KFC MLS Fantasy Team – Week 3

The changes that were made to the KFC this week did not fit with the initial plan for the first 3 weeks of the team. There are three main reasons for this 1) the upcoming World Cup qualifying games which will pull several players out for national team duty, 2) back to back weeks (GW4 and GW5) where three teams are not playing, and 3) some injury considerations. With that in mind, keep reading if you want to see who we decided on.

 

Week 2 summary

There were a lot of ups and downs during week 2. The biggest down was the SKC loss to Toronto. I’m glad they won, because they really needed some good to happen to them, but I wish it had not been at the expense of some of my defense points. The up was the PK by Wondolowski, well, the second one. I thought it was going to be a below average week, but after the dust cleared, we earned 58 points and finished above the league average.

Week 2 Changes

As I mentioned before the break, there were three factors that influenced our trades this week. So here’s a breakdown.

1. World Cup qualifying games. There are a couple of players on our team that are most likely going to be unavailable for week 4 (Zusi and Taylor). So there are two future transfers/benchings that need to be considered.
2. Back to back “No Game” weeks for 3 teams. Philly and Portland are not playing in Game Week 4 so that means Parke and Valeri will need to be traded or benched and in Week 5, Columbus is the only team I need to work around.
3. Injury Considerations. Hedges is listed as hurt for the second week in a row (thought he did play last week) and now Myers is also listed as having some quad strain. Mostly, the injuries and suspensions influenced trades for this week.

So that’s what needed to be taken into consideration before our transfers were made. Origionally I wanted to bring Keane back into my lineup. Just taking a look at the LA schedule makes your mouth water for potential points. But if that happened, we would have 3 players who are most likely going to be gone for international duty and 2 with a No Game. That’s just too many. Still, getting some LA coverage was something we wanted to do so we dropped Kobayashi (no game this week) for Magee. Not expecting another hat-trick here, but he should remain a key element in the LA attacking machine.

Our second trade is to deal directly with the upcoming no games. I know that I’ll want to trade my two midfielders next week (Zusi and Valeri) so I needed to do something to address Taylor leaving for international duty. One option was to just get another Houston Defender, but having to use another trade to get Taylor back was not something we wanted to do. So, we dropped Parke for Kwame Watson-Siriboe (RSL). This trade let’s us bench Taylor next week and avoid having to worry about the Philly no game. Also Real Salt Lake have a pretty decent run of coming coming up.

Hedges is the first on the bench, because I’m not sure how serious the quad strain is for Myers. It definitely sounds better than a pulled quad though. Cudicini is also back in the goal. Everything else is the same.

Captain

With a home game against the struggling Chicago, Graham Zusi is once again getting the captain’s armband this week. My other though was Wondo. Even though he’s not beet getting regular goals, the Columbus showed vulnerability to speed last week and I think that is something San Jose could take advantage of. But, in the end, the potential for midfield bonus points makes to lean toward Zusi.

Week 4 Prep

We’re keeping an eye out for midfielders this week. We’re going to need to swap out two next week so we want to get some solid choices. The plan is to bring Zusi back in so one can be a temporary player. The other needs to be someone who can last a couple of weeks at least because Higuain will not be playing in Week 5. Also, it’s not too early to start thinking about the double games in Week 8 for NY and SKC.

So that’s the KFC team for Week 3. What do you think? How did your team do? Want input on your team? Stop by r/FantasyMLS and post. There are many good members who can help out with questions.