Don’t forget to use your three Boosters this Dream Team season: Park the Bus, 12th Man and Maximum Captain

APPROXIMATELY half of all Dream Team managers are yet to play a Booster this season.

Holding all three back with a view to maximising returns as the campaign reaches a dramatic crescendo is a viable tactic but that doesn’t mean you should naively turn a blind eye to opportune moments.

Remember, you can only play each of your three Boosters once and so it’s wise to target the best possible Gameweek in each instance if you want to rack up enough points to propel you up the leaderboard.

At the time of writing, just over 66,000 gaffers have played all three of their Boosters which means the vast majority still have at least one to activate between now and the season’s end.

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With that in mind, allow us to remind you of each Booster’s unique effect.

Park the Bus

This is the most-powerful Booster of the three as it essentially allows you to select multiple captains for the duration of one Gameweek, albeit with some limitations.

Park the Bus doubles the points of all your defenders and so it’s best to take full advantage of this by adopting a 5-3-2 formation.

Ideally, all five of your defenders would have two fixtures to fulfil as well.

As the season has progressed, it’s become clear that Arsenal and Liverpool boast the best collective defences – these clubs currently provide six of the top eight defenders in the game.

It should go without saying that you’re searching for clean sheets from your five-man Park the Bus defence but you should also consider which individuals provide the most attacking threat from the back.

The likes of Virgil van Dijk (£4.1m), Gabriel (£4m) and Fabian Schar (£3.3m) have posed a persistent threat at set-pieces while Trent Alexander-Arnold (£5.1m), Kieran Trippier (£4.5m) and Pedro Porro (£3.6m) have provided boat-loads of assists – annoyingly, all three creative full-backs are currently flagged as injured.

Looking forward, every single Premier League club will play twice in Gameweek 29 so that may be the time for you to activate Park the Bus if you still have it available.

12th Man

As the name suggests, this Booster allows you to select an additional player from any position to score points for you for one Gameweek only.

You don’t have to worry about formation or budgetary constrictions, simply select a player with (ideally) two favourable fixtures and enjoy the bumper points.

For example, say you haven’t been able to afford Kevin De Bruyne (£6.3m) as a permanent recruit; ahead of a friendly Manchester City double header worth targeting, you could use your 12th Man Booster to temporarily benefit from the Belgian’s returns.

Another popular strategy involves selecting a 12th Man who has excellent short-term fixtures but limited long-term viability.

Take Dominic Solanke (£3.9m) in Gameweek 27 as an example.

Bournemouth host Sheffield United and Luton in quick succession and so it’s reasonable to expect big things from their No9 given he’s scored 16 goals and provided five assists already this season.

Transferring the Cherries’ top scorer into your XI is a reasonable tactic but you’ll have to use another transfer to replace him before Gameweek 28 as Bournemouth don’t have a single fixture to fulfil.

Instead of using multiple transfers to facilitate Solanke’s favourable double in Gameweek 27, it’s much simpler to nominate him as 12th Man.

Maximum Captain

This Booster simplifies the captaincy debate by guaranteeing the armband ends up on the player within your XI who scores the most points over the course of the Gameweek.

Imagine Erling Haaland (£7.7m), Bukayo Saka (£5.9m) and Mohamed Salah (£6.7m) are all set to for juicy double Gameweeks against favourable opposition; chances are at least one of them will go seriously big.

Activating Max Captain in such a scenario would ensure the optimum outcome.

However, if all your rivals were to captain the Norwegian poacher in this situation and he outscored Saka and Salah, then you would have essentially wasted your Max Captain Booster.

If the armband ends up on the player you were going to give it to anyway then that’s obviously a frustrating outcome.

That’s why some gaffers prefer to activate Max Captain when all the familiar favourites are either unavailable or facing difficult fixtures.

Or it may be that Liverpool, Arsenal and Man City all have one fixture at a time when several other clubs have two, blowing the captaincy conversation wide open.

Lastly, be aware Boosters can’t be used them in conjunction with each other, only one at a time.

Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk