Away day blues: A Premier League Fantasy Football special

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Game week 9 saw a rebound to 30+ points territory, following 26.5 points in Gameweek 8. Gameweek 9 saw a strategy chosen whereby home teams were backed for the win (yay, actually used FTW in a grammatically correct way).

This backfired spectacularly, as only 3 home teams won from the 10 games contested over the weekend. Normally I would back either the obvious favorites (Chelsea you failed me so...), or the form team (Liverpool...sigh) or the home team if both earlier choices seems lacking.

The shocker of Game week 9 was undeniably United's stunning loss to City. Sir Alex has gone on to say that it was his worst day in football, as you had to look to the 1930's for the last time United was hit for six at Old Trafford. And to think that it was dismissed as a 'blip', 'statistical anomaly' etc. and so forth.

Even so, honor demands a big, big response versus Everton. This is one of the fixture that Liverpool supporters can forward to as a win-win game, as a United victory will be against the People's Club, while even sweeter will be an Everton victory making a 5 point deficit into an 8 point crisis.

I want to introduce a new weapon in your player selection : Club form. You can get a form guide from places such as http://www.teamtalk.com/premier-league/table.

If you subscribe to the form guide, the likes of Fulham, Bolton, Wigan and Blackburn are all in serious trouble.  Wigan vs Fulham could be an early relegation decider, loose and Wigan must be co favorites with Blackburn to go down. Bolton is away to Swansea who will be ruing throwing away a 2 goal lead versus Wolves. Norwich will surely lick their chops considering Blackburn comes visiting, having drawn against LFC in Anfield. Of the lot, I fancy a Wigan win or draw, a Bolton loss or draw, and Norwich to beat Blackburn.

For Liverpool's rival for the coveted 4th spot, I'm hopping QPR beat Spurs (though my heart says it will be a Spurs win) while Chelsea should be hurt enough to brush aside Arsenal. Liverpool must beat Westbrom and Swansea before raising their game versus Chelsea.

It took me 2 whole transfer weeks to have a usable bench of cheapish players, while those whom have had their value dropped have been transferred out.