A large number of Fantasy Football Scout readers are not planning to make any changes to their Fantasy Premier League (FPL) plans in light of the recent European Super League (ESL) announcement.
On Sunday evening, six Premier League teams (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur) issued their intention to join a breakaway tournament, a move which has been met with criticism from football’s existing governing bodies.
However, our readers are not looking to amend their own plans for managing their FPL teams between now and Gameweek 38, according to the early results from a recent poll.
83.7% of 1,756 people who had responded by mid-morning on Tuesday endorsed the response that, “I won’t change any of my FPL plans this season because of the ESL”.
That said, such a result correlated largely in line with the reaction to the wider question of whether readers are in favour of the ESL itself, with 83.0% of respondents confirming that they were not.
Readers were offered several options to indicate that the announcement of the proposed ESL might influence their thinking in how they play FPL over the closing weeks of the season, but none of them has received more than 5% approval:
Among the alternatives available the single most popular is a principled stand to avoid players from the six clubs involved, a sentiment backed by around 1 in 20 respondents with a smaller number preferring to withhold the captaincy from those assets as a personal protest.
Just over 100 managers suggest they are more concerned about the motivation of players caught up in the turmoil and will not be captaining, or in many cases even signing and/or owning them. Almost 4.0% of managers said they were most concerned about how the unfolding story might affect the chips they have held back to use as late-season rank boosters.
With regard to the concept of the ESL itself, managers appear already to have formed clear opinions:
Reflecting the strength of views already clearly expressed by many on social media and outside Premier League grounds, opinion is weighted firmly and decisively against the formation of the new league with only 11.94% of respondents wanting to know more before adopting a firm point of view. It should not be ignored however, that just over 1 in 20 taking the survey declared that they are in favour of the breakaway.
From the sparse information given about the ESL so far, we know the clubs involved intend to continue playing in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A as they do now, substituting in their own format for UEFA’s current competitions across approximately 20 midweek fixtures.
However, it is already clear that existing governing bodies intend to obstruct these ambitions as much as their laws, competition rules and contracts allow. The next few days could be very important for understanding what the future holds for football.
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3 years, 5 hours agoDon't pop the champagne bottles just yet lads.
Chelsea requesting to withdraw and Chelsea withdrawing are not the same thing.
By the sounds of it the dirty dozen have already signed the dotted line and have entered a contractual agreement,if this is the case Chelsea could be sued for breach of contract and carried to the cleaners if they jump ship.