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Powered by Tableau As in prior weeks, each player is assigned a 'buy', 'hold/monitor' or 'sell' status. These do not necessarily reflect what I would personally do, rather what I suggest to be a decision based in logic. For example, I might feel that Rooney represents better value than van Persie, but I would still 'buy' the Dutchman's success and consider him very ownable. The different assigned statuses are summarised as: Buy - the player can be purchased immediately taking consideration of his playing time, fixtures, injury status etc. This status does not necessarily mean you should buy him now as it depends who else you own, only that it is reasonable to do so. Hold, and/or monitor - if you own the player you're not in a rush to sell him but there's sufficient risk here to justify potential buyers holding off. Sell - the player has too many risks and should either be sold or not purchased. This does not mean he might not ...

Goalscorers are highlighted in bold , players with an assist are underlined Arsenal Szczesny, Sagna, Koscielny, Vermaelen, Gibbs, Diaby, Wilshere, Cazorla, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Podolski, Walcott Subs: Mannone, Mertesacker, Andre Santos, Giroud, Ramsey, Coquelin, Jenkinson We had a potentially tricky situation to deal with at the back here with Koscielny getting the start ahead of Mertesacker, but with the Frenchman seeing red, normal service should be resumed next week. Saying that - and as I'll touch on later in the week - Sagna is the clear pick in this back line for me and presents a solid way to save a few hundred thousand if you're wildcarding or have a spare transfers to use on Mertesacker (or Gibbs in my opinion). Walcott got the start up front on his own and (from an admittedly distracted viewing) he seemed to be somewhat cut off from his teammates. Still, better players than he have suffered at the hands of this City defense so I wouldn't expect drastic shi...

Clean Sheet Rankings Powered by Tableau Attacking Rankings Powered by Tableau Individual Rankings On a recent FanGraphs podcast, guest Dan Szymborski spoke briefly about the difference between projections and predictions. Szymborski is the creator of the ZiPS baseball projection system which uses a combination of historic data and minor league stats to project future production. The key point here for us is that Szymborski notes that he is keen to avoid having a computer model do things that a computer isn't very good at, such as judging whether a niggly knee injury will keep a player out or whether a manager gave a hint in his latest press conference that someone might be rotated. He therefore distinguishes between projections - which are computer generated and focus on factors we can quantify - and predictions which use those projections along with other factors that are best left to the human mind to factor. Given a few comments I have seen where the below ...

Arsenal Szczesny, Djourou, Mertesacker, Vermaelen, Koscielny, Rosicky, Song, Ramsey, Walcott, van Persie, Oxlade-Chamberlain Subs: Almunia, Park, Squillaci, Arshavin, Benayoun, Miquel, Yennaris. It was a pleasant surprise to see Oxlade-Chamberlain in their starting lineup given the recent struggles of Arshavin. He didn't disappoint either, impressing with his movement, composure and football IQ (sorry, Theo) which led to a good assist for Van Persie's goal. We're always looking for fantasy value in this Arsenal team and at 5.7m Ox has some makings of that very player. However, this was his first league start and only his third appearance so be careful not to get carried away here. Maybe Wenger decides to throw him out there for the rest of the season (he can't be much worse than Arshavin and Walcott have been at times this year) but it's too risky to make that leap right now. I want to say more, but there just isn't much else of interest in this lineup. A...

A strange weekend of football really which had goals (see Chelsea) as well clean sheets (9 in all). The average points scored were a healthy 48, especially when you consider that United, Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool all play again before the gameweek is up. I was pleased with my captain picks as my top four scored 12, 11, 8 and 5 points respectively while 4 of my top 5 defenses all managed a clean sheet. Chelsea's defense let me down but they more than made up for it with their 7 goals and big games from Anelka, Lampard, Ballack and Cole (who only played 45 minutes). I am starting to get really concerned with differentiating my team as goals from Rooney (45% owned), Fabregas (32%) and Cole (15%) did little to help me catch/pull away from the opposition. However, with Torres, Drogba and Gerrard all unavailable the premium options are limited. Hopefully we will get at least a couple of impact players in the transfer window, but not resting on this assumption, I will post some ideas o...