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.
Gameweek 17 €50K Weekly Monster matches (just 7):
Our team suggestion for the Weekly Monster in gameweek 17
Formation: 4-3-3
General approach
The FanTeam €50K Weekly Monster for gameweek 17 of the Premier League boasts just seven games, due to the slightly spread fixture calendar for the coming weekend. It includes four games on Saturday, two on Sunday and one on Monday, this leaving out Friday’s encounters featuring Everton against West Ham and Manchester United versus Aston Villa, and the game between corona-hit sides Burnley and Fulham. The latter omission is more of a decision on the part of FanTeam, because other fantasy Premier League games do still feature the match and no official statement on the status of the match has been communicated yet.
With a budget of 105M, we have selected a squad of eleven players, consisting of a possibly surprising Wolves trio, three double-ups (from Manchester City, Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur), the best goalkeeper on FanTeam right now, plus a Crystal Palace punt. We’re lining up in a 4-3-3 formation in order to allow for the inclusion of a few high-potential big hitters, so let’s go over our fantasy picks for gameweek 17.
GOALKEEPER
As we wrote earlier, our goalkeeper for the upcoming gameweek is currently the highest-scoring goalkeeper in the game, namely Alex McCarthy with 80.5 FT points. Southampton has already recorded 7 clean sheets this season, three of which came in the last five games, and their shot stopper has made 47 saves so far. Only five goalkeepers have made more this season. Saves are also what we’re hoping for when the Saints host Liverpool coming Monday in the final game of GW17. The best-performing goalie on FanTeam from one of the in-form sides for just 6M at home against an attacking side, sounds like save potential to us.
WOLVES
With 21 points from 16 games, the Wolverhampton Wanderers are not performing very badly, per se, but they were surely expecting more from the first half of their 2020-21 Premier League campaign. The serious injury and long-term absence of their star man Raul Jimenez plays a big role in this, naturally, but the Wolves defence is still relatively solid. Eight teams have conceded less than their 21 goals and manager Nuno Espirito Santo’s teams are generally known for their defensive prowess. They haven’t had a clean sheet since gameweek 7, but we feel this weekend’s match-up with Brighton could result in their fifth clean sheet of the season.
That’s why we have made a double investment in the Wolves defence with Romain Saïss and Nelson Semedo. Despite being the two highest price Wolves defenders, they were both priced below 8M and are facing a team that has scored just 3 goals in the last five Premier League encounters. Of those five, three ended in clean sheets for the opposition. Wolves, on the other hand, have not booked a clean sheet since GW7, but they also have conceded more than 1 goal in a single game on just two occasions (4-0 away to Liverpool and 2-1 away to Burnley). They are favourites for this game and we’re predicting a small victory with a clean sheet for the Molineux men.
We completed our Wolves trio with their new star man, Daniel Podence, who has become one of their main sources of attacking danger since Raul Jimenez’ injury. Wolves have been far from free-scoring so far this season and the Portuguese attacking midfielder has recorded just five attacking returns so far (3 goals and 2 assists), the last of which came back in gameweek 13 in the form of a goal against Chelsea. Still, when Wolves are attacking, Podence is almost always involved and we don’t expect this to be any different at the AmEx on Saturday.
MANCHESTER CITY
Our team for FanTeam’s €50K Weekly Monster also boasts two Manchester City assets, though not the kind of assets that we have gotten used to when talking about City. Usually, with Pep Guardiola’s Cityzens, it’s the attackers and attack-oriented players who take up most of the spotlight (and the budget), but that’s different this season. This season, they have scored an average 21 goals in 16 games (10 teams have done better), but they have only conceded 12 goals over that same run (no team has done better). Their game at Stamford Bridge is one of the big ones of the weekend, but the Blues seem to have lost their good form from earlier in the season as they have now taken just 4 points from the last five games. Over that same run, manager Frank Lampard’s men have scored just 6 goals, three of which came in the 3-0 GW14 home victory over West Ham.
In other words, the Chelsea vs Man City game on Saturday will be a game between a team that is struggling a bit at the moment and a team that is yet to find the attacking, goal-laden form that we have become so accustomed to from them over the years. Betting on this one is risky, we know, but we think this one could end up disappointing for the home side. This feeling is reflected in our selection of both Joao Cancelo and John Stones for gameweek 17. Both Skyblue fantasy assets have been kind to fantasy managers of late, so we hope that will continue this weekend. We may change ‘green’ Stones to ‘red’ Mendy with the small amount of budget left to guard against Pep rotation and use the saftey net (getting Mendy, Laporte, Ake & Stones in that order).
SPURS
After the more budget-friendly picks, it’s now time for our aces for gameweek 17, starting with Tottenham Hotspur. José Mourinho’s men were handed an unexpected, but surely very welcome rest in gameweek 16 as their fixture against Fulham was postponed due to a Covid-19 explosion at Craven Cottage. As a result, the Spurs will be fresh and raring to go when Leeds United roll up to the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday. Marcelo Bielsa’s side are usually a joy to watch, but they do leak goals as only West Brom have conceded more than them (30 vs 35 goals). Counter-attacking sides seem to especially enjoy themselves against the Whites, which is why the largest portion of our budget this week has been spent on Spurs stars.
After this intro, we probably don’t need to tell you who we have selected for gameweek 17, but we will, just in case. Harry Kane and Heung-Min Son had a blistering start to the 2020-21 campaign, but they seem to have cooled down a bit with just a single goal between them in the last three league games. It should be noted though, that these three games were against Liverpool and Wolves away, and Leicester at home. We are confident that Tottenham’s dynamic English-Korean duo will get back to their scoring ways against Leeds. So much, in fact, that we have picked Son as our captain for FanTeam’s €50K Weekly Monster tournament in gameweek 17.
LEICESTER CITY
Our other big hitters for this weekend are Leicester aces, starting with the inevitable, Jamie Vardy. The English striker has already been directly involved in 18 goals this season (11 goals, 7 assists), which represents a staggering 62% of all his team’s goals. Over the last five Premier League games, he has scored 2 goals and provided 4 assists for a total of 34 FT points. For the upcoming away game against Newcastle, we have selected him as our vice-captain, as the Magpies have conceded 8 goals in their last four outings, including gameweek 16’s 0-0 draw versus Liverpool.
Seeing as we don’t think that manager Steve Bruce’s men will keep two clean sheets in a row, we have doubled up on Leicester’s attack by also spending a considerable part of our budget for this week on James Maddison. The attacking midfielder had some injury troubles during the first months of this season, but he is back now to shape Leicester’s attack. He currently sits on 3 goals and 4 assists, and he has looked lively in his last few games. On top of that, he was given a rest for the away game at Selhurst Park in gameweek 16, so we’re expecting a very fit and motivated Maddison to turn up against Newcastle on Sunday.
BONUS
By the time we had selected 10 players, we still had about 10M of budget left to ideally spend on an attacker or a midfielder. We decided to go for a differential and take a punt on Crystal Palace forward Christian Benteke. We all know that Roy Hodgson’s Palace are far from a goal-scoring machine, but this weekend looks like a good opportunity for them to work on that. Besides that, everyone at the club will see the upcoming home game against struggling Sheffield United as a must-win. Seeing as Wilfried Zaha was just outside of our remaining budget, we have gone with the next best thing in the Palace attack. The Belgian forward saw his first start back in gameweek 11 result in a brace and he has been a starter for the Eagles ever since. It’s true that he just scored 1 more goal since then, but it should be said that the opposition over that run was tough. Against the Blades, we expect Benteke to start once again and hopefully he will improve his goal tally in that case.