The Community Round Up

The last seven days saw an abundance of submissions from our community’s budding writers, showcasing some excellent analysis and team scouting reports. Judging by your response to our new community section, we’ll have plenty more to come from you in the coming weeks and leading into the new season.

The World Cup has been a key source of inspiration in both your submissions and the Hot Topics on the comments board. Even so, we kept one eye on domestic duties and we’ll look back on discussions on the lessons learned over the previous Fantasy campaign, and the early planning for next season. We also revisit some of the community’s favourite posts over the season, in particular one man’s failed mission to move Rome to France. No, really.

The Community Submissions

The season may be over but our community scribes are already planning for their next push.

Stevie52’s look ahead to key strategies for the coming Fantasy Football season proved to be a must read for aspiring and veteran managers alike. Bowstring the Trout has also been looking ahead with his excellent focus on the players that have been forgotten during the 2013/14 campaign but could be set for an excellent season next time around. Be sure to to check those out. Dino has also been busy preparing for next season and has drafted an epic, three-part look at next season’s Prime Targets. See his first instalment here.

The community submissions area has also proved to be a fertile ground for our internationally focused writers, who have begun a series of reports on the teams taking part in the World Cup.

Edgar Davids reminded us that Switzerland are eighth in the FIFA world rankings on merit, while Somalion has been busy looking out for the key players from Japan’s squad. Elsewhere, FortunesAlwaysHiding was scouting South Korea, Applebonkers was taking the Eurostar over to Belgium and svgcr enlightened us on Costa Rica.

In addition, Baines on Toast offered a handy reminder on some of the talent that are missing out on the summer tournament, potentially leaving them fresh for the season kick-off. Early food for thought.

If you are already getting withdrawal symptoms and are craving some immediate Fantasy action then Thomass was on hand with news of an exciting Fantasy cricket game – developed by the guys behind the Fantasy Premier League (FPL), no less.

There have also been some expert and even poetic analyses of the previous season’s key figures, with The Sarjeant focusing on just how Tony Pulis managed to turn around Crystal Palace’s fortunes. Meanwhile, Applebonkers returned to pen this beautiful love poem to Arsenal’s goalscoring and bonus point-grabbing defender, Laurent Koscielny. Emotional stuff.

Click here to read all the latest work submitted from the community and to put forward your own articles.

The Hottest Topics

World Cup fever is almost upon us, with FIFA’s official game whetting our appetite by opening for registration, but frustrating us by blocking us from picking our squads. Nevertheless, the community had a good look through the rules and key strategies for this game – an invaluable early guide for those gearing up to take part.

There were, however, some concerns raised over the rules so far and whether there may be some amendments on the way. Roscola wonders whether the recovered ball rules may change – his analysis highlighted that, currently, Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini is set to bring in at least 15 points a game. I think we should brace ourselves for some tweaks.

As with our community submissions, the hot topics were awash with crystal ball gazing and early planning for next season. Tinkerman invested some time in taking a look at Derby and QPR’s current squads to decipher which of this year’s Championship play-off finalists looks the best from a Fantasy football perspective. Meanwhile, Somalion was pondering whether Theo Walcott, if fit, really deserves to be one of the first names on in our squads.

BONZ braced us for some big managerial changes, assessing how the inevitable managerial merry-go-round, at West Brom, Manchester United, Tottenham and potentially a number of other clubs, will influence our decision making.

The close-season always invites some healthy debate on Fantasy game rule changes and Zep was the latest to pipe up. He would particularly like to see the allocation of points for penalties altered. He’s suggested that points are awarded for earning the penalty, even if the kick is missed.

As our discussion on the key lessons we learned during 2013/14 highlighted, there will be plenty of managers ripping up their rule books ahead of the new season; altering strategies that clearly failed during the past campaign. Aaron Ramessi was pledging not to lose patience with consistent big-hitters, while Innsie vowed to watch more matches in order to improve his first-hand knowledge of player performance.

Super Zlatan was more interested in those who had got their strategies spot on – his call to arms for those with consistent top FPL ranks within the top 10,000 proved a great opportunity to get advice from some of the most successful Fantasy managers in the community, including Hall of Famer Evs.

Like Evs, we are likely to spend a great deal of our time pondering transfers and strategy in renewed tilts for the FPL crown. However, Ludo offered some eye-opening analysis that revealed that winning the FPL game may not be as tough as we think. In his search for the ultimate dead team he found that, by sticking with the same squad and captain from Gameweek 1 onwards, it was possible to still claim top spot. So, who’s up for the “ghostship” strategy next season? Me neither.

Finally, The Missing Link was among those who did exceptionally well with his 2013/14 campaign, with a rank of 644. But, despite his prowess at Fantasy Football, he won our attention for a very different reason last season. When Innsie asked the community for their favourite Fantasy Football Scout moment, the clear winner was the Missing Link’s detailed analysis of Erik Lamela that was sadly based on the mistaken idea that Rome was in France. At the last count this had registered 122 up votes.

The Community Tournaments

Whitman2013 spent this week creating a new Gameweek 39 competition, with community members invited to select a team based on those playing in this weekend’s FA Cup final and La Liga title decider. Beavis emerged victorious with his total score of  58, just one point more than second placed Wilshire Knowledge.