Premier League: It's time to select your fantasy team

There's only a couple of hours until the 2012/13 Premier League season kicks off and I cannot wait! This season looks to be a blinder. A great Community Shield encounter and some interesting pre-season results have got me all flustered about my fantasy football picks.

I have already done some in-depth analysis for all the teams, but now I will look specifically at the individual game weeks. I’ll look at teams that have fixtures which look promising for lots of goals, clean sheets or games that could go either way.

This will be a weekly thing, so keep coming back for more – and as always feel free to comment.

It's a double game week for the Champions League victors Chelsea, away to Wigan and home to Reading. So load up on your maximum of three Chelsea players if you can afford it. Preferably defenders, because I can see at least one clean sheet.

All of Chelsea’s backline are the same price and the news is that Ivanovic is not facing a suspension despite his red card in Sunday’s Community Shield defeat to Man City.

The champions' attackers and defenders are both studs this week as they face up against newly promoted Southampton. Aguero and Tevez are both looking on form, but Tevez might not feature if Balotelli is back fit. Silva didn’t get a game at the weekend so should start, but might be priced out of people's reach at £10m.

Reading also have a double gameweek. Though they are up against Chelsea in their second game, and home to a strong defensive Stoke side in their first. Players like Pogrebnyak and Guthrie could be money-saving options as they are definite starters and could grab some points somewhere.

It’s always tough in the first week of the season trying to get the right balance for your squad. Players that you want all year round, might have tough starting season (Demba Ba for me) but whether you gamble and hope they grind out points against tougher teams is all part of the fun.

Good luck!

This is what my team's looking like at the time of writing.

Goalkeeper - De Gea (Man U)

Defenders - Koscielny (Arsenal), Reither (Fulham) and Cole (Chelsea)

Midfield - Kagawa (Man U), Hazard (Chelsea), Allen (Liverpool), Sigurdsson (Spurs) and Yaya Toure (Man City)

Strikers - Ba (Newcastle) and Aguero (Man City)

Subs - Jaaskelainen (West Ham), Clyne (Southampton), Pogrebnyak (Reading) and Gorkss (Reading)

Article by Greg Hall

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