A-League Fantasy

The A-League is back! Better still, there’s more extensive coverage than ever before with free-to-air coverage at last. Care to make the games which don’t involve your team far more interesting without donating your hard earned funds to the bookies? Well, fantasy football is the answer. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you find yourself caring if Archie Thompson scores against Wellington - even if you’re a Sydney FC fan - when he’s your captain for the week! The downside of the game of course is that you’ll perform better if you can find a way to leave some of your biases aside.

Historically, I’ve found A-League game much more difficult than the Premier League equivalent. One reason for that is that by its nature our league is more erratic (where else do the winners of the previous year have a realistic chance of finishing bottom of the table?). The other reason is that there just aren’t as many detailed and readily available stats to comb through to help you make informed decisions. Enter, StatsZone. This year their app will cover the A-League and in so doing give us much richer analysis and insights into player and team performances. 

Looking at past seasons, coupled with a few gut instincts about how the new additions and  departures might effect teams, is a pretty good place to start when considering who the high scorers will likely be this year. For example, we can expect that with their stable coaching situations, both of the teams who conceded the fewest goals last year, the Wanderers and Mariners, are going to stay relatively tight at the back…though the latter might miss the retired Patrick Zwaanswijk, who was fantasy football gold when he was taking penalties as a defender. You’ll no doubt do well by having coverage from both of those teams when picking your keeper and backline.

Up front, perennial goal threats Besart Berisha and Shane Smeltz (when he returns from a hip operation) are definitely going to get on the scoresheet throughout the season (only three game Benito Carbone beats them on the all-time goals per game ratio, where they sit at 0.625 and 0.698 respectively). Fourth on that list, at well over a goal every other game (0.583) is Alessandro Del Piero.  He managed to fire off a mountain of shots last year - third in the league on that stat at a whopping 86, and tied first for number on target with Daniel McBreen at 45 - so chances are he’ll again get amongst the goals, especially if he plays right up front as has been flagged with someone of the quality of Nicky Carle behind him.

Unfortunately for us, the folks who create the game are pretty cluey and are onto such things…so the prices of the likely performers are set very high…you’ve got to be selective about which few of them you are going to squeeze in under your budget – the salary cap for the game is pretty realistic, you’ve got to make a high performing machine from an oily rag! Below, to hopefully help that cause while we wait for Statszone coverage of the coming games, are some attacking stats from last year covering some of the notables who are still going to be around this season:

Of course, new signings and player departures make past performance not a completely reliable indicator. How teams change after the loss of key players like Dario Vidosic or Marco Rojas, or the gain of those like Carlos Hernandez, Marcos Flores or Matt McKay, can be pretty dramatic and remains to be seen. The dynamics and playing styles definitely change, especially in cases where coaching changes have taken place. Adelaide’s style of play will likely change somewhat with a Spanish coach apparently intent on quick passing, and Pheonix will probably start to take on some of the characteristics that we’ve seen from past Ernie Merrick teams, for example, attacks coming from wingbacks.

The bookmakers rarely give away too much of their money, so it’s helpful sometimes to see who they are picking this year as the top goal scorers. A quick look shows Besart Berisha at around 5/1, Archie at about 6/1, and then Del Piero, Jeremy Brockie, and Brendan Santalab at around 8/1. Most of us will have some combination of such players though in our teams, so an important thing to think about is how you will differentiate from the crowd. What I’ll be taking an early gamble on are some of the youngsters, who also often happen to be more reasonably priced so can fit around the big guns. Having seen their performances for example as Under 20 Socceroos, the likes of Connor Pain, Adam Taggart, Josh Brillante and Corey Gamiero, I believe that given a chance, could be some of the new stars this year, and it’ll do wonders for your rankings if you can pick which it will be long before rival managers get on board in droves. Of course one risk of that is that their minutes could be unreliable. If you played the game last season, chances are you may have been scared by very talented players like Craig Goodwin (and Jeronimo Neumann for that matter) being left on the bench at surprising times.

It’s all part of the puzzle though. And let’s face it…where else will you get the chance to prove once and for all that you’re a better manager than Arnie, or for that matter the FourFourTwo pundits…join their mini-league in the Fox game (http://aleaguefantasy.foxsports.com.au – league code 428-166) and show them who's boss!