#tempebug

[fmlfpl]

Down the Rabbit Hole with Scott

Team of Shadows

Episode 3 -  GW 31 Wrap-up, Now With Even More Self-Loathing!

Greetings, all!

How’s it going, y’all?  Ready for another installation of my experiment in public embarrassment? This is the reverse demonstration of that guy who says “Dude, I almost brought in Lukaku to cap him right up until the deadline and then I changed away before his haul.  And I almost brought in Mkhitaryan that week too!”  And then he tells you how many points he would have had but ignores all the other knock-on effects that might have happened in the following weeks.  Yeah, whatevs.  This parallel universe shows what happens down each fork in the road, even if one fork leads into a really bad neighborhood.

If you missed the previous two find Episode 1 with an explanation as to WTF is going on here, here, and from last GW - Episode 2 - is here.

The Moves

The Early WC team decided that they just had to have a piece of that delicious tasty morsel named Wilf Zaha.  He had dazzled against Chelsea and no longer seems to be a prancing show pony.  Two goals and an assist in his previous three matches was good enough to be a replacement for Barkley, who has no doubles coming up and who had an away match at United on deck.  They still had a marginal Gabbiadini injury, but had depth to let that ride.  The armband went to Alexis, the best of the home options at hand.  The Late WC team had two moves banked and used them both to bring in Alexis for the rest of the run.  They ditched the injured Mane and used an Azpilicueta to Sakho move to pay for it.  The Gabbi injury was going to have to get covered up by Baines.

The Teams

The Early Wildcard team is in the table below, as is the Shadow Team that is currently kicking my ass and that will play a Late Wildcard in GW36.  The prices are at the deadline going into GW31 and the points in parentheses were on the bench.  

The Verdict

Did the Self-Loathing Express continue?  Sure as hell did.  This week it was Alli who stuck the knife in with his 12-pointer.  He came into the Shadow Team back in GW29 when this thing started, and has produced 7, 6, and now 12 points since that point for a total of 25.  Holdover Coutinho also titted along again and now has 22 points in three weeks since his stay of execution.  Those two led the Shadow Team to a 47-36 margin over the Early WC Team.  The only ones of my brilliant WC purchases who can come close to those totals are Ward-Prowse, with 20, and Yoshida, with 19.  And given the fixtures, those guys had been sitting on the bench.  Some of the points have come in for injured Gabbiadini, but not nearly enough of them.  As for this week, I could moan and groan about the Yoshida 11-pointer sitting on my bench, but was I really going to start him against a newly-energized Palace side, especially when I had a couple of Spurs defenders facing Swansea, plus Alonso and Valencia’s attacking potential ahead of him?  Nah, sometimes you just end up with points on the bench.  Don’t whine about it.  Newcomer Wilf Zaha did squat for my real team, while newcomers Sakho and Alexis did equal squat for the Team of Shadows.  Except that Alexis’ presence probably kept me from giving the armband to somebody who would have scored better.  Well done Princess Alexis, well done indeed!

Before I started this experiment, my overall rank was 19,971 Early WC team:  36 points, overall points 1730, overall rank 24,249 Late WC team:  47 points, overall points 1751, overall rank 13,433 Real team gets a red arrow;  Shadows get a green.

Coming Up

Quick turnaround again with games this weekend right upon us.  The Shadow Team just has one FT in hand and 0.3 ITB.  They are mulling over the timing of a Siggy to Mane move.  Both have appealing fixtures in 32.  The Early WC team has two FT and 2.0 ITB and needs to take a long hard look at the people who came in on WC, and also see what is going to happen with this Gabbiadini nonsense.  Can’t leave your roster with a dead striker very long, even if he is allowing his higher scoring Soton mates to come in off the bench.

Good luck everybody!  Let’s hope this parade of public embarrassment takes a turn for the better.

Scott (@tempebug)

[fmlfpl]

Down the Rabbit Hole with Scott

FPL Cup Night Stalker, Round One Preview

Greetings all,

It's the most wonderful time of them all, if you're into chasing down into the rabbit holes of the intertubes.  It's FPL Cup time, and I know most "serious" FPL players probably regard this as a trivial little side game, but I think it's just a weekly delivery of a whole new box of puzzles.  Each week we get just a name and a team page.  Who is this dude?  Is it a dude?  Is it a famous dude?  Is it a grumpy middle school history teacher from Newcastle?  Is it the future Australian Men's National Team Coach?  Is it a stripper/model/waitress/actress from South Africa?  Is it a high school cricket player from somewhere in Ireland?  The internet is a wonderful thing and with a few clicks here and a few clicks there, voila!, your opponent is no longer a random name but is a flesh and blood, real life person with whom you are locked in mortal combat.

I've been doing this thing for a few years for my minileague and wanted to share the fun.  I think I probably find about 2/3 of the opponents with pretty high degree of certainty.  And when I can't find them, I sure don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.  Here's what I dug up this week on the Cup opponents for the FMLFPL crew.  Team pages are linked.

Walsh -- 882 points, 167,084th place

Gooner XI -- Sayantan Bhattacharya -- 807 points, 1,215,432nd place

This is Sayantan's sixth year playing FPL, vs. Walsh's fifth, but the Indian gent has yet to crack the top 150K.  He played a Free Hit Chip back in GW12, but it really doesn't look like he made very much of it as he only changed about five players.  Weird.  His is a much more common name than you might initially think (unless you're Indian and it probably seems like Sean Thompson, or something like that), and the search took a while.  He's in a bunch of leagues, but when I looked at the smallest of them, I found a bunch of guys who all had this guy as one of their friends, and I think this must be his page, pretending he's a Gooner and shit because Gooner Fans are generally kind of insane.  But really?  Thomas Vermaelen?  And then I saw the URL to the page and it has his actual name.  Yup, that's him.  So what does he do? Not really sure.  The other guys in his smallest league all seem to be engineer types at various places about India, but there doesn't look like a common thread to their training.  So I think they basically sit around the Indian version of GoonerSlack and just talk shit on Spurs all day long. Sound about right?

This one seems like it ought to be a walkover with Walsh's Sterling, Silva, Salah differentials and with the Chelsea defense.  Kun and Lukaku are Sayantan's only hope.  Smash him Walsh!

Alon -- 859 points, 354,675th place

TB -- Su Myat -- 835 points, 679,258th place

This is the second season for Su, who flies the Myanmar flag, and who claims a Chelsea allegiance.  Su finished 1.1 million last year and is doing better this year.  Now first off, if you do a FB search for Su Myat, about the first three pages of links that come up, or maybe even more, all look like they work at one of those strip mall foot massage places with the sliding windows and shady price menus and the exiting clients who are scanning the parking lot furtively to make sure nobody recognizes them.  And none of the people in these links happen to be wearing Chelsea kit in their pictures.  And some aren't wearing very much, period.  In fact like the whole list consists of people like that who really don't look like they would even know what FPL was.  This was the only guy I saw while scrolling. And he doesn't look particularly interested in FPL either. Ultimately I had to give up looking for this one for fear that the kids would walk through and see some dubious images while I was hunting for this needle in a haystack.  No happy ending here.

The injuries could hit Alon on this one with Morata out, but if Kane Kanes like Kane can Kane, then it's not going to be much fun time for Su.  I think Alon should see this one through.

Producer Nate  -- 891 points, 115,516th place

JC junior the kop FC -- Khuzaimi Ismail -- 814 points, 1,062,611st place

This is the second FPL season for Khuzaimi while it is Nate's sixth.  Nate topped out at 24K two years ago, while his Malaysian opponent finished 694K in his debut season.  Malaysian opponents are sooo hard to track down in general, but this is the guy here.  Three of the guys common to one of his minileagues are all FB friends and are flying this same banner in their pictures, whatever it is.  It says he is from London but currently lives in Shah Alam, Malaysia.  He used to work at Euphoria, which says it is some kind of Marketing and Social Media Agency, but looks maybe kinda like a nightclub place also.  Maybe Nate could get a gig there for the band?  Road trip to Malaysia!  Who's in?!?!?

Khuzaimi has Aguero teed up and ready to tit against Swansea, and KDB could add to the damage, but I think those could be countered by Kane and Silva if they get their large units swinging in the box as well.  Nate probably has an edge on the defender front, especially if Jones makes it back into the lineup.  Show this lad how the entertainment business is properly run, Nate!

Guest Jason -- 875 points, 213,357th place

Beast FC -- Lochie Rumble -- 603 points, 4,601,569th place

Who does this?  This is a first year account for Lochie and there hasn't been a single roster move all season.  No lineup change.  No transfers.  And yeah, I know that some people make teams to enter into some kind of set it/forget it contest where you have one lineup that stays set for the whole season.  But this is not the kind of lineup you would come up with if you were doing that.  Sam McQueen, Rob Holding, and Emre Can are in the starting lineup, along with Rajiv van La Parra.  Jack Butland is the vice captain pressed into action whenever autoCap Kun sits out or fractures his torso.  Allegedly.  This team isn't in any minileagues and that's not even really a name, I don't think, so I doubt we'll get a peek at the psycho who came up with this thing, but like a science experiment gone bad, it seems to have been properly abandoned.  But wait...  I never totally quit, and it turns out that Lochie Rumble is actually a Twitter account with two followers, but who has liked 3,660 things.  I hope they don't actually like their team.  And he's also some kind of gamer, I guess.  I'm going to suggest that he stick to things other than FPL.

Aguero, KDB and Mane for Lochie, but the rest of the team is shite and Jason should move on to the next round.

Derek -- 909 points, 53,435th place

The Blues -- (some Bulgarian name -- seems to translate as Milen Dilov) -- 577 points, 4,746,427th place

It's Milen's first FPL season and it might be his last, by the looks of it.  It's Derek's second year after finishing 47K in his 2016/17 debut.  Milen did nothing in the first few weeks, but then in GW5 made three transfers, and that has been it.  And that week, he decided to triple captain Morata at home against Arsenal.  Obviously a Chelsea fan with his team name and that move.  He got a 1x3=3 point haul after Morata played 88 minutes and only produced a yellow card as a return.  Whoops.  Milen isn't in any minileagues so doesn't have any cross linking that way.  I have no way of knowing which of the multiple Milen Dilovs is actually "running" this team, but I'm gonna go with this guy, because the pictures on his page are pretty awesome and he works at Monster Energy.

Derek should win this one pretty easily.  The midfield matchup is really one-sided.  And Kane.  And etc.  Go do it Derek!

Scott -- 919 points, 32,852nd place

TGH -- Toby Hollingsworth -- 752 points, 2,529,919th place

And finally my team! This is another first year FPL player who has gone Ghost.  He made his single roster transaction in GW5.  The lineup has stayed the same since, and he only made it into the Cup because his armband is on Kane.  Kane produced 24 of Toby's 44 points last week.  Really not fair that he gets in, and so many active players don't.  Booooo Toby!  Anyway, here is Toby on Facebook.  His picture from back in 2013 is rather embarrassing, and in 2012 he is partying in a room with some Justin Bieber posters on the wall.  At least one of the others in his one minileague lives in Newcastle and two of them seem to have been in college together at Leeds Beckett University.  Can't seem to lock down on where Toby lives now, or maybe he's just on the road following the Beebz. Anyway, he sure isn't tending to his team, so hopefully I can just put him out of his misery, but you never know what happens in H2H.

Toby will get eleven out on the pitch, but just barely and I think I have the edge in midfield differentials and should hopefully manage cleans from three, if not four of my defenders.

Crazy, yeah, but only marginally more crazy than the existence of this game at all, when you think about it...

Good luck everybody!  Go smash those random opponents!  They deserve it.

- Scott AKA @tempebug on twitter

[fmlfpl]

Down the Rabbit Hole with Scott

FPL Cup Night Stalker Round Two results & Round Three preview.

Happy Holidays insane asylum,

In case you aren't familiar with this particular flavor of insanity, check out last gameweek's edition here. 

In brief, I'm trying to dig up some flesh and bones and occasionally photographs to make our FPL Cup just a little bit more personal.  The triumphs mean more when you know who it was you actually beat.  And the losses are just a wee bit more painful, if you're brutally honest with yourself.

Round Two / GW18 FPL Cup Recap

Walsh@FMLFPL -- Walsh -- 983 points, 217,238th in world vs

GingerNinjaAFC -- Fletcher Horsfield -- 804 points, 3,410,084th in world

Walsh swapped Hennessey out for Patricio and Fletcher saved his transfer.

This one was painful, because while Walsh was flying to an 80 point total on the wings of a Palace-loyalty induced Kane cap for 15x2=30 and Suonnny Boy's joyous 21-point explosion, and while he even got an eight-pointer from his Ginger Prince Kevin off the bench, the real Ginger Ninja, Fletcher Horsfield, put up 86 for a GW rank of 152K.  Cap Salah 12x2=24, Brooks for 15????, vanDijk for 15, Alisson's nine, and a seven-pointer from Pereira did the damages and just like that, Walsh is out 80-86.  Stupid Cup anyway.

Alon@FMLFPL -- Alon -- 983 points, 219,125th in world vs

Kasongokabongo23 -- Mohamed Bondok -- 443 points (started in GW10), 5,668,341th in world

Alon saved his transfer, and Mohamed did the same, in a spirit of mano-a-mano YNWA kindredship.

The good feelings ended there, though, because Alon put this guy to the sword, 71-52 in a match that wasn't close.  Alon started in the hole when Mohamed capped Salah for 12x2=24 and had Alisson's nine-pointer in goal, and Alon went with what turned out to be #CaptainFail Sterling for a 2x2=4, but Alon had the VVDue goal on Friday so all was not lost.  Alon blanked on the whole slate on Saturday, but came back with a Harry Kane HurriKane (15) on Sunday and a SuonFestival (21) and Alon moves on to Round Three.

ProducerNate -- Producer Nate -- 1,037 points, 46,815th in world vs

Jays Squad -- Jakub Chajdas -- 801 points, 3,474,963rd in world

Nate saved his transfer while Jakub took a minus four on the week.  He dropped Kamara for Ings and Bellerin for Balbuena.  He didn't have any depth in his team, so needed to replace Bellerin just to field eleven.  Ings came through with a goal, but Bulbasaur put up a Bagel.

This one wasn't close.  Nate walked it home with a 65 to 39-4=35 victory.  His Suoooonn haul of 21 along with Salah's dozen and nine from Alisson were enough to coast.

Round Three / GW19 FPL Cup Preview

Alon@FMLFPL -- Alon -- 1,054 points, 152,938th in world vs

M.S.R. FC III -- Saiful Rhyzal -- 846 points (started in GW5), 3,663,422 in world

A first season team from a Malaysian manager who is a Chelsea fan and who reached the third round by beating a team called Sexpackers in the first round and some GhostShip last GW. 

Two of his leagues have the tag of MMFL on them, which, it turns out is the Malaysia Mega Fantasy League, which has a closed Facebook group of 896 members, putting our little Slack group to shame.  But if they have a podcast, I bet it's totally lame.  I found three people with this name on Facebook, one of whom is a super FPL nut, but his friends are private and the multiple screenshots from various leagues don't totally match up.  It's kinda gotta be him, though.  He lives in Johor Bahru the capital of the state of Johor on the southern tip of peninsular Malaysia.  But if only it was a slightly differently spelled Saiful "Rizal" and he was from Singapore instead of Malaysia, he could have been this prominent Child Motivational Speaker , whatever that is.  I may have to check this guy out, maybe HE can get my kids to remember to do their chores.

Shared Players -- Kane, Wilson, Sterling, Anderson, Laporte, Hamer

Alon -- Mitrovic, Son, Bilva, Stephens, Alonso, vanDijk, Schindler, Vinagre, Fabianski

Saiful -- Jimenez, Hazard, Pereyra, Billing, Robertson, Yedlin, Wan-Bissaka, Doherty, Alisson

Several of the attack are shared.  We don't know who Bilva becomes yet for Alon, but we also know that Saiful has made two moves for the week already for a minus-four.  Jimenez and Hazard could both be nice returns for Saiful, but Son could drop another 21 on Bournemouth and send Saiful packing.  C'mon Alon!!!

Producer Nate -- Producer Nate -- 1,102 points, 34,960th in world vs

Mehdisnvd -- Mehdi Sahranavard -- 951 points, 1,305,932nd in world

Mehdi is a first year FPL player (at least with this log-in) who is from Iran and doesn't play in any minileagues, so that doesn't bode well for me.  He has beaten a couple of active teams on his way to this matchup with Nate.  This is going to be a dead-end of a search for me and it's late so I'm not going to spend that time.  Of the various pages I looked at, I'm going to go with this one, because I like the profile pic the best.  It's the look I picture Walsh making when he's trying to respond to some of the questions for the Pod.  It's far better than this FBI artist's rendering of a profile pic.  This dude has some interesting pictures including an insane-looking brick-laying machine.  This one likes heavy machinery.  And this one likes lions.  Annoyingly, there's not a whiff of FPL on any of these pages, or even on the ones with similarly spelled names that I looked at.  So it's really probably not any of them.  Sorry.

Shared Players -- Wilson, Salah, Alonso

Nate -- Rondon, Mitrovic, Sterling, Son, Schurrle, Westwood, Robertson, Doherty, Delph, Wan-Bissaka, Alisson, Speroni

Mehdi -- Ings, Jimenez, Hazard, Mane, Fraser, Kante, Trippier, Boly, Duffy, Holebas, Ederson, Foster

Mehdi hasn't made a move yet for the week while it looks like Nate had two frees and is using them both.  The collection of bargain misfit toy strikers between the two of them could all either return or blank and there is really no predicting, but if forced, I like Mehdi's pair this week.  Slight edge to Nate in the midfield because of Son, and I think a clear advantage to Nate's defense.  Verdict?  Nate!

...and because our production crew is down to two survivors, I'm going to try to throw in a team or two from the top of the Slack Puzzles, Pie & Whiskey season-long league going forward just to keep this exercise alive.  These selections won't necessarily be the top ranked teams in the league, but will hopefully be ones who have interesting foes.  I only have myself and one other for this round, because of the short turnaround and in the interest of time and sanity.

Desertonians -- Scott Ostdiek -- 1,052 points, 161,451st in world vs

No Kane No Gain -- Sabian Cullum -- 975 points, 883,460th in world

Sabian is a fourth year player from England who wasn't hard to find at all.  He is this guy on Facebook, from Stowmarket, (pop. 19,000) "a small market town in Suffolk" per Wikipedia.  Stowmarket was notable in history for having had an explosion in a gunpowder factory in 1871 which reportedly rattled the windows 16 miles away in Diss, in case you wondered.   He's more active on Twitter, actually, and that's where all of his soccer chat takes place, and where he's "Just taking it all one step at a time."  Also on Instagram.  He seems to be a nice young gent, out of high school by a couple of years, into his family, his church, and enjoys whiskey, so I'm not going to trash him too much.  He's active in a band at his church and in the youth ministry there.  His dad shaved his longstanding beard for charity last February.

Shared players -- Kane, Sterling, Anderson

Scott -- Ings, Jimenez, Hazard, Richarlison, vanDijk, Alonso, Schindler, Digne, Bennett, Alisson, Hamer

Sabian -- Wilson, Rashford, Sane, Lamela, Traore, Robbo, Laporte, Kiko, Wan-Bissaka, Pereira, Kepa, Ryan

Sabian has a decent team, but Lamela and Traore leaves him dependent on Sane for midfield returns, against my Hazard and Richarlison.  Rashford could return for him vs Huddy, but my budget strikers of Ings and Jimenez have good fixtures.  We both have a Liverpool defender, but I think the rest of his defenders don't particularly have good fixtures this week, so hopefully I ease on through to the next round.

The Strongest -- Eddy Healey -- 1,154 points, 4,046th in world vs

CHANGE NAME -- Cammy Little -- 841 points (started GW3), 3,751,827th in world

There's one Cammy Little who dominates the search results and that's who I'm going with, even though I can't link up his minileague mates.  It might be because most of them could be kids from his youth rugby team or some other youth sports league.  Cammy was a professional rugby player in Scotland and played some international rugby before moving into coaching.  He is involved with Rugbytots, some youth rugby organization and he apparently had some naughty words in his FPL team name, because he's been told to Change Name by FPL Towers.  But they let Sexpacker slide as a team name (see above).  He's on Twitter here, also.  But he's kind of a Ghost on FPL with no transfers since GW6.

Shared players -- Kane, Ederson

Eddy -- Aubz, Jimenez, Salah, Sane, Anderson, Camarasa, Cairney, Kolasinac, Doherty, Digne, Diop, Wan-Bissaka, Button

Cammy -- Lukaku, Kamara, Hazard, Maddison, Milner, Neves, Doucoure, Alonso, Robertson, StCook, Holebas, Gomez, Patricio

Cammy has a few too many dead players and useless players to survive this week.  Go get 'em Eddy!

Good luck everybody!  That's a wrap for this GW!

- Scott AKA @tempebug on Twitter AKA desertbug on Slack

[fmlfpl]

Down the Rabbit Hole with Scott

FPL Cup Night Stalker, Round Four (GW20) Preview

And then there was one.  

The FPL Cup rolls onwards, but it rolls on without our core group of FMLFPL luminaries.  Alon, Nate and Jason had all gone down in prior weeks and this week, Walsh and I both joined them on the bench.  Derek carries the flag forward fearlessly into Round Four.

Round Three / GW19 Recap

-- Walsh put up an 85 point total, 25 over the average, and rode it to his highest position of the year, 23K, but his foe, some guy from the Kurdistan region of Iraq, capped Kane for a 34-point haul and edged Walsh 89-85.

-- Derek didn't have quite as high a total, ending on 73, but it was enough for him to eliminate the Indian opponent who I wasn't quite able to track down last week.  The final score was 73-61, and Derek is sitting just a wee bit outside of the top 20K.

-- My team stunk up the place again, bringing home a seventh red arrow in the last eight weeks, and dropping me to 48K OR.  I lost to some surveyor on a big tube station job in London.  Final score was 59-71, and frankly, the way my squad has been performing, I was lucky to still be in this thing.

There are a good number of other Slackers still in this thing, and if I have more time between the next matches, maybe I will round up a few more opponents for the next GW.  Both Eddie and Rincon are still alive so I'll be hunting down their foes for my minileague.  There is still some fair action in the Rabbit Hole, I think, but this week, it's just about Derek.  Cuz Derek >>>

Round Four / GW20 Preview (Stalk)

Derek -- 1,115 points, 20,864th place

Pog6aXI -- Lakshya Mishra -- 966 points, 1,403,936th place

Lakshya is in his sixth year in FPL, with a best ever performance last year at 148K OR.  He hasn't made a move yet this week after squeaking to a 76-74 win in his Cup match.  He's got an Indian allegiance on his team page and is a Manchester United fan.  And after a bunch of dead ends and blind alleys, here he is, linked up with a bunch of friends from one of his smaller minileagues.  He studied at the Ryan International School in Kharghar, which seems to be a day school that gets to experience the same kind of Facebook online reviews that we see in our own necks of the woods.  Can't really figure out where he might work now, but one of his friends seems to work in a pest control service, so maybe Lakshya works there with him.  Yup, lacking anything better, we're going with that.

Shared Players -- Salah, Sterling, Hazard, RLC, Jones

Derek -- Kane, Austin, DCL, DeBruyne, Christensen, Ogbonna, Mariappa, Holgate, DDG, Adrian

Lakshya -- Firmino, Rooney, Niasse, Silva, Otamendi, Azpilicueta, Masuaku, Mee, Foster, Elliot

I like Derek's chances with the differentials that he has.  Kane should go again and be eager to score to take that dumb arbitrary "calendar year goals scored" record, while Firmino is a bit less reliable a return.  KDB has been ticking over steadily while Silva still has the slight cloud of mystery about him.  Lakshya has a bit of an advantage in defenders, but I think Derek should be able to take this one over the finish line.

Here's hoping he stays alive long enough for another few trips down the old Rabbit Hole.

Good luck everybody! -- Scott AKA @tempebug on Twitter AKA desertbug on FMLFPL Slack

[fmlfpl]

Down the Rabbit Hole with Scott

FPL Cup Night Stalker, Round Three (GW19) Preview

Happy Happy Joy Joy!  It's FPL Cup Time, Round Three!  

And that means more psychopath level oppo research on the various FPL managers who our FMLFPL gang are up against in the FPL Cup this week.  There are all kinds of crazy things you find when you go down the rabbit hole and I'm happy to be your tour guide.

Round Two / GW18 Recap

How did we do last week?  Well, the five of us remaining went 3-2, so we win right?  No, not so much.  We might have to draft in a few more replacements to the squad

-- Walsh moved on with an 81-77 win over the Director of Communications for Derby County Football Club.  Our fearless leader bagged five cleans out of a possible six, plus got returns from Salah, Sterling and Captain Rom, but needed a cheeky little six-pointer from RLC coming in off the bench in order to nip the win.

-- Our other fearless leader, Alon, did not fare so well against auto body mechanic CAT-D F.C., crashing out of the Cup 40-53, in what he feels was his all-time worst GW rank ever.  Quite probably correct because it was his worst this year, at 4.4 million GWR, and I don't think there were even that many people playing the game last year.  Soz Alon, brutal week, no two ways about it.

-- Producer Nate went out in Round One, and Guest Jason joined him on the benches this week, after losing 43-52 to the mystery woman Brazilian assassin numerologist chick.  Straight killshot.  Both teams had #CaptainFails (Morata and Kane), but Nate's opponent got eight and six from her other two forwards (Lukaku and Calvert-Lewin) as opposed to the two and one that Nate got from Vardy and Kane.  That proved the difference.

-- Derek was matched up with a Canadian curler of some renown and accomplishment and he put the guy on ice, 63-58.  Derek got double-digit points from Kev and from Captain Haz, while his foe suffered a #CaptainKaneFail of the two point variety.

-- I was up against some Ghostship of a team, nominally led by a tree surgeon from Worcester, and I chopped him down decisively, 73-38.

So what's on tap for this week?

Round Three / GW19 Preview (Stalk)

Walsh -- 1,028 points, 37,638th place

Zev0o -- Saif Salah -- 933 points, 790,691st place

Saif is an FPL Rookie but is still active and has made a move for this week.  He spunked his Bench Boost chip in GW1 and got ZERO added points for it.  Good Job by Him!  Now some player profiles make me a bit nervous when I see them and I come straight out of the chutes pessimistic about my abilities to find them.  Iraqi players with fairly generic names who only play in fairly large public leagues are amongst those profiles.  Now I know it's hard to believe that I don't speak Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen or any of the other various neo-Aramaic languages spoken in Iraq, but it's true.  Those are on my to-do list for 2019 but until then, it makes it a bit hard to track down some of these guys and dolls.  But I got lucky with this one.  A Google of his name and his idiosyncratically formatted team name zev0o yielded this guy, for whom zev0o is the username in his URL.  He lives in Erbil, the capital city of the Kurdistan region of Iraq.  His FB page consists mainly of selfies and you wouldn't even suspect him to be a soccer fan, until you get to one of his old profile photos which is a giant wallpaper of Andrea Pirlo.  Saif has an injured Doucore in his squad and a front line before any moves, which consists of Kane, Firmino and Abraham, and a midfield of KDB, Salah and Sterling.  His main differentials against Walsh will consist of KDB and Firmino, but if Lukaku goes off or if Walsh's Chelsea Crew come through, this one could also get ugly.

Derek -- 1,042 points, 18,760th place

DK -- Deepak Kadam -- 820 points, 3,163,372nd place

This is Deepak's first FPL season and he still seems active, although he hasn't made a move yet this week.  This one is ridiculous also.  One minileague with just three other guys in it.  I can't link anybody to anybody and as far as I got is that the minileague name Chetana Boys may refer to a youth hostel in a residential area of Bangalore City.  My mantra in this has been to not let the truth get in the way of a good story, so I'm going to go with Deepak being this guy, an award winning filmmaker in India, and that when he was making a documentary about the young lost souls of that hostel, his heart was moved and he adopted three of them.  He has taken them into his palatial estate and they just geek out on FPL all year long and this is their minileague.  Or maybe they got compromising photos of him and blackmailed him into playing FPL with them as their brush with greatness.  Each are equally possible.  In any event, the team doesn't look as horrible as the rank would suggest.  And he started in GW3, so that affects things a bit as well.  He has Lukaku and Firmino up top, and a midfield featuring Salah, Coutinho and Hazard.  He has Otamendi and Monreal, and then it gets ugly in back, as Valencia is hurt and his other two defenders are Mbemba and Hunemeier.  DDG goes in goal.  Derek also has DDG, Salah and Hazard, and counters with differential spots of KDB, Kane, Austin and Christensen.  Good luck Derek!

Desertonians -- Scott Ostdiek -- 1,037 points, 24,189th place

Lone Ranger -- Frank Hennelly -- 826 points, 3,043,668th place

And here's my guy... Frank is an FPL newbie and is still active, although he hasn't made a transaction this week.  He was a surprisingly easy find, as a search for his name autofills with Frank Hennelly London and leads to this guy.  His one league is called C412 Bond Street, which is the name of some big underground metro tube station overhaul project in London that was awarded to the company in his LinkedIn page.  It also leads to him here on Facebook, where you can see a video of him sparring in a boxing ring.  He's married with a couple of kids, is a Quantity Surveyor, whatever that is, and he's apparently had spinal surgery.  He has a masters degree in Construction Economics and lived in Australia for a while as well, apparently. 

Since I had a few extra minutes and since our original numbers are dwindling, I'm calling in a couple of subs.  Eddie is active on the FMLFPL Patreon's Slack channel and is in my minileague, so I had already dug up his opponent, and same for another Slack member, Rincon:

Return of the Yeti -- Eddie Fredericks -- 1,068 points, 4,540th place

Gabriel27947 -- Gabriel Tan -- 968 points, 335,119th place

It's also the fifth year in FPL for Eddie's opponent, but he's clearly still active, at least as of last week.  His top ever finish was two years ago at 85K.  He played his Triple Captain in GW15 on Sterling, home to West Ham, to the tune of 2x3=6 points.  Whoops.  An England flag and two minileagues with the same small number of people with generic names did not bode well until I just Googled his team name and found him on Twitter.  And with some Instagram pictures of food and minions here.  And here, on another photosharing site.  I didn't parse through these well enough to find out exactly what he does, but he seems to be from Singapore, likes to travel, and likes soccer and beer, and he's comfortable with large cucumbers, which would probably make him a good fit for the Slack channel.  Too bad we will have to dispatch him from the Cup.

Cechmate -- Alex Stephens -- 897 points, 1,496,983rd place

FC 2-footed tackles -- Gustav Loth -- 901 points, 1,397,488th place

Gustav is a first-year player and hasn't made a transaction since back in GW13.  He has a Swedish flag flying on his team page and I was nervous that it might be hard to find a Swede named Gustav, but there he is, with two of the other three members of his league as friends.  He lives in Lomma, Sweden, on the southern tip of Sweden, and it's not clear what he does, but two of the friends appear to be researchers, one at a med school.  The three of them went to the same high school together in Lund, Sweden.  Gustav likes to surf and travel, by the looks of it, so maybe he's independently wealthy.  His default formation has him with one striker who is the now-suspended Alvaro Morata, so that slot will get filled by Ayoze Perez.  He also has injuries to Ward and Valencia and will likely be absent Daveed Silva, so he will be unlikely to field eleven.  His armband is on DeBruyne, so that can always be fruitful, and he has DDG in goal and a pair of Chelsea defenders in Azpilicueta and Alonso to deal with.

Yes, that's three members of my minileague in the Patreon Slack; can you say that about your league?  Invite them to the fun!  The more the merrier!

Well, that's our trip Down the Rabbit Hole this week.  Hope we all come out safely on the other side and I get a new box of puzzles to unlock for the next round.  Merry Christmas to me!

Good luck! - Scott AKA @tempebug on twitter AKA desertbug on Slack

[fmlfpl]

Down the Rabbit Hole with Scott

FPL Cup Night Stalker, Round Two (GW18) Preview

Happy Weekend!  It's FPL Cup Time, Round Two!  

And that means more internet research, cough-cough, stalking.  RESEARCH!  For those of you who tuned in last week (click here for Round One / GW17), I have gone waaay down the rabbit hole of the intertubes with this one and dug up some interesting tidbits on the various FPL managers who our motley crew faced off against last week.

Round One / GW17 Recap

How did we do?  Pretty well, considering that H2H matches can be a random nightmare.  Five of the six of us went through to round two of the FPL Cup.

-- Walsh put up a 65-55 win over some Gooner Maniac Thomas Vermaelen fanboy on the strength of his 16 from Dilva and 9 from Razzers.  He bagged another 11 from the Pope and he moves onward.

-- Alon had a defensive masterpiece with four cleans and max bones to DDG as well as DilvaPoints and points from new friend Son en route to a 69-54 win over some Myanmar Massage Momma

-- Producer Nate, sadly, went down in a low-scoring battle, 38-41, to some Malaysian marketing and social media mogul.  RIP Nate.  It was a rotation/injury nightmare for him with zero minutes from Naughton, Sane, Morata, Ramsey, Kolasinac and Moreno.

-- Guest Jason was up against some Twitter account Gamer person who STILL hasn't made a transaction, and Jason eased to a 58-45 victory with Dilva and DDG as his top scorers.

-- Derek was up against the frightening Bulgarian Monster Energy guy, but Derek unleashed his WC on the dude and strolled to a 70-46 victory.

-- I was up against some dogfood-jerky eating doofus Bieber fan, and it's good that he was inept, because I only managed 45 points on my sixth straight red arrow, but it was enough to put me past his 33 points.

So what's on tap for this week?

Round Two / GW18 Preview (Stalk)

Walsh -- 947 points, 90,568th place

Teynteam -- Paul Tyrrell -- 808 points, 2,325,836th place

Paul is in his second year, and is sorta-Ghost, but not totally.  His last move was in GW15, and he changed his captain for GW16, but did nothing for GW17 and hasn't made a move yet for GW18.  I'm pretty sure it's this guy, who is the official club spokesperson and Director of Communications for the Derby County Football Club.  He previously held a similar title at Everton.  He's in one minileague called the Leicester Tigers Staff FPL, and the Leicester Tigers are a Rugby club, but Paul has been a PR consultant for the Rugby Football League, and one of the guys in the Leicester league tracks back to some time in Derby as well.

It looks like Paul may be sat on Firmino as a cap if he doesn't change anything, and has a less than fearsome front line that also includes Vardy and Abraham.  He does have a solid backline with Azpilicueta, Otamendi and Alonso, but the midfields pretty much neutralize each other and are near identical.  Walsh will have the edge with an extra Chelsea defender this week and with the Pope in goal.

Alon -- 928 points, 184,894th place

CAT-D F.C. -- Mike Weil -- 902 points, 420,315th place

Mike is an FPL veteran, in his eighth season, but hasn't yet cracked the top 300K mark.  He hasn't made a roster move yet for this week.  He splunked his triple captain chip back in GW8 on Sir Harold of Blank, when Spurs were hosting Bournemouth.  3x2=6.  Bleh for him.  Here he is on Facebook, married and with a little kid.  His page says he went to secondary school at the Tytherington School, in Macclesfield, and he is in one minileague, the Banter Battle, and there are FB friends in the same league.  I'm not quite sure what he does for a living, but most of his friends on FB seem to be in the Macclesfield/Manchester area.  Might have a clue though in his team name.  Cat-D, or Category D, is a term regarding an insurance write-off of an automobile after repairs.  When a car is totaled and written off in an accident, the insurance company then owns the car, makes repairs, and it is a Category D vehicle.  One of his friends is a manager/supervisor at an auto body shop in Salford, near Manchester and they offer a large selection of category D vehicles for sale.  I think our boy Mike works there.  That's what I'm sticking with.

As for his FPL team?  It's kinda crap with a front line of Jesus, Lacazette and Rondon.  He has Salah and Dilva for points but also has Willian, Matic and Romeu in the midfield, bleh.  He'll be hoping Rudiger makes the lineup and looking forward to return of Mee to his defense.  The DDG factor will be neutralized as both teams own him.

Guest Jason -- 933 points, 155,496th place

Once a Blue.... -- Corrinne Charlton -- 815 points, 2,154,156 points

Corrinne finished 416K last year in her first season, and is an Everton fan from England but she hasn't changed her team since GW8.  It's been strictly set and forget and there is a Kane captain coming Jason's way.  The rest of her front line is Lukaku and Calvert-Lewin and the midfield sports Salah, Eriksen, Richarlison McArthur and Capoue.  The only leagues she is in are a couple of pretty big ones.  150 for the standard league and over 100 in a H2H league.  They are both named DACBC something, but not sure what that stands for and I'm not getting anywhere with it.  Dead end.  Uggh.  Oh well, when in doubt, it's time to make something up.

The first thing that I could find that DACBC stood for was Dual AC Boosting Compensation scheme and deals with multistage amplifiers with low power and large capacitive load.  I'm sure that means something to somebody, and maybe this league is composed of those who are in the know.  But then it got really weird.  Only look here if you are totally insane.  And then I also kept coming across these guys, the Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos, one of the largest ammunition manufacturers in the world.  So she's either an electrical engineering wizard, an insane numerologist, or a Brazilian assassin mercenary.  Watch out Jason.   Just eliminate her before she does something dangerous.

Derek -- 979 points, 19,887th place

The Invincibles -- Peter Eddy -- 918 points, 261,178th place

Peter is also an FPL veteran, in his tenth season.  He claims Arsenal and Canada allegiances and played his free hit chip, but nothing else yet.  His highest season rank was three years ago when he clocked in at 2,114 OR at the end of the year.  This is an interesting one, where one of the hits from a minileague seems intriguing and then you get the flavor of the whole league.  His minileague, The Hooliganship seems to be largely made up of people in the curling community of Canada and has several people who have competed at national and international tournaments.  One of them was a silver medalist in the Nagano Olympics.  The Eddy family includes Lori, who isn't in this league, as well as Steve, who leads the league and appears to have been fairly successful, and our opponent Peter, who I'm assuming is this guy who shows up in the page on the 1998 Canadian Junior Curling Championships.  But since he probably has to keep a day job, he might be this guy.

Anyway, he has a Kane, Firmino, Abraham front line and runs a 352 most weeks with a midfield of KDB, Cout, Richarlison, Grob and RLC.  Derek will counter most of that and put his Salah, Hazard and Dilva up against Peter's Cout, Richarlison and Grob.  I'll take Derek in that every day.  Stick to curling, Peter.

Desertonians -- Scott Ostdiek (ME) -- 964 points, 41,994th place

Champions 2016/17 -- Mark Nicholson -- 862 points, 1,066,791st place

Mark has played for nine years now and is still waiting to crack the top 100K.  He's in two leagues, one is the SJL Insurance Cup and they are an insurance brokerage based in Worcester.  I find faceshots and pages for a bunch of the leaguemates there, but this guy isn't upper echelon enough to warrant a page, it seems.  His other league also seems to have a number of people in the insurance industry in it, but ugggghhh, this guy seems just a wee bit out of reach.  So in a touch of holiday good spirit, I'm going to go with this guy, a Mark Nicholson in Worcester UK who is a self-employed tree surgeon but who was out-of-work when he was undertaking this bit of civic improvement.

He's kinda gone Ghost the last five weeks though, with no transactions, and no roster moves, so I'll be seeing a Captain Kane, along with Vardy and Rashford up top, and a midfield with Alli, Eriksen, Sterling, and Livermore.  I think it looks favorable, but I've been in a serious rut, so no guarantees of anything.

Well, that's our trip down the rabbit hole this week.  Hope we all come out safely on the other side and I get a new box of puzzles to unlock for the next round.

Good luck! - Scott AKA @tempebug on twitter aka desertbug on Slack

[fmlfpl]

Down the Rabbit Hole with Scott

Team of Shadows

Episode 7 - GW 35 Wrap-up, the “Much Sameness” edition

(sorry about posting so late, entirely my bad - alon here - but better late then never. keep following along)

Greetings, all!

Welcome back to the weekly demonstration that I have too much time on my hands, an experiment in which I dive down the rabbit hole of second-guessing the timing of my Wild Card.  For a full-blown explanation of WTF is going on here, go back to Episode 1.

The Moves

Early WC Team saved a move last week to have a pair of them going into Arsenal’s DGW in 35.  They had already played their WC and their TC, and the BB wasn’t going to happen in 37, so there wasn’t much to do last week except to get more knowledge.  The Shadow Team had one week left before playing WC in 35, so there wasn’t any point in saving the transfer.  They could probably have patched up the defense, but there wasn’t much upside in that, so they decided to take a ride on the Kane Train as well.  They dropped Aguero to make room for him, since it looked like Jesus was nearly back for City and rotation seemed to be in Kun’s near future…

The Teams

The Early Wildcard team is in the table below, as is the Shadow Team that I'm neck and neck with. The prices are at the deadline going into GW35 after the moves were made and the points in parentheses ended up on the bench.

The Verdict

This one ended up a virtual draw.  Having five of the front seven be the same on each team will do that for you sometimes.  JWP dropped to the bench in real life, which diminished the Soton attack but since Gabbiadini is no longer a part of either team, that wasn’t so much of a problem. It did let the Early WC team pull Davies’ six-pointer off the bench, though, which was nice.  Both teams ended up with Jakupovic stuck on the bench, and so missed out on his fourteen-point explosion.  Each team had a trio of clean sheets from defenders, although the six-pointer from Bailly might seem a bit dubious to some as it was only achieved when the United defender took about four minutes to walk off the pitch.  OK, maybe it just seemed that long, but it clearly makes you wonder whether or not Bailly owns himself in his FPL team. The rest of the score was much of a same.

Before I started this experiment, my overall rank was 19,971

Early WC team:  47 points, overall points 1987, overall rank 15,736

Late WC Shadow team:  46 points, overall points 1990, overall rank 14,523

Both teams dropped in rank this week, but 10K still seems within reach

Coming Up

Early WC team has to do some shuffling to maximize for DGW37 but has two FT banked.  They’ll probably need to take about 12 points of hits by 37 to get to where they want to be in terms of number of DGW players.  Shadow team will be playing their WildCard this week, which may be a bit of a challenge doing it on paper, but we’ll see how it goes.  It seems like they have the edge in this whole experiment right now, because they can totally pick and choose from the form players.  Or at least that’s the way it looks in theory.  We’ll have to see if it plays out that way in reality.  And we’ll have to see if there is anything to be gleaned from this mess after it is all said and done.  But I guess I’m hoping it can be interesting with any number of ultimate outcomes.  I really have no idea which team will end up on top.

Scott (@tempebug)

[fmlfpl]

Down the Rabbit Hole with Scott

Team of Shadows

Episode 2 -  GW 30 Wrap-up, the Self-Loathing edition

Greetings, all!

First, a brief introduction for those of you who missed last week:  Go back and read last week.  I’m not going to take the time to recap the rationale for this whole crazy thing every week.  And I’m told that you millennials don’t have the attention span to read more than like five paragraphs or some such, so I’ve got to keep these brief.  

OK, but seriously, what’s this about? Seriously, go back and read last week.  It’s not too difficult.  

The Moves

The Early WC team just cooled its jets going into GW30.  They had a Gabbiadini injury, but the JWP choice as 5th mid gave them the depth to ride out the injury.  The armband went to Aguero.  The Late WC team also did naught, banking a transfer to enable the upcoming week’s move.  Shadow Team doesn’t have quite the same depth, though, and had a fourth defender coming in off the bench to replace Gabbi.  As it turns out, that worked out rather well.  They also went with Aguero as their captain.

The Teams

The Early Wildcard team is in the table below, as is the Shadow Team that will play a Late Wildcard in GW36.  The prices are at the deadline going into GW30 and the points in parentheses were on my bench.

The Verdict

Somebody tweeted last week that this experiment could produce some serious self-loathing, and that came true all too soon.  The Shadow Team came through with a 60-49 win this week to pull ten points ahead overall.  The front line was the same, but the Liverpool duo that that team still had in place feasted against the depleted Everton defense.  My real-life defense did well with three cleans, but Shadow Team pulled a Robertson ten-spot out of its ass off the bench as a Gabbiadini sub.  Eff.  I could really end up looking stupid by the end of this thing.

Before I started this experiment, my overall rank was 19,971 Early WC team:  49 points, overall points 1694, overall rank 15,274 Late WC team:  60 points, overall points 1704, overall rank 11,300 Both teams with green arrows.

Coming Up

Quick turnaround coming up what with games this midweek.  Both squads have 2FT rolling into GW31.  The Shadow Late WC Team will patiently use those two to bring in Alexis, just two weeks (and 11 points) later than the WC team acquired him, and he’ll likely sit tight in both teams for the rest of the year.  They will fund it by selling off half of their Chelsea defensive duo.  Azpilicueta will make way for Bonus Point Magnet and Big Fat Sam Darling Mamadou Sakho.  I know Walsh will approve.  Palace’s double is in 34 and isn’t all that attractive (liv/TOT) and clean sheets might not seem likely, but tell that to Big Fat and the Great Wall of Palace.  Yeah, the squads they’ve just kept clean against haven’t exactly been Murderer’s Row, but they just beat Chelsea, and I need a defender at 5.1 or less and how can you not love the guy?

The Early WC team probably needs a bit more WC news and Gabbi and Rose injury resolution news before it can decide which way to go as that team already has Alexis in place.

Tune in soon to see if this rabbit hole takes us even deeper into the pit of self-loathing.

Scott (@tempebug)