Fantasy football cheat sheet: Crystal Palace’s away day marvels can expose Villa’s home truths

Tricky midfielders are the order of the day.

We're going all out on a mixture of attacking midfielders and wingers as we enter this bizarre gameweek that starts on a Tuesday night. At the other end of the pitch, we've highlighted three defensive changes that we'd advise you to make before they ruin your 2016.

Three players to sign

Crystal Palace are away, Aston Villa are at home. So we may as well just give all three points to Alan Pardew's men right now. Villa haven't won at home all season and have picked up just three points at Villa Park since opening day. Palace, meanwhile, are the away day specialists, winning five of their nine trips away from Selhurst Park. Pardew has his side set up to absorb all the home pressure and catch their opponents on the break with pacy wingers like Wilfried Zaha. Zaha is due a Premier League goal and scored the winner against Southampton in the FA Cup on Saturday so we're going to take our chances on him compounding Villa's home soil toil. Whisper it, but Dimitri Payet is fit again and not everybody seems to have noticed as he's selected by less than 10% of FF players. Before getting injured in November, Payet had five goals and four assists in his previous nine games which put him up there with Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy in Fantasy Football must-haves. He came off the bench against Liverpool last week and dazzled the Reds midfield so we're backing him to do the same to a Bournemouth team that are struggling for inspiration. He might look like Manchester United flop Anderson but he sure doesn't play like him. Don't blame us if this one doesn't pan out but our selection of Leicester's new signing is a long-term one. Demarai Gray made his debut for the Foxes in last weekend's 2-2 draw with Spurs in the FA Cup and, before being substituted, Gray caused all kinds of problems for the Spurs full backs. With his pace, there's no wonder that he causes such havoc for defenders and the fact that he's already registered an assist against Tottenham on Sunday means that he will be brimming with confidence. He may not bring home the points this week but when Jamie Vardy is fully fit, we think Gray is going to rack up assists in the final five months of the season. The fact that nobody on Fantasy Football seems to have bought him yet is an added bonus!

Three players to sell

We looked at this logically. Before the 0-0 clash at the start of the season, Liverpool and Arsenal exchanged 33 goals in their previous 10 encounters. So we thought - 'let's get rid of a defender.' Then we thought - 'Alberto Moreno's not very good, is he?' And we ditched him. In all seriousness, though. Liverpool have very few fit defenders so goals should be on the cards for the travelling Gunners. Moreno is just the fall guy because he's guaranteed to start on Wednesday night and is a bit of a liability. Remember the days when Everton were rock solid at the back? Well those days are long gone and now the Toffees back four is leakier than Gary Lineker's back passage. They come up against the top-scoring team in the Premier League in Manchester City who have Sergio Aguero rapidly approaching full fitness. Stranger things have happened but we're not liking the chances of Everton keeping City at bay at the Etihad. Ashley Williams will be, without a shadow of a doubt, the best defender in the Championship next season. What we're saying is... Swansea are in genuine danger of going down and there's nothing that the Herculean efforts of their captain can do about it. With one win in their last 10 games and coming off a 3-2 FA Cup defeat to League Two Oxford, there's not a lot to smile about around the Liberty Stadium. It's not often that we think Sunderland are going to actually punish teams but Big Sam>Alan Curtis and we can see the Swans' troubles continuing this week.