Seven years of drafting, a “Draft We Must” league title, an “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?
This week we go head-to-head with fellow bad luck sufferer @wrigavin as well as an attempt to go 4-0 in the cup against overall Community League leader @FantraxFlukes!
When the managers that have faced the 1st and 3rd most points in the whole Community League go head-to-head, there’s only ever likely to be one outcome. After this mega matchup, we are now 1st and 2nd in that unwanted table!
Gameweek 14 saw me come up against my good friend @wrigavin and we’d already decided that the way our respective seasons were going, it was bound to be a high scoring thriller. We were right! Both of us are struggling in the bottom half of the Gold League table but, realistically, should both be much higher and this matchup of 317.5 points separated by four points proved just that.
I was confident in my matchups coming into the week but know that I needed a big lead before Bukayo Saka faced Nottingham Forest at home on Sunday afternoon. I went with a mini Crystal Palace stack in their home game against Southampton on Saturday and was disappointed by Michael Olise’s six as well as last minute streamer Jeffrey Schlupp’s identical score. Vicente Guaita’s 17.75 point surprise saved the day on that front.
Leon Bailey pulled the most typical Fantrax trick by putting up 2.5 points in my starting lineup after the 22 points he scored on my bench last week while Son Heung Min (Oh…Sonny) scored a decent 15.5 points without a goal, only topped by this team’s star Andreas Pereira who achieved a similar feat with 17.
I went into Sunday’s matchups with a 12 point lead ahead of a game Saka was sat to run riot in and I had a bad feeling it wouldn’t be enough, keeping everything crossed that one week streamers Thomas Partey and William Saliba could somehow match him.
Finally, FINALLY this game saw me benefit from some extraordinary good luck which eventually tipped the matchup in my favour. Saka reduced the lead to just four points within a few minutes before hobbling out of the action before the half hour mark. Had the Arsenal star played even 60 minutes, Gavin would probably have been out of site. Partey rubbed salt into the wounds with a rare (but stunning) goal to give me a 15 point lead with Manchester Untied full backs Luke Shaw and Diogo Dalot to play.
Predictably, Dalot put in a monster ghost point display to make it a very nervy ending but Shaw put up a more than useful 15.75 points to give me enough to hold on. As ever with this team, it seems like my joy may end up being shortlived!
Son Heung Min is my marquee player in this league…or at least he was. It’s obviously unclear as to the extent of this injury but right now, it’s not looking good!
The Korean star won’t be seen until after the World Cup, therefore missing the next two for sure, but with an operation set to be used to correct four fractures to his eye socket, who knows what the rehab period could be?
The temptation to trade him out on a low to try and break into the top half is great but that’s exactly what I shouldn’t do. Still, I’m fielding a lot of offers for him that haven’t been that bad to my surprise…more on that next week, no doubt!
This week I face probably my oldest Togga/Fantrax friend @tottiandor and, without sounding like a doom merchant but this one is an absolute write off. Pereira and Mitrovic travel to Man City this week and with Son definitely out, it’s very difficult to see where all the points are coming from. With Totti set to have Grealish, Foden, Bernardo Silva and potentially Julian Alvarez all ready to take on Fulham at home, I’m expecting it all to be over by 5pm…I hope I’m wrong!
The Champions Cup – The Title Defence
On the flip side, the Champions Cup title defence is going incredibly well! This week, I faced @FantraxFluke who came into the weekend with an incredible record of 11-0-1 in the Junior Stans league. On paper, it was an extremely tough matchup and that’s how it panned out. My 120.75 was enough in the end to beat Fluke’s 111.75 to keep up the 100% record…I can’t quite believe it either.
This is undoubtedly the group of death in the competition and going into the last game of the weekend, I needed 6.75 points from Luke Shaw to keep up the only perfect record in Group K. His 15.75 points ensured I pulled off a surprise victory and got me within touching distance of progressing to the knockout rounds.
The next two weeks without Son will be extremely difficult a win this week against @Jmoneytaco would go a long way towards qualification!
Fantasy Football 92 