Fantasy Premier League: Wayne Rooney to star in Gameweek 27

Tips and advice on the official Premier League fantasy football game

(Premier League)

You may have logged on to your fantasy football account this week to see some of your players with an ominous lack of fixture beneath their name.

Chelsea, Tottenham, QPR and Leicester are all off the roster this week to allow Chelsea and Spurs to battle it out for the Capital One Cup on Sunday. By my reckoning (from a quick and wholly unscientific scan of my mini-leagues) most FPL managers will have at least three players from these teams.

This is not a problem if you have a shiny bench full of regular starters who can seamlessly slot into the team for a one week cameo. If, however, you are staring at Jack Colback, Alan Hutton and Ryan Shawcross who all have some variety of orangey-red next to their name then this could be an expensive gameweek.

Independent Scout Picks:

Last week we advocated bold, brazen transfers to set us apart from our rivals. A similar approach this week would be FPL suicide. Gameweek 27 is all about getting 11 players on the pitch to give us at least a hand at the table. So our picks are comprised of proven starters that Managers trust week in, week out to deliver the goods.

In defence, Winston Reid, Daryl Janmaat and Philipp Wollscheid are close to certain to start, and have favourable fixtures to boot. With six assists this season, Janmaat is also a viable outlet for attacking returns.

In midfield, Jonathan Walters and Stewart Downing are low-priced, attack-minded picks with games at home to bottom-half sides. Alexis Sanchez is the only player we can trust to make Arsenal’s starting line-up after Wednesday’s woeful showing in the Champions League.

And Angel Di Maria has a home fixture against Sunderland in which to continue his run of solid, if unspectacular returns.

In attack, the absence of Robin van Persie makes it almost certain Wayne Rooney will return to a forward role on Saturday. Rooney can underline Gary Neville’s view that he is best played upfront with a goal-scoring return against Sunderland.

Sergio Aguero can stay among the points against the leg-weary Reds. And Diafra Sakho looks back to his early-season best in the absence of Andy Carroll for the Hammers.

GW 26 Review

Last week we restricted ourselves to only those players who had less than 5% ownership in a bid to show the depth of quality and choice in the current game. Our plucky bunch of lowly owned underdogs delivered a creditable performance, with Liverpool’s Simon Mignolet and Phillipe Coutinho and Manchester City’s Samir Nasri delivering 33 points between them.

Inevitably, there were some disappointments, with Theo Walcott failing to see any minutes and Wilfried Bony afforded only a cameo, but the bench came to the rescue. We only wish Kurt Zouma hadn’t played so that another bench-warmer Danny Rose could have contributed his ten points.