The Community Round Up

With the football season still more than three weeks away (24 days and counting), community members have been filling time tweaking their teams, pouring over last season’s statistics and still pondering how on earth they are going to fit both Robin Van Persie and Gareth Bale into their sides. We take a look back at some of last week’s Hot Topics and also find out the latest from our community’s leagues.

Hottest Topics

With the Bale and Van Persie discussions rumbling on, Matt decided to take a different approach to the debate. His pictoral look at the options for those considering one, or even both, really caught our eye. Meanwhile Lateriser12 has been wondering whether we can really afford to be without both, given the way they hog their respective team’s points.

Those following Triggerlips’ financial advice are unlikely to be able to afford both Van Persie or Bale. Referring to the first few weeks he suggests financial prudence, keeping money in the bank and protecting investments. This advice could be key to navigating through the choppy waters of the first few Gameweeks in the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) game and avoiding having to wildcard early on.

The Rate My Teams (RMT) are coming in thick and fast as the season launch approaches and Super Hans was on hand with some wise words, advising us to sometimes go with our gut instinct so that we don’t all end up with the same team – his post was one of the most popular this week, garnering 22 votes. Still on the subject of RMTs, PhD student Commonsns, who is studying online communities’ collective intelligence, has used his research to create a super RMT based on all our efforts so far. Among our own daily hot topics, we’ve also been looking at the etiquette of posting and responding to a RMT, urging those who are given advice to remember to thank their good Samaritans.

A lot of the recent talk had surrounded Everton midfielder Kevin Mirallas, who could potentially afford us an out of position if fielded in a front three. Toffees team mate Leighton Baines has been practically out of position for years but the arrival of Roberto Martinez and a possible change of tactics has seen the left-back somewhat overlooked. Luckily, Forca Inter was on hand to remind us that Baines costs exactly the same in the FPL game, is one of the Premier League’s most attacking players and benefits from potentially far more clean sheet points.

Another to take a more visual look at the Fantasy game was In Tommy We Trust, whose excellent analysis of the bonus point changes in the FPL game have led him to create a quite simply stunning interactive and colourful chart. We’ve been having great fun plotting the anticipated changing bonus point fortunes of players ahead of the new season.

Weston Wasters is another budding academic among us – he has kindly lifted his head from his text books to offer a slice of knowledge, this time regarding calculating player value. His ingenious musings went a long way to helping us find some potential underpriced gems and weed out those overpriced players along the way. On a similar theme Cromulent1 has been casting his critical eye over points per million as a way of calculating player value.

Finally, Absinthe, a regular during the deadzone hours of midnight to the early morning (UK time), has been taking a detailed look at defensive rotation and fixture difficulty. His mammoth piece of research was so big it had to be divided into several parts. Part one focused on two-way options, part two looked at the three way options, part three looked at the options for those looking for four defenders to rotate with two playing each week, and the final part looked at the trickiest of all the defensive options, the Uber strategy, which involves playing with an all cheap, all rotating defence.

Community Leagues

FFS UEFA’s Transfer Window Simulation (TWS) reached the second round of bidding for defenders last week. Top player in the round Pique was acquired by BonZ‘s Cardiff, whilst Berbagod‘s Sunderland staged a remarkable double swoop of Chiellini and Hummels. Even though Fulham, guided by PeppieandFelix still lead the game, Saniul‘s Everton are not far behind and Norwich led by The Shadow are turning into real contenders. It promises to be a very close contest at the top in the coming weeks. Submission of bids on midfielders and striker targets must be made by Saturday 2359 BST. Anyone interested can still sign up here.