I promised that once the Fourth of July passed, I'll transition from offseason form to preseason form and will now accept sign-ups for this coming season's Fantasy Premier League game. Lo and behold, you can now register for the new season, which starts on August 15, which as of this writing is 41 days. Registration for the league ends August 5 and so, I'll give you a month to do the deed. Read on for league details...
First thing is first, I'm writing this, keeping in mind all audiences are reading this. After all, this is an American fantasy sports site with a robust niche of football (erm, soccer) mad enthusiasts (like myself). Therefore, it's my responsibility - if you want to call it that - to give a fair introduction to the league to soccer laypeople and soccer fans in general who haven't caught the fantasy footie bug. The idea is, to increase interest and awareness of Fantasy Soccer, and hopefully to get some of those people to play the game, preferably, our league of course. *wink wink* Without further ado, onto the business...
Introduction
Think of Fantasy Premier League as a fantasy game that takes some attributes of fantasy baseball with those of fantasy NFL (sigh, football). The Premier League calendar stretches nine months, from August to May - 38 games long to be exact - and the fantasy season overlaps that of the league's schedule. Each weekend feels a lot like an NFL Sunday, but with so many games played, there's a little less incidence of luck involved. Playing in the English league has an NL/AL-only feel about it, if you think about it, because players transferred in and out of the league will make a big impact on your roster. Stud players can be a bit scarce, which makes playing the matchups that much more important in your team's selection for the weekend.
League Site
After some personal thoughts of wanting to expand our Fantasy Premier League into a European League (England, Spain, Italy, France, Germany), I've decided that sticking to the Official Fantasy Premier League game is the way to go. I also pondered over the possibility of switching the game to Yahoo or ESPN but I find that the Premier League's game has the best functionality for private leagues. Yahoo's game provides a better scoring spread than the Premier League's game should your players not score a goal or bag an assist, but it's a wee bit complex. For a private league, I like straightforward scoring and besides, the Premier League game has H2H play.
This brings me to my other point... format.
League Format
The Fantasy Premier League game is a salary cap game. The game is not designed for drafting and trading, which makes this format immutable. Basically, you're given a 100 million pound budget from which to build your team, which includes your starting XI, a backup goalkeeper, a backup defender, a backup midfielder, and a backup forward. Therein lies your strategy. You can buy and sell players each week, but if you make more than one, you'll be penalized four points with each extra transfer. However, taking the point penalty means nothing if you make the right moves.
Interestingly enough, I find that many managers have a different view as to how they believe they can squeeze the most points out of the game, which is why I see that a number of teams are nowhere close to being identical, save for a few common pieces. Some managers like stockpiling defenders, some think all the rage is in their attacking players, and some are willing to spend extra on a top-flight goalkeeper. Whatever floats your boat, as long as your team is at the top of the table.
Scoring
The winner is determined by points standings, just like how the league does it for real. Outscoring your league as much as possible is the aim, in order to move up the standings or to open up a lead at the top. Consistency as well as a knack for knowing your matchups and finding a bargain when you know one, is the name of the game.
I know what you're thinking, that's a rather dull way to crown a champion. In all honesty, it is. I've seen players have a huge cushion at week 25 and ten weeks later, only a third or half of that lead is eaten. However, the Premier League's site allows for extra competition to keep you interested. First off is H2H play. When you register for the RDB league, you'll be automatically signed up for a H2H public league, where points are solely determined by whether you win, lose, or draw your weekly matchup, and the standings are based off of those points. Now, if the Premier League allows for private H2H scoring, we'll switch to this format.
Second, at around the halfway mark of the league's competition (Week 19), the Premier League starts what's called the Fantasy Cup, a survive-and-advance elimination tournament, where you're paired against a random league player, and should you win, you progress to the next round, and so on and so forth. The idea is to crown the best overall competitor across all of the Fantasy Premier League's micro-leagues. If you're so lucky, you can win all three leagues: the RDB league, your H2H public, and the Fantasy Cup. Again, the extra competitions make up a great reason as to why sticking to the Fantasy Premier League game makes a great deal of sense, to keep everyone interested in their teams year-round.
Rules
For rules on scoring, team selection, formations, etc., please consult with the Fantasy Premier League's rule book. It'll explain everything in gorier detail than I'm capable of doing.
Fantasy Advice
Ah, here's the tricky bit... Columns on fantasy football (the game actually played with feet) are hard to come by and the advice isn't all that constructive. This is a space that's sort of the wild frontier of fantasy sports and it's a bit difficult when soccer is more of a qualitative sport than say, baseball, with its elaborate sabermetric methods and its stat-based nature. The Fantasy Premier League's Pundit is the default advice column the league's game provides and it's just OK at best, but it's a brave effort.
Well, now time for me to pimp my blog, Diving in the Box, my weekly fantasy advice column which tries to give you some good detail as to who you should start/bench or buy/sell for the weekend. Honestly, it's by no means the best, but I do give you some player tips that should come in handy for your team selection. Granted, my column is geared for Yahoo leagues (hey, I can't give you my complete cheat sheet if you're in my league), it's still useful. Coming back this season is my Fantasy Premiership Rankings and although I was a bit too busy to release new ones in the last stretch run of last season, I'll try my best to make it a periodic column. I'd say it's best to make it a bi-weekly column since my rankings week to week, never drastically changed. I hope to have a Preseason Team-by-Team Guide once the transfer season dust clears and that should give you some insight for the upcoming season.
Additional Leagues
If you're interested in another league format to try out, I'm all ears, but it won't change the format we have currently. In the past, we've done a draft-and-trade roto league on the London Times' site, but I'm forever scarred by drafting Carlos Tevez while missing Mikel Arteta, Yakubu, and Obafemi Martins to serious injuries. At least, I got my Matty Taylor sleeper kick spot-on. There's also the Super European League on OleOle for mixed league action, should you miss Cristiano Ronaldo's fantasy ability now that he's a Madridista.
That's all the league details I have for now. Hope all this explains the league to you newbies and I hope to see some new faces join our merry old bunch in the league. C'mon, you can't resist a challenge against yours truly either. Looking forward to having you aboard! Until then, keep your clothes on...
-Ray
