Fantasy Premier League 2017/18 - My Team

Evening fellow Steemians,

It's almost upon us!

Three, long months of weekends betting on football leagues you've never heard of finally comes to an end this weekend...

And with the glorious return of Premier League football comes the return of Fantasy Premier League!

I've been playing for quite a few years now with varying degrees of success, last year was a bad year for me and this year I'm determined to put that right!

I thought I'd share my team with you all - feel free to let me know what you think!

This year I'll be sticking to the trusted 3-4-3 formation. I was tempted to go with some of the pricier wing-backs such as Alonso and Walker due to their attacking potential, however I never like to have too much value loaded up in the defence, and there's always the potential that teams will have sussed out how to play against teams with this style of play.

With that in mind then, I've gone for a balanced approach, and I'll be attempting to plan my team with the following 6 gameweeks in mind not looking any further beyond that.

West Brom have some great opening fixtures and having thought about sticking David De Gea in goal and keeping him for the season, I like the idea of Antonio Valencia's clean sheet potential and attacking returns, therefore I've opted for Ben Foster and Craig Dawson along with Southampton's Ryan Bertrand for my defence.

For this team I've taken into account pre-season form and the opening set of fixtures. There's also potential to find some real bargains early on and I've gone for Swansea's Tom Carroll who has been in great form in pre-season and comes in cheap at 4.5m. I'll be keeping my eye on Ruben Loftus-Cheek of Crystal Palace, another who if he gets regular games could become a cheap attacking threat.

Based on their opening set of fixtures, I've opted for some West Brom and Southampton players. It was a tie between West Brom's Jay Rodriguez and Southampton's Manolo Gabbiadini for the third striker slot behind Alexandre Lacazette and Romelu Lukaku. I chose Gabbiadini who I feel you can expect to be amongst the goals early on having been at the club some time now, whereas with a new player like Rodriquez you can't be certain how well he will settle at his new club. Incidentally I believe Lacazette could potentially end up being the highest points scorer this year.

I've given a punt to Tom Ince, who's had a good pre-season and Huddersfield's early fixtures offer encouragement. The rest of the squad picks itself. I'm not currently too concerned by the lack of Chelsea and Tottenham players, it'll be interesting to see how Spurs get on at Wembley in the early rounds and Chelsea's lack of serious investment and injury to Eden Hazard means I'll wait to see how they shape up over the first few weeks.

Kevin De Bruyne is the only Man City player I truly feel safe picking - there is so much scope for rotation in Pep's squad, again, this needs to be monitored going forward.

So I plan to post regular updates on my team progress, below are some useful links - one of which is an article posted on Steemit by @acidyo for a Steemit Fantasy Football League. Head on over if you're interested and get involved! Other links are to the Fantasy Premier League website and the Fantasy Football Scout website that provides handy information and stats to help guide you through the season.

Let me know who you plan to pick this year - who are your ones to watch and who do you think will come out on top?

Thanks for reading!

Stuart

My Team:

Links:

Steemit Fantasy League:
https://steemit.com/fantasy/@acidyo/announcement-steem-fantasy-premier-league

Useful sites:
www.fantasyfootballscout.co.uk
fantasy.premierleague.co.uk