Ahead of the Premier League season, it looks like there could be quite a few Irish regulars in England's top flight. The addition of Sheffield United will see four more Irishmen added to its ranks, while a couple of youngsters could also make a first team breakthrough.
Not bad, but what does it make for our Fantasy Premier League prospects? We are going to test that out over the coming months.
We have put together an all Irish squad, and to be honest, our prospects aren't great. If you fancy taking us on, you can join the Balls FPL league by entering this code: ucz5j6.
We will start with the positives. Our defence is pretty strong. Outside of players from the top six clubs, you'd struggle to put together a better backline than this one. Seamus Coleman, Shane Duffy and Matt Doherty are all FPL stalwarts, while we fancy Enda Stevens and John Egan to do well this season.
Our midfield is also reasonably solid, if unspectacular. Hopefully Callum Robinson will knock in a few goals, and Conor Hourihane might bag a few assists.
Lastly, we had £23.5million of our £100million budget to spare. That's money in our back pocket.
Now onto the many, many negatives.
We have one Irish goalkeeper in Fantasy Premier League this season in Mark Travers. There's a very real chance he won't be first choice.
For our backup we went Bailey Peacock-Farrell, because he plays for Northern Ireland. He almost definitely won't play a game this season.
In midfield, Robbie Brady isn't a starter at Burnley, and Jeff Hendrick scores two goals a season. James McCarthy is an unknown quantity at this stage.
Up front, there is a very real chance our strikers will score less than five goals between them.
Shane Long is due another dry spell, and Michael Obafemi will find game time hard to come by. Troy Parrott is a huge prospect, but we can't imagine him racking up massive points just yet.
We couldn't fit David McGoldrick in because we already had three Sheffield United players.
And yet, we remain optimistic for the season ahead. There is no logic to that of course, but feck it we believe.
Here's what we are going with for week one:
Nearly every player is playing away from home as well, which is a right kick in the stones.
Anyway, we will keep you updated with our progress throughout the season. We can't imagine things will go great.
