Mondogoal – The FFS Strategy Guide

As we announced on Monday, we’re supporting Mondogoal, a brand new daily and weekly Fantasy Football game, over the forthcoming season.

Mondogoal covers the Premier League and all the major top flight leagues – Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and Major League Soccer (MLS). You can play games for each one, or even global contests that span across all the leagues. You can also enter contests Champions League and the Europa League to scratch your Fantasy Football itch in midweek.

The game has also just gone mobile, with the brand new site now available to allow tinkering on the move.

You can seek out our announce article for the very basics behind the game but, in this follow-up, we’ve listed some of the key strategies that will help you plunder the player list and compile a starting XI capable of reaping rewards.

Scan for Bargains

While we’ll all have our favourite big-name targets ahead of each Mondogoal contest, it will be your ability to search out budget talent that will set you on the path to success. Mondogoal shifts the player prices week to week, based on each player’s recent performance and their popularity in the game. With that in mind, the form options will always come at a hefty price. On the flipside, players returning from injury, earning a rare start or even coming into form, will often be undervalued and will be ideal for helping you free up funds for your top targets.

Use Mondogoal’s tools to sift the player list and hunt out the underpriced. Sort the player list by “Salary” and use the excellent filter tool to narrow the player list to those players that fit within a certain price range. Mondogoal also has two further features to help here: you can sort the list by Points Per Game (PPG), plus, if you click on an individual player, you can profile his scoring in recent matches.

Consult the Teamsheets

Mondogoal allows us to select our lineups right up until ten minutes before the first kick-off that day. On Saturday and Sundays this will often be ahead of the early fixture but, even so, we can get a view on the teamsheet from that match and use these to help us unearth some gems. This tactic is even more significant when there’s no early Saturday kick-off: all the three o’clock teamsheets will be published ahead of the deadline and can be used to help select a lineup made of certain starters, and a cast of undervalued bargains.

By all means select your team early in the week or the night before, but be ready to make crucial changes and shift to “Plan B” nearer to the deadline when you’re armed with the all-important teamsheets.

Limit Your Risks

Taking a risk with one or two selections can make your Mondogoal lineup stand out and steer you to success. However, it’s also essential that you hunt out certain starters.

Build your team around a spine of players who are set to earn 90 minutes – it’s obvious that you need goals, assists and clean sheets but it’s even more obvious that players can’t achieve these from the bench or the stands.

If there’s even a chance that a player will be rested, rotated or has a knock, then consider a rethink. There’s nothing worse than missing out on winning a contest because you had one player stuck on the timber.

Fouls Make Points

Mondogoal awards a point for every foul won by a your players. That’s a significant reward when you consider that a striker must make 33 successful passes in a match to earn the equivalent (typically only half a dozen achieve that). With this in mind you should target those players who, amongst the potential to earn goals, assists and clean sheets, will also draw fouls from their opponents.

Opt for raiding full-backs rather than dominant centre-backs, seek out those “number 10’s” that run at opponents, the towering target man who will win those free-kicks and those attacking players, that, at times, literally have to be flattened to be shackled. Be aware of those players who commit fouls and back any attacker likely to come up against them.

Avoid the Cloggers

You’ll also be losing points for every foul your team commits: another reason to steer clear of that centre-back clogger. Every foul conceded by a player loses a point, with two more points docked for a yellow card. Keep clear of those players likely to tempt the referee’s wrath and consult the fixtures and consider the one-on-one duels so you’re wary of those defenders and midfielders up against tricky opponents.

Three Men At the Back

As a rule of thumb, Mondogoal favours attacking players. Goals and assists are the meat and drink of your team, while clean sheets can be easily lost down the back of the defensive sofa. What’s more, even if you find some shut-outs, a defender who concedes four fouls will lose four points – that’s his clean sheet gone. With this in mind, we’re favouring setting up with three at the back – a growing trend, even amongst Premier League bosses.

Check Out Our Player Picks

We’ll be bringing you a weekly dose of player recommendations, helping you to form the foundations of your Mondogoal lineup. Don’t go spending your winnings in advance but, at the very least, check out our thinking so you know what not to do!

Look out for the first picks article on Friday and, in the meantime, sign up and enter a Saturday, Sunday or weekend contest for Gameweek 1. Mondogoal have also launched an introductory FFS £2 game for the opening Gameweek with 50 spots available.