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Mindvampire6 - Runner-up 2009/2010

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MindVampire
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FS Record: TFFO - Runner-up 2009/10

Mindvampire6 - Runner-up 2009/2010

Post by MindVampire »

What follows is an account of my season long TFFO battle that ended with Mindvampire6 finishing in 2nd position.

Mindvampire6

Cech, P CHE 3.9 :arrow: T3 Given, S MCY 3.4
Reina, J LIV 3.8

Carvalho, R CHE 3.8 :arrow: T14 Johnson, R BIR 2.8
Samba, CBLR 3.3
Tomkins, J WHM 2.8 :arrow: T7 Dunne, R AVL 3.1

Evra, P MUN 4.2
Baines, L EVE 4.0
Insua, E LIV 3.0


Lampard, F CHE 7.0 :arrow: T1 Gerrard, S LIV 6.5 :arrow: T11 Lampard, F CHE 7.0
Fabregas, C ARS 5.0
Barry, G MCY 3.9 :arrow: T6 Geovanni HUL 3.6 :arrow: T8 Boateng, K POR 2.5
Sidwell, S AVL 3.3 :arrow: T2 Lennon, A TOT 3.7
N'Zogbia, C WIG 3.3
Milijas, N WLV 2.7 :arrow: T5 Young, A AVL 4.2

Torres, F LIV 7.0 :arrow: T4 Adebayor, E MCY 6.2 :arrow: T9 Torres, F LIV 7.0 :arrow: T12 Tevez, C MCY 6.3
Rooney, W MUN 6.8
Drogba, D CHE 6.4 :arrow: T10 Defoe, J TOT 6.0 :arrow: T15 Torres, F LIV 7.0
Bent, D SUN 5.6 :arrow: T13 Drogba, D CHE 6.4

TOTAL 79.8


Week 1 – With 42 pts from the Fab and 20 pts or over from Drogba, Bent and Rooney… My 5 captains scored 112 out of my 128 pts in week 1… This resulted in my best ever start of 7th place come the Monday update :)

Week 2 - Drogba, Torres and Rooney were captained in all 5 flanges and all scored well.
Transfer 1 - Lampard, F -> Gerrard, S (With Drogba scoring very well and with little budget spare… I made my most dubious transfer of the season. As I recall… Lampard had been playing at the tip of a diamond formation and after watching him on Tele I decided he’d be less productive. Of course Ancelotti realised this too (LOL) and FL didn’t continue to play there for that much longer)

Week 5 - I took the lead for the first time this season, just creeping ahead of Dreikaiserbund for a day or two. On a side note, I had also set up a new team (MV9) for September’s manager of the month without reading the rules that August was included… rookie error… But it all worked out well as I used MV9 to win Week 5 Manager of the week (using all 15 transfers for 2 matches)

Week 7 – Back to 2nd behind Dreikaiserbund
Transfer 2 - Sidwell, S -> Lennon, A (Correction of a poor initial pick and need for TOT cover allowed for the introduction of the in form Lennon)

Week 8 – 1st place again at Tuesday’s update, which didn’t last long as Dreikaiserbund continued his very strong scoring which included him winning the first manager of the month ahead of me.
Transfer 3 - Cech, P -> Given, S (Cech’s injury (which proved to be minor), the need to raise cash and MCYs good early defensive form convinced me to make what would later prove a poor transfer because of Chelsea’s cup run)
Transfer 4 - Torres, F -> Adebayor, E (Torres injury, Adebayor in form)
Transfer 5 - Milijas, N -> Young, A (Poor initial pick, WLV cover advantages gone, new AVL cover was needed after transferring out Sidwell)

Week 10 – 1st again briefly
Transfer 6 - Barry, G -> Geovanni (With Adebayor scoring I wanted to swap out Barry… HUL had some stand alone games coming and the cover worked… I think I was swayed after having him perform well in a few teams last year)

Week 11 – 2nd again
Transfer 7 - Tomkins, J -> Dunne, R (finally dumped poor initial pick for the in form Dunne)

Week 12 – Shay Given scored me 28 pts as captain when Adebayor was out - a nice bonus :)

Week 15 - Dropped to my joint lowest position of 7th after a big Defoe score for others

Week 16 – Back to 1st
Transfer 8 - Geovanni -> Boateng, K (Injury allowed for the correction of my poor earlier transfer, KVP seemed a secure pick and freed up cash for later transfers and immediate flange cover)

Week 17 – Had a little lead over a threatening Oddsman and his Iguana team… Dreikaiserbund had dropped like a stone about now and Cold Pigeon appeared in the top 10 for the first time

Week 18 – Mindvampire6 now had a 37 pt lead
Transfer 9 - Adebayor, E -> Torres, F (African Nations cup loomed, I transferred the returning Torres a game earlier than I could have)

Week 19 – My biggest lead of the season of 43 pts with Cold Pigeon around 70 pts behind me at this stage

Week 21 – Cold Pigeon gained allot on me during week 20 and week 21. Lampard and Tevez were playing well (whom I didn’t have at this stage). I was clearly too cautious over transfer use around the transfer window and before the imminent departures of the African Nations Players (probably as Mindvampire6 had my fewest remaining transfers)
I finally transferred in Lampard this week. CP actually led briefly on the 29th December only for me to regain the lead into the New Year.
Transfer 10 - Drogba, D -> Defoe, J (African Nations cup, considered Tevez, but believed Defoe was a necessity due to opposition having him and fixtures, immediate goal and a captained hat trick a month later just about justified this)
Transfer 11 - Gerrard, S -> Lampard, F (Finally brought back FL as Drogba was off to the ANC and I needed CHE cover… During his spell in my team Gerrard scored 9 pts less than Lampard, which wasn’t a disaster… but was clearly a waste of 2 transfers)

Week 22 – The season was producing quite significant point swings on a regular basis. I had a 35 pt lead built by the final flange of week 22 (MCY v BLK). On the Tuesday after that game I was 5 pts behind CP courtesy of Tevez. Frustratingly I had put Tevez into every one of my other squads… but I hesitated over the transfer at the last second in Mindvampire6… producing by my worst *opportunity lost* moment of the season.

Week 23 – I Retook the lead.
Transfer 12 - Torres, F -> Tevez, C (Torres got injured so Tevez came in for him)

Week 24 – MV13 won manager of the month. Over the season I made 5 MV named teams to win manager of the week and manager of the month prizes

Week 25 – Cold Pigeon took the lead again after the midweek games but I regained it after the weekend’s games.

Week 26 – Built up another 30 pt lead…
Transfer 13 - Bent, D -> Drogba, D (I gained some early points over my rivals with this transfer as I was one of the earliest to bring Drogba back in (but it pained me to dump Bent!)

Week 28 – CP took the lead…

Week 29 – My differentiators weren’t doing much so I decided to take a chance with the injury prone Torres for my final throw of the Transfer dice…
Transfer 14 - Carvalho, R -> Johnson, R (Carvalho never played again and RJ allowed the Torres transfer financially. RJ also allowed me to cover the clean sheets that Coldpigeon was getting from S Carr… As it happened I missed the boat with RJ)
Transfer 15 - Defoe, J -> Torres, F (Took the plunge and transferred in Torres again… earlier than the main opposition…)

Week 31 – Cold Pigeon had built up a 38 pt lead after the weekends score with only the Monday nights game to go… Liverpool played Portsmouth and I pulled back the 38 pts with the big performance from Torres that I was looking for…

Week 32 – Cold Pigeon leads
Week 33 – Cold Pigeon transferred in Torres and Bent for Rooney and Defoe… But I scored a decent 142 pts and retook the lead
Week 36 – Equal points so I’m behind on goals scored after one of the updates. Retook the lead by the end of the week. By now Cold Pigeon and Mindvampire6 had swapped the lead on 10 occasions :o
Week 37 – Bent, Dindane, and Gerrard all scored very well… everything seemed to go CPs way this week. He finishes the week with a 20 pt lead.
Week 38 – CP’s lead back down to 7 pts… Looking difficult for me, particularly because of his Chelsea clean sheet potential and Dindanes recent form
-----
So the final teams for the last 2 weeks were:

Mindvampire6 ... Cold Pigeon

Reina, J ... Reina, J
Given, S ... Cech, P

Samba, C ... Vermaelen, T
Dunne, R ... Dunne, R
Johnson, R ... Bassong, S

Evra, P ... Ivanovic, B
Baines, L ... Carr, S
Insua, E ... Insua, E

Lampard, F ... Lampard, F
Fabregas, C ... Fabregas, C
Young, A ... Gerrard, S
Lennon, A ... Kranjcar, N
N'Zogbia, C ... Dindane, A
Boateng, K ... Chung-Yong, Lee

Torres, F ... Torres, F
Rooney, W ... Bent, D
Drogba, D ... Drogba, D
Tevez, C ... Tevez, C
-----
Week 39 –The last day of the Premiership and I was 5 points behind Cold Pigeon.
My predictions for Cold Pigeons scores for both week 39 and week 40 put him finishing ahead of me by about 15 pts if I played a straight bat. What makes matters harder is that my options for a calculated risk on FA cup day were severely limited. Reds363s high scoring over recent weeks almost left him in striking position for 2nd position. Luckily I just had just enough of a cushion to be able to take the chances I needed to without much fear of finishing in 3rd.
I therefore decided to take the earlier and more logical risk of captaining Rooney… whilst knowing that Cold Pigeon didn’t have him and that he’d probably star Drogba. Rooney fails to deliver… Drogba doesn’t…
(On the plus side this week, I had found out on the Friday that I had got the job I had applied for and really wanted… This definitely helped my stress levels whilst watching the footy and also tempered my disappointment afterwards)

Week 40 – The FA Cup final and Cold Pigeon is 16 points ahead of Mindvampire6.
I was half expecting to have to star Lamps as most of the match previews predicted Boateng wouldn't feature... Had I done so, and as an example… I would have needed Lampard to score about 19 pts more than Drogba AND for Portsmouth to score a goal in order to have overcome CPs lead…

When the team news came out I reverted to my Plan A - Captaining Boateng.
My logic for this choice was that I predicted that the game would be tight on the poor Wembley pitch and that there would likely be penalties... So… with Boateng as the penalty taker... he could eliminate the Chelsea clean sheet and give me some of the independent double points I would need… all in one go. This still seemed unlikely… but I believe it was the only real choice when you also consider that there was also no way to be sure of which of Lamps or the Drog CP would have starred anyway…
So after one last swing of the bat… The FA cup started… and as Boateng stepped up to take his penalty… for a few seconds I believed luck might just be with me… But as we all know… it wasn’t to be…

Conclusions

In the final analysis I finished 55 pts behind Cold Pigeon... and nothing I could have done over the last 2 weeks would have made up that difference…
I feel happy with myself that I went for it at the end, as after all, losing by 24 pts or 55 pts makes no difference…
Having now looked back over the season in some detail (and of course with some considerable pain LOL). I can obviously see countless mistakes and missed opportunities. The flip side to that is that I obviously made a good number of the right selections and good calls at the right time… Of course, I’m sure Mr Batchelor would probably say the same… and in the end, he and his team outperformed me and mine during the critical part of the season… particularly with his nearly faultless final selections and his better performing final squad.

So one more time… a big congratulations to Graham Batchelor for what was a draining but nether-the-less epic, season long battle
And equally big congratulations to Reds for finishing in 3rd position and for winning the ISO comp ;)
Also, congrats all other FISOers who finished in the top 10, who contributed to the FISO super league win, who won manager of the week and manager of the month prizes and to those who bettered there personal bests.

And finally thanks for all the support and advice that makes the TFFO boards the friendliest on FISO ;)


Final Positions 16/05/2010
Position Manager Team Name Points

1 Graham Batchelor Cold Pigeon 3560
2 Chris Lay Mindvampire6 3505
3 Steve Legg Generals 3488
4 Phil Randell Sleeping-Giants 3425
5 Chris Lay Mindvampire2 3411
6 Neil Carrington Casino Royale 3399
7 Jeffery Cole Iguana 3391
8 Tim Miller King Rocha 3387
9 Paul Hooper Superhoops2 3386
10 Philip HOWARD Team Meerkat 3374
10 Edward Hargreaves Jammy Dodgers 3374

Goals scored
Position Manager Team Name No. of Goals

1 Graham Batchelor Cold Pigeon 186
25 Chris Lay Mindvampire6 166

Mindvampire6
Captain pts 1066
Total pts 3505

Pts by position:

Goalkeepers 207 pts
Centre Backs 207 pts
Full Backs 360 pts
Midfielders 1090 pts
Strikers 1641 pts

(Transfer) Player Name Pts

Cech, P 16 :arrow: T3 Given, S 92
Reina, J 99

Carvalho, R 51 :arrow: T14 Johnson, R 9
Samba, C 85
Tomkins, J 0 :arrow: T7 Dunne, R 62

Evra, P 138
Baines, L 119
Insua, E 103

Lampard, F 11 :arrow: T1 Gerrard, S 76 :arrow: T11 Lampard, F 228
Fabregas, C 315
Barry, G 31 :arrow: T6 Geovanni 10 :arrow: T8 Boateng, K 30
Sidwell, S 5 :arrow: T2 Lennon, A 78
N'Zogbia, C 138
Milijas, N 11 :arrow: T5 Young, A 157

Torres, F 119 :arrow: T4 Adebayor, E 55 :arrow: T9 Torres, F 48 :arrow: T12 Tevez, C 142
Rooney, W 432
Drogba, D 222 :arrow: T10 Defoe, J 103 :arrow: T15 Torres, F 101
Bent, D 146 :arrow: T13 Drogba, D 273
Last edited by MindVampire on 01 Jun 2010, 15:48, edited 4 times in total.

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blessedbrian
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Re: Mindvampire6

Post by blessedbrian »

interesting read MV, and it is this sort of attention to detail which is why you had such a great season. Congratulations on your efforts :)

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looneytoon77
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Re: Mindvampire6

Post by looneytoon77 »

Thanks for the interesting & detailed run through MV, always good to see how the top teams managed to get all those points through the season. Also, despite not winning it, congrats on the prizes you did collect & for the 2nd placing.
Also, nice to see the comparison to Cold Pigeon’s team. Least it looks like you will be able to give it another go next season from the posts from the telegraph.
Enjoy the summer & the new job! :)

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Oddsman
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Re: Mindvampire6

Post by Oddsman »

Many many thanks for doing this MV - always easier to do when you've won.

Without looking at this now in too much detail - the most noticable thing that grabs you is how many injuries the leading 2 squads were carrying in the final few weeks of the season. I was in a similar position - although mainly self inflicted as I made my final Iguana transfer on Feb 21st. I was very surprised to finish is the top 10 but presumably apart from Reds we were all carrying a lot of crocked players.

Shame you didn't quite finish this season on the summit MV - but it's good to hear that we will be back next season where I look forward to doing battle with yourself and the usual suspects.

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reds363
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Re: Mindvampire6

Post by reds363 »

Thanks for posting MV, a very interesting read! Particularly interesting to see how the team started off: obviously it was a good initial selection given that you were up there right from the start, but you really did nail it from week 1! Just a shame you missed out on the odd big score (Tevez in January springs to mind), and that your last two transfers didn't really come off.

Nevertheless, congrats once again - and thanks to recent posts around this forum, it looks like I can say reasonably confidently "see you back next season" for another go! :D

Biscuitman
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Re: Mindvampire6 - Runner-up 2009/2010

Post by Biscuitman »

MindVampire wrote:

Final Positions 16/05/2010
Position Manager Team Name Points

1 Graham Batchelor Cold Pigeon 3560
2 Chris Lay Mindvampire6 3505
3 Steve Legg Generals 3488
4 Phil Randell Sleeping-Giants 3425
5 Chris Lay Mindvampire2 3411
6 Neil Carrington Casino Royale 3399
7 Jeffery Cole Iguana 3391
8 Tim Miller King Rocha 3387
9 Paul Hooper Superhoops2 3386
10 Philip HOWARD Team Meerkat 3374


A fascinating read. Thank you MV. I was equal 10th with Jammy Dodgers (and shown as such on the league table), but maybe the order they show teams with equal points in is based on goals scored or something, rather than being arbitrary. Looking forward already to next season - with the added bonus of a month of W Cup in between.

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MindVampire
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Re: Mindvampire6 - Runner-up 2009/2010

Post by MindVampire »

Thanks chaps!

And I updated the final Table Biscuitman :wink:

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Chocs
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Re: Mindvampire6 - Runner-up 2009/2010

Post by Chocs »

Thanks for sharing this with us MV. For what it's worth I would've gone for the same moves in the last couple of weeks - no point in just matching CP's moves, particularly given the cushion you had over Reds in 3rd. My main mistakes this year were more to do with delaying a couple of crucial transfers than anything else, but it's always so much easier in hindsight :wink: .

Roll on next year's competition :D

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Re: Mindvampire6 - Runner-up 2009/2010

Post by murf »

Cheers MV - one thing that hasn't been mentioned is the crucial issue of getting it right/lucky with a fair few initial picks who can just tick over and accumulate reasonable points all year (see full backs, N'Zog, Samba) allowing you to focus on tinkering elsewhere.

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Re: Mindvampire6 - Runner-up 2009/2010

Post by admin »

A copy of mindvampire's story is also recorded for posterity at http://www.fiso.co.uk/viewarticle.php?id=440" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Re: Mindvampire6 - Runner-up 2009/2010

Post by Malrom »

Thankyou for sharing, MindVampire :!:

I never will beat you, they won't let me play :x :x :x

Even if I could play, you would beat me by miles.
Congrats to second place :!: Excellent :!:

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