Fantasy Premier League

Monday Manager

Mon Dec 11 04:17PM

The one-gamers are winning.

Hate to alarm you, but it's true.

At least so far.

Unless you have Essien on your team. Or Martins.

But having only played one game I guess it should be too surprising. Great goals from Saha, CRonaldo, and Trabelsi (and that's just the Manchester derby!), Berbatov (2 plus an assist) and Taylor (wow, what a goal!) made us regret having sold them for Drogba (could have been sent off), Sheva (playing down to his usual Premiership form) and van Persie, etc.

But all is not lost. Chelsea's match against (a resurgent?) Newcastle comes up on Wednesday. And Arsenal still have to travel to Wigan. So we wait. And we hope.

And speaking of 2 gamers...

Busy festive period approaching with a lot of games to be played. For fantasy managers, it is at least 2 weeks to 2 games. Which in this day and age leads to the "do I pick the best players, even though they may not play both games?" The Manager can't say that he has an answer to that. SAF likes to rest his players when he can, but doesn't have that deep of a squad. Giggs is getting older and Saha is still fragile. But it's quite the drop off in talent and experience to Kieran Richardson from Giggs, and OGS "The Baby Faced Assassin" isn't any less fragile than Saha.

On the other side of the coin is Chelsea. While they have, on paper at least, an insane squad, Jose is much less likely to chop and change his side. In fact he named 9 of his eleven as 'untouchable'.

And let's not even bring up Rafa's Reds! 

With so many games and so few decision points for fantasy managers, this is always a stressful time. Lots can we won or lost by picking the hot footed player who scores 2 in 3, or gambling on the one who gets rested at home to Charlton. We at the blog will try to make as much sense of it as we can and give you our best guesses and the benefits of our (often all to painful) experiences.

Happy holidays.

UPDATE:

As if on cue...

• Park Boost For Ferguson
  

"With Park joining Ole Gunnar Solskjaer on the comeback trail, Giuseppe Rossi's loan period at Newcastle drawing to a close and Henrik Larsson due to link up with his new team-mates next Sunday for the start of a week's training before returning to begin his loan stint at Old Trafford in the new year, Ferguson suddenly has some attacking options."

• Benitez: In Squad We Trust

"Sometimes we will play without the players being really fit because physically it is impossible for them to play two games in two days or something.

"But that is the reason for the squad and that could be the difference this season."

"

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