Manchester United’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic is OUT and Randomly Rocky Balboa

Feb 25

#BonusContentYIRMA

Looking ahead to Fantasy Football Gameweek 26, we’ve frisked the fixtures to try and make sense of where the points are going to come from in this week’s games.

Manchester United, Southampton, Manchester City and Arsenal – DO NOT PLAY IN GW26… You have been warned!

OK…following a break in the Premier League fixtures allowing us all to take in the “Magic of the FA Cup” it’s back to business as usual this weekend with the return of league action.

Whilst the Cup offered up a chance for some clubs to field new talent and some clubs to piss off to Dubai for a training camp (Yeah, it’s a Hard Knock Life) it did not extend it’s supposed Harry Potterness to dishing out Bonus Points for new Superstar Goalkeeper Wayne Shaw for eating a pie in the dugout. This alongside many other reasons all point to my sincere physical giddiness for the return of the league and the upcoming Gameweek 26 for Fantasy Premier League.

NOW…if you read my preview last week you will have noted that apart from me banging on about the Second Coming of Jesus, GW26 is interesting more so for the clubs who aren’t playing rather than the clubs who are playing.

Due to fixture congestion and cup nonsense etc we have a number of clubs not playing this week – Manchester United, Southampton, Manchester City and Arsenal

In order to put this into some sort of fantasy context, I’ve rewritten the scene from Rocky Balboa where Duke explains how Rocky was going to get through his upcoming fight despite a wide array of physical limitations.

“You know all there is to know about fighting, so there’s no sense us going down that same old road again.”

People have already asked me – Why are you banging the drum on players who don’t have matches this week??

At the time of writing this post 17,073 people have bought Antonio Valencia this week. Now Jose Mourinho has stated this season already that Valencia is the ‘best right-back‘ in world football but regardless…

HE DOESN’T HAVE A ******* LEAGUE GAME THIS WEEK!!!

Right… I’ve made something that resembles a point.. so who is playing that makes sense for your consideration then??

I mentioned above that Lukaku against Sunderland is appealing. I won a decent amount of beer money earlier in the season when the Belgian Bruiser broke smashed his goal drought at the Stadium of Light and with that in mind I’m backing Big Rom to pick up points again this week.

I’ve already put money on another hat trick for Lukaku also…so there’s that

Elsewhere… West Ham travel to Watford and there could be points on the road for the Hammers. Big Andy Carroll is still a doubt for this fixture and it’s that uncertainty that is making me lean towards Antonio over Snodgrass as a midfield pick for this week.

Antonio will typically push forward more so if Carroll doesn’t make the starting 11 this week and with Snodgrass pulling the strings and looking to impress at his new club he could provide Antonio an opportunity to get on the end of a set piece.

In addition Michail Antonio is the undisputed king of headers in the Premier League…so there’s that!

Finally in defence I’ve looked through some of the teams with decent home fixtures and settled on one of my personal favourites – Step forward 37 year old Northern Ireland Legend…Mr Gareth McAuley.

GMAC proved during Gameweek 25 that you don’t necessarily need to actually score in order to be awarded goal points from the official FPL game meaning that if Salomón Rondón scores a 40 yard Screamer – there’s every chance McAuley may be given the points for it.

In addition, in stark contrast to everyone not playing this week the veteran defender has played EVERY single minute of EVERY single Baggies game so far this season in all competitions. So he should get you an appearance point or two if nothing else!

In addition he scored in the famous 2-0 win against Ukraine at Euro 2016 in Lyon which led to my biggest hangover of the year… So there’s that!