PLFantasy

Kevin Tan Which of the 5.0m def would u choose for nxt 6 GWs? Boyce, McAuley, Ridgewell or S Taylor? For 5.0m we have access to a surprising number of teams with AVL, FUL, NEW, NOR, QPR, RDG, STK, SOU, SUN, SWA, WIG, WBA, WHM all having several options available in your price range plus a couple of riskier prospects from the 'big name' teams including Jenkinson and Gallas. I want to avoid rewriting everything we know after just three weeks so let's start with the three teams I would have backed from this group in the preseason: SWA, SUN and STK. SWA have been very good value to date and remain in contention for sure. SUN had an excellent result against ARS but then looked so-so against SWA but I'd say they remain an option, while STK look sufficiently unpredictable to give me some doubts about them (though I'm not abandoning them yet). Of the teams to impress so far I'd throw in WHM and WBA which gives us four teams to focus on. Of that group, WHM do the ...

A couple of general points before we dig into the questions. First, apologies for not getting to one of these last week. I was behind on getting the site to a reasonable place before the season and have been playing catchup since. Regular service should now resume. Second, thanks for all the kind comments on the blog. I'm glad my ramblings help some of you make your weekly decisions and maybe provide a bit of entertainment along the way. Finally, I got a number of responses about my question about naming 'assisting the assist' and I'm ashamed to say I'd never heard the term 'hockey assist' despite living in Canada. Anyway, that's perfect, so from now on all those defense splitting passes which earn Mata zero points will be known as hockey assists, or perhaps hA. Onto the questions: Alex Dembele is going to Tottenham afterall. To me that makes him a viable option on a better team at a reduced price. I feel like he will be in the starting line up soo...

@thatbensonguy I have 1.1m, looking to upgrade a DEF (probly Ass-Ek > Kompany) or MID, I have Brunt (5.8). What's the better move? Spurs defensive prospects looks pretty sound over the coming weeks including 5 home games in the next 7 GWs (including the double gameweek). While I still have faith in City's defensive unit too, I would not be ditching Assou Ekotto at this point, and in fact rate him as one the better players to target. Brunt has been a huge disappointment and there is a real lack of talent in that WBA side. For 6.9m your options a bit limited. I guess I still like Ramsey and Walters but I'm not sure either are worth 2.0m more than the group of players on offer in that 4.5-5m range. If you can use the money elsewhere I'd go cheap, if not then I'd look at the aforementioned pair or perhaps Cabaye. @Yitzeroo With newcastles defence on the down should I play Simpson this week, or have Morison up front? Will Norwich carry on scoring? That's a t...

@K0n0s Quick question for upcoming weeks, at 9.3 isn't Suarez the best buy now given his fixtures? Suarez is a tough player to evaluate this year. He's obviously a talented player and his underlying stats (shots on goal) are excellent. However, he hasn't scored in 2 months and Liverpool aren't really a great attacking side at the moment. In a vacuum I do like him but if money is no issue I'd still much prefer to have Van Persie or Aguero and if money is tight, I'd go Adebayor over Suarez, especially given Spurs' great fixtures. @SyncJS If you have Vorm and Schwarzer, who would you pick for next week? knowing Vorm is good at Home, still hesitating who to line up Both are good options but in most cases I would side with the home side and that is certainly the case here. Swansea have been dominant at home and while you wouldn;t necessarily project that to continue all year, I'm happy to ride that bandwagon for now. @MindOfANerd If you had to bench on...

@teekleton can you please update me on the goalkeeper combo strategy? did you try one? is it working? any good combos for the next 8 gwks? The latest charts showing the best combos of GKs (as of GW11) are updated and can be found here . I am however conscious that I haven't yet done the analysis to prove that the GK-combo strategy has been a success this year, or whether in fact you should have gone with a De Gea type option. I will try and get that analysis knocked out over the weekend, though I would suggest that it will almost certainly have been preferential to employ the strategy so far with Vorm (originally 4.0m) leading all keepers in points by some distance. Throw in good starts for Krul, Al Habsi, Schwarzer and Hennessey and you have a recipe for a successful combo. In the pre-season (and before Vorm signed for Swansea) the recommended combinations were Given/Begovic or Begovic/Moreira (who became Vorm). Given has been a bit disappointing from that group, but I wou...

mustardking - I have to quibble with your explanation of regression to the mean, however. it does not mean that players who are underperforming will have final numbers in line with their talent level - it means that they should hit their natural talent level going forward. So if van persie usually scores once per match but doesn't score at all in the first two matches, it doesn't mean that he is more likely to score twice in upcoming matches. it means that he is likely to average one goal per match in the upcoming matches. You're absolutely right and explained it much better than I did. I find it easier to explain in baseball where we have averages rather than soccer/football where the stats tend to all be counting stats (number of goals scored, assisted etc). I think the analysis still kind of holds up in that a player like Gyan is unlikely to continue to take 10 shots a game and not his the back of the net, but you're right that he won't suddenly score every 2 s...