Sounds like a lot of money, does it not? How can a budget of £100m not be enough? Surely you can have the best of the best with that amount of money?
Well, when it comes to Fantasy Football, the answer is a definitive NO. I spent a few hours during the weekend struggling to pick 15 players whilst remaining within this constraining budget.
It was a struggle but I managed to land right on the penny, spending exactly £100m on players that I hope will propel me to the top of the fantasy football league tables.
Fantasy Football - Is that when there are 20 goals a match and someone ends up winning?
A brief introduction to Fantasy Football (FF) is in order before proceeding any further - those of you who have already selected your team can skip right on to the next section.
In fantasy football you get to choose real players, the players are awarded points based on their real life performances. So, the better the real life performances of your selected players, the more points you accumulate, with the aim of getting more points than your mates.
It is really that simple, more complex definitions are available, but think of it as a way to verifiably prove to your friends that you know more about football than they do. No ifs, no buts. The table at the end of the season never lies.
Strategy
Every self help guru, business leader, crypto expert knows that you must have a strategy before embarking on a course of action.
Without a strategy you loose sight of the end goal and chase after the newest shiny toy or flavour of the month before ending up wondering how did it all go wrong.
To avoid this pitfall I reconfirmed my FF strategy. Reconfirmed, because it's the same strategy that I have been using since Thierry Henry and Christiano Ronaldo left the Premier league.
Without a guaranteed star player that scores lots of points week in week out, the next best thing is to minimise your chances of getting points deducted whilst maximising your chances of scoring points.
Minimising Points Deductions
In the premier league FF league - https://www.premierleague.com/home - the goalkeeper and defenders get given 4 points if they stay on the pitch for 60mins and do not concede a goal but lose all 4 points if they do concede a goal.
As the aim of football is to score more goals than the other team and the EPL's emphasis on entertainment, the probability of a team not conceding a goal are low. Therefore, my strategy is to limit my defence unit to the minimum allowed which is a goalkeeper and three defenders.
An alternative strategy could be to select goal scoring defenders as they get given 6 points for each goal scored, but this is a high risk (and high rewards) strategy which over the course of nine months is likely to end up in failure.
Maximise Points Scoring
Midfielders have the highest probability of being your top points scorers in any given game week. They get given 1 point for not conceding, 3 points for an assist and 5 points for scoring a goal.
Unsurprisingly, I pack my team with midfielders and two types of midfielders in particular. The assist kings and the midfielders who also play as strikers, both types of midfielders can get 10+ goals and 10+ assists in an average season.
Strikers get given 4 points for every goal scored, so unless there are strikers that can assist and get 25+ goals a season, I tend to select only two strikers a game week.
My Team
Starters POS Position Value £m
Boruc BOU GKP 4.50
David Luiz CHE DEF 6.00
Vertonghen TOT DEF 6.00
Rangel SWA DEF 4.00
Snodgrass WHU MID 6.00
Walcott ARS MID 7.50
De Bruyne MCI MID 10.00
Sigurdsson SWA MID 8.50
Özil ARS MID 9.50
Lacazette ARS FWD 10.50
King BOU FWD 7.50
Substitutes POS Position
Federici BOU GKP 4.00
Barnes BUR FWD 5.50
Milner LIV DEF 6.50
Long BUR DEF 4.00
Total: 100.00
So now you know how I spent exactly £100m on 11 starters and 4 substitutes, it's a shame that real life is even more surreal than fantasy as you will need multiple of this amount to be able to buy these players for real.
Rest assured you will be kept updated on the performance of my team. Will the execution vindicate the strategy?
I quite like Milner as he takes penalties...My worry with any Manchester City player is Guardiola's tendency to rotate. I made my team today and I also went with David Luiz as a cost effective alternative to Alonso.
Milner had a better season than expected last year, he may not play as many games this year but the fact that he takes pens is a bonus so he's worth having in any FF team. De Bruyne is currently my fav non-arsenal player and he could set the league alight this year. That's if Guardiola does not go and get Sanchez, in which case De Bruyne may not get the run of games required to reach that next level.