- Offense: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Blackpool
- Defense: Chelsea, Blackburn
- Both: Liverpool, Manchester United
While Chelsea gives lots of easy choices for defenders, Blackburn does not. So we need to look for defensive options from Liverpool and/or Manchester United. As it happens, Liverpool does not have any great choices for striker, so this is a natural plan for Liverpool anyway. Manchester United does have good options for striker. However, since there are so many good options from other teams and the fact that Manchester City will be playing very defensively, I choose to follow the same plan both Liverpool and Manchester United: choose one defender and one midfielder. Note that the midfielder also gets points for a clean sheet.
With that plan in place, most of the line-up fills in rather easily, aside from one tricky question: who is the third midfielder. One obvious option is to pick Cesc Fabregas from Arsenal. If we do that, we end up choosing a striker from Blackpool, such as DJ Campbell. On the other hand, we could choose a second striker from Arsenal, namely Theo Walcott. In that case, we would get a midfielder from Aston Villa or Blackpool, of which there are several good options.
I choose the second approach because I feel more confident that Aston Villa will score goals against Blackpool than vice versa. And amongst Aston Villa's midfielders, I picked Ashley Young as his recent form has been slightly better than Stewart Downing's.
The final line-up is the following 4-3-3:
- Strikers: van Persie (ARS), Walcott (ARS), Bent (AST)
- Midfield: Young (AST), Meireles (LIV), Nani (MAU)
- Defense: Samba (BLR), Cole (CHE), Kelly (LIV), Rafael (MAU)
- Keeper: Cech (CHE)
Note: I should also mention that van Persie is currently listed as injured but returning this weekend. If we get news that he will not be available this weekend, then I could either put Fabregas back in or swap van Persie for Arshavin.
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