EPL Fantasy Soccer

[fox]

Fox, yeah im same as Jeffers. We run a few aussie betting sites together and do that full time now. GameTipper and Ned do a bit of work with us too.

Good thing about this forum is that we have so many people into so many different kinds of sports, a big bonus for a forum.

every aussie blokes dream , sport sport sport, nice. buggers

[fox]

wouldnt leave you much spare time mate, you get married at halftime at a footy game eh

[GameTipper]

Just some Fantasy player news... The top forward pick may be out for the season opener... See story here: Drogba to miss start of season after operation

Just a heads up - He was my first pick of all players in my team, so no doubts others may have done the same thing... free's up a lot of $$$ if you take the punt on someone else!

[GameTipper]

This goes against my better judgment, cos I'm out to kick some major butt in our PunterZone League competition, but I'm going to set aside my competitive nature for a moment (or several) and give some tips on how to go about setting up and running an English Premier League Fantasy team. This is mainly aimed at newer users if you want or need it of course, but could also help some experienced ones too.

This is going to be a long post - so go grab a coffee or a beer and get settled in...

Nutting out good players and getting a fairly competitive team running from week 1 onwards is paramount, but also gives you a good base to trade from in future rounds. There are a number of key things to watch out for, in both starting up, and then the 9 month journey from there on... Yes people, 9 months!

I've been playing this game for the last 4 seasons, and ironically, my best season was my first! Coming 32,680 out of around 600,000 users. Last year, having missed the first week, I ended up 168,125th out of 2.1 Million users, also didn't update my team and missed cut off multiple times, which is one of the first points I wanted to make. Make time to check your team each week, or in some cases, before the next round starts a day or so after the last! Knowing when the next round starts is very important, cos it gives you time to take advantage of free trades, and to select a good and suitable Captain/Vice-captain for each round.

For experienced and new users alike, some changes to the trade system this year allows the 1 free trade per round to accumulate to a maximum of 2 for a given week. In another words, if you miss one week, you will have two the next, if you don't use them, you have two the week after. There is also an extra one off Wild Card given in the mid-season trade period to perform multiple free trades in a single week with no score penalty. This extra Wild Card expires after the trade period concludes, but you also have another one up your sleeve to use at any time during the season. Another point to be made here - Know how to navigate the Fantasy website to source information and read all the rules and help you can get. Knowing this will avoid mistakes and missing information in regards to making a quick last minute trade before cut off times. Sounds simple enough, but knowing this is still important.

How to go about starting. When you first sign in, you will be prompted to add your personal information and then select a full team to kick off with. You DO NOT have to be perfect right away! You have unlimited trades until the first game week starts, I tend to click the "Auto-Complete" button and then start researching the players I want to add later on. This just allows you the freedom of getting in and start making changes when it suites you, cos there is nothing more daunting than thinking you have to come up with a full team straight away. I know because this very fact has turned some people away from starting in the first place. From here, it's basically all at your finger tips... stats, player profiles, last years results etc etc...

The never ending conundrum... Player costs! Obviously, in this game at least, you have a budget of 100 million to squeeze in 15 players. This works out to be an average of 6.66 million to spend on each player. To consider the ramifications of this, all you need to do is source last years top two players (still playing this year), Lampard (13m) & Drogba (12.5m). Selecting both of these players essentially costs you the average of 4+ players! Good news is, there is a whole heap of players that start around the 4m-4.5m mark, but will any of them score good points? The player research tool allows you to have a look at their prospects for the year and in most cases, also spells out if they will be first team players or not. (See links below) The main aim is to get a nice fit of players within this 100m to score you points, which comes directly from their actual on pitch performances. So the other obvious thing to do is to select players who are starters each week. Starting out is ok, all the prices are fixed but as the season goes on, these prices fluctuate allowing you to upgrade or down-grade players, which is where your trades come in. I've always looked at building a side that starts, with a mix of top players, lower consistent players, and then some newer, young players that will hopefully go up in price during the season (This is where some good research goes a long way). Leaving these sorts of players as your reserves is helpful as you won't lose points if one of your better players are out, and they should go up in price. A diamond in the rough has seen many a fantasy player save a fortune on a position or two allowing those big name, big scoring players to be added to your team. Selecting players from a range of different teams can work both for and against. You can only pick a maximum of 3 players from each team, so you are forced to some extent to include players from the lower clubs, and even if you manage to pick good players from 5 clubs, they all have to play each other at some stage which will effect the scoring balance in that week.

A couple of links to help here:
- Full Players List w/Score History & Costs
- Full List of Players for this season per team

Selecting a Captain/Vice - This is an understatement, selecting the right player week in, week out, gives you a massive advantage each and ever week. Get it right doubles the score, get it wrong and it can leave a hole in your weekly score. Tracking the history of a player is the best way of going about this. Scoring midfielders are the best to select as they are generally considered the higher scorers all round. Forwards on a good run of goals/assists are also solid, while selecting a Defender or Keeper can back-fire badly, or score you heaps! Take note of the scoring system to find out where the pitfalls lay. It's nearly guaranteed that from one week or another, a hot player will play a fizzer, so I've always found it helpful to get off a hot streak player after around 3-4 weeks and get on the second best... sure it's cost me a few times, but in alot of cases, it's saved my bacon!

The scoring system itself is fairly easy and has been more geared to adding points than taking them away, but this year a new scoring feature challenges all of this... An own goal by a player or keeper will now subtract a further 2 points. If you think that's not much, consider that the average defender (the usual own goal scorer) on a good day scores around 6pts (plays 60+ mins, no goals conceded), taking away 2pts for an own goal would have a defender score just 1pt (plays 60+ mins, own goal, conceded goals). Knowing how the scoring system will effect scores and knowing the history of some players really comes in handy. Worst score I've seen combined a hellish day out for a defender... Conceded goals, played for less than 60mins, yellow card and then a second yellow = red card... that player ended up on a score of -4! Ouch! Keeping track of players like this can save you a fortune! The flip side of this is getting on a defender who also scores or creates assists, they score big-time for goals as they are fairly rare. Looking for a defender who attacks or ends up playing in the midfield can make your team an unstoppable scoring machine! Again, knowing which ones may do it comes in handy as combined with your captains arm-band, can score you a massive boost for the week!

While you can set up a team and let it run for the season without putting much into it, injuries, form slumps and the mid-season trade period will eventually play havoc. So if you just want to check back every so often, do so with the knowledge that mass changes will most likely be needed, costing you further points once your wild cards have been used up. Stemming the bleed of points via excessive trades will help you at the end of the year. There may be times where you need to sell two players to get a better player in, this sort of trade would be to your longer term advantage as spending the extra 4pts for a trade will eventually pay you back via the better player scoring more, and by dropping/selling players that are costing you. Again, check out the rules in regards to trading to explain this further.

Knowing who to play in your starting 11 each week is also very important, especially for players playing in the mid/lower table teams. If you have a defender in a lower side playing up against a higher scoring side, you'd probably want to put them away on the subs bench for the week. Sides that are playing well and scoring lots of goals are danger teams for keepers and defenders alike. Sides that keep clean sheets are a bonanza for keepers and defenders, so keep an eye out on who is playing who each week to avoid costly mistakes in the back line of your team. The overall formation of your team can also change from week to week, see the rules page on formations. This can also cut down the amount of points lost based on various out-comes of games. Selecting less defenders and more forwards if it looks like your back line will concede and your forwards will flourish. The Mid field is always your best bet to inflate numbers. I like playing with various setups during the season to rotate players around based on game winnability, this is something you will learn to balance over time based on the players you have and the teams they are playing.

Bonus points for players are given on a 3-2-1 basis per game and count towards your overall player score. This can be an awesome way of getting an extra 6 points if you can select the best player for the match and have them as your captain! CONTINUED...

[GameTipper]

CONTINUED... There is nothing wrong in checking out what you opposition manager is doing with their team setup, or seeing who is on their roster. You can click on other managers teams to check out how they are scoring, and which players they have to chose from. Fair enough, we'll all probably check each others teams out, but keep this in mind, you can learn a whole heap from the managers at the top of the main score boards, especially if your team isn't getting the higher scores each week and you want to overhaul your team with a wild card. Adding other public leagues to your game is also fun and a good way of seeing other setups easy, plus it's fun to compete against other teams/people from all over the world. It also serves as a good promotion for the PunterZone forum to attract more users! *Grinz*

During each game week, you can follow the live scoring via the website to see how your players are going. Gets exciting to see your scores rise during a game. There is a whole heap of other stuff you can do to track your team and seek out an advantage in the game apart from anything I've provided here, so have a search around the net if you like and if you find something useful, maybe post it here for others to look into as well. I have provided a broad amount of knowledge here from my own perspective and from the way I go about my fantasy team and season play. It may not win you the whole fantasy game, but for new players it may help towards starting up and looking at building your own strategy of play for the year.

Remember! GameWeek 1 starts on August 14th at 11:30 BST! You must have your teams in and correct by then to be in the running!

In conclusion (yes we are finally here!), we are playing against each other, but also play as a team against all other teams playing. So helping out your fellow players in the team is also important in my mind. I'm more than happy to help out any MEMBER of the PunterZone forum during the season if they wish, just send me a PM and I will endeavor to answer questions and help where I can. It also should be known that a few other tactics have been left out of this as well, nothing that anyone else can not find out or come across themselves, but they are my own little things to hold on to for now. Maybe if you ask nicely via a PM, I may divulge this information! While playing the Premier League Fantasy game comes with a whole heap of frustration, it's also a fun way of competing against others during a long season. It's fun, really!!!

Recap of the Official PunterZone Fantasy EPL League joining details:
- Goto the website: Fantasy.premierleague.com
- Sign Up!
- Create your team.
- Join the League by going to the Leagues page and follow the prompts!
- Add the Code: 40878-14213
- Welcome aboard!

Thanks goes to Ned for starting it up this year, hopefully the first of many to come!

Looking forward to playing this years competition - Good Luck Team and may the best manager win!!!

[Ned]

Brilliant GameTipper, thanks alot for posting all that information. It should be a great comeptition this year. We've got 7 managers already.
Should be a good one

[GameTipper]

Brilliant GameTipper, thanks alot for posting all that information. It should be a great comeptition this year. We've got 7 managers already.
Should be a good one

No worries man, always happy to help

Lets hope we get a few more!

[jeffers]

I've joined

Just put in a random selection for now, will sort the team properly before deadline day

[GameTipper]

Well done Jeffers! I'm sure you'll have an advantage over the rest of us here... Good Luck mate!

[Ned]

Come on everyone! Get your teams in and join the PunterZone League. We've got 15 competing so far which is fantastic but the more the better. Not long to go now until the season starts so get your teams up to date and be ready for a long season and tough competitors!