Thursday, January 27, 2011

EPL Week 25 Fantasy Team

This week, Manchester United are by far the most likely team to score. The next best, quite some way down, is Arsenal. In my model, Bolton and Blackpool are the next closest after Arsenal, whereas the bookies have Bolton and Chelsea next. Of course, I will put my money where my mouth is and use my model for choosing a team.

On the defensive side, the most likely clean sheet is from Manchester City, followed by Chelsea, and then Manchester United. After that, it becomes crowded. Arsenal, Newcastle, Tottenham, Bolton, and Fulham are the next best choices and are all roughly equal to one another. The same applies to Birmingham, Liverpool, Stoke, Blackburn, and West Brom, which are only a tiny bit worse.

In general, there are lots of good choices on defense this week. Given that, it makes sense to choose all offensive players from the top 4 offensive teams. So I will have no defenders from Manchester United or Arsenal.

After we take defenders from Manchester City and Chelsea, we need only one more defender from any of that long list of good defensive choices above. I went with Martin Kelly from Liverpool as he has been playing well recently and delivering a good number of fantasy points per game.

I chose the same offensive players as last week from Manchester United and Arsenal — one striker and one midfielder each. That leaves one striker and one midfielder from either Bolton or Blackpool. From Bolton, the clear choice is Johan Elmander. For the final spot, I'll take the trendy Charlie Adam. His fantasy points per game over the season are less than, say, Stewart Holden from Bolton. But my sense is that Adam is in better form at the moment.

Here is the full team selection:

  • Keeper: Hart (MAC)
  • Defenders: Cole (CHE), Terry (CHE), Zabaleta (MAC), Kelly (LIV)
  • Midfield: Nani (MAU), Fabregas (ARS), Adam (BPL)
  • Forwards: Berbatov (MAU), van Persie (ARS), Elmander (BOL)

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