Working out where individual players will be on the pitch has a big effect on the outcome of any contest and when picking your lineup it’s a good idea to research how a team sets itself up in different game situations. This feeds into the positional eligibility of players, which can be completely different from where they actually end up playing.
Position Eligibility
When building a stack, the position a player is listed at is important to take into consideration. No players have multiple position eligibility and the position at which they are listed is locked each week. There are couple of ways to make this work to your advantage.
One example is when a player is listed as a midfielder but is actually playing in defence and can be relied upon to tot up plenty of points on the offensive front by playing as an attacking full back.
The second way that this can be successful is a defender that actually plays in an attacking role. One player that is a good example of this is Arsenal’s Kieran Gibbs. You can almost guarantee that he’ll be listed as a defender on daily fantasy soccer contests despite the fact he often plays as part of a front three when injuries ravage the team. In this situation, the player’s price is kept low yet there’s more opportunity for him to contribute in attacking areas and this is an excellent way to save money for forwards.
Formations
Unfortunately, real-life managers don’t care one jot about your daily fantasy soccer team and will employ whichever formation they think guarantees the best result in a given fixture. It’s here that it really pays off to know your stuff on each individual team and the different strategies that managers tend to use on a weekly basis. Knowing if one team likes to play a counter attacking game away from home whilst going back into their shell when back on their own patch is knowledge that is incredibly useful.
By knowing team formations inside out, you can see the players that are most likely to be high in the points by the end of the contest. Midfielders that are deployed on the wing, regardless of the opposition, will score more points and the same goes for wing backs and obviously strikers.
Some of the more nuanced choices are when a manager opts for formations that see three central defenders played alongside full backs. Whilst on paper the formation looks defensive, the full backs get forwards much more than usual and benefit from points totals more in line with wingers than defenders. There is also more opportunity for centre backs to get forwards as part of a central defensive trio and this is a nifty way to pick up some cheap points.
Conclusion
Formations and position eligibility should always be looked at side-by-side. By knowing exactly how a manager sets up the team you can work out whether position eligibility is something that can be exploited to good effect in the contest that you are entering.