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SBI Fantasy MLS: Week Eight Preview

Graham Zusi

By CASEY CANNON

Hello and Welcome to the Soccer by Ives Fantasy Corner – now with more aggressive deadlines! Every week I dig through statistics, news, and rumors to provide the reader with the kind of fantasy advice that only a former member of Deathtöngue can provide.

Go right now and make lineup changes. Now, now, now. The deadline is 7:15 PM WEDNESDAY. There are plenty of points available this week. Don’t lose track of tim, or get arrested for being the biggest drunk jerk in all of Texas and accidentally miss the deadline.

Gratz to this weeks SBI winner Brad’s Noodle Club with 95 points. Damagedgoods has claimed the over all MLS fantasy Iron Throne with 505 point. Want to usurp him? Read on to plot your fantasy moves like Tyrion Lannister.

TEAM PICKS

Take Three – SKC. The Ivy Funds play two games this week. They could lose both or earn two 1-1 draws on the road. With two away games don’t expect the SKC forwards to put up lots of goals. Still,” if anyone needs encouragement to take Collin, Zusi, and Besler this week I say go forth and invest in SKC.

Take Two and a half – New York Red Bulls. I have picked up Olave and McCarty. What third Red Bull player is worth taking? Robles, Holgersson, or Barklage? That third player is an autotrade next week. I’m not gonna do it.

Avoid – Vancouver . The Whitecaps will struggle to get a goal on the road against FC Frisco Burn while giving up a goal or two. Also keep in mind all but one of the Vancouver Milqtoast players are pulling in 4 points per game or less.

INDIVIDUAL PICKS

CaptainZusi, SKC. This kid is scheduled to earn 18 points this week. The sad thing is almost half of the Fantasy players are going to make Zusi the Captain too. This pick won’t separate players from the crowd. Still Zusi’s worst game this season was five points. I love low variance. He is just too good to turn down right now.

ValueOlave, NYC. I think it was Dax McCarty who first suggested that Olave may win the golden boot. While we can’t count on him to keep scoing goals he has a fair shot for a shut out in the second game. IF his current average holds up he is good for 15.6 points this week. All this and for 5.9M the 6th best value in the game.

Overpriced – Eddie Johnson, Seattle. Eddie Johnson hates me. EJ waits for me to tell the world that Eddie “You Make Me Rich” Johnson is way overpriced. Then he goes and scores a hat trick. Right now 8.2% of teams have him on the roster because his three points per game is totally worth the 9.9M cost. Oh yeah, and he is hurt. So go ahead and bet against me on this one, that is the historically accurate decision. Just make sure to dump EJ the moment I grudgingly pick him up.

Special Case- Dominic Odoro, Columbus Crew. Mr. Odoro has been playing well and infuriating Crew fans who like to perceive themselves superior to Interim Head Coach Bobby Warzycha. This week Dom visits the Chicago team that traded him in the off season. There are lots of antidotes of an extra motivated player putting a hurt on his old team. Odoro averages 4.8 PPG. sixth among forwards. Will an extra motivated put a dagger into the Chicago Quakers or does Odoro just run faster and kick the ball even higher over the net? The same situation applies to Dilly Duka who is expected to absolutely dominate both the sideline warm ups and the Fire Bench.

THE FULL THREE PLAYER MONTE

The three player Monte game has two elements: selecting three players to score goals and creating a streak of picking a captain who scores every week. The players can be awful, tossed out of the game for reprehensible fouls, and single handedly responsible for costing his team the game like Alan Gordon but so long as he scores, nothing else matters.

1. Captain: Henry, New York (If reasonably healthy)
2. Bieler, SKC
3. Earnshaw, TFC

Tiebreak: 25

One final serious note this week. Most SBI readers know more about actually playing soccer than I do. I’m just a fan with a spreadsheet. When the time came to choose a fall sport I chose cross country instead of soccer. It was my wife who dragged me to my first MLS game and onto the pitch to play. Still today I got to spend an hour coaching the U-5 Chipmunks. I figure I am qualified to make sure the kids have a good time and try to be a good role model. The news today from Boston reminds me we have a responsibility: to raise kids so we have more hero’s than monsters. Find a way to volunteer your time. If it is through soccer, great, if not find some way have an impact.

That’s all for today. Come back next time for more MLS fantasy notes.

Comments

  1. A note on the 3 Goal Monte game: it looks you have to pick which game the player will score in if his team has two games for the week. If you want Henry, for example, you have to choose which game he will score in, or I guess you could pick him as two of your players, once for each game.

    Reply
    • Really? I’ll be honest, I didn’t Check that out. If that is the case strike Henry. I ll make a replacement suggestion when I get to my computer

      Reply
  2. Eh, I took 3 from RBNY and 2 from SKC (mostly for money reason) but with Miller’s performance at DC he seems likely to get the starts this week and he was as 4.5 yesterday Seems a great value to me.

    Reply
    • I added Robles and Holgerson from NYRB and Bieler from SKC. Already had Dax, Zusi, and Collin. Took the -4 pt hit. Bieler is going to be my Captain due to the fact that he is averaging .75 goals/game. So on the low end that is 5 pts for a goal and 4pts for 180 minutes = 9×2 = 18pts for the week. I’ll take that, with the high end being around 32pts. Hard not to start Zusi or Dax as Captain, but thats what makes it fun i guess.

      Reply
      • Yeah, I added Zusi last week in anticipation of making a couple moves this week. So going into the 2GW I had Zusi, Collin and Dax. Picked up Barklage and couldn’t pass on the value of the likely starts from Miller.

        As obvious as it seems to Captain Zusi for his average Collin’s surging in recent weeks and Dax has a more friendly second game with NE than Collin and Zusi have at LA.

        That’s the hardest decision and I’ll probably not make my final choice until I start to head to the game tomorrow (right now my C is on Dax)

      • Zusi is the captain. He can score goals, gets assists during the run of play and for dead ball kicks and he crosses the ball and defends like crazy. He’s a stat machine.

        Bieler is on my team too but he’s a vice captain.

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