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 GW12 Monster:
Our team suggestion for the Weekly Monster in gameweek 12
Formation: 4-3-3
General approach
It’s another big-money €100K Weekly Monster for gameweek 12 of the Premier League on FanTeam and we have gone with a slightly different strategy this time. Seeing as there are quite a few appealing fixtures this weekend, from a fantasy point of view at least, and taking into account the considerable number of premium picks facing favourable opposition, we have based our team a bit more on the potential big hitters instead of teams likely to perform well as a whole.
Having said that, our selection for the FanTeam €100K Weekly Monster still boasts quite a bit of both. We have picked two Liverpool aces for their visit to Fulham, two Magpies at both ends of the pitch as they host a struggling West Brom side at Saint James’ Park, two Aston Villa players as they prepare for a challenging visit to Molineux, two defensive Burnley assets and a trio of individual picks who could very well deliver the goods for their respective teams this weekend.
GOALKEEPER
Burnley’s Nick Pope is probably one of the most reliable goalkeepers in the English top flight and he is up against Arsenal in North London this weekend. Normally, this would be more than a serious challenge for the Clarets and this traditional wisdom is reflected is Pope’s low price, but there’s nothing normal or traditional about the Gunners this season. Mikel Arteta’s men currently find themselves in 15th place with just 13 points from 11 games. Even more worrying is the fact that they have scored just 10 goals so far, only the bottom three (Burnley, West Brom and Sheffield United) have scored less. As a matter of fact, Arsenal have scored just 2 goals in the last seven PL games. Let that sink in for a moment and you’ll understand why Pope is our goalie this weekend.
DEFENCE
What’s more, we doubled up on the Burnley defence by also selecting Ben Mee as one of our four defenders. With a price tag of just 4.8M, he represents a very interesting budget-enabling opportunity. Not counting the 5-0 drubbing at the Etihad against Manchester City, the Clarets have conceded just a single goal in their last four games, which could point to Sean Dyche getting back some of his team’s trademark defensive solidity. They’ll be hoping to make it a third shut-out in five and so will we.
Mee is joined in defence by Jamal Lewis, Newcastle’s left-back and one of their main creative forces, despite not having an attacking return to his name yet. He gets plenty of chances to bomb forward and an his first assist looks like a matter of time. There is, of course, the issue of Newcastle still not being a free-scoring goal machine, but they do have Callum Wilson, who is a kind of fixture-proof danger man. This weekend, Lewis and co are up against West Brom, who will need to make do without their star forward Matheus Pereira after a red card against Palace last weekend. A third Newcastle clean sheet of the season could be on the cards here.
The same goes for Leicester’s Wesley Fofana, though his team has already recorded 3 clean sheets so far. The Foxes seem to have experienced a rather sudden drop of form over the past few weeks with unconvincing results versus Liverpool, Fulham and Sheffield United, but the quality is still there. On Sunday evening, they are hosting a Brighton side whose biggest issue so far this season has been to translate decent performances into points. One of the issues for Graham Potter’s men is scoring, which is underlined by their 6 goals over the last six games. The returns to fitness of forwards Neal Maupay and Leandro Trossard are confidence boosters, but we’re not sure if it will be enough for the Seagulls to break the Leicester defence this weekend.
Our fourth defensive pick is Aston Villa’s Matt Targett, who is playing a Jimenez-less Wolverhampton Wanderers side on Saturday. The Mexican Wolves star was stretchered off with a serious head injury last weekend and has fortunately left the hospital already this week, but he will not be present against Villa. That’s a big loss for the home team, because he has been directly involved in 5 of their 11 goals. He is amongst the top three in his team for successful attacking passes, key passes and crosses as well, though Wolves don’t allow for much attacking joy usually. We feel that Villa could upset them this weekend though, possibly by keeping a clean sheet.
MIDFIELD
That’s also why we have selected Jack Grealish for our FanTeam €100K Weekly Monster squad this round. The Villa talisman is once again key for most of his team’s attacking moves, which had led to 5 goals and 6 assists in nine games, seeing as the Villans had a blank gameweek in round 1 of the campaign and saw their clash with Newcastle getting postponed as a result of a virus in the Magpie camp. With 20 goals, only the current top five have scored more goals than Villa this season, which is impressive considering the fact they have played two games less. Wolves have conceded 7 goals in the last four games, including one against goal-shy Arsenal, though it should be noted that four of those goals were conceded at Anfield last weekend. In any case, Grealish can deliver against any team and he could be the one to mark the difference at Molineux.
The bulk of our midfield and indeed of our team is formed by our Liverpool duo, though. First up is Mo Salah, who is gameweek 12’s most expensive fantasy asset on FanTeam as the Reds are up for a visit to Craven Cottage. The Egyptian has already scored 9 times and provided 3 assists in the Premier League this season, and he was also on target against Midtjylland in the mid-week Champions League game on Wednesday. A relative downside to selecting (and captaining) Salah is that manager Jurgen Klopp let him complete the 90 minutes on Wednesday, which could lead to a rest against Fulham on Sunday. Personally, we think he’ll start, but do keep an eye on Liverpool team news.
The advantage of picking his partner in crime Sadio Mané is that the Senegalese forward is practically certain to start against the Cottagers. He was benched for the game against Midtjylland and came on in the 87th minute for Diogo Jota, so we’re expecting him in the starting eleven on Sunday. Mané has not been keeping up with Salah as much as in previous seasons so far, but he has still recorded 4 goals and 4 assists in 10 Premier League appearances. In Fulham, he is facing the second-leakiest defence in the league as Scott Parker’s men have already conceded 21 goals in 11 games.
In case one of our two Liverpool stars is not starting, FanTeam’s Safety Net will automatically bring in midfield replacements.
ATTACK
We have gone with a heavy attack this week, starting with Tottenham’s very own Harry Kane. As a result of his away game against Crystal Palace, he is the third-most expensive forward in the game this weekend, but with good reason. In 11 Premier League games, the England number nine has already scored 8 goals and provided 10 assists, which is simply incredible. Only in gameweek 1 at home to Everton and in gameweek 10 at Stamford he failed to return, but the remaining 9 games resulted in a total of 99 FanTeam points, 24 more than number two amongst forwards Dominic Calvert-Lewin. Sunday’s opponents Palace have enjoyed a decent start to the 2020-21 campaign, but Kane and the rest of José Mourinho’s Spurs will likely prove to be a bit too much for them.
The man on fire is joined in attack by Danny Ings, who returned to footballing action in style by scoring the winning goal for Southampton from the penalty spot last weekend against Brighton. He was brought on by manager Ralph Hasenhüttl at the start of the second half after missing about 3.5 games due to injury and immediately showed how much better an already in-form Soton can be with him in front. This weekend, the Saints are welcoming Sheffield United to Saint Mary’s and the Blades are in trouble. They have taken just a single point from their first 11 league games and they managed to net just five times over that period. The worst start for any team in the history of the Premier League. With low confidence, a malfunctioning attack and a leaky defence, a Danny Ings looking to make up for lost time is the last person they’ll want to face.
Finally, Callum Wilson. We already briefly mentioned him when discussing his team mate Jamal Lewis as defensive pick for gameweek 12. The former Bournemouth striker has made himself invaluable to Newcastle in just a few months time by being directly involved in an unbelievable 83% of their goals so far. With 7 goals and 3 assists in just nine league appearances, the England international is performing at an impressive rate and looks like a no-brainer for the home game against West Brom on Saturday. The Baggies came off conceding five against Palace, so a few more against Newcastle would not be surprising.