Fantasy Premier League

Tactical review: Chelsea 123.5, Wolves 0

Mon Nov 23 03:21PM

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed The Fantasist tweaked its Choose 'em or Lose 'em picks on Friday after realising it had advised managers not to pick Craig Gordon.

Technically a correct call, but somewhat obvious since the Sunderland keeper is out for three months with a broken shoulder.

Anyway, karma came back to bite The Fantasist on the backside because it also got cold feet over its recommendation of Ashley Cole - who was still an injury doubt - and changed to Branislav Ivanovic, who ended up watching Chelsea's 4-0 win over Wolves from the bench. Whoops.

If that were not enough, Darren Bent and Paul Scharner were both accorded 'Lose 'em' status and promptly scored, Jonny Evans did not play and there was no mention of five-goal Jermain Defoe (a frankly mental 63.5 points) or his sidekick Aaron Lennon (33 pts).

In the Fantastist's defence, its recommendations of Paul Robinson (12.5 pts with another game on Wednesday), Thomas Sorensen (28 pts), Joe Cole (11.5 pts) and Salomon Kalou (9pts) proved shrewd enough, but it certainly wasn't the best weekend.

Rather than spend more time picking over this predictive train wreck, let's see what would have happened if you had gone for the much-derided all-Chelsea line-up mentioned last week.

It's true that the 11 starters came to more than the permitted 100, but anyone who bought the likes of Florent Malouda or Ashley Cole at the right time might have been able to fit them all in.

Otherwise, managers could have easily got 10 Chelsea players by jettisoning either Petr Cech or Nicolas Anelka (Robinson outscored Cech and was only 3.35).

Anyway, a quick look at the list below shows Chelsea's team score comfortably exceeded the 100 predicted by The Fantasist. So maybe it wasn't such a stupid idea after all.

Player - (Value) - Score

Petr Cech - (14.60) - 12pts

Juliano Belletti - (4.22) - 5

John Terry - (12.65) - 7

Alex - (9.71) - 14

Ashley Cole - (12.66) - 11.5

John Obi Mikel - (4.62) - 3.5

Michael Essien - (8.85) - 24.5

Florent Malouda - (10.52) - 24

Joe Cole - (6.66) - 11.5

Salomon Kalou  - (6.49) - 9

Nicolas Anelka - (16.16) - 1.5

Total value - 107.14

Total points - 123.5

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