Plenty of Tweets this Friday seeking a bit of Fantasy EPL advice that requires a touch more than 140 characters. Rapid-fire for a few of these in a quick post while we continue to research Last Minute Tinkers (link is to last weekends) for publication later this evening.
@fantasygaffer Berba or Defoe?
— Efan Yuliyanto (@efannafe) October 26, 2012
Would have answered this on Twitter, but I got distracted by your background. The answer is layered, a decent bit of complexity goes into it but at the end of the day we’ll take Defoe in the short term. The questions over Adebayor’s health and the recent comments from Andre Villas-Boas give us confidence to use Defoe until such a time as his production falters.
#THFC Defoe 676′ | Shots(On) 43(13) Goals 5 | Shooting Accuracy 43% | Chance conversion 17% | Chances created 10 Asst 2 | @eplindex — FantasyGaffer (@FantasyGaffer) October 25, 2012
That is the full story on Defoe. We still love Berba, and would not fault someone for starting a front line that included both strikers discussed here and each plays a promotion side that is generous with its concession.
@fantasygaffer 5.3m to spend on a defender to replace williams….thoughts?
— Chris Tasker (@AnglesGrindley) October 26, 2012
We certainly advocate selling Ashley Williams and any other Swansea defender or goalkeeper you may have on your roster. In Tinkers we will address the upcoming Swans’ fixtures and they are amoung the most difficult in which to maintain clean sheets. To answer the question – we would typically point in the direction of Fulham’s inexpensive defensive cadre. However, four of their next six are away from the Cottage. We would love to see the £5.2-rated Kolo Toure get a run of starts, but that is unlikely. Similarly, Arsenal’s Carl Jenkinson has a few difficult fixtures ahead and a returning Bacary Sagna to contend with. We are going to point to Liverpool’s £4.5m Andre Wisdom who played in the cleansheet on Thursday in the Europa League and has played 90′ in three straight including two cleansheets on the bounce.
@fantasygaffer fletcher or pogrebnyak in the starting XI? Have both — Imtiyaz(@mimtiyazudd) October 26, 2012
Fletcher is discussed at length in the upcoming Tinkers (as is Pog) but a few quick numbers for the Scotland international indicate all you need to know.: He is first in the Sunderland scoring table with five goals. Second in the table is Demba Ba with one. We like Pog for the money and believe he will finish the year with 10 goals, but Fletcher is the only scoring threat in the Black Cats attack at the moment and all of their energies should rightly be focused on putting the ball on his boot within shooting distance of the opposition goal.
@fantasygaffer Who should be my captain this GW? Ba, Cazorla, Baines or Jenkinson? — Daniel Sant’Anna (@tree_united) October 26, 2012
Number of questions every day has risen and we’ve altered Tinkers to include the most asked about, most likely, and a couple surprises suggested by Opta statistics beneath each match preview. Each included player is rated in terms of our confidence that he will be the ‘most valuable’ player to captain in the match. We’re not always right (last week we had Santi Cazorla rated highest) but those are our rankings. Eventually, there will be an update rank on this site from week to week, but for now this is the best we’ve got. For these four players, we’ve not ranked Baines or Jenkinson at all. Ba and Santi are both rated 8/10, level in our estimation. Personally, we’re giving the armband back to Santi this weekend in hopes he makes good on the promise he showed a week ago. Jenkinson is an interesting pick, but we’re not certain he even sees the pitch in this one.
For more check out @FantasyGaffer on Twitter and look to our Favourites on that site to find our most recent STATS tweets with Opta data courtesy of EPLIndex.com. Constant Fantasy EPL advice, even when you’d wish it would stop.