Fantasy Premier League

Don't Drink And...

Wed Oct 25 04:11PM by Neal

For those of you who have been reading the blog for a long time - you are no doubt familiar with Jeremy's rules for picking a team. 

For those of you new to the blog, here's a quick recap...

- Pick players who are likely to start and play the full match (you do remember this one, right Jer?)
- Pick players who are playing "up" a position (e.g., listed as defenders but playing in midfield) 
- Pick guys who take kicks
- Pick wingers because they get crosses and win corners

This weekend, I heard a story that merits adding another rule to the mix.  The story comes from our friend Dan who has been a member of our private league since, well, before I was a member of our private league.

Dan lives in Washington, DC (this is important later in the story) and apparently went out for more than a few adult beverages on Friday night.  Upon arriving home at least a little bit wasted, he logged on to his computer to make some changes to his fantasy line-up (already a bad idea).  Changes made, he went off to bed.

On Saturday morning, Dan awoke to find that, in his beer-soaked transaction frenzy, he had failed to confirm his last change leaving him with only 10 players in his squad when line-ups were locked down.  Now, back to the thing I said was going to be important later.  For those of you in Europe, you have plenty of time to wake up, read the papers and make a few last minute changes before matches start around Noon.  Those players in the United States are not so lucky.  With the time difference matches start at 7:30 AM on Saturday morning on the East Coast of the US, 4:30 AM on the West Coast.  Dan's reward for wanting to make some last minute changes?  Zero points for the week...

So, remember kids, before you go out and drink yourself into a stupor - it's never a good idea to drink and make line-up changes.  You might end up thinking Petr Cech is a great buy against Sheffield United this coming weekend...you might end up with an incomplete line-up and no points...and even worse, you might end up with whomever Man Citeh's keeper-du-jour is (now that would take some serious drinking).  The consequences may not be as bad as drinking and calling your ex-girlfriend or boyfriend but I know I had a good laugh at Dan's expense when I heard.

I'm curious to hear if anyone else has any good line-up change stories - maybe we can make Dan feel a little better knowing he's not the only one out there.

(10 user comments)

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User comments

  • (1)

    This hasn't happened to me yet, but I live in fear of the "I was just checking his price" accidental lineup change. Since Yahoo! doesn't provide any kind of browseable player price list, the only way to see how much other players cost, of course, is to actually pretend you want to exchange one of your current players. I always try to pick a dummy player with low or no price differential, just in case my mouse slips or something. But what do you do when you have, say, Henry and Rooney for 4.0 profits? Click "Sell" and then be very, very careful! Some kind of a "Commit Changes" button would be helpful, I think. You could experiment with different lineups until you find one that works out. And if you never do, you just cancel out of the whole thing and you still have your original lineup.

    Posted by: mattozan on Wed Oct 25 05:28PM | Report abuse
  • (2)

    Last season I was waiting for the line-ups to be announed for a 12:30 kick off, as I had Kewell in my team but he was 60-40 to play...at approximately 11:57am Sky Sports News announed he was not in the squad, so I rushed to make the last minute change and swap him for Duff, thinking I had 3 minutes to do the quick swap. In my rush I clicked "leave slot empty" and before I could replace this empty space with Duff the system locked down (11:59am when i thought it was Midday)...only 10 players and therefore ZERO points. To make matters worse, it was the day Arsenal beat Boro 7-0 and I had Henry in my team (the day he got 40 points). Devastated does not begin to explain it...still I won my league last year so I can look back and laugh now ;)

    Posted by: nikargiropoulos on Wed Oct 25 06:21PM | Report abuse
  • (3)

    you got the story wrong. He did not change his team and go off to bed. he passed out piss drunk while changing his team only to wake up and discover that he had wanked himself and left it open. So much for the benefits of popping down to the pub for a pint.

    Posted by: jon_wolfsthal on Wed Oct 25 06:29PM | Report abuse
  • (4)

    I had this work for me on the positive side. Last week (or the week before?) I was about to buy Juan-Pablo Angel, the night before he missed a PK and scored an own goal. I had it there with the "Confirm Transaction" button staring me in the face and somehow I woke up the next day with the same screen and my team intact sans JPA. Talk about "whew"....

    Posted by: skallweit72 on Wed Oct 25 07:42PM | Report abuse
  • (5)

    I would alway swap a player for a player rather than selling a player and leaving the slot empty. that way if the worse comes to the worse and the transaction doesn't complete you still have a player in the place.

    Posted by: jasey_bo on Wed Oct 25 08:24PM | Report abuse
  • (6)

    Can someone explain why Yahoo can't go with 10 players and give us the points for the incomplete lineup rather than a big goose egg? I would be really hard to make up 70 or more points.

    Posted by: wolfwarrior2220 on Thu Oct 26 02:22AM | Report abuse
  • (7)

    wolfwarrior - i agree with you. since yahoo already put the ceiling on the budget, let it be the risk for the managers to take by fielding 5/6 players only. it's all about taking risk anyway, if you have 11 players - you are spreading it 1/11 (risk value at 0.09) compared to fielding 6 players (risk value at 0.17) - anyway, why dont let the managers do the thinking. give them some freedom, let them decide how many players they want to field for certain matches. if, yahoo really wanna follow the rules of football, then it's not 11 players that we need to select from - it should be 11 + 5 subs.

    Posted by: spy_leman2000 on Thu Oct 26 12:09PM | Report abuse
  • (8)

    the full roster "limitation" forces you to make hard choices because you have to spend/waste your money on at least 3 defenders, etc. It's a different challenge (be it better or worse) than buying Henry, Rooney, and Lampard and sending them out every week. Forces you to pay attention to more teams, more players, and more strategy.

    Posted by: jspitzberg on Thu Oct 26 04:44PM | Report abuse
  • (9)

    It could be worse, how about this sad little story of mine. 2 years running (2003 and 2004 I beleive) I did the same thing, incomplete lineup, missing week. (once from collapsing after a 96 hour coursework all day and nighter for college, and once for just being an idiot) What makes it worse is my overall finishes those two seasons were 66 and 51 respectively. I know most people will think i'm making that up, but it really is true. So let your friend know, could be worse...

    Posted by: i_phimister on Thu Oct 26 09:10PM | Report abuse
  • (10)

    Jon's right. Neal went easy on me in his description. I litterally passed out on the couch with my laptop on my chest and the "confirm transaction" button unpushed. It was a horrifying moment to wake up to see that screen staring me in the face. Dropped from 4th place to 11th in my group. And belive me, I have learned my lesson: don't tell your friends embarrassing stories about yourself.

    Posted by: dspeal on Fri Oct 27 08:39PM | Report abuse
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