Fantasy Football tournament 18/19 - now live!

[Sly Boots]

Yay, another competition whose name is now out of date -_-

Anyway, thank you to MM, WB and Animal for joining our experimental draft-style tournament for this season, as well as Mrs MM. As I said on the old forum it seemed to go quite well for being completely automated.

The season starts tonight, and in terms of our tourney match-ups, this week we have:

Team Medicine Man vs my own Ratter's Raiders
Mrs MM vs Mrs Boots in a titanic battle of the spouses (which Mrs MM will almost certainly win thanks to my better half's, um, unique drafting policy )
Animal's Ball Fondlers FC vs Wrathbone's Wrasslers

I posted up some post-draft advice on the old forum, which I shall cut and paste below for any that haven't seen it.

Also MM, have you checked out that trade offer I sent you yet?

[Sly Boots]

So the advice I posted before:

Ok then, some advice moving down the table as it appears for me:

MM - your team looks good! Keeper maybe a bit dodgy but I seem to have drafted two very keepers but I only want to have one, so I've sent you a trade proposal I think is fair, so accept that if you want otherwise don't worry

Wrathbone - another nice looking team! I actually think you may be the favourite based on that draw. Only comment I have is you're maybe short a defender, as you only drafted 3.

Animal - you've got a lot of defenders (8), two keepers and only one striker. I think you could comfortably drop four of your defenders and one of your keepers and try to pick up a couple of midfielders and strikers instead. I'll post full instructions for doing that in the following post.

Mrs MM - another decent looking team. However like WB is short on defenders, I would advise dropping a couple of the midfielders and picking up another defender and another striker. Also, do drop Chamberlain as he's going to be injured for the entire season.

Transfer instructions follow.

[Sly Boots]

Ok, so transferring players then.

The first thing you want to do is go over to the Players tab.

You should see a long list of players here, in default order from the highest number of points earned last season. Sitting just above this list is some more detailed sorting options - you can search for defenders (D), midfielders (M), Forwards (F) and goalies (G) for a bit more of a targeted search. If you're feeling flash there's a drop down menu under status/team which allows you to search by particular teams.

When you've found a player you'd like to add, click on the green plus sign. This will then automatically take you to your team page, and if you then choose a player to take out of your team, click on the red minus icon. The players should then automatically swap around.

I've set the transfer system so that it's first-come, first serve essentially. There was another option but it was a bit more complicated, so I thought for us this would be the best way.

That's it!

[Sly Boots]

Woo - a trade has occurred!



Let me know if you guys want me to set out instructions for trading players between yourselves - feel free to do so by the way! It's essentially the same as picking up players from the unwanted pool as explained above, but instead you select the player you want from someone else's team in the league as the first step.

[Medicine Man]

Instructions would be nice.

I'm not ashamed to admit I'm struggling a bit to get all this in my head and your guidance is much appreciated.

[Sly Boots]

Instructions would be nice.

I'm not ashamed to admit I'm struggling a bit to get all this in my head and your guidance is much appreciated.

There's not much to do now really other than as much or as little tweaking as you want to do - apart from my few thoughts on the drafted teams above I think everyone looks in pretty good shape and I think at this stage there's going to be a lot of competition and I couldn't call who will win it in the end.

I've posted the instructions above for swapping in players from the unwanted pool (all those many players who didn't make it into anyone's team). Now that you've accepted my trade for De Gea my advice would be to ditch Pickford (imo having one goalie is absolutely fine especially if he's a good'un) by clicking the minus next to his name, then hopping over to the Players tab to find one you want to add instead. Although actually as I gave you two players for your one, simply by dropping Pickford you'll be back at the max squad size for the tournament so wouldn't need to do anything further.

For trades between ourselves, essentially you click on the title of that person's team, either in the standings or on the home page, click the plus sign next to the player you'd like to suggest a trade for. You'll then be whisked to your own team and you can select one or more player to offer to the person you're offering a trade to. In our case I felt Zaha was worth a couple of players, so I gave you Jorginho as well as De Gea for Zaha. That person then receives a notification saying someone has initiated a trade with them and can either accept, reject or offer a counter proposal.

It's actually pretty simple in practice, although reaching a compromise often far more difficult

Feel free to ask me questions relating to any specific aspect of the site that's not clear and I'll do my best to explain.

[Medicine Man]

Will I have to drop 2 players before the transfer will go through?

[Sly Boots]

Will I have to drop 2 players before the transfer will go through?

No, I don't think so.

This site seems to do it so that once a trade has been proposed and accepted other people are given a short window in which they can veto it, which point our trade seems to be at currently.

I'm not sure how long that window is, but once it's completed it should go through ok, though once it has as I suggested it would be best to then drop Pickford.

I see your good lady has been busy this afternoon

[Sly Boots]

Whoops - it seems as the league admin I have to manually execute the trade deals

Sorry, I'm new to this as well.

I've just put it through, MM.

[Medicine Man]

Ah I thought it was something I'd done. I was just away to tell you that I sorted it.

Thanks Sly.

I see your good lady has been busy this afternoon

She has? She's meant to be at work.

[Sly Boots]

Ah I thought it was something I'd done. I was just away to tell you that I sorted it.

Thanks Sly.

I see your good lady has been busy this afternoon

She has? She's meant to be at work.

Busted!

[Medicine Man]

Just had an email off her to say she's been really busy today and will be finishing a bit later tonight. Oh such webs of lies and deceit she weaves.

[Sly Boots]

[Sly Boots]

A quick word on substitutes. The players you pick in your first XI will be the ones scoring points each week, however if any of those don't play then they will be automatically substituted for a player on your bench who plays in the same position.

IE if one of your selected strikers doesn't play in that week's game, one of your bench strikers will score the points instead and those added towards your total for the week. If you have two strikers on the bench, then whoever scores the most points that week is the one substituted in.

A useful tactic if you're feeling advanced is to leave in players you know won't play the next match (ie if injured) if you have multiple substitute options for them, as it means that you'll automatically get the highest points available, whereas if you guess at it and swap them in before the match is played you might have chosen the wrong one.

[Sly Boots]

So Animal has started well...