Invitation to the GrumpyOldFootballers fantasy league!

I would like to invite anyone reading my blog to play in the first GrumpyOldFootballers Fantasy Premier League. It’s absolutely free, no-one makes any money out of it, I just thought it would be fun to have our own little fantasy league competition. Every week, I’ll update the world via this blog on how the teams are doing.

To play you need to register at http://fantasy.premierleague.com and choose your team as per the instructions. You’ll choose a squad of players, and you can swap them about each week (like Rafael Benitez), or keep the same eleven all season (like Martin O’Neill).

Once you have logged in and entered your team, click on the ‘Leagues’
link you can find on the the right of the page. Enter the code 210826-49183 to join the GrumpyOldFootballers Fantasy Football league.

In this game, there are no secrets. Anyone can see anyone else’s team just by clicking on it, so in the spirit of starting as we mean to go on, here’s my team, GrumpyOldFootballers FC:

Grumpy Old Footballers FC

Now, I’ll be honest, I thought I would just be able to make up a league and register my team later, but it turns out that I can’t, so I had to make up my team now. Transfers are free, so I can change my teams as I go along. One of the things I like about this game is that player values change as the performance does. So, in past seasons like Fabrice Fernandes and Louis Saha have cost next to nothing and every team ends up having them. With this game, those managers who have faith to pick a player when they cost £4m get rewarded when their value goes up to £7m – they can sell them and make a profit. It’s worth keeping an eye on injured players – their value goes down while they’re not playing, and you can snaffle up a bargain by putting them in earlier than anyone else.

So, let’s discuss some of the more esoteric picks in GrumpyOldFootballers first XI:

Philip Deggen, Liverpool

Using my extensive knowledge of world football based on playing Football Manager since Kevin Tom’s first discovered the ZX Spectrum, I knew that Degen was an attacking international full-back (on either side) who had spent the few previous seasons playing in Germany. Playing for Liverpool, you would expect a few clean sheets, and hopefully most folk won’t know who he is.

Maynor Figueroa, Wigan

Figueroa is an attacking full-back whose long throws have been banned in seventeen countries by the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. He only joined Wigan towards the end of last season, about the time Steve “Bernard Cribbins” Bruce tightened up the Wigan defence. He won’t be a first choice either for Wigan or me, but he’s cheap, and again I hope very few other teams will have him.

Glen Little, Portsmouth

Didn’t play many games for Reading last season, so didn’t score many points. Has only one pace – glacially slow. Can’t beat a man for pace, or at tiddley-winks. But he’s one of the most underrated crossers of a ball in the premier league. Now if only he had the human equivalent of a telegraph pole to cross the ball to…

Okay, that’s enough for now.  Hope to see you in the GrumpyOldFootballers Fantasy League very soon!

Good luck!