Seven years of drafting, a “Draft We Must” league title, a “International Genie League” title and (most importantl) a Draft Community League Champions Cup title…it’s not often you get to brag about your Fantasy Football achievements so I’m grabbing this opportunity with both hands!
Why the (not so) humble brag? Well, my Togga/Fantrax experience has inadvertently landed me with my biggest and toughest task of all…qualification to the Draft Community Gold League and (in partnership with the Fantasy Football Community) I am tasked with writing about my experience. This is unarguably the toughest league and Twitter so I could genuinely finish dead last…hopefully not eh?
After a break for the internationals, we faced another very tough fixture in Gameweek 10 against old friend/rival/Togga OG FPL Hazardous! Judging by the title, I think you can see where this is going…
If you come here to see a disillusioned Fantrax moan about their misfortune every week, you are in exactly the right place. More bad luck, a couple of goals from one of my opponents lesser players and a display that can only be described as generally dreadful all contributed to this week’s demoralizing loss against FPLHazardous to take our beleaguered team to a 3-0-5 record and 8th position in the league table. Here we go again…
What to blame this week…quite frankly, the team just isn’t scoring well! I always feel like 100 points is the benchmark for the “I deserve to win” territory so 62.5 points just doesn’t cut it. There are, of course, excuses though. Let’s get into it!
I was looking forward to two things in particular this week:
- Aleksander Mitrovic vs his old club. Coming into GW9 in hot form after a goal filled international break for his country, I expected big things from the Serbian in a home game against Newcastle. Result? A Fulham red card, a yellow card, an early injury and a score of -2.
- Luis Sinisterra vs Aston Villa. Coming into GW9 in hot form after a goal filled international break for his country, I expected big things from the Colombian in a home game against Aston Villa. Result? A stupid first half yellow, followed by an even more stupid second half yellow resulting in a sending off, a suspension and a score of (you guessed it) -2.
These are the types of events you can’t legislate for in Fantasy football. To have one of these two this week was unlucky but having both was painful. It looks as though I’ll be without both of these in GW10, meaning a promising frontline of Mo Salah, Mitro and Sinisterra will be reduced to…Salah and Brennan Johnson. Ugly.
Salah himself was disappointing too. The radio commentary of the Liverpool v Brighton game suggested that the Egyptian King was everywhere but that translated to just 10.5 points, eight of which can be attributed to an assist.
The rest of the team…well, the less said, the better! Clean sheets for Lukasz Fabianski and James Justin certainly helped to keep the score semi-respectable but the whole of my midfield went for 18.5 points with Philippe Coutinho going for 12 of them. Rubbish.
Next week my squad depleted by the suspensions of Sinisterra and Emerson Royal (at least I didn’t start him) and potential injuries to Mitrovic and Leon Bailey (who plays Forest) goes into battle against…Erling Haaland. I’ll be hiding behind a cushion until 5pm and DEFINITELY captaining the goal machine in FPL!
At this point, it’s very easy to get downhearted and throw in the towel against the best opposition there is. I’ve been close in recent days but I have faith that the luck will turn! Plus I’m still working on a few trades, anything could happen!
Waivers and Trades
No more trades to speak of yet but checking in on the Mitro > Odegaard swap, neither have set the world alight in the last two weeks. I was relieved to see that Odegaard was quiet against Tottenham despite Arsenal’s dominance and I expect similar from him against Liverpool this week. As far Mitro, the fixtures are great but this injury is a HUGE spanner in the works and typical of my luck this season so far! Fingers crossed it isn’t too bad.
Waivers…I went for speculative adds in Adam Traore and Sergio Gomez and got neither, such is the competitive nature of this league (in fairness, Adama went for 29 dollars which was pretty crazy). I have managed to grab Trevoh Chalobah and Cesar Azpilicueta following Wesley Fofana’s injury and Pablo Fornals who could score well against Fulham.
Onwards and upwards…
Fantasy Football 92 