EPL Week 31 Fantasy Team

I had a disappointing middle-of-the-pack finish last week. However, it was a poor week for everyone with few points to be had anywhere. The top 9 spots were only separated by only 5 points, which means the final ordering was pretty much down to chance.

Logging into my account to set this week's lineup brought a smile back to my face though. Despite last week's poor performance, I'm still up about 75% over the last 10 weeks. So there's plenty of motivation going into this weekend.

According to my models, these are the teams to look at for this weekend:

• Offense: Arsenal, Newcastle, Everton, Liverpool
  
• Defense: Man City, Bolton, Tottenham, Chelsea
  

Of these, Arsenal is far and away the most likely to score. The others on offense and all of those on defense are clustered pretty close together. Arsenal also has a reasonably good chance to get a clean sheet; however, given how far they are ahead on likelihood to score, it makes the most sense to draw two attacking players from Arsenal.

The midfield looks to have the fewest choices, so we will start there. Arsenal and Newcastle both have good options, but neither of the others do. Everton does not have any high point earners in midfield. Liverpool's best choice is Gerrard, who is injured. Meireles had a few weeks of great form, but with Suarez and Carroll in the lineup now, he hasn't been earning many points.

This means we want to choose two midfielders from either Arsenal or Newcastle and one midfielder from the other. Given that we would never want to skip van Persie, it seems best to take two from Newcastle, and the obvious choices are Barton and Nolan. From Arsenal, we can take either Nasri or Fabregas. The latter is expected to be ready this weekend, but there is still some risk that he would start on the bench. So for that reason, I picked Nasri.

For strikers, we clearly want to pick van Persie. We've already taken two from Newcastle, so Best is not an option. From Everton, Cahill is the only option as Saha is again injured. We can either pick him and one from Liverpool or take two from Liverpool. I choose to do the latter because it's too hard to choose between Suarez and Carroll. The former has been in great form for Liverpool recently, while the latter just scored for England this week and should have high confidence.

For defense, the best options from Man City are Kompany and Hart. Injuries leave fewer choices at City at the moment. Zabaletta should be back, but we can't expect him to start in top form. Hence, taking Hart seems like a safe bet. The remaining three choices of defenders are not easy. Chelsea defenders are usually good choices, but they are playing away to Stoke, who can be very effective at home. I chose to hedge my bets by taking just one Chelsea defender, Luiz, who is also a scoring threat, along with one defender from each of the other teams with likely clean sheets.

This gives us the following 4-3-3:

• Strikers: van Persie (ARS), Carroll (LIV), Suarez (LIV)
  
• Midfield: Nasri (ARS), Barton (NEW), Nolan (NEW)
  
• Defenders: Kompany (MAC), Cahill (BOL), Dawson (TOT), Luiz (CHE)
  
• Keeper: Hart (MAC)
  

Finally, for captain this week, the choice is easy: van Persie. He is the most likely player on Arsenal to score and Arsenal are the most likely team to score.