January wildcard

Ok. I'm totally conflicted at this point. Have had a great couple of weeks and shot up in most of my leagues. Currently sitting in top 25k. Haven't played the wildcard yet and now kind of afraid to in case I lose any of the momentum I've gained.

This is what I have at the moment


And this is what I'm thinking


I'm not touching the front line. In terms of midfield I'm keeping Cabaye and Hazard but thinking of going Henderson to Eriksen, Silva to Yaya and Oviedo to Januzaj.

This means swapping Mert for Kos, Terry for Azpi and Howard for Boruc.

Too much messing when the team works fine as is? What do you think?

You look to have a decent budget to play with as I would be a full 1.0m short if i were to replicate that squad.

Having no Arsenal attacking coverage would concern me. Since you have Adebayor to cover Spurs, maybe Ramsey instead of Eriksen would be something to consider?

Assuming you will play that front 3 every week that means 1 of your 5 midfielders will need to be benched every week. Maybe downgrading 1 of them to a cheaper bench fodder player should be considered and use the funds elsewhere?

In your defense you have a similar issue as outlined above in your midfield whereby you have 4 players from the top sides and you may not play them every week. Again you could downgrade one of those to create further funds elsewhere.

Extra funds could be used to upgrade Azpil to Ivanovic / Cahill or one of your keepers to Hart maybe?

remoteboy wrote: »

Ok. I'm totally conflicted at this point. Have had a great couple of weeks and shot up in most of my leagues. Currently sitting in top 25k. Haven't played the wildcard yet and now kind of afraid to in case I lose any of the momentum I've gained.

This is what I have at the moment


And this is what I'm thinking


I'm not touching the front line. In terms of midfield I'm keeping Cabaye and Hazard but thinking of going Henderson to Eriksen, Silva to Yaya and Oviedo to Januzaj.

This means swapping Mert for Kos, Terry for Azpi and Howard for Boruc.

Too much messing when the team works fine as is? What do you think?

Im looking at something like this for the wc



I'll see how Wilshere/Ramsey perform and if needs be will swap in for either Eriksen/Cabaye.

My main question is do I keep Terry? If I swap for Azpil I'd get another 1m for the bank but Terry is more likely to get more minutes

carraig2 wrote: »

Played wildcard and had brutal week.
Any suggestions for what I should do to recover?
Radical overhaul or ride it out for a few weeks?

Really depends on what your team looks like. Sounds obvious but I saw this earlier on another forum and it makes a lot of sense:

There are 6 essentials in your team: 1)Mert/Koscielny, 2)Coleman/Baines 3)Hazard 4)Yaya 5)Suarez 6)Aguero

This should be giving you your week in/week out points and keep you on par with the other players at the top. There is no point in trying to look for differentials against these 6, you still have 5 spots to get differential points. Take these 6 as a base and work from there.

So if you don't have these 6, then do what you can (inc Wildcard if you need to) in order to cover those 6 spots. If you already have them, or have 5 and can make a transfer for the other, then no need to wildcard, wait it out.

So you need to have a strategy around your remaining 5 starters, do you rotate keepers? Do you want to rotate 2 mids? Rotate a mid and an attacker? Have a non-playing sub to save money?

All are open to work with. Once you have the 6 essential positions filled it means not missing out on the big points most big players will get, the strategy with the rest of the team is up to you, and is actually where you'll make a move in the rankings.

This is pretty much the same advice as last year, when Mata, Michu, Fellaini, Walcott, Silva and RVP were the 6 essentials in January. People hate template teams, but everybody will have the above 6 as a backbone. Advice is: pick your battles. Don't use Navas and Oscar to compete with Yaya and Hazard each week, pick Yaya and Hazard and compete for the other points.

8-10 wrote: »

Really depends on what your team looks like. Sounds obvious but I saw this earlier on another forum and it makes a lot of sense:

There are 6 essentials in your team: 1)Mert/Koscielny, 2)Coleman/Baines 3)Hazard 4)Yaya 5)Suarez 6)Aguero

This should be giving you your week in/week out points and keep you on par with the other players at the top. There is no point in trying to look for differentials against these 6, you still have 5 spots to get differential points. Take these 6 as a base and work from there.

So if you don't have these 6, then do what you can (inc Wildcard if you need to) in order to cover those 6 spots. If you already have them, or have 5 and can make a transfer for the other, then no need to wildcard, wait it out.

So you need to have a strategy around your remaining 5 starters, do you rotate keepers? Do you want to rotate 2 mids? Rotate a mid and an attacker? Have a non-playing sub to save money?

All are open to work with. Once you have the 6 essential positions filled it means not missing out on the big points most big players will get, the strategy with the rest of the team is up to you, and is actually where you'll make a move in the rankings.

This is pretty much the same advice as last year, when Mata, Michu, Fellaini, Walcott, Silva and RVP were the 6 essentials in January. People hate template teams, but everybody will have the above 6 as a backbone. Advice is: pick your battles. Don't use Navas and Oscar to compete with Yaya and Hazard each week, pick Yaya and Hazard and compete for the other points.

The only one of your 6 I don't agree with as being an absolute necessity is number 2. I'm not saying Coleman and Baines aren't good players to have in your team, they certainly are, but in terms of value they wouldn't be in the same category as the other mentions (obviously Koscielny moreso than Mertesacker). There will be plenty of weeks where Coleman and Baines (probably moreso Coleman) will just get you 1 or 2 points.

CSF wrote: »

The only one of your 6 I don't agree with as being an absolute necessity is number 2. I'm not saying Coleman and Baines aren't good players to have in your team, they certainly are, but in terms of value they wouldn't be in the same category as the other mentions (obviously Koscielny moreso than Mertesacker). There will be plenty of weeks where Coleman and Baines (probably moreso Coleman) will just get you 1 or 2 points.

Yep. The point with the 2 defensive options is more that you don't miss out on the points that others will have, which is why it's not simply Coleman and Mertesacker, you could also have Baines and Koscielny. Not like the attacking 4 where they are pretty much peerless, but if you have no Arsenal or Everton defenders then you will lose ground. Personally I think Mert and Coleman are so highly owned (by far the highest 2) that you need Mert + Baines or Coleman + Koscieny minimum. Baines + Kos might be a tad risky but any combination and that should be 2 other positions you don't have to worry about in terms of losing ground, you can pick your battle rotating in the other defender/keepers etc

carraig2 wrote: »

Ta, had a look at getting rid of Coleman. Kos a whole million cheaper. That would help too

Also thinking Giroud too exspensive for his returns

Agreed on all of that. The likes of Yaya, Hazard, Suarez and Aguero are players you just have to have in your team at the moment. They'll take value out of the rest of your team but it isn't value that you would be able to achieve the same points total from anyway. In my opinion, if you have those 4 players, with the other 11 all being from teams in the bottom half of the table, you'd still probably do better than having a team of the best of the rest, with none of those 4.

How cheap is Crouch? If he is anything over 6 million, surely you'd be better off just having the cheapest possible striker who starts as backup (Chamakh). Crouch will barely ever score you anything significant.

G1032 wrote: »

My WC is currently active.
Essentials I have are: Mert (will probably sell for Kos), Coleman (will probably sell for Baines), Hazard, Aguero and Suarez

I have Silva but do I really really need Yaya? Is he that vital to have instead of Silva?
I think Aguero, Yaya and Silva might be overkill

I have Aguero, Yaya and Silva. If I had to cut one (I'm not going to) it would be Silva.

CSF wrote: »

The only one of your 6 I don't agree with as being an absolute necessity is number 2. I'm not saying Coleman and Baines aren't good players to have in your team, they certainly are, but in terms of value they wouldn't be in the same category as the other mentions (obviously Koscielny moreso than Mertesacker). There will be plenty of weeks where Coleman and Baines (probably moreso Coleman) will just get you 1 or 2 points.

I would somewhat disagree about Coleman. If you got him at 5.0 like me then he is a season keeper. Almost everyone in the top 50K has at least 1 everton defender so it would be dangerous to drop him now. I wouldn't bring coleman in at his current price though!