2016 - The less said about it the better. This year, things will be different. We will
remain positive, optimistic and avoid dwelling on all of the terrible,
horrible, no good very bad things that occurred over the past 12 months.
Riots,
racism and police brutality spread across the US as oppression, famine and war
ripped through the Middle East. Musicians, actors and athletes that we idolised
for decades continued to drop like flies from the first day of the year to the
last. The futures, hopes and dreams of millions of young adults were smashed
when the collective voice of the masses spoke demanding that Britain exit (“Brexit”)
the European Union. Back Stateside they, arguably, fared worse when they voted
Trump in (“Trumpin” – this one isn’t a thing yet, but let’s make it a thing).
The
shock of these events no doubt caused a substantial proportion of the
population to [insert favoured coping mechanism here] and, in attempting to deal
with our grief, we may have acted inappropriately. I can remember times when I
should have been reading awesome blogs and doing
research for the upcoming gameweek when I was instead reading fake news stories
on social media. I could have been monitoring price changes but I preferred to write emotionally charged posts on Facebook about the impending doom of just about everything.
One weekend, I set my alarm for an early start on Saturday, leaving myself plenty of time to sort my team out before the deadline. I woke up nice and early even though I could have used a few extra hours sleep (the stress of 2016 saw my behaviour become increasingly irresponsible as I found it ever more difficult to cope with simple tasks like watching the news) and poured myself a large coffee (extra shot x2) to ensure that I'd be alert and ready to focus my mind on setting up my team for that GW. I opened my laptop feeling pumped up and ready to engage in some wicked tinkering when...
Deadline has passed? Huh…? God damn Friday night football.
This,
sums up 2016.
In
order to help organise our lives up so that 2016 doesn’t happen again, I have
constructed a helpful list of resolutions that we may follow, kind of like the
10 commandments, just better.
1. Thou Shalt Worship the One True Fantasy God and No Other.
Translation: Last year we let our guard down. Amidst the
chaos of 2016 many of us experienced a shift in our priorities. Girlfriends,
jobs, children... all these things got in the way when we should have been plotting
and documenting/screenshotting our transfer strategy for the upcoming
gameweeks.
2. Thou Shalt Think Long and Hard Before Activating the
Wildcard.
Temptation, this is a test of your strength and character.
With the congested festive fixture list, no doubt you’ve spent many a night
recently fantasising what a post-wildcard team could look like. You may be
desperate to trim the injured and out-of-form deadweight that accumulated
during December, but I urge you to think long and hard before activating the
Wildcard.
I think it depends entirely on your situation within your
mini-league. The problem with a second Wildcard is that come the second half of
the season we all have a good idea of the must-haves, the cheap-enablers, the
misclassifieds and the unknown-hidden-gem-summer-signings from Algeria.
There is a gravitation towards a template team. In my opinion
this massively benefits those at the front of the pack because if you’re
trailing by 100 points and two-thirds of your squad is identical to the one in
first place, you’re going to find it much harder to overcome that deficit,
simply because you only have 5 possible opportunities to outscore your
opponent.
This is not a definitive time to hold the wildcard; it is
just a time to exercise caution and revisit the First Commandment. Make sure
you spend time assessing the current outlook for your squad before making the
decision to go wild.
3. Thou Shalt Not Worry About Players Being Rested When Selecting
Your Captain.
Whenever there are two fixtures in the space of ~48 hours I
get this irrational fear that professional footballers cannot play two game in
such a short space of time. Nonsense.
The standout choices this week for me are
Kun at home to Burnley and Alexis at Bournemouth. Then the voice in the back of
my head says “Hey Alex, Kun can never play two games in 48 hours without
snapping in half, and Alexis plays every game all the time no matter where he’s
been on international duty but this
is one game too many.
Arsene won’t risk his prized asset getting injured for this
game, especially after Giroud’s scorpion goal proved he is a more than capable
deputy at CF. But it’s rubbish - With all the top teams on winning streaks, they all need the points too much to
risk benching any of their star performers.
Injury is simply a risk worth
taking these days. If you’re still worried, however, Captain Costa. Spurs vs.
Chelsea is going to be a cracker. The 5-3 game was around this time two years
ago. Both teams are as hot now as they were back then. Expect fireworks.
4. Honour the Holy Trinity
Don’t pretend like you haven’t experimented with your team
to try and fit in the three big guns. If you are going to use your Wildcard,
can you find a way to keep the balance within your team and employ CAZ (Costa, Aguero, Zlatan) to do the damage?
Realistically, you’re going to want Alexis too, which should make for an
interesting midfield and defence, but if you can find a way to make it work,
then make it work!
5. Thou Shall Exile Players of African Descent
Okay, that one sounds pretty bad, but let’s not all turn on
the Fantasy God and start hating just yet. He’s just referring to the African
Cup of Nations (AFCON) which is conveniently scheduled smack bang in the middle
of our Premier League season. List of likely participants is include below, and you can add Zaha to that list, unfortunately, who after finding a bit of form appears to be dissing England to play for the Ivory Coast.
6. Thou Shall Not Covet Thy Neighbours Wife @JohnTerry
@RyanGiggs
Seriously guys, not cool.
Unfortunately there’s not time for the final 4 commandments
this week due to the ridiculous scheduling of these fixtures giving less than
24 hours between the final whistle of GW19 and kick-off of GW20. Tune in next week
for the remaining 4 commandments, or something else unrelated. Either way, it’ll
be good.
