The Pre-Match Preamble – Gameweek 18

The Boxing Day fixtures always make me a little fidgety.

There’s a tendency to look on them as part of the festivities and, rather bizarrely, consider that they will be kind to us as a result. That, in the spirit of Christmas, the Gameweek will show goodwill to all who play Fantasy Football.

That’s utter nonsense, of course. If anything, Boxing Day is a joker in the pack: a wildly unpredictable set of fixtures, capable of serving up cruel and unexpected events.

Gameweek 18 is not part of our holiday. Unlike Home Alone and the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special, its raison d’être is not to be warm and familiar and put a smile on our face.

It’s easier for us all if you accept that and, like me, start feeling edgy about the day ahead.

Locked in for a 10-hour shift in front of screens, but within easy friction distance of my family, I’m wary that my mood is again at the mercy of a group of footballers and managers who may have forgotten the script and are about to ad lib without an autocue.

This really isn’t an ordinary Gameweek. Preparations are different, focus can be lost and rest and rotation are far more spiky enemies.

Foolishly, I’ve somehow managed to bank on a couple of “sure-things” in a Gameweek that offers little of the sort.

For starters, I’ve belatedly doubled up on the Chelsea defence.

A move I’ve been muting for several weeks, I finally decide to make it for a Boxing Day meeting with an erratic Bournemouth, without the protection of the suspended N’Golo Kante in midfield.

Antonio Conte’s invincible outfit have been the most certain and reliable factor in our seasons. If Gameweek 18 is to torment us, then Chelsea are a prime target for upset.

Next, I took the option to revisit Zlatan.

Anxious about inviting the legend and his ego back into my dressing room, I know that there is an aching inevitability that he will crash now he’s returned to the fold.

Seven goals in six Gameweeks demonstrates a consistency that only a Boxing Day programme would dare to break.

I’m starting with Jermain Defoe, almost as a measure to protect myself from the possibility that Old Trafford will be the scene of the most unlikely Fantasy Football crime.

Looking at my transfers against the backdrop of today’s unscripted events, it seems I’m not just inviting failure, I’ve prepared his room and knocked up a generous portion turkey and ham pie for supper.

I can already see myself forced to binge on Baileys and After Eights tonight to help numb the pain.