Week 31 Player Picks

Its becoming a regular trend of reporting back on another poor week. 30th edition of this season turned out to be the latest disaster, returning a merger 47pts dropping 250 places to 856th in rankings and now I find myself behind in my private league! At least my wife had better luck as she picked the Grand National winner. Typical of late, my horse finished second lol! Back to FF, I need to take some gambles now and for this reason I'm not going to reveal my team until after midday.

Week 31 fixtures;

Sat, Apr 17

Fulham v Wolves

Blackburn v Everton
Tottenham v Chelsea
Sunderland v Burnley
Stoke v Bolton
Birmingham v Hull
Man City v Man Utd

Sun, Apr 18
Portsmouth v Aston Villa
Wigan v Arsenal

Mon, Apr 19
Liverpool v West Ham

Wed, Apr 21
Hull v Aston Villa

So we have another double week, with Aston Villa and Hull playing twice. From the single gamers, You have to fancy Liverpool (at home to the Hammers), Sunderland (home to Burnley) and Fulham (taking on Wolves @ home). I'd expect the majority of your team will come from these 5 clubs.

Goalkeepers:

Myhill
Gordon
Fridel

It's a difficult pick this week. If money was no object I'd take the villa keeper but I very rarely spend more than 5 units on a keeper so to stump up 10 units is hard to swallow. Call me mad but I'm being tempted to stick with Myhill with 2 games in week 31. From the single gamers, Gordon is the standout @ 6 units.

Defenders:

Dunne
Warnock
Collins
Cuellar
Mouyokolo
Sonko
Dawson
Hutton
Agger
Hangeland
Foley

So again, the double gamers stick out especially the Villa players but each one is very expensive @ over 10 units. The Hull defenders are more reasonably priced but you have to ask yourself will they keep one CS let alone two so is it a red herring? From the single gamers, I won't look beyond Hutton, Agger and Hangeland who all have very good home match ups. Only consider Foley if you have him on BD but if you do have him @ 6, you can do a lot worse than taking a box to box player lining up in midfield.

Midfielders:

Downing
Milner
Young
Petrov
Bullard
Mendy

For me you need to take the DGers in midfield. The popular choice will be Downing, Milner, Young and Bullard and certainly this is my preferred line up. If you can't afford  the fab 4, consider Petrov or even cheaper than chips Mendy as replacements. If you have Malouda on discount, you may decide to keep the in-form Frenchman but FloMo has a tough match away to Spurs.

Strikers:

Agbon
Carew
Van Persie
Bent
Torres
Campbell
Altidore

The obvious choices are Agbon and Carew. Certainly I expect both players will start against two teams with weak defences but the problem is most FF managers will have the pair. If you want to do something different, Van Persie was immense when he came on midweek and I expect Van the Man to make up for lost time away to Wigan. Torres should be fit and firing at home to West Ham but who know what Benitez will do. The ex Valencia manager knows he won't be at Liverpool next season. I feel he cares more about winning the Europa Cup than attempting to finish fourth (eg when he subbed Torres in the 65th minute @ 1-1 against Brum so the striker was fit for 2nd leg against Benfica). Bent has been fantastic this season returning 23 premiership goals and surely he will fancy his chances against Burnley.

In summary, your strategy should be to maximise on the DGers, especially the Villa players but there are a couple of single game gems out there to keep you honest.

My week 31 Team will be up @ midday.

Good luck.

SK