The base price for a midfielder in the EPL fantasy league is £4.5m. Like most other seasons, this year most of the key all-star players have increased in price, meaning a lot of people are looking to squeeze in base price players to accomodate their bigger names.
Today we are looking at the basement priced mids, and trying to find players who are likely to earn enough points to make them worthwhile additions to your team.

Every year Premiership managers conspire to spend millions of pounds on exotic sounding foreign players whose names have never graced the screens of an English TV. Last year it was Marouane Fellaini, a £15 million signing for Everton. And what's more, his tough tackling, willingness to play ludicrously out of position, and even more ludicrous haircut have made the Premiership a better place over the last twelve months.

Coming off a strong Premiership debut in Hull City's 1-0 win over Bolton, Jozy Altidore has opened up his scoring account with his new club.
His 30-yard blast in the 42nd minute of Hull's third round League Cup matched against Southend helped his team to a 3-1 win.

In a tribute to the Clint Eastwood movie, "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," EPL Talk has categorized the new shirts for the 2009-2010 season into three categories. It wasn't easy. Many of the ones that we would have placed in a mediocre category, if it was available, had to go into "The Good" or "The Bad.

Arsenal should be after a midfielder.

Gareth Barry was priced out of everyone's price bracket when Manchester City offered him £130,000 a week. This is double what Arsenal would have even thought of offering the England international.

Yaya Toure is the old chestnut that never goes away; look out for the Steven Appiah stories to emerge soon!

So how has Jozy Altidore done in his transfer to the Hull City Tigers? Well, lets just say the kids got game.

Here was Jozy's first professional EPL assist, a crucial game changer that helped Hull City net their first win of the campaign (watch from 3:25 on):

Hull City v Bolton Wanderers
by donchesko10

The kid has a nose for goal.

The nastiest new shirt designs 1. Bolton home Wanderers have been churning out some pretty awful home kits in recent years, and this is the worst of a bad bunch in OTP's opinion. As we already mentioned, it looks like Bolton will be fulfilling the Premier League's barcode quote in Newcastle's absence.

We are almost at the end of another season but there are still plenty of EPL fantasy points up for grabs. As the cellar dwellers battle it out to avoid the drop, there is opportunity to bring in a couple of relegation battlers. At the bottom it's do or die for 5 of the clubs and there may be some points being scored, probably in the attacking areas (there probably will not be any defensive spoils.

Resident sooth-sayer Madam George with tomorrow's results today... sort of.

Wigan Athletic have unveiled their new home football kit for the 2009-2010 season.

The new kit is designed and manufactured by Vandanel and is sponsored by 188Bet, the same company who is also sponsoring Bolton's football kit for the 2009-2010 season the first time a company has sponsored two clubs in the same season of the Premier League.

Who will steal Cristiano Ronaldo's crown as Europe's top goal scorer?

This gameweek is a double for a few teams including Fulham, which makes Brede Hangeland a fine pick for the next couple of weeks given Fulham's forthcoming fixtures (Bolton, Sunderland and Burnley after this week's double GW). Hangeland does well every season as a bargain priced defender, and is a key choice for those looking to hone in on Fulham's potential clean sheets.

Yesterday we looked at the match day revenues of clubs in the Premier League and the huge gap between the big clubs like Manchester United and Arsenal and the smaller clubs like West Brom and Fulham.

Clubs with the highest gate and match day revenue should be able to afford the best players and they can afford their huge salaries.

Xabi Alonso is delighted to be at Real Madrid however his brother Mikel, formerly of Bolton, and now in La Liga with Tenerife, believes he is missing his old club Liverpool.
The two siblings faced each other over the weekend, during which the eldest brother took home the bragging rights after a 3-0 Real Madrid win.

With all the players that have come in to the City of Manchester stadium the time may come this summer when the board look to recoup some of their money.

Having spent in the region of £100m on transfers since the much publicised take over many fans will be looking on in interest to see which big name the club are going to be linked to this summer.

Liverpool flop Sebastian Leto could be set for a shock move to Juventus.
The 22-year-old midfielder has spent the season on loan at Olympiakos and looks unlikely to return to Anfield in the summer with boss Rafael Benitez ready to offload the Argentine.
Leto had been linked with a switch to Paris Saint Germain.

Hard-working English Premier League side Bolton Wanderers Football Club have unveiled their brand new home Reebok kit for the 2009/2010 season. The new Wanderers shirt features sponsorship from the Bolton's new primary sponsor for the next two seasons 188BET. The new Bolton Reebok 09/10 home kit will be worn by the Wanderers players on Saturday afternoon when [.

According to Football Spy at the Daily Mirror, Bolton and Birmingham are interested in Anderlecht midfielder Lucas Biglia.

[Photo: Hull City]Very gracious, properly excited new Tiger Jozy Altidore gave me a moment of his time not long ago, and the local daily has video from the unveiling.And...Just so it doesn't get lost in a previous post update: I have been told that UK reports linking Aston Villa defender Eric Lichaj with a move to Bolton are total rubbish.

This man is playing in the EPL and not looking back.
See below for Jozy Altidore's assist and chances at goal during his strong debut for Hull City against Bolton this past weekend.
What do you think? Will Hull City be good for his development or would have Ligue 1, the new home of American players, been a better route?

The Premiership had a busy Saturday with seven matches on the schedule. Some of these included Portsmouth v Man U, Aston Villa v Tottenham Hotpsur, and Manchester City v Fulham. Here's the full list of fixtures with video highlights (some are not yet available and will be added later).

English Premier League Video Highlights Saturday, November 28, 2009

Blackburn 0-0 Stoke | Video Highlights

Fulham 1-1 Bolton | Video Highlights

Man City 1-1 Hull | Video Highlights

Portsmouth 1-4 Man Utd | Video Highlights

West Ham 5-3 Burnley | Video Highlights

Wigan 1-0 Sunderland | Video Highlights

Stig of the thump Given a fairly lengthy criminal record, including time inside for headbutting a cafe owner, it should probably come as little surprise that former Bolton player Stig Tofting has taken to the boxing ring like a duck to water. The former Danish international has been taking part in a celebrity boxing tournament in his [.

The worst possible thing happended today as Newcastle unbelievably went down to yet another home defeat against Fuilham, this time by 1-0, and Hull City got a good 1-1 draw at Bolton. This means that Newcastle are 3rd bottom again, with Hull one point clear, and now if Newcastle don't get at least a point in their [.

He scored 150 goals for Manchester United in just five seasons - yes 150 goals - and he's currently on the books at Real Madrid - but reports in England suggest that Ruud van Nistelrooy could move to Blackburn of all places.
This is essentially MJ to the Washington Wizards redux. (Michael Jordan, not Michael Jackson, relax.

The English Premier League is set to start its season this week and The 90th Minute Soccer blog will be having a weekly feature of predicting the results for each match. The first week will be interesting and can be very different to predict as some teams start out in great form while others are still getting the rust off.

Jozy Altidore has been granted a UK work visa and is set to debut in the Tigers draw with Bolton on Saturday.

Four games into the new Premiership season, how is the Steven Gerrard-Fernando Torres partnership functioning?
Liverpool has had a comparatively poor start to the season but the Gerrard-Torres partnership seems to be firing on all cylinders.
Season 2009-2010
Gerrard + Torres starting together (t=Torres g=Gerrard a=Assist)
August 16, 2009 - Tottenham - L, 1-2 (g1)
August 19, 2009 - Stoke - W, 4-0 (g2a t1)
August 24, 2009 - Aston Villa - L, 1-3 (t1)
August 29, 2009 - Bolton - W, 3-2 (t1 t1a g1)
P4 W2 D0 L2 F10 A7
Torres: 3 goals + 1 assist
Gerrard: 2 goals + 2 assists
Total: 5 goals + 3 assists
* 80% of Liverpools goals scored/created by G+T so far
* G+T started only 14 league games together last season.

The Premier League returns this weekend and that means it is time to bring out the crystal ball again. Last time out I went 7 for 10 and that brought my score for the season up to 20 out of 36 (56%). The weekend after an international week always thoughts up some upsets and this is how I thing that this weeks games will go.

During yesterday's press conference ahead of tonight's Champions League game, Man United manager Sir Alex Ferguson walked out. The press kept on asking him about his charge of improper conduct for his comments about referee Alan Wiley.
Sir Alex said that it was a stupid question and that he wasn't going to comment but they weren't going to take no for an answer, so understandably he walked out.

Both Stoke and Fulham have a double header on Gameweek 20, after missing out on Gameweek 17. Arsenal and Bolton are the other teams that gameweek who benefit from the revised fixture list.
The tricky part for a lot of players is that by now many have shaped their teams into something close to what they would like, making the dilemma not so much about who they should transfer in, rather who they will transfer out.

Arsenal are center of most of today's transfer rumors as The Guardian is reporting that Arsenal are in hot pursuit of West Ham's Matthew Upson. The move will follow Kolo Toure's departure to Manchester City. Wenger is a known admirer of Upson, having previously purchased him in May of 1997 from Luton Town.

For the first time this season Manchester United fans are celebrating reaching the summit of the Premier League table. Finally level with Liverpool in the games played column (although that will change again on Monday), Manchester United showed that they still have what it takes to win the league, even with several key players out.

For all the players related to the Coca Cola Championship, transfer window is going on just as it was guessed. Unlike the Premier League, it appears that rumors in the lower tiers usually turn out to be quite true and it all ends up exactly as the papers talk. That was exactly what happened to the [.

Blackburn manager Sam Allardyce had a drink with Liverpool No 2 Sammy Lee after his side's 4-0 defeat at Anfield last weekend without mentioning that he had been offended by a gesture from Rafa Benitez.
The conversation over a couple of beers casts doubt over Allardyce's claim that he was humiliated by Benitez after Fernando Torres scored Liverpool's second goal.

This may not be all that news-worthy, but it does appear that Sky Sports inadvertently posted Arsenal's early season schedule on their website before realizing their mistake and taking it down. At any rate, their screw-up is our gain. This isn't official, but it seems to be legit while they haven't apparently finalized the schedule yet, GoonerTalk, which broke the story, does have a screen grab of Sky's site, and it would seem odd if Sky just made this up out of thin air.

Is this your new replica kit? (What were Spurs thinking?) 15 June 2009 - 13:18 | Sport.co.uk
New football kits for this season. I don't particularly like the new Everton home shirt (the away kits looks like it'll be nice but isn't pictured here).
The new Blackburn and Bolton shirts are much worse than ours.

Il campionato si è concluso da poco, ma gi possiamo parlare della prossima stagione. Il Manchester United, campione in carica ma orfano di Cristiano Ronaldo, ceduto al Real Madrid, inizier l'annata calcistica in casa contro il Birmingham e concluder le fatiche stagionali sempre all'Old Trafford, contro lo Stoke City.

The Argentine youngster's Franco di Santo future at Chelsea appears to be up in the air as Rovers hover. Following chairman John Williams' admission that Blackburn Rovers were interested in Franco Di Santo, Sam Allardyce has suggested that they could take the Argentine permanently rather than on loan, as was initially mooted.

Premier League Predictions 2009-10
1. Chelsea
2. Arsenal
3. Liverpool
4. Manchester United
5. Manchester City
6. Everton
7. Aston Villa
8. Spurs
9. Sunderland
10. Fulham
11. West Ham
12. Stoke City
13. Bolton
14.

Something very weird is going on with Jozy Altidore.

On August 10, it was widely reported Altidore recieved his work permit and was ready to start his Premiership career.

Then, all of a sudden last Friday, we learned (thanks to Altidore twittering) that, no, the work permit actually wasn't completed and Altidore was still in the United States.