving them back up to 9th and in GW34 they face 17th placed Brighton who haven’t won in their last 4. This is also the 1st match in the GW34 Weekly Monster so line-ups will be known prior to the deadline however we’ve selected 3 players that definitely should be in the starting line-up: Goalkeeper Meslier, Defender (but playing in midfield) Dallas and up-front the effervescent Bamford.
That leaves two remaining spots and we’ve saved them for Jesse Lingard who can do little wrong since he was loaned to 5th placed West Ham where he also takes the penalties just as Aston Villa’s El Ghazi did for 11th placed Villa in their last match in GW33.
