First Impressions and Second Thoughts - Week 5

Sometimes, and especially when you write a blog analyzing such things, you get WAY too clever for your own good in fantasy sports. This is even more true coming off a week in which just about everything I touched turned to gold (at least in Premier League fantasy terms). Now, on the plus side, even with some stupid moves, I still didn't have a terrible weak (50 points from Drogs and Malouda will do that for you) but how easy would it have been to just focus on my day job and keep the faith with Joe Hart and Paulo Ferreira and just hope for the best with van der Vaart's injury? Instead, I find myself wishing that Yahoo! had the same rule as the Premier League does and limited owners to one move per week. They don't and I'm left here wondering what happened while counting the small blessing that Eth go 9 completely undeserved fantasy points (I watched the entire match and he didn't do a d@mn thing).

With that, on to what we learned in Week 5 about the teams and the players in the Premier League and our own little fantasy world.


Teams

• The Title Chase -  Granted they've had an incredibly soft first five matches but Chelsea continue to march toward having the title wrapped up by Christmas so they can really focus their resources on the Champions League.  With Arsenal's late (and completely BS) draw at Sunderland we have seen serious flaws in all of Chelsea's pursuers while we still haven't detected a single one in the Champs as they continue to score for fun despite missing Lamps.  Arsenal started to show continued weakness as the injuries mount and they spurned a 2 goal lead with a horrible PK from what had to be their 10th choice penalty taker in Rosicky. (As a side note, where was THAT Rosicky when I traveled all the way to Germany to watch the USA get undressed by the Czechs in WC2006?  He crushed two great shots from much further out - I can't win with that guy).
• Champions League Spots - With Arsenal in all likelihood joining this group by dropping two points late, we find ourselves with a slightly more interesting race for the next three spots with Citeh getting their act together a little bit, Spurs rebounding with three late goals, and ManYoo beating a quality opponent (at least we think they're a quality opponent) to draw things a little closer together.  I have to say, I'm still not convinced by ManYoo or Berbs (more on that below) over the long haul but they at least avoided falling way off the pace this weekend.  I'm also not sure I'm ready to believe in Spurs after their second best player was a substitute right back who hasn't come close to seeing the field since he returned from loan last season.  I mean, when you have 3 mediocre CBs who you can play out of position at RB you have to do that before you play a natural RB who played well last season right?
• The Wolves Story - Well on their way to taking more points from Spurs (after taking all 6 last season) Wolves found themselves collapsing completely down the stretch and allowing three goals.  How quickly things go from optimistic at the top half of the table to the 15th spot.  I'm still optimistic because they play hard and they're going to make it difficult on anyone who plays them.  Furthermore, they should be getting Stephen Hunt into the line-up relatively soon to help diversify the attack.  I'm hoping for a 10th place finish for Wolves but if nothing else, it seems reasonable to expect them to avoid an all-out relegation fight.
• Birmingham - What to make of these guys?  They seem to be this season's answer to Bolton in years past - capable of great defending performances one week and losing badly to West Brom the next.  I'm never surprised when attacking qualify varies from week-to-week outside the top few teams but I'm always much more surprised when the qualify of defending varies so greatly.  It seems to me that things like organization and effort tend to be constant whereas some days the clever through ball or devastating long-range shot finds its mark and others its just a bit off.  Maybe things will improve as new signings Hleb and Beausejour integrate themselves into the mix but we'll just say that this weekend's result lead me to believe that Brum are no better than fodder for the lower end of the middle of the table.
• The Promoted Sides - Yeah, Blackpool got crushed but Chelsea is crushing everyone so that's no great shame.  With NUFC and WBA both winning on Saturday we find ourselves five matches into the season and all three newly promoted sides are in the top half of the table.  The funny thing is that none of them look nearly as out of their depth as we all expected they would be.  NUFC continue to add talent (Ben Arfa) while WBA have been thrilled with the emerging Odemwingie (more on him later) who has been great in the early going.  I'm not implying that any of the three are going to be long-term fixtures in the top half but as we've seen in recent seasons a great early-season run can all but secure survival so long as you can be no worse than slightly below average the rest of the season.  Finally, as fantasy managers, we all have to change our perspective and remember that "the table doesn't lie" when we're evaluating the value of various match-ups.  Right now, all three of these teams are firmly mid-table and that means that at home you shouldn't be surprised with a win against all but the top teams.  (On the road you should expect a loss against the better teams but not be surprised with a draw or even the occasional win against the rest of the table).
• Liverpool - The only silver lining here is that they've had a brutal early schedule (vs. ARS, @MAC, @BRM, and @MAN) but the downside is that they've gotten very little from that early schedule.  A team going somewhere would have found a way to get more than 2 points from those four matches.  I think we have to face the reality that this is a mid-table team this season.  They have two excellent players in Gerrard and Torres and a few additional above average players but there is way too much "average" on this team to expect much.  Let's remember that even before they lost Masch and Alonso they didn't mount a serious challenge for the title.  With neither player even close to adequately replaced the expectation of anything beyond an outside challenge for 4th was unrealistic.  When is that new ownership group coming again?

Players
Before we get to the specific players, I want to get to a concept that Jeremy and I are introducing to this blog from fantasy football (gridiron) here in the US.  That is the concept of a points vulture.  The points vulture is a secondary player whose presence takes fantasy points away from a long-time producer of points at a given position.  If you'd like an example, we had a long conversation about whether van der Vaart would be a fantasy vulture with respect to Gareth Bale.  VDV was taking a number of set pieces that in previous weeks Bale would have taken robbing the expensive Bale of potential fantasy points.  As you'll see below, Bale did more than well enough despite that this weekend but these situations should be watched in the weeks ahead.  Pennant/Eth is another such example with Pennant taking more than his share of kicks from Eth which we can expect to continue once Pennant is healthy again.

• Berbs - What to think? He's never been a consistently strong fantasy striker.  Has he turned a corner of some sort to become a 20 goal+/season scorer? or is he just having a nice run of form only to revert back to being the above-average-but-not-great player that we remember from his Spurs days?  As the Barn Door stays open, I'm trying to come up with reasons not to buy him because I know he'll end up pissing me off but I'm reasonably confident that he'll piss me off even more if I don't.  Let's just say that I'm not happy about these developments.  And that's before I contemplate, "what happens if Rooney starts playing like Rooney again?" Does that help or hurt Berbs?
• Nani - I didn't see the match but by all reports he didn't start off his (theoretical) run as a no-doubt first teamer with much credit.  His fantasy day was OK at 10.50 but with ManYoo having scored 3 you would have hoped for more from a premium winger.
• FloMal - For all those of you who were fired up to jump off of the FloMal bandwagon heading into next weekend, I hope you paused before you hit the "sell" button.  He showed again why he is THE midfielder to have thus far.  He may get rotated from time-to-time but I'll take him being 4th in overall fantasy points despite having missed a match.
• Bale - Just keeps cranking out the great point totals - so much for the theory that VDV taking some of the kicks would reduce his value.
• Pennant - Welcome back to the Prem Mr. Pennant and a nice return it was. I was all set to welcome him in as a line-up regular until he went off with a hamstring tweak in the second half.  With his free kick vulturing act ready to continue, we should probably all watch the injury reports since he's still only 7.10.
• Odemwingie - Have you seen his numbers? I know he plays for WBA but he's been crushing it all season with only a 4 point week in week 3 as a downside.  His price is climbing but he gets a lot of SOTs so you have to like his chances of continuing to produce.
• Salcido - If I'd known he was going to start this weekend, I'd have been all over recommending him but apparently his visa/work permit issues were cleared up and he should be the fulltime Konchesky replacement at Fulham.  He started off with 16 points despite not getting any clean sheet points.  Could be a poor man's Bale in the making as he's all about attacking.
• Ferreira - He's been pretty solid when he's started but the big question is what the rotation will be.  One of the reasons I jumped off the Ferreira bandwagon was this uncertainty as Chelsea rotate one of Terry, Alex, Ivanovic, and Ferreira from match to match.  
• Marc Wilson - PUUUUUUUUUUUUUULIS, you b@stard - how could you do this to me after I said so many nice things about your players in the build up to week 5? If you'd just let us know Pennant was ready, I wouldn't have had a cheap defender to go with, I wouldn't have sold Hart and I'd have been 23 extra points to the good this weekend.  But no, I'm not bitter at all, why do you ask?