Preview
A new season of Hero ISL is here and we fantasy players are all excited with straight four months of Indian footballing action. The first match will be played between the defending champions ATK against Kerala Blasters FC, both the teams have faced each other eight times out of which ATK has won seven of them including finals of 2014 & 2016. Both the teams have good set of Indian and foreign players, and it will be a great contest in hand.
This season ATK is in the hands of Teddy Sheringham and techincal director Ashley Westwood. Ashley has been in Indian
footballing circuit before while coaching Bengaluru FC. So expect ATK to have good balance of Indian and foreign players. Big injury news coming out from ATK is star striker Robbie Keane has been injured during the pre-season and will be out for few weeks, Jayesh Rane is also reported to be injured. Even though they have Jussi Jääskeläinen as marquee player in keeper position, Debjit Majumdar will don the goal keeping duties.
Pre-season stats
ATK played five matches in preseason and won all five of them, with Robbie Keane being the top scorer but with the absence of Robbie Keane, Robin Singh will start along with Njazi Kuqi.
Kerala Blasters will get down to business to break the jinx of ATK, as said earlier, both team have met eight times but KBFC won just once. During the pre match press conference, the head coach said there are no injuries and all the players are ready to go. That means the big names like Dimitar Berbatov and Wes Brown will start today, but we feel the biggest name in KBFC is Iain Hume and he would be roaring to go against his ex-team.
Pre-season stats
KBFC played five matches in preseason and won two, lost one & drew 2, which doesn't exibit great form from them.
Injury Update:
ATK: Robbie Keane & Jayesh Rane are expected to out for 2-3 weeks
KBFC: No injuries
Probable XI
ATK: Debjit Majumdar, Tom Thorpe, Jordi Montel, Bipin Singh, Prabir Das, Anwar Ali, Santos Branco Zequinha, Robin
Singh, Eugeneson Lyngdoh, Njazi Kuqi, Prabir Das.
KBFC: Subhashish Roy, Wes Brown, Iain Hume, Dimitar Berbabtov, Nemanja Pesic, Sandesh Jhingan, Rino Anto, CK Vineeth, Arata Izumi, Milan Singh, Jackiechand Singh
TFG Fantasy XI
Happy Hunting!!!
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(Disclaimer: The TFG Fantasy Pundit 11 has been picked after taking into consideration various factors and analysis. The writers and editors of The Fan Garage are not responsible for any decisions taken by readers of this article while playing any fantasy league game. This article has been written with the sole purpose of providing a direction to choosing a good Fantasy team for the match mentioned in the article.)