EPL Week 30 Fantasy Team

Here are the teams to look at according to my models:

• Offense: Arsenal, {Blackburn, Tottenham}
  
• Defense: Birmingham, {Chelsea, Everton}, Stoke
  
• Both: Man United, Aston Villa
  

The bookies' model suggests the same choices in terms of offense, but in terms of defense, they prefer Arsenal, Tottenham, Liverpool, and Blackburn to Everton, Stoke, and Birmingham. As usual I will stick with my model, as mine is more accurate at predicting scores (and hence, clean sheets) than theirs.

Looking at options for strikers from amongst these teams, we find Rooney, van Persie, Arshavin, and Bent. Neither Arshavin nor Bent is a particularly great choice, however. Furthermore, Arsenal have better choices in midfield than Arshavin at striker, and many teams offer better choices at midfield than Bent.

In fact, with just two good choices for strikers and a great many choices in midfield (as we shall see), it seems sensible to use a 3-5-2 formation, rather than the 4-3-3 that I have favored recently.

Choices in midfield include van der Vaart, Nasri (note that Fabregas is out), Stewart Downing, Ashley Young, Gareth Bale, and Morten Pedersen from Blackburn. The first four of those are easy picks, especially given that Aston Villa are at home facing Wolves, who are a poor away team. The last choice is between Bale and Pedersen. I went with Pedersen since he is the only consistent point source from Blackburn and they are sure to score against Blackpool.

In defense, we also have many choices: Terry, Ivanovic, Ashely Cole, Huth, Evra, Luiz, Baines, and Ridgewell. The first three of these are all from Chelsea, so we can take only two of them. I picked Cole over Ivanovic because Man City city are pretty dangerous in the middle. Huth is the next best choice for the third and final spot.

Finally at keeper, the only good choices are Cech and van der Sar. Thankfully, we still have not picked a second from Man United, so we can take van der Sar.

Thus, we arrive at the following 3-5-2:

• Strikers: Rooney (MAU), van Persie (MAU)
  
• Midfield: van der Vaart (TOT), Nasri (ARS), Downing (AST), Young (AST), Pedersen (BLR)
  
• Defense: Terry (CHE), Cole (CHE), Huth (STO)
  
• Keeper: van der Sar (MAU)
  

The choice of captain is particularly difficult. Good choices include van Persie, who is facing leaky West Brom; van der Vaart, who is facing leaky West Ham; and Rooney, who is in good form at the moment. Of these, van Persie is probably the safest choice, particularly given that Hernandez is also a scoring threat for Man United, and they are facing Bolton, who are a strong team.