Jonty Joins As Community Manager

Nice one Jonty. And for coming 2nd in the Contributors league (top presenter in the scoutcast)

Great news. Jonty is a softy. Unlike that Stilicho chap.

Pulis set to leave Stoke. I'm currently recruiting a team of security guards to patrol the border of Liverpool, stopping him even thinking of getting anywhere near the Everton job. That would really test my Everton support...

Well done Jonty!

If there are any spots in your moderating team, look no further 😉

Firstly, congratulations Jonty!

Secondly, a little tip for your 2013/14 predictions - Stoke to go down 😉

Well done Jonty

Now about that Chelsea GW1 DGW 😛

Going back to an earlier discussion on the last thread about how much luck is involved in the FPL game, It's virtually impossible to quantify, but here's a thought experiment:

Suppose you start with 2.6m people tossing a coin. Everyone who flips a head proceeds to the next round where the process is repeated, while everyone who flips tails is eliminated. If all the coins are unbiased (i.e. the outcome is 100% down to chance), then on average it will take 22 rounds of coin tossing before you end up with 1 person left who has flipped 22 heads in a row.

Now suppose that instead of being 50/50, the coins are biased so that 70% of the time they come up heads (analogous to introducing an element of skill into the game). After 22 rounds the probability suggests you now have on average 1,017 people who have flipped 22 heads in a row. After 38 rounds when the game ends, you still have 3 people on average who have managed to flip a heads 38 times in a row. To finish in the top 10,000 of this game you would need to flip 18 heads in a row.

Of course, the chances of flipping a heads so many times in a row are pretty low for any given individual, but if your sample size of attempts is large enough, the probabilities show that it becomes inevitable that a few people will do exactly that, despite luck being the main driver of the outcome.

I'm not suggesting this is a perfect analogy for the FPL game - to start with, the difference between a good gameweek and a bad one is not as binary as a heads/tails coin toss, it's possible to get 38 green arrows in a season and still have a rubbish rank, and it doesn't explain repeat success in multiple seasons. Nonetheless I think it does begin to illustrate the extent to which random luck plays a major part in getting a high rank when there are so many players involved.

Consider also that you could have picked the following team for £100m at the start of the season and scored nearly 2,300 points without making a single transfer, bench or captain switch. That's good enough for a top 1500 rank. Add in a bit of bench switching to account for injuries and suspensions and you could have easily topped the overall ranks with this team without making a single transfer all season:

Begovic
Baines | Mertesacker | O'Brien
Bale | Cazorla | Michu | Fellaini
RVP (c) | Suarez | Benteke

Bench: Jaaskelainen, Bassong, Davies, Nolan

Bottom line is I think luck plays a bigger part in being successful than us players would like to think.

Yesterday, Podolski and Mertesacker took part in a charity match in Cologne called 'Poldi and friends vs Per and friends'. Michael Schumacher, Lewandowski, Fabianski and others were involved. It ended 10-10!

Congratulations Jonty! Fully deserved.

Strooman:

"The future I don't know, Many clubs from the English Premier League have been in touch with my agent. PSV have been very good, my friends and family all live here, But moving to England could be the next chapter for me."

Sign him up Ferg...err Moyes.

Hey All, I dumped the season end key data into a spreadsheet. So easy to sort and slice and dice for new season! Note: Can't guarantee accuracy of the older season data I have in there, as was done quite some time ago with some pretty dodgy lookups from memory.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqsCkAPbwxCCdEh3d2dmN0xEYm05enh1Q0FiMnY1amc&usp=sharing

Feel free to remove my own index scoring if you wish 😆

Enjoy!

Pulis confirmed gone

Well it turns out I've won my minileague, on the basis that I made fewer transfers, after I finished level on points with another person!

I hope Moyes reads this:

"It could not be our way to do things like Real and Bayern and not think about taxes - and let the next generation pick up our problems," Klopp told The Guardian.

"We need to work seriously and sensibly. We have this amount of money so we can pay that amount. But we lose players. Last year it was Shinji Kagawa.

"Shinji Kagawa is one of the best players in the world and now he plays 20 minutes at Manchester United - on the left wing! My heart breaks. Really, I have tears in my eyes.

"Central midfield is Shinji's best role. He's an offensive midfielder with one of the best noses for goal I ever saw.

"But for most Japanese people it means more to play for Man Utd than Dortmund. We cried for 20 minutes, in each others' arms, when he left."

Football__Tweet ‏@Football__Tweet 38s
BREAKING: Tony Pulis has left Stoke City. #SCFC
Mer

well done jonty

cheers for the e-mail offer of chief moderator on your team but ill have to say no..i have 3 kids under 6 years so i dont need another few hundred to keep in check

thanks again

BREAKING NEWS

Clive Woodwood in line to replace Tony Pulis

Live audition for the Stoke job is currently ongoing

http://pub.tv2.no/multimedia/na/archive/00244/_grilldress_768_244313x.jpg

This Van Wolfwhistle bandwagon already picking up steam on here!

A few pre-season goals and he could easily become the next Danny Graham or Petric.

Fulham sign D. Boateng
http://distilleryimage6.ak.instagram.com/410c95d8c1e411e2b05122000a1f92cb_7.jpg

Congratulations, Jonty.

Well at least Stoke have the players to adapt to a different, perhaps more attractive, brand of basketball now.

BBC: BREAKING NEWS

Tony Pulis leaves Stoke City.

Source, twitter.

Excellent news for Jonty. Hope you do a great job on here.

Apologies if this has already been posted, excellent interview with Klopp before the final. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/may/21/jurgen-klopp-borussia-dortmund-champions-league

"He hits his head with his palm. "Shinji Kagawa is one of the best players in the world and he now plays 20 minutes at Manchester United – on the left wing! My heart breaks. Really, I have tears in my eyes. Central midfield is Shinji's best role. He's an offensive midfielder with one of the best noses for goal I ever saw. But for most Japanese people it means more to play for Man United than Dortmund. We cried for 20 minutes, in each others' arms, when he left."

😆 I don't understand why we didnt play him central midfield this season, its probably the one position we really need sorting and he looks like a great solution? Exciting to hear Kagawa called one of the best in the world though. I bet he missed Dortmund like mad this season.

The3rdTurd's post has got me determined to pick the perfect starting team now. Time to scout out the next Michu or Benteke...

Well done Jonty. A good choice in the mould of David Moyes rather than a Mourinho.

Manager Tony Pulis spent 333 games in charge at Stoke, winning 122 for a 37% win-rate. The 55-year-old drew 98 and lost 113.

Didn't say how many tries, conversions or drop kicks.

Shame he's gone, might have to start considering Stoke players next season. Adam anyone?

How much did pre season form influence the picking of your team at the start?

And did the majority of players carry that form into the new season?

The British and Irish Lions are expected to shortly confirm the appointment of Tony Pullis as an assistant coach.

On the subject of luck and probability of coin tossing etc. Derren Brown (not a big fan normally) did a show where he told someone the winner of all the races in a horseracing meeting. He gave him the ticket with a horse in each race all piled into a single accumulator that paid several thousands. And race by race they kept coming in, and the guy was getting more and more excited until the last one and he got paid out.

How did he do it? He placed bets for all the possible permutations and only showed the single person who had won throughout every race.