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 (€50k prize pool) Main Event. The winner takes home a cool €5,000. FanTeam also offer a €2 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.
Fixtures for the GW16 Monster:
Our team suggestion for the Weekly Monster in gameweek 16
Formation: 3-5-2
General approach
Despite the ‘Safety Net’ being available, we’re picking 3 players from the first kick-off (with one being our Vice Captain) due to the high chance of managers resting players due to the short turnaround between GW15 and GW16. We’re then focussing on the teams with the stronger squads and taking a punt on certain rotations. Once we’re seen the line-ups for the first match (Palace v Leicester) we may have to edit our team.
Leicester
There seems to be some doubts on Vardy starting but we will know the team sheet before finalising our team but we think Iheanacho, Perez and Praet (VC) will all start and be a lot fresher than the Palace squad who have lost 10-0 over the last two matches. If your captain and vice captain don’t start then you don’t have either players’ score doubled so we’re making sure of avoiding that issue by putting the VC on Praet.
Chelsea
We’re expecting an immediate bounce-back after the disappointing performance in the derby against Arsenal and that their bigger squad means they are fresher than the in-form Aston Villa. It’s a bit of a gamble but we’re expecting Giroud to take the striker spot (no safety net here if he doesn’t start but we expect him to make an appearance at some point) along with Kai Havertz and Hudson-Odoi in attacking midfield.
Arsenal
It’s about time for a ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’ so we’re selecting Leno in goal and Holding in defence to keep out Brighton who scored 2 goals in GW15.
Liverpool
We made the mistake of captaining Salah in GW15 and we’re continuing that theme in GW16 expecting him to start and get amongst the goals against Newcastle who’ve just had a run around from Man City. It looks like Rhys Williams will be taking over from Matip in central defence after his groin injury so he’s in as well.
The Final Spot
Goes to the inexpensive Semi Ajayi of WBA who may be able to keep a clean sheet against Leeds after their excellent performance against Liverpool.
Gameweek 16 of FanTeam’s €50K Boxing Day Monster starts at 3pm today so don’t delay your entry!