Christmas Fantasy Football Picks

Here are our three players to watch – well in fact to sign – to see you through the Christmas period. As ever, we make no promises that this will turn out well. And we appreciate the lack of imagination that seemingly lies behind these picks; but points mean prizes…

1. Andrei Arshavin

Over the next four gameweeks (assuming you play the FPL and are familiar with that parlance) Arsenal play Burnley, Hull, Villa – and then joy of joys have a double header, with Portsmouth and Bolton both on the week’s menu. That’s a nice run of games and no mistake. So who to select to take advantage of that run? Fabregas is the obvious option. But we’re going to go (very very slightly) left field and pick the ever-endearing Andrei Arshavin. He’s in the game as a midfielder but in the absence of Van Persie will be leading the line – so a midfielder’s points for someone playing as a striker. And he’s cheaper than Cesc. Go Andrei.

2. Wayne Rooney

As we wrote here, Man United are in the midst of a tremendously easy run of games (although they have already contrived to lose the only difficult one, against Villa). It’s certainly not a time to go with a United defender, as ‘makeshift’ is generous for the four they’re chucking out at present – and their midfield is ever-changing and unpredictable. So, somewhat obviously, the name that stands out is Wayne Rooney. His goal against Wolves made him the first player to reach 20 calendar goals in 2009 (ahead of Drogba, Torres, etc) and none less than Patrick Barclay was moved to describe his performance against Villa as one of the best he had seen in the history of the Premier League. Jump on that bandwagon.

3. Branislav Ivanovic

Just to round off our thoroughly uninspired choices coming solely from the Big Four, we suggest you go with Branislav Ivanovic, Chelsea’s giant defender. With their current injury problems he has played pretty much every game at right back, has got forward well, and is always a threat from set pieces. Also, at just £5.8m, he is considerably cheaper than the rest of their current back four (Carvalho, Terry, Cole). The return from injury of Alex and Bosingwa could disrupt him but he should be safe for the next couple of games (Chelsea also have an easy run) at least.