First of all many thanks to those who have already completed the Pre-season survey. The feedback so far has been invaluable and already given us a view on how the site is used and particularly your thinking when it comes to a possible membership area.

If you’ve yet to complete our survey, please help us out by clicking here and diving in.

On the subject of the potential members area – I just wanted to clarify a few things that might put a few minds at ease…

We can only stress again that the members area will be an additional section of the site – or rather that only the elements that make up the members area will be restricted. So links to the Season Ticker and Player/Team statistics will simply direct non-members to a preview area and the Next Five Ticker will only be visible in the sidebar for logged in members.

The site as you see it now will remain free – it’s absolutely paramount to myself and the team that this is the case.

If we do produce “Members Only” articles will be using the same system as free articles. They will appear right here in the site as you see it now but obviously part of the content will be restricted – the part that is based on the Fixture analysis afforded us by the DataCo license and the content based on the Opta statistics which again, is granted to us via a license.

This means that the comments system will continue to work in the same way. There won’t be any restriction on comments for members or non-members so there will be no physical split in the community. Members will see the full articles while non-members will see opening paragraphs and a link to join if they want to unlock the entire article. Again, the comments for these articles won’t be restricted in anyway – members and non-members will continue discussions together.

Given that we will have access to some incredible Opta stats (I’d urge you to take a look here), our writers will have some superb data at their fingertips to provide some in-depth analysis articles to help members digest all the stats available. The members only articles will be extra pieces provided on top of the free content that is available regularly now. These won’t replace the Technical Area articles and such-like – they will be an extra offering for those who have paid to access the Season Ticker and Opta Stats as a way of us delivering more value for the membership fee.

For us, the members area is a way of taking the site further. We want to grow the site and offer a new level of content but the tools to help us do that are obviously not available for free. We’d be taking a punt on whether you guys want and will pay membership for this content but we certainly won’t be splitting the community to do so. Fantasy Football Scout has grown to what it is today in no small part due to the community here – there is no way myself or the team would look to jeopardise that by breaking up of dividing what we have.

Keep the feedback coming then – if you have a view please complete the survey first and provide your comments in there.

Thanks again.