It is finally back. Last year the Norwegian top flight got it’s very own Fantasy game, and given its spring to autumn season it dovetailed nicely with the Fantasy Premier League game we know and love.
With more than 500 FFScout teams taking part, last season’s inaugural Fantasy Eliteserien proved to be a surprise success story among the community.
Ahead of next season’s launch on 10 March, MrKlin and Niemi have teamed up to guide you through the forthcoming campaign.
The Norwegian language version of the game can be found here here. This season the game’s creators have developed an English language version, which can be found here.
It is also worth checking out how last season panned out in this article – Fantasy Eliteserien – Season Review.
The Game
The game itself comes from the same creators as FPL, and as such the game is very familiar to us all. The main differences are man-in-the-stand bonus points and the chips in play.
The Norwegian Eliteserien offers us players from 16 teams to choose from across a 30 Gameweek campaign, from March to late November.
The “man-in-the-stand” bonus will be familiar with FPL veterans and boils down to the commentators for the game handing out bonus-points as they see fit from the game performance.
In theory this could help some of the “invisible” players in a game, like the defensive midfielders and other overlooked workhorses, but in reality you’ll notice little difference to who gets points in FPL – other than not being able to predict it accurately before they are actually given.
This season they have added chips to the game as well, which are different from those used in FPL.
The Fantasy Eliteserien chips are:
“Parkere Bussen” – Literal translation “Parking the Buss” – essentially a captaincy on the entire defence (double points on all defenders)
“Spissrush” – Striker rush – double points on all strikers
“To kapteiner” – Two captains – Get your captain-points from both the captain and vice captain
Key Players
Being a mid-to-low level league in Europe, the trend is that the best players will be sold on. As such there are not too many stand-out stars that are a guaranteed must from season to season.
Despite this, there are some familiar old stagers who are excelling in Eliteserien – most notably former Arsenal striker Niklas Bendtner. Now of last season’s champions Rosenborg the Dane was last season’s top goalscorer. The smart money is on him gracing at least half of all teams at the start of the new campaign.
Other notable names from last season that are still available in the league are the likes of Eirik Ulland Andersen, Basel Jradi, Gilbert Koomson, Torgil Gjertsen, Fredrik Haugen and Samuel Adegbenro.
On the flip-side, notable names from last season who do not figure again now are Krepin Diatta (Club Brügge), Milan Jevtovic (Antalyaspor), Carlos Grossmüller (Club Universitario de Deportes), Björn Bergman Sigurdarsson (Rostov) and Sigurd Rosted (KAA Gent).
This turnaround forces Eliteserien managers to find the new gems each season, and makes it all the more important to stay on top of emerging form and hype-trains – something the FFS community did admirably at last season.
It is also worth noting that the Norwegian transfer window is open until April 4th, so internal transfers in the league, as well as signings from foreign clubs, can still happen long after the Gameweeks start rolling in.
Coming Up
Moving closer to season start, we will publish part two of our 2018 Eliteserien preview – offering more detailed insight into the teams and the key players to target, as well as those to avoid.
FFScout Competitions
As mentioned, FFSscout had a decent presence in the game last season, and we are hoping for a return of our three main leagues also this season. More details about these will be announced in due course.
FantasyFootballScout
FFS H2H
PD KNOCKOUT LMS
6 years, 1 month agoThanks for this - great to see Bendtner be the success he always thought he'd be 🙂
And well done for helping make this such a success story last season.