Hello again! I’m back after a 2 week hiatus and return to inform you all that I am now 2nd in the world!! I decided not to write an update for GW 33 as my WC was activated in GW 34 and I didn’t want to give anything away to any of my rivals who may be keeping an eye on the site. Therefore I intend to have a quick look at GW 33, before moving onto assess the GW gone by and then finally turning to the rest of the season. 

GW 33 was another solid week for Wain’s Wonders, bringing in 64 points for a week rank of 44,869. In my GW 32 update you may remember that I was looking to take two punts with my free transfers before using my wildcard. After much deliberation, I stayed away from Kolarov and played safe with Baines and Bolasie. Baines duly delivered a clean sheet and helped me move back into the top 10 for the second time this season. My last entry into the top echelons of the game was very brief with a drop to 14th the week after. However, I fancied my chances of maintaining my position as only the world number 1 and I had a wildcard to play…

The wildcard week was relatively stress free until the Friday afternoon. I was pretty set on my team and the only real deliberation was my choice of keepers for the run in. One transfers I had committed to was to shift Harry Kane from my team and replace him with Jamie Vardy of Leicester. However, this decision looked to be a huge waste of money as it broke out on Twitter that someone knew Vardy’s girlfriend and she had told him that he was ‘touch and go’ for the match against Burnley. This led to a mad panic as I tried to make some last minute changes which included swapping Vardy to N’Doye funded by Moreno coming in for Skrtel. Fortunately his girlfriend then tweeted that he would be able to play and in fact he did, returning a goal and a bonus point on Saturday. However, it turns out that it wasn’t a massive troll as he is playing with painkiller injections each week.

I settled on Schmeichel and Pantilimon as my keepers in a hope to take advantage of the two DGW’s and I decided to captain Hazard, along with 88% of the top 50. Although the usually consistent Hazard failed to produce any attacking points, my wildcard managed to score 95 points, which was a game week rank of 5,797. It pushed me up to second place and reduced the lead to world number 1 to 35 points. It was certainly a DGW for the defenders as Harper, Dawson and Terry were the top 3 points scorers and all 4 of the DGW teams returned at least 1 clean sheet. The surprise package of the DGW were Hull as they kept out both Crystal Palace and Liverpool as well as scoring 3 goals, 2 of which went to N’Doye who surprised the majority of fantasy players. The main disappointment of the week was the lack of attack potential by the Liverpool boys. Having drafted in both Sterling and Henderson I was hopeful of returns but now have to decide whether they are worth keeping for the run in. An interesting side note is that Kolarov scored and assisted this week…

Looking onto the rest of the season I am 35 points behind Simon March in first place. This may not seem too far out of reach but the main issue I have is that out of the 15 man squads, 12 of the players are exactly the same. To go on and win the whole competition I am going to have to differentiate my team and also take some captaincy punts. If anyone has any clever ideas as to how to make up 35 points in 4 GW’s then comment below or shout your ideas to me on Twitter @jawain04. 

My team looks solid for this week coming with 8 of the 11 playing at home. I haven’t ruled out a transfer though and am going to be looking closely at the upcoming fixtures and having an in-depth look at the stats. Captaincy could be a big factor this week as Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Man City all have very good fixtures. Hopefully picking the right player will see me gain a little more in my quest to be number 1…