The A-League Women finally has its own official Fantasy football competition, and with the league taking centre stage in Australia over the next month alongside the World Cup, it's an opportune time to analyse how Melbourne City's options could contribute to your mini-league glory.
I wrote a similar guide for the A-League Men's competition back in September which extensively covered both the basics of Fantasy football and the more advanced intricacies of the Fantasy A-Leagues' (FAL) unique scoring system. I'm assuming that most readers of today's article will already be playing Fantasy ALM and are hence familiar with these concepts, but if you are jumping into Fantasy football for the first time or didn't read that article, then I implore you to follow this link back to that article (skip straight to the Beginner or Advanced sections depending on your needs) as it lays the groundwork for much of what is mentioned in this piece.
My hope is that the pair of these articles can be used as a guide by both beginner and experienced Fantasy football players to inform their squad choices, particularly around City players, but also to guide their wider selections generally.
In this article, I'll skip over the explanations of FAL, the types of players that make attractive Fantasy options vs. those that don't, and the differences between FAL and FPL (again, head back to the ALM edition for a comprehensive guide on these things).
Instead, I'll briefly discuss one notable difference between FALM and FALW, before moving on to a table of City's stat-leaders from 2021-22 for all point-scoring stats, a rough 'fixture ticker/ difficulty rating' for our opening 10 games, and a 'City players tier ranking' to finish things off.
Bye the way...
Whilst most of the logic from the original Fantasy A-Leagues guide still applies, there is one recommendation I made in the beginners' section that can be called into question specifically for the 2022/23 season of the A-League Women: to prioritise your funds for your starting XI.
The issue with this advice is that in 2022/23 only, there will be 11 teams competing in the ALW, meaning each team will have two byes. This therefore demands a stronger bench to cover for the unavailability of players who will miss each round. Whilst we're unlikely to be troubled by a Western United bye, for instance, a week off for teams with multiple strong Fantasy options (Sydney, Victory, City especially) could cause chaos if you've loaded up without having adequate bench cover.
Fortunately, there are several extremely underpriced players in this year's FALW who will be useful for overcoming this unique challenge - two of whom feature in the 'must-haves' tier at the bottom of this article.
Stat leaders
Moving onto City's Fantasy options specifically, here's a table of the top three players for each of the point-scoring statistics in the 2021/22 season from the current City squad:
Statistic | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
Goals | Wilkinson (12) | Pollicina (7) | McNamara (4) |
Assists | Pollicina/McNamara/Davidson (3) | Wilkinson/McKenna (2) | Torpey (1) |
Shots on target | Wilkinson (25) | Pollicina (21) | McNamara (13) |
Key passes | Pollicina (31) | Davidson (17) | Wilkinson (16) |
Crosses* | Pollicina (49) | McNamara (16) | Torpey/Wilkinson/Blissett (14) |
Successful dribbles | Pollicina (25) | McNamara (20) | Davidson (17) |
Successful tackles | Davidson (27) | Torpey (17) | Pollicina/Tumeth (15) |
Successful aerial duels | Wilkinson (25) | Tumeth (11) | Davidson (9) |
Clearances | Checker (47) | Tumeth (26) | Torpey (21) |
Blocks | Davidson (22) | Torpey (21) | Wilkinson (16) |
Interceptions | Tumeth (39) | Davidson (23) | Checker (20) |
*Total crossing data. Only successful crosses count towards points.
All data from FBRef.
Fixture ticker
Totally subjective, so recategorise teams if you disagree with how they've been rated. UPPERCASE indicates home fixtures, lowercase indicates away fixtures.
Round | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10* |
Opposition | wel | BYE | BRI | NEW | WU | can | PER | BYE | wsw | ade + MVC |
*City appear to play two fixtures in Round 10 (therefore rated 'good' for that round).
Melbourne City FAL player guide
Must-haves: James, Roestbakken
Great options: Wilkinson, Pollicina
High risk, high reward: Henry, Blissett, Grosso, Ekic, Galic
Could do worse: Checker, Davidson, Bowen, Torpey, Chinnama
Avoid: Barbieri, McKenna, McNamara, Malone, Karic, Accardo, Tumeth
Notes on tier list:
James and Roestbakken are stupidly underpriced. James is so cheap that even if you don't think she starts ahead of Barbieri (she probably will though), you could get her as a backup keeper. The same goes for Roestbakken as a defensive bench option, just don't treat her like one - she is even more certain to start this year, and will likely be one of City's highest-scoring defenders.
Wilkinson and Pollicina are great picks, but the Forwards category is such a competitive field that you might just need to think twice before including them in your team.
High risk, high reward players are all minutes risks, but could be great value options if you pick the ones that go on to cement starting roles. Henry and Ekic will compete for the forward position vacated by the currently injured McNamara (who is an 'avoid' until she recovers and becomes a 'great option'), and it will be one of Blissett or Grosso who takes the LWB position. Galic is more of a low-risk, high-reward player, as she is so cheap that her only downside is that she takes up a midfield position, but is such a highly-rated prospect that the occasional start mightn't be out of question.
Checker and Chinnama feature in the 'could do worse' category almost entirely because of how much better value Roestbakken is, Davidson is pretty much the player the category is named after, whilst Bowen and Torpey are difficult to get a read on. Bowen could split her time between defensive midfield (not an attractive Fantasy position) and defence (where she wouldn't even get points for clean seets due to being listed as a midfielder), so doesn't seem like a great pick. Torpey must be one of the few wing-backs in the game to be classified as a midfielder, so also misses out on clean sheet points, but has at least shown she is capable of contributing the rare goal or assist. The high price tag leans me towards saying there are better options out there.
Barbieri is too expensive to be taking a bet on her starting ahead of James, McKenna's place in the starting XI is far from secure, McNamara will be injured for a while but is a great option once fit, and Malone, Karic, Accardo and Tumeth (long-term ACL) will likely see so few minutes that it's better just to look elsewhere for bench options.
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