The Rough With The Smooth – Gameweek 35

Welcome to the latest in our new regular article series gathering our community’s tales of joy and woe from the last Gameweek in the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) game. This will look at the key decisions made that proved either inspired or saw overall ranks plummet. We also find out what lessons our community has learned from their key captaincy, transfer and benching decisions over the week.

This week saw some happy Arsenal investors join the ranks of the community’s smoothest operators. Meanwhile, for those who failed to back West Brom’s clean sheet chances it proved a particularly rough week.

The Rough

So Klose stopped counting the number of points on his bench when it reached the 30-point mark. Among those high-scoring players gracing his bench were Leicester’s goalscorer Marc Albrighton, the Foxes’ defender Schlupp and, most galling of all, West Brom’s penalty-saving goalkeeper Boaz Myhill. His lesson learned is to always trust Leicester and a Tony Pulis-managed side to deliver.

Patience was certainly not a virtue for JK, who put off transferring out Cesc Fabregas and Raheem Sterling, who both blanked, in favour of his targets Arsenal’s Alexis Sanchez and Aaron Ramsey, who notched up three goals, an assist and five bonus points between them.

Moin was among those to ensure he took advantage of Arsenal’s attacing prowess. Unfortunately, he picked and captained the wrong player with Olivier Giroud who produced just two points. His lesson learned is to pick safer captain choices in future.

The Smooth

Lady luck was smiling on Dicky2014 during Gameweek 35 as the absence of Villa’s Brad Guzan propelled Myhill into his starting XI. He is now in the top 9,000 in the overall rankings and has learned that sometimes Fantasy Football really is pure luck.

Johnny was among those to pick the right Arsenal asset. In selling Fabregas for Sanchez and captaining the Chilean he moved from 39,000 to 22,000 in the overall rankings and cut the once unassailable lead of his mini-league rival from 62 to just 18 points.

Aaron Ramsey and Christain Benteke in for Chelsea pair Cesc Fabregas and Loic Remy proved an inspired set of transfers for The Kolorov Love. He is now on the edge of the top 5,000, even though he left Myhill on his bench.

Our Dimitar Berbatov smooth operator award goes to Doosra, who as many of the community will know was absent from Fantasy Football for several weeks due to illness. During his six-Gameweek absence he made no changes and left the armband on Eden Hazard, which ensured he only dropped from 9117 to 12126 by the time he retuned ahead of Gameweek 32. Incredibly he is now ranked 4,855 in the world with Eden Hazard’s captaincy helping to secure a fine score of 74 in Gameweek 35.

To see more Rough with the Smooth tales from Gameweek 35 click here.