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The usual trio of Andrew, Luke and Carl discuss the upcoming Telegraph Fantasy Football season and how they are forming their team drafts. Fellow Hub contributor Paul compiles what he learnt from the pod. Find the pod on your platform of choice below:
YouTube: watch below
1. Fergi opens up with three valuable tips
After the usual intros, the host dives straight in to offer his key tips for playing the Telegraph Fantasy Football game.
The first is to pick a rounded yet flexible starting XI – important due to the 40 transfer limit in the game. Keep in mind price points, therefore if any player becomes a must-own, they can be transferred in with limited disruption to teams.
Next, with five free teams to enter into the game, managers have the ability to mix strategies. With no limit to the number of players from one team, one tactic could be to start with a block defence, therefore any clean sheet would catapult the side up the leaderboard. Alternatively, with the volume of budget friendly forwards, trialling many attackers from mid table teams could reap rewards.
And last but not least, break the season up into two. Set your team up to use limited transfers up until Christmas, targeting to use between 10 and 12 up to this point, before resetting for the second half of the campaign.
2. Bonus players are still underpriced
Overlaying Carl’s data analysis on value for money, and Luke’s experience in generating insights from the data, the pair indicated that those players who were boosted by the inclusion of tackle bonus a few seasons back are still worth their weight in gold. The player that generated the most interest here is Wolves’ Joao Gomes (£2.9m) who accumulated 138 successful tackles last season.
3. The promoted potential gems
Two further potential gems this season are Southampton’s Adam Armstrong (£3.0m) and Ipswich’s Sam Morsy (£2.4m). The former has come off a 21 goal campaign, and the latter racked up the volume of tackles which would translate well into Telegraph Fantasy Football point scoring.
4. Only two players feature consistently across each of their current drafts
If the panel’s current drafts are anything to go by, starting XIs are going to be more varied than ever this season. Haaland’s price hike to £8.5m could be partly to do with this, nonetheless it was only Newcastle’s Alexander Isak (£5.1m) and Chelsea’s Cole Palmer (£5.8m) that appeared in each draft.
5. No Mo
Perhaps more surprisingly, Liverpool’s star forward didn’t appear in any of the three experienced Telegraph Fantasy Football managers’ drafts, and barely had a mention on the podcast. In the brief instance the Egyptian was brought into the conversation, the ‘not value for money’ tag was attached, with the three suggesting once again that a balanced squad was more important. However, does this make Salah (£7.2m) an interesting differential for the start of the season?
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