Everyone agrees that Mo Salah is having a good season.  Ten goals and six assists in his first ten Premier League matches equals the joint highest total at this stage of a season.  Translate that into Fantasy Football points and it gives him a total of 112; almost double the tally of the next highest player.  You would be a fool to ignore including him in your Fantasy Football team.  Or would you?

Here’s my problem.  I have written before about how competitive is my workplace Fantasy Football league and how I am the current reigning champion.  Not so this season.  I am languishing closer to the bottom of the league than I am to the top.  I have had Mo Salah in my team since the first week of the season, but even his stellar performance has not been sufficient to raise me above my competitors.  The problem?  They all have Mo Salah in their team, too.  Every one of them.  Worse, they are captaining him every week, ensuring that they receive double points for every one of his goals or assists.  Every one of them.  What am I to do?

If I adopt a policy of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’, and captain Salah, too, I will not lose ground to my rivals but, equally, I will never catch up with them.  Each week, I find myself in the perverse position of actually wanting Salah to do badly, so that my fellow players don’t gain extra points for captaining him, but this amounts to an act of self-harm when I have him in my team, too.  I am now in a position where I am contemplating the unthinkable of actually dropping Salah from my team and replacing him with someone else hoping, against the odds, that my chosen replacement will outperform him.

This is the Salah Conundrum.

I’m still not sure if I have the solution to it.

© Donnie Blake

Donnie Blake needs to get out more.

Donnie Blake is the author of the Artie Yard, World Cup Detective books.