Fantasy

My Premier League team - Click to enlarge

You may recall my great trepidation in entering my first fantasy football pool. My fear was that my experience would turn into a tragedy.

Well, the only tragedy that occurred was that of the “Great Premier League Server Crash of 2011“. The Premier League is still reeling from the bad PR it got from not being able to deliver on its new site and quite frankly it may not be able to right its wrongs completely. I think the 2011-12 fantasy season was permanently damaged and should maybe have an asterisk beside it in fantasy record books.

After all – despite the Premier League’s graciousness in granting everyone a free week of transfers- or because of it ? – the league will never be quite fair or level for this season. But let’s not get into that. If you want to get into that you can visit the excellent website, Fantasy Football Scout, where its post on the Premier League’s apology garnered a whopping 3000+ comments from its members.

How I have averted tragedy – for now:

So how did I avoid thoroughly embarrassing myself in Game Week 1?

Well, to tell the truth, my reputation survived because I entered another league.

My Premier League team above – Given - Huth – Dunne – Shawcross – Song – Gardiner – Toure – Nani – Suarez – Dzeko – Zamora – earned me 61 points and gave me an Overall Rank of 228,650 out of 2,063,230 total players worldwide.

While it was no tragedy to earn 61 points and land in roughly the top ten percent of participants, it also wasn’t anything to write home about, or blog about : )

But entering that other pool – the ESPN Premier Fantasy League – not only took me out of the realm of tragedy but put me into the world of respectability.

My ESPN team - Click to enlarge

My ESPN team of – Given – Huth – Shawcross – Dunne – Nani – Toure – Silva – Song – Van Persie – Rooney – Zamora – was slightly different from my Premier League team because of differing player values. As a result I was able to earn 65 points, putting me in the 98th percentile and ranking me 1492nd in the whole pool – worldwide.

Those numbers are making me feel pretty chuffed.

Being in the 98th percentile sounds great to me. So does being 1492nd. Mind you I don’t know how big the ESPN league is. I doubt that it has over 2 million participants like the Premier League.

Otherwise perhaps its site would also have crashed : ) ?

I think I’m going to keep playing in both leagues. It wasn’t my plan and it will be more work but I think it will make for an interesting comparison and should lead to some interesting observations and learning opportunities along the way.

Especially when tragedy strikes.

Which I know is coming. It is just around the corner.

If the Premier League site can crash – so can I.

Humbly Yours,

Superscout@Bestplayerintheworld.com

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The people are angry

I’m relatively new to this fantasy football stuff but I have to say that I’ve been mightily impressed by how dynamic and active a world it is. Tons of activity. Tons of knowledge and passion. Great websites like Fantasy Football Scout. Great technology in general – except when there gets to be too much activity I guess.

You see the Fantasy Premier League site has basically been down for the last 12 hours and people are not happy. People cannot create teams, people cannot adjust their teams. The latter is the worst part, for the serious guys picked their teams long ago but need to be able to tweak their sides at the last possible moment due to news, advice or plain old intuition. The real, hard-core FantasyFootballers need to have constant and up-to-the-last-second access to the database in order to perform at the highest level.

But for the last 12 hours they haven’t been able to and have they ever been pissed-off, as you can see from their comments:

“Still can’t get into FPL. WHAT A F*CKIN FARCE!!!!!!!!”

“this is preposterous not being able to log in!!”

“Down for me too, you would have thought they would have prepared for this!!!!”

I suspect that it’s just high demand. Seems to me that fantasy football is getting more and more popular – especially when you see guys like me signing up from all parts of the world.

I doubt that it’s anything as serious as the hacking of the Playstation network which shut that huge site down for days and days.

But just to be sure that I get in my fantasy football I’ve come up with a back-up plan. I’ve signed up for ESPNsoccernet’s Premier Fantasy and….here is my team!…

My ESPNsoccernet "Premier Fantasy" team

Have to say that I’m very excited by this team. My plan was to duplicate my picks from the Fantasy Premier League but after I did that I had a ton of cash left. The valuations were completely different.

As a result I was able to add Rooney, Tevez and Bale!

Incredible isn’t it?

I don’t really know what that all means though as the rules of this league are likely different from the other league but I’ll keep you posted…

At least I have a league to play in.

Gotta say that I’m getting hooked on this fantasy football stuff…

I can understand now why people are flipping out about the crashing of the site. It’s like losing a loved-one or being denied a very powerful drug…

Hmm…Have I just entered a world of addiction?…

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I’m going to try to avert the looming tragedy which I fretted about yesterday. Yes folks – I’m making changes to my Fantasy Premier League team before the deadline. Changes are permitted before the opening kick-off of the season and changes I shall make. Here are my changes:

Transfers before the deadline

The changes were sparked largely by an email I received from Sir John Culea of the official ESPNsoccernet Premier Fantasy blog. I had posted this comment on his post about over-rated players:

“Agree with all of them Sir John. You’re on top of it. Just not sure about Modric. If he’s somewhat over-rated, who would you take instead at that price?”

And Sir John very kindly replied via email:

“Hello my friend, Thanks for writing.  Considering Modric is about it at that salary, the ones lower who I would recommend would be Dempsey, N’Zogbia, Silva (for assists) and Charlie Adam.  Good luck. Sir John.”

That got me to thinking. I especially wanted David Silva in my team. So, I started playing around with removing and adding players and ended up with the above changes. Let me explain those changes.

I got rid of Begovic because I went to another fantasy source, Fantasy Football Scout, and saw that many people there were picking Shay Given. I’ve always liked Given but like him even more now in the fantasy world because he’s now playing with what should be a defensive-minded Alex McLeish Aston Villa team instead of riding the bench at Manchester City. So I basically upgraded from the young Begovic to the wily Given. What I liked about Begovic was that he played for Stoke, a team that I don’t really like for their style but a big, tough team that will none the less fight to prevent goals and will be well organized by Tony Pulis. But the problem is that I just don’t think that Begovic is a top-notch keeper just yet. Given is much better.

You will notice that I got rid of Jolean Lescott. I was forced to do this because I wanted to add Manchester City’s Edin Dzeko and had already reached my limit of three players from City.

Dzeko was a replacement for Liverpool’s Luis Suarez. I really like Suarez and intend pick him up later but it looks like Liverpool are going to rest him for a few weeks due to his recent involvement in the Copa America. I am comfortable with this plan because the Fantasy Premier League rules permit one transfer per week and two wildcard transfer weeks:

“A Wildcard allows you to make unlimited free transfers throughout a Gameweek. You can use up to 2 a season.”

I’d really like to get off to a strong start – in order to delay the inevitable tragedy – and will wait for Suarez.

To fill the hole left by Lescott, I opted for the experienced Richard Dunne, who was the right price, playing for what I hope – as mentioned earlier – will be a defensive-minded Villa team under McLeish.

And finally – you will notice that I got rid of Jack Wilshire. I also plan to get him back because I think he will have a big season when Fabregas and Nasri leave. But he is injured now and I want a strong start.

In Wilshire’s place I have added the aging and scandal-ridden Ryan Giggs. Giggs is on my bench for week one but I believe that the legend will return this season and will be in on a lot United goals. We’ll see.

So here is my “final” team heading into week one:

Final team?

3-4-3: Given: Huth: Dunn: Shawcross: Song: Silva: Toure: Nani: Hoilett: Dzeko: Zamora

Bench: Howard: Distin: Jagielka: Giggs

Captain: Nani Vice-Captain: Dzeko

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I’m a proud new member of > Fantasy Football Scout

Fantasy Premier League uses the > EA Sports Player Performance Index

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Premier League's Fantasy League

Well, here goes nothing. Or, here goes my reputation. I’m sure that this is going to make me look bad, make me look like a very poor “scout” but I’m going to do it anyways. I’m going to enter a team in the Barclay’s Premier League’s Fantasy Football League and document the whole embarrassing mess.

I’ve already registered a team under the name “SuperScout” – so my name is in fact all over this story, which I’m sure will be a tragedy. Look me up after this weekend’s first slate of games – if you want to have some fun at my expense.

Here’s the team I have picked with my 100M pounds:

My Picks

I know – can you believe it? – I’ve picked three, count ‘em three Stoke players. And I don’t even like Stoke! I don’t like the way they play. But it just made sense at the time.

Other picks seemed to make sense too – though Sir John Culea over at the ESPNSoccernet Premier Fantasy blog thinks that Luka Modric is over-rated.

Guess we’ll see. Perhaps my whole team is over-rated!

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