Operation Sports and EA Sports are teaming up for a weekly giveaway of signed Barclays Premier League shirts! That’s right, footie fans, every week, from now until the end of the Premier League season, we are giving one lucky winner a signed jersey from a BPL club, courtesy of The EA Sports Official Sports Technology Partnership with The Premier League.

How do you win said shirts, you ask? Read on.

First, get posting here on Operation Sports. Only members with 10 posts or more are qualified to enter.

Next, check out the EA Sports Player Performance Index and how it works. Study it thoroughly, and then do it again. Ready? Good.

Because every week we will offer up three players from the index for you to choose from, and your goal is to pick the player who gains the most points for that week in the PPI (or, in rare cases, who loses the least points). Those who picked the winner will be entered into a random draw to see who gets the signed shirt.

That’s all there is to it, really, so get your crystal ball out and get ready to make your picks!

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We’re into the seventh round of the EA Sports Player Performance Index contest. There’s only two weeks left in the Premier League season, so tell all your OS friends to start checking out the Player Performance Index and play!

Here are the three players for this round:

Clint Dempsey

Junior Hoilett

Demba Ba

I have a tiny hunch as to which player will get the majority of the picks (God bless America!). But don’t let patriotism blind you, Fulham gets Sunderland this week and Martin O’Neill’s squad has been stingy in conceding goals lately. Blackburn, meanwhile, plays at home against Wigan—and with Junior Hoilett looking increasingly like he’s moving on to greener pastures after this season, you’d think he’d put on his best stuff to showcase to potential suitors. Demba Ba’s Newcastle gets the spotlight match this week against Manchester City. As good as a player Ba has been this season, it would be tough for Newcastle to get anything against the City defense.

Furthermore, a practical argument for choosing Hoilett or Ba is that, if either just happens to gain more points this week in the PPI than Dempsey, your odds of getting picked as the shirt winner is probably much greater if, as anticipated, most people pick the pride of Nacogdoches.

So who you gonna choose? Check out the PPI and submit your pick as to who will gain the most points for this week in the comments section below. Good luck!

FAQs:

What if I post my pick, and then change my mind before the submission window closes?

Sure, change your mind (but please, don’t go overboard). We will go with your last submitted player as your official pick, as long as you got it in before the deadline for that week, of course.

When is the weekly window, and when will I know if I won?

Good question. It depends on that particular round of matches. Premier League rounds usually start Saturdays and end Mondays. The winner will be drawn after the PPI is updated, which is after the last fixture of that round is played.

The weekly window will start late Tuesday or early Wednesday, when we post the three players for the following round of matches, and you will have until 12:01am Saturday (EDT) to get your picks in.

There is an exceptions to this, on the Round of Matches starting April 6 and April 9. This “weekend” that starts on Friday and ends on Wednesday are actually two back to back rounds of matches, but we will be combining the two since it’s just too complicated to make picks for two different rounds simultaneously.

What if the player I picked gets injured, or doesn’t play?

If a player gets hurt at the last minute, unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about that. Same with club managers’ selection policy, though the players we offer up for selection are normally in the starting XI. If a player gets hurt, say, a day before the window closes for that week, then yes, we will nominate somebody new, and you may enter your pick again.

What if two (or all three) players gain the same amount of points?

Then everybody who picked those two (or three) players gets entered into the draw.

Here are a couple of images, showing off the jerseys to be won. Good luck!