Very Small Rocks season thread

[Clan]

Thats exactly why i don't like it.A lucky guess and you're away running.

Like i said though it's purly a personal thingy.
I had no complaints 2 weeks ago when Scholes baged me 30 points all by himself.

[1800-WorldCup]

Who's your best performing player from your initial draft?

Maybe Hal already has these stats in his amazing spreadsheet.... hint, hint.

I picked up Zola on a free transfer..... before the season officially started (in the team for Pre-Season 6).

He's earned solid points on a regular basis but it took until week 11 for his price to rise.

He's now gained a million and earned 104 points (third highest).

Geremi has earned 107 points (highest) and gained 1.4 million. Hal also picked him up for Pre-Season 6.

Henry has earned 105 points and increased 0.5 million.... in Kopite Juniors since the draft!

We've also had Hibbert from Day 1..... only earned 63 points but gained 0.9 value

Giggs, Murphy and Hyypia have also been ever presents in the 1800-Uk.com squad.

[kopiteinkc]

Without looking at the stats I picked up David Thompson as soon as he moved to Blackburn.

In fact the day the premierleague site added him to the fantasy roster I picked him up. He was cheap and is a consistent point scorer. However, he has a tendency to get yellows (hmm) and is out this weekend. But he's been a bargain buy for me.

Shearer and Henry have been my stalwarts. Griffin of Newcastle is my "Hibbert".

[Ingromius]

I think this might be part of LSG's problem: it's hard to say for sure if we have a player of that stripe at all. Without doing a minute analysis, though, I would point to Kewell as our MVP so far. Always a risky player to rely on, playing as he does for such a disappointing squad and with Italy rumours incessant, but so far he's pulled his weight, which is saying a lot on my squad!

Special mentions also go to Li Tie who is a consistent point winner for only 4.0, and Berkovic who has been ON FIRE for the past few weeks and is the cheapest player in my midfield. Both of these players came on board a few weeks into the season but have more than earned their keep.

[Clan]

Toss up between Friedel and Scholes for best.
Honourable mention to Greening.

Friedel and Greening were original drafts.

[kopiteinkc]

Greening was one I really had as my next pick and have regretted some weaker picks before him.

But hindsight is 20/20, doing the draft again now would be really interesting. But I do remember you guys giving me a hard time for going for three straight forwards. That has stood me in good stead despite Bellamy's injuries.

[Clan]

Indeed we did Mark.
Forwards have been the bane of my team all season.I hope Beattie will sort that out for me.

When i originally drafted Gudjohnsen i though i had put the problem of goal scoring to bed...........wronnnnnnnnnngggggggg.

[kopiteinkc]

Well you let your head rule your heart on Gudjohnsen.

I would never do that :D

By the way I still have never drafted a Man U player!!

[Clan]

Remember when we first started this and there was 10 players hoped for?
Can you imagine how hard it would be to replace a dud if we had succeeded in doing so?

[kopiteinkc]

I having a hard enough time replacing a dud right now.

To be honest, the likes of Hibbert, Sun, Griffin and the performances of teams like Boro and Man City (Anelka, Berkovic, Sun) have saved some teams from oblivion. By having teams over achieve like that has kept lower value players scoring high points.

[1800-WorldCup]

Some people replace duds with cheaper duds :D

[DoctorJones24]

Since we're officially one game away from the midpoint of the season, I guess Hal chose a good time to reassess and predict. Naturally, I think his new predictions are way off! :D

How bout a quick look back at our two predictions early in the season? To refresh your memories, I based mine on a small sample of pts/game stats from last year mixed with just a subjective look at each teams 15 players, teams, and the types of seasons I thought they'd have. Hal did his just as he has done these latest ones: using raw totals of pts scored thus far. This time, he's adjusted 5 players (though I can't understand how he chose "those" five over the many others).

Anyway, neither of us did very good jobs predicting how things might go, though I seem to have done slightly better, at least among the top teams. For instance, for the top three current teams, here's how we each ranked them:

TEAM...................DRJ.........HAL
1 Kopite.................4.............7..
2 1-800..................2.............1..
3 Chelsea..............5.............6..

Not much differnece, really. How Hal ever ranked a team with both Henry and Shearer up top in 7th place is beyond me though. ;)

I'll wait until after this Saturday's games to redo my predictions based on current squads and form, though I promise they'll end up no better than my previous ones.

[DoctorJones24]

Originally posted by 1800-WorldCup
Who's your best performing player from your initial draft?


I just realized how bad my draft turned out when considering this question. Beckham, Harte, Robert, Hasslebaink, Seaman were my top five picks, I believe, and all have been pretty much crap. The first four have all actually been dropped to free agency at one time or another and NOT immediately pick up, either. Perhaps there should have been signs that Leeds would collapse and Harte would fall from fantasy defending star status, but damned if I didn't see that coming. He and Ziege were gods among defenders last year!

Anyway, I have no team MVP at this point, other than the trainer, I guess.

[DoctorJones24]

Originally posted by DoctorJones24
Since we're officially one game away from the midpoint of the season.....I'll wait until after this Saturday's games to redo my predictions based on current squads and form, though I promise they'll end up no better than my previous ones.

I just realized we're not even close to the halfway point. That will be after Gameweek 16; we're currently on Gameweek 12. The preseason weeks screwed with my math.

Anyway, GOOD NEWS!!
Plenty of time for JCW to turn things around, maybe move up to 4th or 5th spot! We're telling our supporters to count on an upper half finish.

[DoctorJones24]

Originally posted by DoctorJones24
I just realized how bad my draft turned out when considering this question. Beckham, Harte, Robert, Hasslebaink, Seaman were my top five picks, I believe, and all have been pretty much crap.

By the way, I also just remembered that Hal conducted my draft for me after the first three rounds! Hm...the Cracked Wheat supporters smell a scapegoat.

Who was it that Hal drafted for me as a striker, but then traded away to get me that huge contributor, Lua Lua? Good thing I got him!

[Ingromius]

With what I'm guessing will be a very active winter transfer period quickly approaching, should we come up with a system to handle signing new arrivals to the Premiership? There are rumors about some big names coming over and it doesn't seem right to just ignore their arrival: one team could too easily land several stars of the Shevchenko level - and even if we all know they've been signed, it would be a matter of chance to catch them immediately when they're finally added to the team rosters.

Not sure we could make this work, and of course it's entirely possible that there will be no big signings -- but if there are, how about some kind of mini-draft (3 rounds or so)? Teams who don't have the finances or flexibility, or who choose to stick with what they have, could just "pass" all of their rounds ahead of time. Just musing at this point but I think we should come up with some agreed-upon way to deal with these guys before the moment is upon us.

[1800-WorldCup]

Are any of you still active in Deadly Strike?

Are you doing the Italian Serie A thing?

I've created a Serie A League of 6 teams to hopefully get the draft done quicker if anyone is interested.

Log into your Deadly Strike account and click on League.

http://www.deadlystrike.com/Cup/userleagueMenu.asp

Once you join the Forca Italia league, your team name will come up as Unnamed Team, so be sure to change that.

Michel

[1800-WorldCup]

For those of you who missed it....
http://bengal.missouri.edu/~adamsm/lfc/smallrocks.htm

Group 1:
1 1800-UK.Com
2 FOMUS
3 Kopite Juniors
4 Cape Tribulation

Group 2:
1 London St. Germain
2 Jones Cracked Wheat
3 Chelsea in PA
4 Trollpop Aviation

___________________________________

Fixtures:

Week 1: (Dec 21)
1 vs 2 and 3 vs 4

1800-UK.Com vs FOMUS
Kopite Juniors vs Cape Tribulation

London St. Germain vs Jones Cracked Wheat
Chelsea in PA vs Trollpop Aviation
___________________________________

Week 2: (Dec 26)
1 vs 3 and 2 vs 4

1800-UK.Com vs Kopite Juniors
FOMUS vs Cape Tribulation

London St. Germain vs Chelsea in PA
Jones Cracked Wheat vs Trollpop Aviation
___________________________________

Week 3: (Dec 28)
1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3

1800-UK.Com vs Cape Tribulation
FOMUS vs Kopite Juniors

London St. Germain vs Trollpop Aviation
Jones Cracked Wheat vs Chelsea in PA
___________________________________

Week 4: (Jan 01)
2 vs 1 and 4 vs 3

FOMUS vs 1800-UK.Com
Cape Tribulation vs Kopite Juniors

Jones Cracked Wheat vs London St. Germain
Trollpop Aviation vs Chelsea in PA
___________________________________

Week 5: (Jan 11)
3 vs 1 and 4 vs 2

Kopite Juniors vs 1800-UK.Com
Cape Tribulation vs FOMUS

Chelsea in PA vs London St. Germain
Trollpop Aviation vs Jones Cracked Wheat
___________________________________

Week 6: (Jan 18)
4 vs 1 and 3 vs 2

Cape Tribulation vs 1800-UK.Com
Kopite Juniors vs FOMUS

Trollpop Aviation vs London St. Germain
Chelsea in PA vs Jones Cracked Wheat
___________________________________

Top two from each group go into the semi finals. Tiebreakers for group standings are:

1. Goal difference

2. Head to head results

3. Toss a coin

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There's also a link to the Big Soccer Small Rocks Champions League from the Team Sheets page:
http://www.travelnotes.org/Football/Fantasy/

[1800-WorldCup]

While watching the previous videos of our oponents for Matchday 1, we notice that that the old Unsuitable crew are actually performing slightly better than the new look FOMUS.....

Unsuitable (http://fantasy.premierleague.com/M/entryhist.mc?id=625140):
Points total: 532

Team Value: 101.5
In The Bank: 0.0

FOMUS (http://fantasy.premierleague.com/M/entryhist.mc?id=735981):
Points total: 512

Team Value: 101.2
In The Bank: 0.7

Unsuitable stuck with Robinson as captain, while FOMUS prefers Michael Owen.

FOMUS starts Job over Dyer although Dyer often comes in as first sub.

FOMUS also has Fernandes in the squad, instead of Berkovic.

FOMUS doesn't believe in transfers to strenghten his squad or tinker with the line-up, so we don't expect much of a surprise from this outfit and are happy to be playing them first.... to get a nice three points on the table before we entertain Kopite Juniors -- in a fired-up, heated atmosphere.

99.99% Probable starting line-up for FOMUS:

Robinson;
Mills, Brevett, Queudrue;
Dunn, Hamann, Cole, Fernandes;
Owen (C), Anelka, Job.

Subs:
Hoult;
Dyer, Grainger, Wei Feng.

Possible injuries:
Dunn, Hamann, Job and Grainger.

Wei Feng has only ever played 90 minutes, although Dyer looks like a starter.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The 1800-UK.com squad have returned from their Caribbean hideout raring to go and are all trying to impress in training to get a starting berth.

Glenn Hoddle feels quietly confident that he's finally got the right team bonding.... although he is a little worried that one of his players insists on wearing his wife's knickers and might leave him on the bench.

Good luck to all... catch us if you can!

[1800-WorldCup]

The FOMUS line-up is confirmed.