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After taking a Platinum level beating in game week 24, the 11Kicks House Team was ready to step down a level. As luck would have it, I received a very kind invitation from Revvies to play in a private Gold level league. I’m in.
My XI for game week 25 is above. Pretty straightforward: 4-3-3, Joe Hart in goal, two big central defenders who I’m hoping to see get their head to corner kicks, two attacking fullbacks with potential for assists. My midfield is all about the goal threat, with Rafael van der Vaart, Cesc Fabregas and Clint Dempsey and my three man forward line can’t fail to produce. Unless I just gave Edin Dzeko, Dimitar Berbatov and Robin van Persie the kiss of death.
It’s transfer deadline day, so there are all kinds of coming and goings. And it’s tempting to get excited about all the new signings and select those shiny new players in your fantasy football team for game week 25 (which starts tomorrow, by the way). But I’d counsel caution.
First of all, there’s the danger that deals aren’t 100% done. It’s not guaranteed that Fernando Torres will be available to play for Chelsea, Luis Suarez to play for Liverpool or Michael Bradley to play Aston Villa. Just because a player is pictured holding his new team’s shirt in your newspaper or on a website, that doesn’t mean the Premier League has finalized his paperwork and sanctioned him to play for his new team.
In addition, January signings can be slow to adapt, because they don’t have time to settle into their new surrounding. The Nemanja Vidic that played for Manchester United in January 2006 wasn’t even half the player that Nemanja Vidic of August 2006 was. Even quality players need to acclimatize.
So my advice is to hold off until at least game week 26 and make sure everyone makes it safely through the transfer window. That way you ensure the players you pick for Tuesday and Wednesday are available for their new managers to pick as well.
You may remember Luis Suarez as the Uruguayan toe rag who denied Ghana a place in the World Cup semifinal with his famous extra time handball save. So you may be wondering if his imminent arrival in the Premier League means we’ll be able to pick him as a goalie 11Kicks fantasy football team.
Sadly, the answer is no. But once Suarez’ £23m transfer from Ajax to Liverpool is all signed and official, we will be able to pick him in his more usual position of striker. Which is good, because good as Suarez is at keeping the ball out of the net is with his hands, he’s even better at putting the ball into the net with his feet. And sometimes his head.
If Suarez is going to playing alongside Fernando Torres, then I think we can expect both of them to produce. But if – as Chelsea fans are still hoping – Suarez is arriving as Torres’ replacement, then you may want to look elsewhere.
Fulham’s John Pantsil should be glad his game against Liverpool yesterday wasn’t part of an 11Kicks fantasy football gameweek.
His comedy own goal would not only have cost his goalkeeper and fellow defenders the four points that come with a clean sheet, he’d also get an extra minus one for the actual own goal. Though you could argue he deserves minus three points since he had three swings at the ball, each of which took him farther from safety.
Dimitar Berbatov scored another two goals yesterday, as part of Manchester United’s thrilling/predictable (delete according to taste) 3-2 come from behind win over Blackpool. That’s 19 Premier League goals so far this season.
The game against Blackpool didn’t count towards fantasy football, because it was a rescheduled game that fell outside of a normal gameweek. But fantasy football managers should still pay attention. Because with two against Blackpool coming just three days after Berbatov’s hat-trick vs. Birmingham, the Bulgarian is clearly a man with fully functional shooting boots.
You know how some players look decent in the lower leagues, but then get shown up in the top flight? Well, that was me this weekend in 11Kicks fantasy football. After a few wins at Silver level ($4.99 to enter, $25 for finishing first) I took the 11Kicks House Team up to Platinum level for game week 24 ($24.99 to enter, $125 for finishing first) and promptly came 10th out of 11 teams. Ouch.
In hindsight, the most interesting thing is that I didn’t have a terrible week. Two goals from Fernando Torres, one from Nani, and clean sheets for Wojciech Szczęsny, Brede Hangeland and Nemanja Vidic, all of which totaled 47 points. But Platinum is the big boy league, where it seems you need players scoring in every position to have a chance at winning.
Speaking of which… congratulations to player Jimstaelhi and his KING RED HOOK team for finishing first with 68 points. His team selection masterstroke was making hat-trick hero Robin van Persie captain (worth 18 points) and picking fellow hat-trick hero Dimitar Berbatov (11 points) to play alongside him.
Despite the beating I took, Platinum level was enjoyably competitive, especially because all 10 rival managers seemed to take it seriously enough to pick a carefully considered team (no one was dumb enough to pick a suspended player, for example). So, like the lower league player who’s made a tough Premier League debut, I’m a little wiser for the experience, and will almost certainly be back to try my luck in top flight again.
It takes something and someone a bit special to miss a penalty kick and still be the 11Kicks fantasy football hero of the week. It’s minus two points if you get it wrong from the spot, a penalty miss is usually enough to ruin any players points total for the weekend. But not if you also score a hat-trick, as Arsenal’s Robin van Persie did against Wigan. See the above video for all three goal, plus the miss.
That’s minus two for the miss, but two for appearing and nine for the goals, giving RvP nine points total. Game week 24 isn’t over yet, but it looks very likely that the winner of the Platinum league I played in will be one of the four teams that not only selected RvP in their lineup, but also made him captain and so doubled their return to 18 points. More on my inaugural Platinum level adventure once game week 24 is concluded.
Big week for the 11Kicks House Team, as me and my boys will be competing at the Platinum Level for the first time. Or playing at the Platinum level anyway.
For those unaware, Platinum is the big money league. It’s $24.99 to enter—the price of a good teak. And whoever finishes top wins $125—the price of a very very good steak. So I spent a long time carefully selecting my team today, followed by a through Google News search on each player, just to check for any injuries or suspensions. The result is above, my reasoning is below…
There’s a rumour going round that links Blackburn with Juan Roman Riquelme of Boca Juniors. If you’re not familiar with Riquelme, the man is a proper old-fashioned #10, and a footballing genius. See above.
Sounds great, but Riquelme could be bad news for Blackburn fans.
Bad news because Riquelme is really only ever interested in the playmaking bit. He can ping a pass into a gap no one knew was there, he can pull out the sort of trick that leaves defenders looking like Friday night drunks and, last but not least, he can shoot. What he can’t do is run. He’s not going to go chasing people or making any other sort of effort that doesn’t involved glorious moments of skill. In short, he would very likely make Blackburn a dysfunctional team ten man team, with everyone else trying to pick up his slack. So that’s the bad news.
The good news is that if you’re not a Blackburn fan, and are only interested in seeing Riquelme confuse defenders, and score goals and get assists with impossible passing feats, then he’ll very likely do plenty of all three.
So if Riquelme does decide to trade Buenos Aries for Blackburn, then he’s going straight in my fantasy football team. But I’ll probably put some money on Blackburn getting relegated at the same time.
Seems Birmingham City haven’t quite figured out how to sign football players. A £6m fee was reportedly agreed with Spurs for Robbie Keane, only for Birmingham to then back out, much to Robbie Keane’s bemusement. Birmingham suggested it was something to do with Keane’s wage demands, but Keane says it didn’t even get that far:
“That Birmingham stuff, that statement from them I find very bizarre, to be honest with you,” said Keane. “Apart from that a deal was never really on the table, I think they were just looking for some publicity. The Birmingham thing was never on in the first place. That stuff that was said [that a deal was close] was very strange, that was never going to happen.”
Maybe Carson Yeung and the rest of the Birmingham board should try playing 11Kicks instead. You just select the player you want, point at him with your mouse and click him straight into your first eleven. Don’t do that with Robbie Keane this weekend though, because unless another move materialized between now and Saturday, he won’t be seeing much action.
