Week 2 Preview

Now to get ahead in Yahoo's Fantasy Football game, you always need to be thinking 1 step ahead of the rest. I am now fairly settled on my team for Week 1, so my attentions are turned to Week 2.

If you're looking for Week 1 information, you'll find it in the post below this one.

Week 2 is a single game week for all teams, with the fixtures below:-

WEEK 2 FIXTURES
Saturday, 22 August 2009
Arsenal v Portsmouth, 15:00
Birmingham v Stoke, 15:00
Hull v Bolton, 15:00
Man City v Wolverhampton, 15:00
Sunderland v Blackburn, 15:00
Wigan v Man Utd, 15:00

Sunday, 23 August 2009
Burnley v Everton, 15:00
Fulham v Chelsea, 16:00
West Ham v Tottenham, 13:30

Monday, 24 August 2009
Liverpool v Aston Villa, 20:00

As a general rule you want to prioritise picking players from teams you feel will win and keep clean sheets. Now from those fixtures, 2 stand out immediately: Arsenal at home to Portsmouth & Man City at home to Wolves. Also of interest are Liverpool at home to Villa (they beat them 6-0 last season) & Man U @ Wigan. You may also want to look at Chelsea @ Fulham & Everton @ Burnley, but I feel these could both be tougher games. I'll probably be avoiding the majority of players from Birmingham v Stoke, Hull v Bolton & West Ham v Tottenham. Sunderland are an okay bet at home to Blackburn.

Why am I already thinking ahead? Well, you can be assured that by the end of this weekend's fixtures, a lot of player's values would've changed as they perform either badly or well. From a Week 2 point of view, you don't need to worry about the players who perform badly as their cost is likely to decrease - it's the players that perform well you need to worry about.

Once the Week 1 deadline passes at midday this Saturday, you are able to start changing your team for Week 2 ***. This means you can snap up players before their values go up as a result of their Week 1 performances. The original bloggers Jeremy & Neal labelled this period "The Barn Door", obviously because it's as if Yahoo leave the door open to allow managers to pick up players before their prices change. Of course, you don't get the points the player earns in Week 1, but you can take advantage of picking up players before their price rises. If you don't do this and wait until midweek to start making your changes, you could find you can't afford "form" players who may have been available to you if you'd snapped them up on the barn door.

For Week 2 I will be looking to get in as many Arsenal, Man City, Liverpool & Man U Players as I can, with a few Chelsea & Everton players in there too & if it's absolutely necessary I will fill a few spaces with cheaper players from the remaining fixtures (Sunderland).

Arshavin, Van Persie, Fabregas, Walcott, Vermeulen, Almunia, Tevez, Adebayor, Robinho, Ireland, Wright Phillips, Toure, Given, Gerrard, Torres, Kuyt, Insua, Johnson, Reina, Rooney, Berbatov, Owen, Valencia, Foster, Lampard, Drogba, Malouda, Bosingwa, Cech, Cahill, Osman, Jo, Saha, Baines, Howard, Bent, Richardson, Jones etc etc. These are all going to be players you'll want to be looking at & deciding on before their prices (possibly) increase around 7pm Saturday/Sunday (depending on how quickly Yahoo will be updating the points this year).

You can either wait until after the results on Saturday before making your changes before the points/values are updated (so you know who's scored/looked in form), or if you know you will not be at a computer at this time, make your changes straight after the deadline - of course this is riskier as you may miss out on a player or drop a Week 1 player who performs unexpectedly well.

PLEASE REMEMBER - YOU MUST SAVE YOUR CHANGES. If you change some players but DO NOT save your changes, and players prices increase after this time, when you do come to save your team you will not be able to as your team's total cost is likely to exceed the £100 million limit.

I imagine a lot of you already use this tactic. I never used to until a few seasons ago when I realised that it's what 99% of players in the Top 500 do to keep ahead of the rest. Fantasy Managers who wait until midweek will never be able to afford all the players that Managers who get things done early can.

I hope this all makes sense and is of some use to you.

*** This entire post is written assuming Yahoo keep "The Barn Door" for the 09/10 season. If they were to close it and not allow players to change their teams until all fixtures are completed then most of what I've just written is completely irrelevant...although you'll still want to be looking at these teams/fixtures for Week 2.

We'll know for sure at 12:01pm on Saturday 15th August.

Cheers,
AM

p.s. If you're on Facebook, please add yourself to the YFF Assistant Manager group by clicking on the Facebook box to the left of this post. It will help me to put some faces to names & also allow me to alert you when I post something I feel is really important!

Due to demand I've opened a 2nd Yahoo Blog League, already half full, so be quick if you want to join...