The Pre-Match Preamble – Gameweek 29

“You can’t have all the good players, all the time”

Few quotes from this week’s ScoutCast resonated more than that nugget. Simon March, currently the world’s top Fantasy Premier League manager, spoke a lot of sense over the course of our hour together but that comment was the one that hit home.

So often on a Saturday morning there’s a player or two that terrifies me. This week it’s Olivier Giroud – someone I greedily discarded in the pursuit of double Gameweek assets.

While shedding Giroud allowed me to make a profit (just) in Gameweek 28, I’m in no doubt that this weekend he could claw those points back with interest, while Messrs Eriksen and Austin serve up blanks. I fear this and yet I am too faint hearted to act on it.

I’ll need to spend points if I want to re-introduce Giroud’s Gallic good-looks back into my virtual dressing room. I really can’t see a crippled West Ham defence preventing Giroud from rolling out another smouldering goal celebration and yet I’m still hesitant to back that hunch to the tune of a miserly four points.

Then again, the Gameweek would almost be incomplete without setting up such a scenario.

It’s almost essential that I give myself the possibility of squeezing into my Captain Hindsight costume: to be able to curse my lack of conviction and inform anyone who will listen that I was “this close” to making that move that would have reaped in the points.

These are the scenarios that keep Granville miffed, that feed those “what might have been” stories that we’ll roll out at the end of the season when we’re looking back on our rank. So, while my reluctance to reclaim Giroud may amount to an epic fail, I’ll still gain the opportunity to gripe about it later. I really can’t lose.

For now, I can comfort myself that Mr March didn’t get where he is today chasing unfounded hunches.

The world’s number one has spent the season sitting on his hands – reserving transfers and avoiding hits. I know for a fact that Giroud will pop into his head before he flips his laptop lid shut tight on this Gameweek deadline but I doubt very much he’d act on it for a first points hit of the season.

Have some of the best players, some of the time and rely on George Boyd to save the day. It shouldn’t really work but Simon says it does and, looking at the rankings, who am I to question it?