The weekend is upon us. Yes, for some of us, we have been planning for Gameweek 30 for some time now. The beauty of the planning is that with 10 teams missing Premier League games today due to FA cup fixtures, we can either have made transfers to account for this accordingly, or, not. So I have a full 11 outfield players today, with a spare goalkeeper, and a dodgy sub on the bench too (Newcastle’s Steven Taylor).
I’m still uncertain how this will affect things, I guess that depends on how good a week it is, 1-1s all over the place or 4-4 goalfests. In some ways I would have preferred to have good points from say Firmino over the past few weeks, and have one less player today, but I guess when I was making changes three weeks ago I was hoping that whoever I brought in would score loads of points then, as well as today.
As far as I’m concerned, three things will be key this weekend.
The number of players. The lowest field I can find so far in the Top 20 is 7 players, although that team may be amended in the next few hours (hits). Still, I hope my plus 4 players will allow me to gain on such teams this week.
But everyone is gonna have the same players. With only ten Premier League teams to choose from, unless it’s a punt, everyone is going to have the same players this weekend, which might make it very tight. But yes, Kane, Vardy, Aguero, Mahrez, Eriksen or Alli, a Spurs defender etc will likely be in every single team.
If we look at the fixtures then City play Norwich, Spurs play Villa, and Leicester, Newcastle. I have 7 players from those three matches. However, the remaining matches are Stoke v Southampton and Bournemouth v Swansea. I expect we shall see similar numbers in most teams this week, and with that how these two fixtures pan out will be the difference between points and frustration. A 1-1 at the Stoke match could render 2 of my defenders and one of my midfielders pointless. I expect most people will have keepers or defenders and midfielders in these games.
But, with only five matches, and our players in all of them, surely there is more likelihood of bonus? I don’t usually have players in every single match. This week I could clean up. Hold on, I’ll do a quick tot up. 5 games, 30 bonus points available between 15 players. I have 11 so maybe I get something like 20 bonus points today.
Norwich v City: 1 player, 3 bonus.
Bournemouth v Swansea: 1 player, 3 bonus
Stoke v Southampton: 3 players, 6 bonus.
Villa v Spurs: 3 players, 6 bonus.
Leicester v Newcastle: 3 players, 6 bonus.
Ooh, that means I get 24 bonus points this weekend on top of my amazing week anyway. Wow.
Lovely.
Have I been overthinking this?
I still think there’s every likelihood this week is a bit of a non-event, if we have a week like we did two weeks ago, with virtually none of the usual subjects scoring points then this may be a very dour affair. But I hope not.
Ps. I love Leicester
FFUK 