Time to unleash the Beast
There’s £10k in prize money up for grabs this weekend in Mondogoal’s ‘Premier League Shootout’ contest. For just a £2 stake this contest serves as the ideal introduction for any fantasy football enthusiast who may be thinking of testing daily fantasy football waters for the first time and the prize money goes all the way down to 25th place.
In this Hotcard article we will drill home some of the key fundamentals to daily fantasy football success as we take a look at the selection process for this ‘Shootout’ contest and we will also touch on the late swap issue, a feature that is being hotly debated at present.
The Premier League has introduced a Friday evening game to their schedule this season and if you are playing in a full game week round your line-up is effectively locked-in once Friday’s match gets under way. If late-swap was allowed you would be able to change players in the remaining fixtures of the contest as long as the games in question haven’t commenced. However, since late swap isn’t a feature the onus would be on you to accurately predict line-ups which is of course a skill in itself. This ‘Shootout’ contest has omitted the first 2 games from the weekend card meaning 5 of the 8 games will start simultaneously on Saturday. You will therefore be able to manage your line-ups by editing your team (if needed) after team news is released prior to kick-off on these 5 games. You would then only have 3 fixtures to worry about where potential non-starters might be a concern.
We feel it’s important to reiterate the significance of goal expectancies and the following table shows home sides that are expected to score more goals this weekend than the number of goals they averaged at home last season and likewise pinpoints which teams are expected to concede less home goals than visiting teams averaged last season.
This topic was discussed in more detail in ‘Pillars of Success’ and we’re happy to concentrate on the fixtures highlighted above as we piece together this week’s team of the week.
If you are familiar with our Wisdom section you will know that we look to focus on players who rank highly in each playing position then use this in conjunction with those all-important goal expectancies. Tottenham restricted Manchester United to just one shot on target last week while Stoke lacked any sort of creativity against Liverpool. We’re happy to go with Harry Kane who will be out to prove he’s no one season wonder and Christian Eriksen is also included. There is speculation that Hugo Lloris will start and he’s included but if he doesn’t make it Michel Vorm is a ready-made last minute replacement within budget. Kyle Walker was unfortunate to score an own goal but he kept Ashley Young very quiet and surely did enough to retain his place at the expense of Kieran Trippier, something that we discussed recently in Keep that Scoreboard ticking.
Swansea City were terrific against the Champions and Federico Fernández who is a model of consistency will line-up in our defence while Gylfi Sigurdsson gets the nod in midfield.
Coutinho should be in the thick of the action for Liverpool against the Cherries and his team-mate Nathaniel Clyne is also included. However, the one that really caught our eye is Christian Benteke who seems to have been undervalued by the game operator. The Beast's closing valuation last season was £12.9m but he is available for £7.5m here. Villa only scored 18 home goals last season and Liverpool are pencilled in here to score over 2 goals.
West Ham versus Leicester should be a cracker and we’ve gone for Diafra Sakho who completes our 3 man attack. No player created more chances than Dimitri Payet across Europe’s top 5 leagues last season and judging by his debut the Frenchman could be a serious upgrade on Stewart Downing. He’s expensive but we have sufficient funds remaining to include him.
Here’s our provisional team of the week for this Mondogoal 10k contest:
