The World Cup may still be some days away but thereโs been no shortage of competitive spirit amongst the Fantasy Football Scout community this week. We have seen our community writers battling out for our inaugural Community Submission of the month prize, while FFS UEFA World Cup team captains have been battling to recruit the cream of the crop to join their squads.
The Community Submissions
This week we launched a new informal twist to our Community Submissions section: a ยฃ20 Amazon voucher awarded to the writer of the article deemed the best of the month.
We asked you to vote for your favourite out of the 41 articles that were published during May and we can now reveal that the winner is Bedknobs and Boomsticks, for his excellent number crunching work around the Fantasy Premier Leagueโs Bonus Points System. Congrats B&B!
Dino was another writer worthy of a mention this week , as he concluded his three-part assessment of next seasonโs prime targets. Dino points to plenty of potential points amongst the underachieving bottom of the table sides of 2013/14.
Crystal Palace were among those teams tipped for relegation ahead of last season but new manager Tony Pulis and resolute back four ensured their safety. Good on Zidaneโs Floor expects a price hike for their defenders but his analysis shows they could be worth every penny.
As with May, the early part of Juneโs submissions were dominated by the World Cup with our scribes once again continuing their whirlwind tour of those teams taking part. Walsh has been analysing USAโs chances, meanwhile Heydudes13 has looked at Ghana, while Christina has been scouting Bosnia.
Our statisticians have also been back in force this week, with Blue Lion looking at the goals conceded and scored in the World Cup qualifiers and Demi picking out his 32 best World Cup stats, one for each of the teams taking part.
Asquishypotato has been focusing on World Cup teams on a group-by-group basis and last week reached Group Cโs teams and key players. Meanwhile, OneKeano has begun a series of group previews, starting with Group A.
The Hottest Topics
The Fantasy Freak has been livening up the comment boards this week as quiz master. We thought weโd take a leaf out of his book and try out a quiz of our own based on the statistics available in our memberโs area. Nobody managed to answer all ten of our questions correctly, although Demi came the closest with nine. Only Wilfried Bonyโs record for most headed goals during the 2013/14 campaign eluding him.
Recovered ball statistics have also been vexing the community this week, with these defensive attributes looking key to success in the official McDonalds-backed FIFA game. Saniul wonders though whether such a prevalence on defensive play will ruin the game.
For those less concerned by the recovered balls issue, Tony Warner Uber Alles gave us this excellent analysis of how some of the World Cupโs key players perform in that area. Billy Gilmore also served up some tasty four year old statistics from the first Official FIFA world cup game.
For those looking for a game more akin to the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) format, The Fox Sports World Cup Fantasy game seems an interesting prospect. Christina urged those taking part to ensure they keep a close eye on fixtures in this discussion on how best to play the game. Right on cue Roscolaโs World Cup fixture ticker was unveiled this week to help managers navigate their way around the tournamentโs timetable. Innsie is also playing this game and prompted this discussion of the best defensive strategies.
Points for scoring penalties is a mainstay of all World Cup Fantasy games which makes Anonymousโs guide to the tournamentโs expected penalty takers a key read ahead of Thursdayโs deadlines.
Preparation for next season is still at the back of Giggs Bosonโs mind as he asked which defensive formations we are likely to opt for in the next FPL campaign.
We also asked what the communityโs ambitions were for the forthcoming Premier League season, with many echoing MJ6987โs minimum requirement of a top 10,000 finish and aspirational goal of a top 100 place. RonH‘s ambitions, meanwhile, focused on successfully persuading those behind the FPL game to reform their price change formula, after Van Persie’s value drop failed to mirror his plummeting ownership last season.
Finally, no Fantasy season preparation would be complete without some ingenious team names flying about. Some of the best team names to emerge from our discussion included Billy Gilmoreโs ShawFrankReDempsey and JKโs The Kolorov Money.
The Community Tournaments
TM245 has come up with an intriguing World Cup game based loosely around OC Prodigyโs Scout Picks Challenge. Full details can be found here.
The FFS UEFA World Cup competition now has captains in place and Twitter accounts set up. This week, captains have been looking to recruit their squads with Spain boss Thomass producing the biggest transfer coup by enticing 2012/13 FPL winner SpiderM4att into his squad.
Elsewhere, Gargamel, the creator of the superb Gargatron team analysis tool, has set up a mini-league in the intriguing Goal Scorer Challenge game, whereby managers pick one potential scorer in each match. The catch though is that they can only pick them once in the whole tournament.
