Monday Morning Manager

I was boarding a plane on Saturday morning and saw the ESPN crawl as I walked by a wall-mounted television. Burnley 0 Man City 4 it read at the time. I spent the next three hours dreaming up scenarios of how many goals of the four Tevez was involved in and what the final scoreline was going to be. I decided that he had probably scored a second consecutive hat-trick. With visions of that dancing in my head, I was disappointed to find out he had only scored one. But following up later I saw the assists, and AJ's contributions as well and was happy with the outcome. Then of course, the points didn't come in on Saturday. Or Sunday. How frustrating! But they're up now and Carlito and AJ both put up ~20 and even Fox brought points to the table - which was far from a sure thing.

Carlito is owned by over 20% of teams. To be honest, I'm surprised that more teams around me - in my private group - didn't have him. Playing Burnley, even at Burnley was nailed on for points. I stayed away from K2 as he's been so inconsistent this season, and after that hat-trick against Wigan, clearly Carlito was the hot hand. Foot, sorry. But I wasn't selling AJ, even after an anonymous few weeks. And I even looked into Viera and Kompany, but didn't pull the trigger on those moves, choosing instead to gamble on Maxi despite his matchup. While that didn't work out for me - Viera with 19 and Kompany with 14 - Maxi earned a respectable 8.5 and came oh-so-close to scoring. As he's cup-tied in Europe, he's sure to be fresh and ready for a flagging Fulham next week.

Speaking of Fulham, congratulations to them again for their European success so far. It's come at the cost of their interest in the Premier League, but they did have the luxury of coming up against Wigan, a team who is trying even less hard at the moment. Wigan's win at Liverpool was a great performance but it seems like they might have over-estimated the worth of that victory. They're not safe from the drop yet and will have to pick up points against Portsmouth, @West Ham and Hull City from their remaining fixtures. That should be possible, but it will be needed because their other two matches are Arsenal and @Chelsea.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out this particular gem from Neal's Week Ahead post:

Hangeland - reasonably priced, good match-up, and hasn't done anything yet going forward this season - I'm saying he's due;

Thankfully for me, Neal's back-line is otherwise set, but he sure got that pick spot on.

One pick that Neal didn't get right was Nasri.

Nasri - see Walcott above, he's been at his best when he's been in Cesc's role so if I were you I'd pick him up now and keep him for the rest of the season as he's likely to see his fortunes rise in his most comfortable position;

At least not yet. It was inexplicable how Wenger left him (and Bendtner, but that's more of a personal gripe because he's in my team so cheaply) out of the starting line-up against Wolves. I didn't go for Nasri because I was afraid that even in the "Cesc role" (Is that like the Makelele role? I mean are we coining the phrase yet? No offense to Fab4, but if we're calling out attacking middies, shouldn't that be the Messi role or the Gourcuff role?) Nasri would still be the guy behind the guy behind the guy scoring the points. Also, I knew that Wolves would be tough opponents (Hi, Chris Jones!) and that they might be more vulnerable to pace, so I went with Walcott in my fantasy team.

All that being said, Nasri's introduction saw Arsenal ratchet up the pressure - and yes, Henry's dismissal after Sicky went down like a little girl didn't help Wolves - and eventually... like virtually the last touch of the game eventually... score and win.

I'm not going to keep Walcott despite his 14 point return. At Spurs is not the same as home to Wolves (no offense, Chris Jones) and Walcott never seems to deliver medium- or long-term in fantasy. Instead I'm selling him and Osman (who was a virtual spectator against West Ham) for the two-match pairing of Etherington and Gera. I'm also going to be thinking about selling Tevez for Torres. But I'm leaning, thanks to a game-in-hand, towards keeping the Argentine.

Where are you on the barn door? Two-gamers? Well-chosen one gamers? Argentinians or Spaniards?