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 €20 entry (€100k prize pool) Main Event. The winner takes home a cool €10,000. FanTeam also offer a €2 entry Weekly Monster with a lower prize pool for those who prefer to play with lower stakes.
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.
Fixtures for the GW11 Monster:
Our team suggestion for the Weekly Monster in gameweek 9
Formation: 3-4-3
General approach
On FanTeam, it’s another €100K prize pool for fantasy Premier League managers this gameweek, the second one in a row. In comparison, the budget was slightly lowered from 110M to 105M, but we managed to put together a relatively balanced team in terms of budget and expectations. On paper, at least. We’ve focused on goals (and clean sheets) for this one, in combination with some mid-week European duties that could have serious impact on this weekend’s performances.
The core of our squad consists of Manchester City and West Ham players, with three fantasy picks from each roster. We have added two double-ups to these six, with two players from Spurs and Burnley each, and topped it off with a defender who we feel represents decent value and potential for this round.
MANCHESTER CITY
First of all, there is Man City, the obvious favourite for fantasy managers this gameweek as they host Fulham at the Etihad. The Cottagers booked a major victory against Leicester in London last weekend, which will have done their confidence a world of good, but we find it hard to imagine another upset taking place against Pep Guardiola’s men. The men in skyblue have not been at their usual best yet this season, at least in an attacking sense, but they did show a glimpse of what they are capable of against Burnley in gameweek 10.
The 5-0 drubbing against the Clarets was especially favourable for those fantasy managers who put their faith in Riyad Mahrez and Kevin de Bruyne. The former bagged a hattrick and a delicious 20 FT points, while the latter recorded 11 FT points, courtesy of 2 assists. For this week, we have included both in our squad, despite their sky-high prices. As a matter of fact, they are the two most expensive players for gameweek 11, but we feel they’ll be worth it. The Belgian is our captain, the Algerian our vice-captain.
We decided to go all-in on City by also selecting forward Gabriel Jesus, the third most expensive asset in the FanTeam Gameweek 11 €100K Weekly Monster tournament. He looks set to start against Fulham and it looks like a good opportunity for him to work on his current tallies. With just 2 goals and a single assist to his name so far, his start to the Premier League season has been somewhat underwhelming. No team has conceded more than Fulham’s 19 goals in 10 games so far, which bodes well for our Man City trio.
WEST HAM
Where our bet on Man City at home against Fulham is in reality quite straight forward, our triple-up on West Ham is quite a bit more risky. The Hammers are hosting Manchester giants United on Saturday. The home side currently sits in 5th place in the league though, while the visitors find themselves in 9th, but with just 1 point less and a game in hand. Nevertheless we feel that this weekend could be a great moment for West Ham to book a victory against the Red Devils. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s men have been a bit hot and cold so far this season, and on top of that, they have just come off a disappointing home loss against PSG in the Champions League. As a result, United, Leipzig and PSG all have 9 points now, which means that the Mancunians need to win in Germany next week to avoid elimination (assuming PSG beat Istanbul Basaksehir at home to qualify).
This is likely to have an impact on the team’s starting lineup, substitute management and maybe even mindset/attitude when they visit London Stadium this weekend. This is why we have chosen three West Ham players for our gameweek 11 squad, starting with midfielders Jarrod Bowen and Pablo Fornals. The former was the man of the match last weekend against Aston Villa with a goal and an assist, while the latter has been a mainstay in manager David Moyes’ starting eleven this season. The Spaniard has already scored 2 goals and 4 assists over the 2020-21 Premier League campaign.
Our third Hammer is their striker, Michail Antonio. The English striker returned from injury last weekend and looked a bit rusty still. He was replaced at half-time by Sebastien Haller, who made another good impression despite not recording an attacking return in 45 minutes of playing time. Still, we think that Antonio will once again lead the line in GW11 as he is working back to full match fitness, but even if he doesn’t, FanTeam’s Safety Net will replace him with Haller in our team. In any case, our team will feature West Ham’s starting striker as they take on a United side in the middle of a hectic period.
SPURS
This weekend, it’s also London derby time and we have selected two players from the home team, two defenders to be exact. Tottenham are hosting Arsenal on Sunday and the Gunners are going through an extremely dry spell at the moment. While they are not awful defensively, they have managed to score just twice themselves in the past six gameweeks. That’s a very worrying statistic, especially considering the fact that José Mourinho’s Spurs currently boast the Premier League’s most solid defence.
That’s the reason why we picked both left-back Sergio Reguilón and right-back Serge Aurier for our FanTeam €100 Weekly Monster squad. At 8.4M and 8.2M respectively, they are amongst the three most expensive Spurs defenders this week, which also grants us some security from the Safety Net, particularly with Reguilon facing a fitness battle to be ready. Should any of the two not start on Sunday, then the likes of Matt Doherty, Toby Alderweireld and Davinson Sanchez will come into the team.
BURNLEY
By selecting two Burnley assets, we have taken a bit of a gamble mainly based on their opponent’s recent form. The Clarets are hosting Everton this weekend, which on paper looks like a very difficult game, but the Toffees have actually lost a bit of their shine since the start of the season. They got off to a great start by taking 13 of the first 15 points, but in the five games after that, they took just three points. Only the away game against Fulham in gameweek 9 won, while the games versus Southampton, Newcastle, Man United and Leeds resulted in defeats. Carlo Ancelotti’s men conceded 10 goals over that same period.
Now, Burnley is far from a goal-scoring machine and they are just coming off a serious 5-0 defeat against United’s skyblue city neighbours, but we feel an upset could be on the cards here. In any case, it doesn’t look like it will be a walk in the park for the Toffees against a Burnley side that is slowly improving. Considering Everton’s defensive weakness, we have gone with Clarets striker Chris Wood, who might cause some serious issues with his physique and movements. If Sean Dyche’s manage to create some offensive danger, the New Zealand international is likely to be involved. The second Claret is goalkeeper Nick Pope, an excellent shot stopper who will hopefully at least rack up a few save points.
EXTRA
To complete our 11-men squad, we needed one more defender and we had a bit of budget left, so we ended up fitting in Wesley Fofana. Leicester are visiting Sheffield United on Sunday and the Foxes are in real need of a victory after two consecutive defeats, including the surprise defeat at the hands of Fulham at Craven Cottage last weekend. Sheffield United have had a horrid start to the season with just 1 point from the first ten league games and just 4 goals to their name. In theory, a win and a clean sheet should be possible for Leicester and Fofana.