http://fantasy.premierleague.com/

[Bor de Wolf]

Scout notes:

New contract for Schmeichel as Isaksson looms

Kasper Schmeichel has been handed a new 3-year contract that trebles his earnings. The City keeper, who has conceded just 1 goal in 4 games thus far, was apparently one of the Premiership’s lowest earners on £1500 a week.

Fantasy Managers have been quick to jump on the City defensive bandwagon by snapping up the budget buy keeper. However, it’s worth considering that this new deal could well be a sweetner for the young Schmeichel, as City’s number one, Andreas Isaksson, could well return after the international break. It would make sense that Sven would seal the future of his new young keeper before relegating him to the bench. If Schmeichel concedes at Blackburn today we could see an awful lot of Fantasy Managers forced to shop for a keeper.

The Ronaldo rush is on

Barring injury whilst on international duty, Christiano Ronaldo will return to the United lineup for the Everton clash on September 15. His return is likely to see a frenzy of transfer activity amongst Fantasy Managers as players are swapped in order to free the funds to sign him up. This is a major factor in the Fantasy Premier League game where player values rise and fall with transfer activity within the game.

Ronaldo is currently priced at 11.9 in that game, that’s 0.1 million cheaper than his original price. That’s likely to change by the start of gameweek 6, once thousands of Managers have shifted their sides around and bought him back. Many who haven’t kept the cash in reserve during his suspension, will have to make a transfer to free up funds and then decide whether to take the 4 point penalty for the extra transfer, to avoid the risk of a Ronaldo price rise. More significantly, the next few weeks are likely to see a massive rise in the popularity of the bargain buys who offer the opportunity to free up the funds to spend on Ronaldo. The likes of Schmeichel and the City defence, Scharner and Sibierski at Wigan, Dempsey at Fulham and Kanu and Utaka at Portsmouth are all likely to be very popular targets in the next fortnight.

For those looking to deal in the Ronaldo market, the question is do you wait until the Internationals are over and move when you’re assured of a clean bill of health, or move now before your potential targets rise in price and risk having to spend extra transfer to cover any injuries? In normal circumstances it’s always best to wait, but if your budget is extremely tight and if your targets are likely to be popular, then it could be wise to move now.