Readers of Fantasy Football Scout – Good Afternoon. None of you will recognise me nor have heard of me before. That comes as no surprise seeing as this is the first time I have posted or indeed written on the site. Well allow me to introduce myself; I am an angry, disjointed and unhappy individual. I am, in short, The Ungentleman.
The time is right for me to come forth and represent those who want their sanities kept in check through my weekly article – Ungentlemanly Conduct. By blackmailing Mark I have a platform to “calmly” talk through what happens to be irritating me in the world of Fantasy Football and football in general. If you agree with me, great! If you don’t, well, I couldn’t care less.
People Voted for the Nazi’s
“People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazi’s, you can’t trust people”
Is a quote from the well known, and loved, British comedy – Peep Show. I’ve included it here because it sums up how I feel about the majority of the population – that people are, quite frankly, stupid.
This can be the only explanation for the ridiculously high amount of people transferring in players who aren’t playing in Gameweek 2. Fabregas and Zamora are the ideal examples of this and it sums up how naive the majority of people playing the FPL game are. The irritating thing for the rest of us is that, for players like Fabregas, this means that come Gameweek 3, when he is actually playing, he has risen in price.
It would appear the majority of the idiots who’ve transferred them in have done so because they haven’t even bothered to look at the fixtures and are simply chasing last weeks points. What about the rest though? Come on there’s surely some of you reading this now – why did you do it eh? Was it because you thought he was going to go up in price? Do you not see that this panic buying pushes up his value? If you’ve bought one of these two players, or indeed any player whose not playing in Gameweek 2 and you’re reading this then I wish you only unhappiness in your future Fantasy Football playing days. The annoying thing is one of these people will probably beat me in my H2H league.
Worst Pundit Ever
Many people on the site have noticed the pundit for Gameweek 2 has been less than helpful. I’ve got two words for you– half arsed. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about because you don’t read the pundit (the blissfully unaware) it’s the frankly lame advice article on the FPL website. Why have I brought it up? Well their tips for the second Gameweek include two players who aren’t even playing this week in James Milner and Joseph Yobo.
Now in the interest of fairness they do add the caveat that they aren’t involved in Gameweek 2 but I put forward the question; Why bother mentioning them in the first place? It’s like telling me that, when fit, Arteta is a good fantasy league purchase. Great, thanks for that, he’s not fit though is he? I don’t deal in the long term here I want quick fixes. I’m not worried about what my fantasy league team in 2013 is going to look like am I? The thing that tops it off for me is the fact that they’ve got James Milner down at 8.0 million squid. Last time I checked he was 7.0 million. Call me pedantic but that’s the cherry on top of a frankly rubbish cake for me.
Waste of a pundit, waste of my time.
Bonus Cock-up
That’s right the data entry monkeys at FPL towers (or dodgy communicado between the dreaded “ex-pro’s” and the FPL) have contrived to provide yet another bonus point cock up. Now I’m not moaning here about who deserves what points etc – that’s entirely subjective and must be taken with a canyon-load of salt – but more the obvious allocation errors which appear to have plagued the site for the past couple of seasons.
If you don’t know what I’m referring to, I’m talking about the Gameweek 1 bonus allocation for the Stoke vs Burnley game. The three points awarded to Shawcross, a goal scorer, made sense but it was the two points awarded to Richard Cresswell who was on the pitch for around 4 minutes which baffled many an FPL regular. Cresswell did effectively nothing in the game and it was quite obviously a glaringly horrible mistake.
Errors before last season were seemingly inconceivable but for those affected by Traore-gate (which was thankfully corrected) and Kirkland-gate (which wasn’t) last season will know this is just another in a long line of utterly frustrating pieces of lazy administration. Thankfully they corrected it by giving the 2 bonus to Sorensen (debatable in itself). Here’s hoping that this was just rustiness at the start of the new season.
If you put an infinite amount of FPL workers or “ex-professionals” at an infinite amount of computers they’d still get the bonus wrong.
Anti-bandwagon
This fairly regular slot will be about the player who I think is a bandwagon destined for failure. This week the inaugural winner of the Anti-bandwagon is Jason Koumas. One good week (a goal and two bonus) and over 70,000 people transfer him in, leading to a .1 price increase already. Koumas has been knocking around the Premier League for about 4 years now and there’s a reason why he’s priced at 5.0 million. He’s flaky at best and if Wigan do go through with strengthening their midfield, as both Martinez and Whelan have suggested, Koumas could be warming the bench quicker than you can say “Jay Simpson”. Oh and if that’s not enough – take a look at Wigan’s fixtures – 4 of last season’s top 5 in the next 5 games to contend with. Have.Fun.With.That