FanTeam Premier League – GW 32 €50K Main Event – Wed 1st July

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. This series will focus on FanTeam’s Premier League Main Event, a daily fantasy league based on the Premier League games. Our article will focus on an Early Entry for this weekly tournament 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, which has a maximum entry limit of 3,500 participants. Every week, we’ll report back on how our team performed in the previous week. A finish in the top 556 would see us win part of the prize pool of which the winner takes home a cool €7,500. FanTeam also offer a €2 entry Weekly Monster with a lower prize pool (of which the winner should get about €1,100) 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.

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.

Finally, the Pursuit format is being applied to the upcoming FanTeam Weekly Monster for gameweek 31+. In this game mode, you get more bonus points the cheaper your players are (you gain 1 point for every 2.5 million euros underspent). Your captain will get double points, but he will also cost twice as much. Your vice-captain will get 150% more points, but he will also cost 150% more. You can read about Pursuit in more detail on the FanTeam website.

Don’t forget, the deadline for gameweek 32+ FanTeam’s Main Event is set at 18h00 (UK time) on Wednesday, July 1st, 2020. You can enter a team earlier and make changes right up to the deadline. This means you have an hour to check the starting line-ups  for all 3 games.

Gameweek 32 Weekly Main Event matches (times UK+1)

How did our Main Event team fare in gameweek 31?

NAME (club) (opponent)RETURNSPOINTS
Calvert-Lewin (Everton) vs Nor (a)Impact +14
Jota (Wolves) vs Bou (H)Impact +13
Jimenez (Wolves) vs Bou (H)1 goal, Impact +17
Richarlison (Everton) vs Nor (a)Clean sheet, Impact +14
Traoré (Wolves) vs Bou (H)Clean sheet, assist, Impact +17
Fernandes (Man Utd) vs Sheffield Utd (H)Clean sheet, Impact +14

Our team suggestion for the Main Event in gameweek 32

Formation: 3-2-1 |  Budget used: 73.0m

General approach

Seeing as gameweek 32 was spread out over a period of six days in order to accommodate for the FA Cup quarter finals, we’ve all had to wait a few days for FanTeam’s Main Event, but our patience is rewarded. The GW32 €50K Main Event will revolve around the schedule for Wednesday, July 1st, consisting of just three games. These include an unreliable Arsenal side hosting prime relegation candidates Norwich, a tightly contested Everton-Leicester encounter at Goodison Park and a struggling Bournemouth welcoming a virtually safe Newcastle. For our gameweek 32 selection, we’ve gone with 2 Arsenal aces, 2 Newcastle assets and 2 Everton players, in part to follow what seems to be a developing post-coronabreak trend of low-scoring games, and to play the Pursuit mode odds a bit more as well.

ARSENAL

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Hector Bellerín

For this week’s FanTeam GW32 €50K Main Event, Arsenal are, on paper at least, the team with the most favourable fixture as they are hosting last placed Norwich. The Gunners are having a season to forget, but we’ve still opted to select and captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang for this one. The Gabonese forward hasn’t scored or assisted since his brace and subsequent 13-point haul back in gameweek 27, partly due to his team’s performances and partly due to some bad luck over the past few rounds. In any case, if there was ever a game and a moment for a soon-to-run-out-of-his-contract worldclass striker, it’s this one. Despite his recent goal drought, Auba still sits on 17 goals and 3 assists for this season, while only Aston Villa have conceded more than the Canaries’ 56 goals in 31 games.

The combination of relatively high price tags and coach Mikel Arteta’s love for rotation made us hesistant about the likes of Pépé, Nketiah or Lacazette, while the Arsenal defence is, well… the Arsenal defence. Still, we feel a Gunners victory is on the cards here, so we wanted at least one other player of theirs. In the end, we went with right-back Hector Bellerín. Between gameweeks 1 and 23, the Spaniard played just 268 minutes of Premier League football due to injury, but since GW24, he’s got his trusted starting spot back. As part of the backline against Southampton last weekend, he got 7 points on FanTeam and we don’t see why he would not be able to repeat that feat coming Wednesday. Opponents Norwich are the least prolific side in front of goal in the entire division, scoring just 25 goals in 31 games. In combination with their awful defensive record and Bellerín’s tendency to support his side’s attacking moves, we’re hoping for a positive showing and some decent points from the Arsenal defender.

NEWCASTLE

Jamaal Lascelles, Miguel Almirón

When discussing surprises and extraordinary performances this season, the likes of Sheffield United, Leicester and Wolves are often mentioned, and rightly so. But with 39 points from 31 games after a by now traditional underwhelming summer transfer window, Newcastle United have had a more than decent season so far, as well. After a 3-0 win over Sheffield United in GW30 and a 1-1 draw against Villa, the Magpies now find themselves in 14th place, 12 points above the drop zone and with 7 games to go. Coach Steve Bruce can be proud of his men and himself for this achievement, though a few more points would really seal the deal and the next away game against toothless Bournemouth could be the perfect opportunity to do so. The Cherries were in bad form before the coronabreak and they still are now. Two games into Project Restart and they are still to get their first point or indeed score their first goal.

That’s also why we’ve picked Jamaal Lascelles first. The Newcastle defender got injured in gameweek 12 and didn’t return to PL action until gameweek 23, but he immediately became a nailed-on part of Steve Bruce’s defence again. He has recorded a clean sheet and 1 impact point on FanTeam for a total of 7 points, though it should be noted that he also got a yellow card in each game.

We decided to have his team mate Miguel Almirón join Lascelles in our team for this week’s €50K Main Event. The Paraguayan is a secure starter for Newcastle and also their most advanced midfielder, which in theory should lead to increased goal involvement. The Magpies are notoriously shy in front of goal though, which explains Almirón’s current 2 goals and 2 assists for this season (or maybe it’s other way around). In any case, one of those assists did come recently in the victory over Sheffield United in GW30+. Thanks to an assist, a clean sheet and 1 impact point, the forward has recorded 9 FanTeam points since the return of football and we’re hoping for a few more points on top of that this week.

EVERTON

Mason Holgate, Richarlison

Despite the considerable difference in terms of their respective league positions, we feel that Everton against Leicester at Goodison Park might very well end up being a tightly contested match. Everton’s mostly disappointing season took a turn for the better after bringing in coach Carlo Ancelotti back in GW8, while Leicester’s flying start to the campaign seems to have fallen a bit flat of late. Neither team has come out of the coronabreak a flowing attacking machine, but unlike Leicester (1-1 vs Watford and 0-0 vs Brighton), the Toffees did book the better results up until now: a 0-0 vs Liverpool followed by a 0-1 victory at Norwich. The Foxes are having some trouble finding the net for the moment and Everton haven’t yet conceded a goal since Project Restart got underway while scoring just one themselves, so we figured a low-scoring affair could be on the cards here.

As a result, we have included young Mason Holgate in our team for the GW32 €50K Main Event. Ancelotti has shown that he’s not afraid to shuffle around his defensive set-up regularly, but Holgate has been an extraordinarily consistent mainstay in the Italian’s starting lineups. As a matter of fact, since GW10, the English central defender has completed the 90 minutes in all Premier League games bar one and we don’t see why that should change. On top of that, he’s got 2 clean sheets and 1 impact point over the past two weeks, good for a nice 13 points on FanTeam, so his form is in order.

Instead of doubling up on Everton defenders and risking a stacking penalty (or a disappointment, they’re still playing Leicester, after all), we opted to strengthen our midfield with Holgate’s team mate Richarlison. Like the young Englishman, the Brazilian forward is a key cog in Ancelotti’s football plans for Everton, as well as the team’s MVP with 10 goals and 5 assists. He’s got 8 points on FanTeam since the return of the Premier League, courtesy of 2 clean sheets and an impact point, but like the rest of his team mates, his form hasn’t been scintillating yet. Against Leicester, he will have his work more than cut out for him, but the hopes of many an Everton fan will be on his shoulders. We feel he has the kind of qualities needed to decide this type of game.

As we said this team has been entered into the 20 euro FanTeam Premier League 50k Main Event and we hope to report back next week that we’ve shared part of the 100,000 euros prize pool. You can also follow discussions about FanTeam games on FISO’s FanTeam Forum where we have a FreeRoll for those that want to learn a bit more about the game.