To see less ads Register or Login ----- Daily Fantasy Sports games 18+

Virgin Media Fantasy Football - game tactics

A Fantasy Football forum for news and comment on Virgin Media Fantasy Football
Locked
User avatar
admin
FISO Administrator
Posts: 12120
Joined: 13 Oct 2005, 17:29
Location: Fantasy Sports Forum
FS Record: Won TFFO, 2nd/3rd TFF, Won BFF, Won FLGolf
Contact:

Virgin Media Fantasy Football - game tactics

Post by admin »

Copy of the main section of my Virgin Media Fantasy Football blog on game tactics (part 1) which you can also see at:
http://www.football.virginmedia.com/pag ... 30,00.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Warm Up Period

The first point to note is that there is a Warm Up Period (with unlimited transfers) until the game starts for real on Saturday 29 August. The first 2 weeks of the EPL (English Premier League) season are a chance to test the game out over these 3 sets of game week fixtures. Those serious Fantasy managers who put the time in to research pre-season news in order to second-guess likely 1st team line-ups and player form for the start of the EPL are not going to have an advantage here over everyone else – there will be plenty of action for everyone to look at before you need to settle on a squad line-up for the start of the prize period (and I'll be here to guide you). If you're someone who doesn't like putting too much research time into your team, this game's later start is going to help you!

So, as far as which players to select, we can relax (for now!). One of the things we can instead think about now is ''How to Spend the Budget'.

How to Spend the Budget


This is a Squad-based game: you choose 15 players from the £100m budget (with no more than 3 players from the same EPL club) but only 11 play, so 4 won't participate each game week. There is no 'substitute' feature so if one of your 11 man team does not take to the pitch during the game week, one of your substitutes does not take his place.

With squad-based games, the main thing to weigh-up is whether to go for a balanced squad or to spend as little as possible on one or more players (who would then maybe never be selected for your 11 man team) thus freeing up more of the budget for the 11 man team.

The player values range from £13.1m (Torres) all the way down to £1.1m (there are 5 players at this value). So the most expensive player is 12 times more expensive than the cheapest which is quite a high factor.

This vast range in values, combined with the fact that:

a) the 4 substitutes cannot count towards your game week score;
b) you have unlimited transfers until the start of game week 4;
c) you get 2 transfers to use every game week from game week 4 (so 70 transfers in total),

leads me to conclude that picking at least 1 of the 4 subs from the £1.1m players could be a good tactic, even if they are not going to be a regular for their club's 1st team. Similarly I think 1 of the other 3 substitutes could also come from the sub £3m range to help maximise the budget available for the main 11 players and give you as much flexibility as possible to select or transfer in as many star players as possible for your team each week. Nearer 29 August I will look at potential bargain players ('fillers') at the lower end of the value range.

The alternative is to go with a balanced squad where essentially you have decided that swapping between two players in the mid-value range (i.e. playing whichever one has the easiest fixture each week) would be better than the potential score from one expensive player who plays regardless of the difficulty of the fixture (with his low-value counterpart always benched). For example, is playing Gerrard (£12.4m) each week (and always benching Kelly £1.1m) going to produce more points than playing whichever of Cahill (£6.2m) or Ireland (£7.3m) has the easiest fixture each week? Both combinations cost £13.5m but which will produce the most points over the season? Answers on a postcard please!

View Latest: 1 Day View Your posts
Locked

Return to “Virgin Media Fantasy Football”