The conventional MLS Fantasy wisdom going into round 8 was to stock up on Houston Dynamo players because they have the double game week in eight and then again in round 10. This all came undone as New York completely diced up Houston on route to a 4-0 weekday victory. What are fantasy owners to do now?
Mike Gray will be along soon enough to give us his thoughts on round 9, but with mlssoccer.com releasing a video on who to pick up looking ahead to round 10 (embedded up top) I thought I'd give my thoughts on the best way to proceed as there are going to be several ways to go about it.
Option one is to drop the wildcard and jettison all those Houston players you've been stockpiling. With the bonus wildcard for everyone happening in round 11, I'm going to caution against this. In a league as unpredictable as MLS, the key is to find the consistency in the noise.
Tally Hall and Will Bruin are the top point getters for Houston thus far, but if Houston's defense is kaput then what's the point of starting their keeper? Likewise, Bruin's value jumped $.5 as everyone jumped on his bandwagon, but that's already taken its first dip as he went five matches without a goal before the draw in Portland.
Take a look at the video for Andrew Wiebe's Houston suggestions, but the next step is determining the four (or unlimited if you drop the wildcard) players to add on for the double matches in week 10. There are six teams involved including Houston, and certainly the frontrunner in all of them is Seattle.
That's where I've thrown my lot in. Clint Dempsey, Obafemi Martins, and Lamar Neagle are all on the overall Dream Team and I don't see any arguments against picking up all three of them. Neagle and Dempsey were good enough last week to make the Dream Team in the midfield even with New York's double match week performance.
FC Dallas has a couple Dream Team players, but they seem to be in flux at the moment. San Jose is a solid choice though, with Victor Bernadez a big point getter and Shea Salinas consistent while not costing a whole lot.
We'll have more later in the week on who you need to be starting in week 9, but those are just a few tips I thought were worth passing along for the super planners out there.