Jul
03
Michael Owen looks set to complete a move to Old Trafford, in what is undoubtedly the shock transfer move of the summer so far.
Given Owen’s injury record over the past few seasons, plus the alleged wages of £120,000+ involved in his contract at Newcastle, the move represents a gamble on Ferguson’s part.
While Owen’s goal record still stands up to solid scrutiny, his ability to chain together lengthy periods in a starting eleven has faltered badly in recent seasons. That will surely see Owen being utilised sparingly by the United boss – a fact that will cast serious doubt over the benefits of considering Owen for our fantasy lineups. Nevertheless, we’ll need consider Owen’s arrival carefully, particularly in regard to the outuput of both Rooney and Berbatov…
Jul
02
Assessing the likely impact of the promoted sides can be a key ingredient to a successful fantasy season. It won’t take long for bargains amongst the Wolves, Burnley and Birmingham squads to emerge but if you can get in early and reap the rewards two to three weeks ahead of rivals, there are profits to be gained. Birmingham’s new signing, Roger Johnson, already appears to be a candidate worthy of consideration.
The 6ft 3in centre back arrives at St Andrews with the reputation as a commanding Championship defender who demonstrated he could cope with the step up during Cardiff’s cup run last term. Significantly, in his 44 games for the Welsh side last season, he also notched 5 goals and 4 assists. That’s a clear indication that he has a goal threat to mimic the returns of Stoke’s Shawcross and Hull’s Turner this season. What’s more, there’s also the promise that Birmingham will emerge as a decent option for cheap defenders…
Jun
30
After a period of technical tinkering, it’s time I caught up with the developments of the summer so far – starting with a look at City’s second signing of the close season – Roque Santa Cruz.
Santa Cruz arrives at City after a torrid final season with Blackburn. The Paraguayan made 17 starts for Rovers last term, notching just 4 goals and 2 assists. It was a season regularly punctured by injury however, with spells on the sidelines in October, December and from March onwards. The player’s own thinly veiled threats to leave the club in various interviews, also did little to enamour him to Ince and Allardyce or provide a stable platform for the striker to perform.
Instead fantasy managers and City fans will be clinging to the form demonstrated in the previous season – a first in English football, in which Santa Cruz provided 19 goals and 7 assists in 36 starts for Blackburn. Significantly, this was under the reign of Mark Hughes, who will surely appreciate what it takes to get the best from his new striker now he finally has him ensconced at Eastlands…
Jun
29
Keen eyes will have spotted the latest addition to the site – we now have a Twitter service up and running, with a feed in the middle column. I’ll be using Twitter to bring you short sharp bursts of news from now on and this will eventually replace the ‘From the Net’ section. I say “I” but actually, in the main, this will be maintained by one of the new site contributors. More on that soon.
Potentially, this could play a vital part in the fantasy manager’s armoury. We’ll be working to “tweet” the very latest team news on Fridays and Saturday mornings and Vodaphone users can even subscribe to the text service to get the updates on their mobiles. Click here for details on that.
I’ll be adding a Follow button to the site later, right now though you can set yourself up as a follower by visiting the Twitter page and clicking the Follow button (go figure).
Jun
27
Okay then. I was just a little optimistic with my last post. In truth, I’ve had a lot of technical difficulties over the last four or five days and that’s seriously dented the time I’ve had to create content and get on with other stuff behind the scenes. Apologies for the persistent downtime.
The positive news is that it looks as though stability has been restored and that my hosts have got to to the bottom of the issue. I had to disable gravatars to achieve this but, after some tinkering, I’ve now switched them back on and hope to keep the site stable. We’ll monitor this for the rest of the day.
Today is no ordinary day by the way – it’s Granville’s birthday. My podcast partner in crime and main motivation behind my fantasy season for the last three years, is celebrating with a rather large party that I’ll be attending tonight (he’s done the music playlist so I’m a little worried). I know you guys will want to pass on your best wishes to the Mancunian moaner. Cheers Granville.
I promise not to wake with a hangover tomorrow and, if all is well with stability on here, I can really begin concentrating on content for the rest of the summer.
Jun
23
Right then, after a bizarre day of downtime and multiple test posts it looks as though we now safely installed on our new server.
Today’s confusion and the couple of posts lost in the server move will hopefully be worth it. The new host will enable me to expand the site further and cope with any growth in the new season. I’d have much rather have spent the last few weeks making updates but all the nasty infrastructure work should now pay off from this point on.
I’ve now opened up registration once again so if you’ve yet to sign up do so in the next couple of weeks. Very soon I’ll be restricting comment posting to subscribers only.
Updates will be increasing from this point on – not least because I hope to revealing the first contributors to the site later at the end of the week. Oh, and now I’ve got the hosting sorted out, Granville and I can finally get back doing the podcasts. See, it’s not all good news.
Jun
17
We have our fixtures so now the planning can really begin. I’ve updated the “next five” table in your sidebar to offer a brief glimpse of how the teams square up over the opening games.
I still need to work on the full “Season Ticker” and I need to firm up the colour allocations a little to ensure I’m being consistent. This will come later this evening.
For now though, soak up the opening five and speculate on who will come out of the blocks fastest. My first impressions – somebody obviously has it in for Burnley, while all three of Chelsea, United and Liverpool appear to have strong platforms for a decent start. Not so sure on Arsenal.
Jun
16
Liverpool have today agreed a rather staggering fee of £17 million for Portsmouth’s Glen Johnson. The newly established England right-back is now expected to agree terms at Anfield having publicly announced his intent to join Liverpool, despite interest from former club Chelsea and cash-rich City.
From a fantasy perspective, Johnson’s arrival a Liverpool will be met with a mixed reception. In some ways we’re gaining very little here. The right-back spot has been one of the few positions in the Liverpool back four that has been settled with Arbeloa the regular occupant. The Spaniard is reportedly the subject of interest from Real Madrid, and if that deal materialises, hopefully Johnson will get a clear run at regular starts without the threat of rotation…
Jun
15
Registration is now open as the next step towards site changes for the new season. Right now this means very little – however, in just over a week or so, I’ll be restricting comment posting to registered members. You can sign up via the link in the sidebar or by clicking here.
This will cut out the spam posts for the new season and allow for better moderation as traffic increases. Hopefully you’ll all see the benefits of that. By introducing registration I’m also able to assign roles to various members of the community – thus I’m able to take on contributors and editors. As some of you may know, I’ve been taking applications for writers over the past few weeks.
Thanks for all those who have applied – you’ll be hearing from me via email in the next 48 hours.
Jun
12
His goal record was incredible. His fantasy returns almost infeasible to the point of rendering some games a farce. There’s little doubt that Ronaldo’s departure from United’s team sheet and our fantasy football player list leaves a huge chasm in both. So who can Alex Ferguson turn to now to dish out such merciless destruction and, more to the point, how can us fantasy managers look to profit?
Jun
11
He’s off then. United have this morning announced that a staggering world record fee of £80 milllion has been agreed with Real Madrid for the services of Ronaldo.
The player will now travel to Spain to discuss terms for a transfer that is likely to kick-off a chain of big money moves.
For fantasy managers it’s an end of an era. A turning point – particulary in the Fantasy Premier League game – a game which Ronaldo threatened to break single handedly with his weekly double figure points hauls. It looks as though we’re all have to start thinking about our choice of captain again.
Much more on this later.
Jun
05
Gareth Barry’s £12 million move to City has already given us something to think about. With Liverpool and Spurs in the hat, this was perhaps a surprise decision by the Villa man but let’s not dwell on the motives behind the transfer (cough…huge wages) and instead focus on what it could mean from a fantasy perspective for the coming season.
City undoubtedly have themselves a fine player who will have a significant impact on their performances and results. Having adopted a central midfield role for Villa, he seems likely step in alongside De Jong at Eastlands, allowing Hughes to consider deploying Kompany in central defence. That’s the first factor to look for should you be considering a City defender. Secondly, we have to question just how Barry’s fantasy output will be affected by his new surroundings….
Jun
03
As our keen podcast listeners will have heard, I’m planning to take on a couple of writers for next season to help me out here on the site. This is being prompted by a couple of things – firstly my life situation has changed somewhat, which has meant I’ve had to reassess how I allocate my time here. Secondly, I’m anticipating another significant increase in traffic in late July/early August prior to next season which will put increased demand on more site content. That means I’m going to need some help, in more ways than one, to keep things ticking over and the standards high…
Right now I’m looking for volunteers – keen would-be writers who want to contribute to a site which will hopefully continue to grow in the next couple of years. Long term, it’s difficult to say where this will lead for those who get involved, but if things do progress then there’s no reason why arrangements with contributors couldn’t get more formal. Who knows? We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it…
Jun
03
Okay, I’m back then. After some time away, sunning myself in Barcelona (arriving the same day as the Champions League trophy), I’ve made a return to the site to get things moving again.
There’s going to be some changes coming in the next few weeks – many of those will be behind the scenes (which may cause some brief downtime). Others will become blindingly obvious as we go but hopefully all of them will improve the site for one and all, for what will be our third full season.
I’ll be revealing more in a bit – right now I’ve got some techie stuff to plan and some more posts to tap out. Thanks again for your continued support as always. It’s good to be back in action.
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