Rllmuk Fantasy Premier League 2018/19

[skittles]

What's your source for press conferences etc? 

 I don't have one! I rely on fantasy football website itself!

[Alexlotl]

9 minutes ago, Hellcock said:

What's your source for press conferences etc? 

 I don't have one! I rely on fantasy football website itself!

 

Fantasy Football Scout do a good roundup on their site. They also trickle in during the day via Twitter.

 

If you're on Twitter, I'd recommend:

 

@BenDinnery - injury updates, best source I've found

@FFScout - general updates

@OfficialFPL - the source of truth

@FPLPriceChanges+ - the guy's a dick, but he Tweets who's about to rise/fall which is handy for timing transfers.

 

I'd recommend putting them all into a list separate from your main feed, as the volume can get overwhelming on match days.

[skittles]

Ha. Thanks man.

 

I also make my transfer for the week as soon as the first games start, so I always run the risk of injuries but try and second guess price movements. How many points do you have  and can we see your team? As you aren't in our league @Alexlotl

[Alexlotl]

4 minutes ago, Hellcock said:

Ha. Thanks man.

 

I also make my transfer for the week as soon as the first games start, so I always run the risk of injuries but try and second guess price movements. How many points do you have  and can we see your team? As you aren't in our league @Alexlotl

 

I'm there. 6th at the moment with 389 points. Team value £95.8m with £6.1m in the bank (as I mentioned before, this is a nuts amount of cash in hand), so total value £101.9.

 

The price trackers aren't perfect, but they can give you a bit of breathing space so you don't have to rush into transfers.

[Azrael]

I know I should swap out Salah for Hazard but just can't bring myself to do it. 

[The Grand Pursuivant]

1 hour ago, Azrael said:

I know I should swap out Salah for Hazard but just can't bring myself to do it. 

 

If I was going to be swapping Salah out for anyone this week it would be Kane. Huddersfield and Cardiff? Those two teams will finish 19th and 20th this season. Could be a monster haul.

 

As it is I'm still fighting my Pedro and Arnautovic fires. If they are both confirmed injured on Friday I may wildcard for a Kane team then switch him back to Salah after a couple of weeks.

[Azrael]

Good point, could swap out Salah and Arnoutovic for Kane and someone else. Not sure who, B Silva or maybe get Richarlison back in. 

[skittles]

2 hours ago, Azrael said:

Good point, could swap out Salah and Arnoutovic for Kane and someone else. Not sure who, B Silva or maybe get Richarlison back in. 

I think B Silva or D Silva is too risky. He doesn't always play ! I thought one would have a guaranteed start in the squad but pep has proved me wrong again. The only guarantee right now is sterling and aguero (for an hour).

 

Hoping Lucas Moura bangs a few in against those Cardiff and huds. After watching the Cardiff home game against arsenal j think they could be a quite challenging fixture at home. The atmosphere is insane.

[DirkCrisis]

I wouldn't worry about Man City rotation too much. As long as you have 2 or 3 in the squad they'll always be scoring points. Next week's free transfer is going on getting rid of Fernandinho and bringing Bernardo Silva back in I think. Over time, the average city player who isn't playing every week will probably still score pretty big overall (injuries or being out of favour aside).

 

Looking at that Liverpool Chelsea game, like Fantasy Football Scout, I think it could easily end up 1-1 with Matip and Rudiger scoring just to annoy fantasy managers. 

[Alexlotl]

I meant to get rid of Bernado but didn't have a spare transfer, then he banged in a goal and an assist last week. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

He seems to score if a) he plays and b) he's in the right position. Sometimes he takes the deep playmaker role and ends up assisting the assist. There was also that one time he played at right back, which we'll draw a veil over. I've had him since the outset, and taking the long view, he's doing the business. Not sure what'll happen when KDB returns.

 

I could do with Moura knocking a few in against Cardiff, starting to lose faith in him a bit, but need to save my transfers.

[skittles]

Good point. When is KDB back? Surely a fit KDB gets a guaranteed place in the first team.

 

City has an absolutely insane squad when you think about it.

 

Maybe Richarlissan (sp) for Lucas Moura, or B Silva. Am unsure. Mane may get the boot soon, don't rate him too much.

 

Agree @DirkCrisis - 

[Alexlotl]

KDB still a way off, although aparently having the usually suspiciously rapid Dr Kugat recovery in Barcelona.

 

City and Liverpool both have incredible squads this year. Chelsea are up there in terms of performance right now, but unless they buy (and sell - *cough* Morata *cough*) well in January they lack the bench strength to challenge for the league title, IMO.

[Alexlotl]

Well, Captain Kane, here goes… no Ali or Eriksen is a worry, hope he gets service.

 

Have gone with Wan Bissaka over Alexander Arnold which I really wasn’t sure about. I have Hazard and Fraser, so can’t win either way. 

[Commander Jameson]

Word of warning. The PL is experiencing problems. My latest transfers went through ok earlier but are not reflected in the app.

[skittles]

6 hours ago, Alexlotl said:

Well, Captain Kane, here goes… no Ali or Eriksen is a worry, hope he gets service.

 

Have gone with Wan Bissaka over Alexander Arnold which I really wasn’t sure about. I have Hazard and Fraser, so can’t win either way. 

Bravo sir. Bravo.

[Alexlotl]

2 hours ago, Hellcock said:

Bravo sir. Bravo.

 

Cheers! Sounds like he should have had a hat trick, mind. Good hauls from Trippier, Patricio and Hazard too.

 

74pts with Fraser, Obi-Wan and Mee still to play. It’ll be interesting to see which Burnley turn up tomorrow, but provided the usual Cardiff turn up, they should be okay.

 

I saw someone on Reddit had the same idea as me, and has plotted out an extensive kick-Cardiff-and-Hudds-while-they’re-down transfer plan. Some odd quirk of the schedules means that loads of teams have those two back to back. 

[El Pibe]

Feels like generally it's a season of picking Chelsea and Liverpool players and picking playing Cardiff and Huddersfield players.

[skittles]

I think aguero needs to be replaced with sterling. It's too risky when he is only playing 60 mins.

[skittles]

I think I'll get rid of aguero for the West ham striker. And mane for sterling and use the excess cash to upgrade someone else. 

 

[skittles]

Up to 2000th ish globally...!

 

Would you trade aguero and mane for firninio and sterling? 

 

I'm concerned about agueros play time and mane has just not been performing.

[Azrael]

Hold off doing anything for  now in case of injuries during the international break.

[DirkCrisis]

At the moment the likes of Lacazette or maybe even Gylfi Sigurdsson seem more on form than Firmino. But a team should be designed for the long haul IMO and although my 59 points seems a bit bleak this week I'm hoping that Salah will eventually come good and I'm relatively certain that Aguero can be relied on to at least score at home. In fact, in 3 out of 8 gameweeks his score has been 1 or 2 points, but the rest of them have been reasonable with one explosive return.

 

So even if he is only playing 60 minutes I still think he's a decent long term investment.

 

Now I need to workd out who I'll be replacing Morgan and Kabasele with as they brought me a grand total of -6 this week, the pair of twats.

[The Grand Pursuivant]

6 hours ago, Hellcock said:

Up to 2000th ish globally...!

 

Would you trade aguero and mane for firninio and sterling? 

 

I'm concerned about agueros play time and mane has just not been performing.

 

I probably shouldn't be giving you tips, because if I don't you might do something as pointless as a transfer like this and give me a chance to catch you in the league. That said, you're doing so well in the early season for a second year in a row, I really don't want you to screw it all up again either!

 

I'm assuming here you have 2 free transfers. Transfers are precious. You get 38 of them. The should be used exclusively to improve your team. Whether that be through removing injured players, underperforming players, suspended players, every time you do one it should be done to maximise your points potential for the next few gameweeks. I personally don't like making transfers unless I want those players for the next 5 games minimum.

 

Now the question here is, does swapping a Manchester City and a Liverpool player for a Manchester City and a Liverpool player maximise your points potential. Without even naming specific players, the answer to this is a resounding no. When you look at the players you're wanting to change and ask 'Does this improve my team' the answer is also no.

 

If you're concerned about Aguero being subbed off after 60 minutes, that's fair enough. Stirling's playtime is equally as unassured as Aguero's though. They will both start most games, but are highly likely to be subbed early and rested on the odd occasion. Those are the inherent risks of having a premium City player. They are also incredibly likely to score very similar amounts of points over a season. The same can be said of Mane and Firminho, who are both players who go through patches where they either do nothing, or get explosive scores. All 4 of these players will probably score close to or more than 200 points this season. I doubt there will be more than 40 points between the highest of them and the lowest. You don't want to waste transfers switching these kinds of players about. That's not really what transfers are for.

 

Over a subset of 5 or 6 weeks, there may be a huge swing in favour of one over the other. This is true. Just look at the start of the season. Mane scores 4 goals in 4 games. Then 0 goals in 4 games. Now you want him out. Firminho is still 14 points behind him, even with Manes blank patch. Neither of them are exactly in form, but they are playing for a goalscoring team. Could Firminho even that up? Possibly. Could Mane pull further ahead? Also possible. You just can't call which of the 3 attackers in a freescoring side like Liverpool are going to perform. It's all just variance. Luck. There is nothing you can do about that. What you do know is that eventually they all will perform. Now, you could still go ahead and make this transfer and do amazingly out of it. I'm not saying you couldn't. But, if you did, that would make it a lucky decision, rather than a good decision. And whilst luck is important in FPL, luck is not how you do well in FPL.

 

A good decision, if you are worried about something like, say, Aguero's gametime, would be to see how downgrading him to somebody who might match his points output over the next 5 games, like Arnautovic or Mitrovic, and upgrading somebody in your team who just isn't performing and can't be relied upon for points, like Neves or Moura. You say that Mane is not performing, but what about Moura? He has blanked in the last 4 games as well, and he is playing for a team that is currently struggling to score and he is far from guaranteed to start in. You have Neves in your team. He has blanked for 7 games in a row. He's an absolutely incredible footballer, but he will be lucky to get 100 points this season. He is not a fantasy football asset. Mane is. He will score points. If Aguero is troubling you that much, and he needs to go, you could do Aguero to Arnautovic and Moura to Stirling. One of the best ways of making transfers is just putting the two players next to eachother and asking yourself 'Who scores more points?' Aguero/Neves or Stirling/Arnautovic. Over the next 5 games, who scores more? I know how I would answer that one.

 

That's a transfer that improves your team and could get significantly more points over the next few weeks than playing the City/Liverpool 'who will score this time?' lottery. You have a pretty healthy squad, but this is just one of many things you could do.You could look at shifting some money out of your defence to upgrade your midfield deadweight. Like last season, I think the high priced defenders getting all the points at the start of the season phenomenon will die out soon, as midfield/forward partnerships start clicking. Keeping 4 high price defenders may prove detrimental with the Wolves defence looking incredibly stubborn and mid priced midfielders like Richarlison and Maddison doing the business. And you don't even have a City defender in your 4 premium defensive line up! As an Arsenal fan I would not recommend keeping Monreal, our defence is going to leak goals for the foreseeable future. Tottenham have hard fixtures coming up and rotate their fullbacks so Trippier is always someone it's risky to have. Alonso is a solid pick but arguably not worth the money. You could get rid of one of them for a Wolves defender, or someone like Holebas, upgrade Neves to somebody who will actually get points and still have a really strong team and bench. Again look at the options you have. For example Trippier/Neves or Richarlison/Doherty, who scores more? That one is closer to call, but I still think it's the latter. That's just one of many pairings you could look at.

 

You could do any of these things and they would be better decisions than just switching players from the same teams around. Second guessing yourself is the best way to do badly in this game. If I was in your position, as you can probably guess, Neves and Moura would be my priority transfers out. Who you get in for them, how long you take to do so and whether or not you potentially downgrade an expensive player to upgrade them is up to you, but getting rid of those two is your best bet for keeping or improving your rank. Imagine if you did this transfer you're asking about and it fails miserably, and then Moura and Neves continue to blank and your rank plummets. That's just as likely as it going well. Look at your decision to get Lacazette in. That was an absolutely fantastic transfer. You got him in at exactly the right time, he looks like he'll keep scoring goals and now everyone wants him. If you want to keep doing well, you need to make decisions like that one. There is definitely a defender/midfielder combo that will get more points than Neves + one of your premiums. There is definitely a midfield/forward combo that will get more points than Neves/Moura and Aguero. There are probably even single transfers from either of those players that will score your more points in the long run. You want to be looking for those, instead of doing the Liverpool/City hokey-cokey every couple of weeks.

[skittles]

You sir are an absolute legend !! Love everything about that. Thank you. You are of course completely right, I have been trying to structure our neves or Moura. 

 

My rationale for that pretty pointless swap was simply avrerage game time so far. Sterling seems to play majority of games so that extra 30 minutes of game time night be worth something in the future.

 

Trippier out soon. Mendy back in. Neves/Moura upgraded to rocharlison or maddison of Leicester. I note Leicester and Liverpool have a good run of fixtures upcoming so wanting to have at least two players for each. Tottenham fixtures swing good from December 2nd so perhaps time to go overweight from then.

 

Thanks for the tips. Watch me fuck it up again.

 

Lacazette is ace, has that attitude of shoot on goal.

 

 

[DirkCrisis]

Im still not sure why people are obsessing with Mendy over someone like Laporte. I realise Mendy seems to be a Guardiola favourite (or at least was pre-season) and has been out for a while but Laporte seems more consistent from an FPL perspective. 

[Alexlotl]

2 hours ago, DirkCrisis said:

Im still not sure why people are obsessing with Mendy over someone like Laporte. I realise Mendy seems to be a Guardiola favourite (or at least was pre-season) and has been out for a while but Laporte seems more consistent from an FPL perspective. 

 

Because he's insanely attacking - his heatmaps basically show him playing as a winger, and he got 5 assists in his first 4 games. He basically keeps Sane out of the team when he's fit.

 

Laporte will be good for clean sheets and maybe 1-2 goals a season off set-pieces, I'd guess.

 

I think Guardiola thinks Mendy's a dickhead but loves what he can do.

[The Grand Pursuivant]

17 hours ago, Hellcock said:

You sir are an absolute legend !! Love everything about that. Thank you. You are of course completely right, I have been trying to structure our neves or Moura. 

 

My rationale for that pretty pointless swap was simply avrerage game time so far. Sterling seems to play majority of games so that extra 30 minutes of game time night be worth something in the future.

 

Trippier out soon. Mendy back in. Neves/Moura upgraded to rocharlison or maddison of Leicester. I note Leicester and Liverpool have a good run of fixtures upcoming so wanting to have at least two players for each. Tottenham fixtures swing good from December 2nd so perhaps time to go overweight from then.

 

Thanks for the tips. Watch me fuck it up again.

 

Lacazette is ace, has that attitude of shoot on goal.

 

 

Honestly, I understand the worries about Aguero's game time. 60 minutes per game for a 11mil striker is not what you are looking for. But it's Aguero. Generally he'll only need 60 minutes. That's how I'm rationalising it anyway.

 

The situation is different if you don't have Salah though, so moving Aguero on is a better option for you than for me. This week is a case in point. Salah vs Huddersfield and Aguero vs Burnley. Both could score big, but if Aguero doesn't, and you captain him it will be painful. But then, if Salah and Aguero score big, and you've captained Stirling, it could be even more painful! Especially in a situation where Hazard, your other captain option, is playing Man Utd, so putting the armband on him is always fraught with risk.

 

That's FPL though.

 

Will be interesting to see what you do in the end.

 

Good luck with it!

[Azrael]

Any suggestions on what I can do with my team:

 

 

 

Thinking it's time to get rid of Lucas Moura and could probably downgrade a couple of defenders to free up some funds. Think I need Hazard and/or a Liverpool attacker. Also don't have any Arsenal players which I might need to look into. 

 

Ideally Aguero, Hazard and Kane will all pick up season long injuries during the international break. 

[The Grand Pursuivant]

1 hour ago, Azrael said:

Any suggestions on what I can do with my team:

 

 

 

Thinking it's time to get rid of Lucas Moura and could probably downgrade a couple of defenders to free up some funds. Think I need Hazard and/or a Liverpool attacker. Also don't have any Arsenal players which I might need to look into. 

 

Ideally Aguero, Hazard and Kane will all pick up season long injuries during the international break. 

 

To start with put Boly first on your bench!

 

You play differently to me. I never have expensive GKs and rarely go with more than one premium striker. Most of my advice will be telling you to play the way I do because I will inevitably think the way I play is superior. Namely focusing on getting most of my points from midfield. I will try to make that useful.

 

You definitely need Hazard and a Liverpool attacker. Hazard is having one of those seasons where he's just the best player in the league. You don't necessarily need Hazard vs Utd this week though. Liverpools next two games are Huddersfield and Cardiff. There will be goals there. That should be your priority.

 

I really do think you have too much money up front though. Your midfield is so weak. Whilst I would definitely recommend Fraser, Maddison and Richarlison to people looking for a 6-7m midfielder, having all 4 of your playing midfielders at that price point leaves you nowhere to go. There are so many players that are going to get hauls over the next couple of weeks that you don't have and will need to make big changes to get. Stirling, Mane, Salah, Hazard, Firminho, Lacazette, maybe even KDB when he's back. Going without some of those is going to be terrifying in the short to medium term.

 

Tottenham look lethargic, are missing a bunch of their creative midfielders and Kane is just playing so deep and looks so tired. Not to mention the offpitch nonsense with their new stadium. Having three of their players is not something I would be happy with at the moment. Recognising when you have made a mistake is really important. Having that many Spurs players at this point in the season in may be a big mistake. It might be great in December, when their fixtures turn and they have a chance to gain form. Not now though.

 

The decision you really have to make is do you want to take Kane out now when he is playing against Cardiff, or wait to do it next week. It would depend on how many free transfers you have. I don't think it's worth a hit to get him out when he's playing West Ham. If you have one FT then I would hold and maybe do 3 transfers for a -4 next week. If you have both then you have a decision to make.

 

I'd recommend looking at Kane out to a striker from 3 price points and then upgrade Moura. 9-9.5 with Lacazette and Firminho. 6.5-7 with Arnie, Mitro and the Bournemouth players, then 5.5ish with Ings and Jimenez. All of those I think are likely to give a higher points per million than Kane over the next few games. Then see what that lets you do with your midfield. You could do Moura+Kane to Firminho/Mane or Salah/Jimenez (not sure of your sell values here so I may be off but it should be possible). Both of those are pretty good transfers if you look past a potential loss of points from Kane vs West Ham. Maybe you could hold, then sacrifice a premium defender and try to get Hazard in along with a Liverpool attacker and a cheaper defender.

 

If you still have your wildcard I'd put serious thought in to using it.

 

I say all this, but your Spurs players could go wild against West Ham and kickstart their season. A big win and they might remember that they're a good team who know how to play football. It's entirely possible, but the question you need to ask yourself is whether or not it is probable. I don't think it is. I don't know anything though.

[Azrael]

Good points. My midfield did have Salah until about a week or two ago (Swapped out Salah and Zaha for Kane and Richarlison) so might get him back in - or Hazard - and get rid of Kane. 

 

I so have my wild card available (usually used by the first international break) and am considering using it. 

 

Most seasons I tend to have a cheap backline- Usually 2 4.5 keepers, one 6m defender and the rest below 5.5 - with a 3.9/4m non-playing one to free up funds. Spend big in that area this time round hence the cheaper midfield.