In today's Mirror, so game is live now.

Is this the worst ever for a top newspaper game ?

OVERALL WINNERS:

The highest scoring manager at the end of the competition will win £50,000!!!

2nd Place: £20,000

3rd Place: £10,000

MANAGER OF THE MONTH:

The highest scoring manager each month will win £5,000!!!

WEEKLY WINNERS:

Each and every game week 75 of the highest scoring managers will win a £5 prize credited to their game e-wallet!

Only 3 places for the overall and One prize for the monthly .

And who the hell wants to win £5 for coming in the top 75 in a week especially as it looks like you can't actually have the £5 unless you win at least two (apparently you can only withdraw £10 or more). The new transfer rules will mean that seasonal teams won't get a sniff at these prizes anyway, they will all be won by teams going for the £5k monthly.

If you compare the prize list with he sun, well there is no comparison. The Sun 99 weekly prizes of £100 plus winner gets £1k, Monthly 5 big prizes then 95 of £100 Overall prizes down to 100th (two lists so will go a lot further down than that too). All of these prizes can be won by seasonal teams as there are no transfers during any of these periods. Only three prizes can be won by YTM seasonal teams .

The prize list (only really 3 chances for the seasonal) and the payment problems mean I'm very unlikely to bother with this, this time. Although if they change the payment system I might throw one team at it per month for the monthly prize as the weekly prize will almost guarantee your money back as long as you don't put in more than 2 teams each month.

Shame really normally stick in about 15 teams for the seasonal. Still I guess it will give me more time to concentrate of other comps.

True but the Sun has entries of 500,000 plus and Mirror declined last year from c80,000 to c34,000. How could they possibly offer comparable prizes?
TFF with entries of 200,000 plus has a prize fund of only £100,000 so YTM at £150,000 is actually quite generous.

I agree the £5 prizes are rather pointless and the new version of YTM incorporates daft myopic and suicidal developments but I don't think we could realistically expect a better prize fund.
More critical is the comparison in the enjoyable experience offered. TFF is miles ahead and getting better every year. The Sun is ok and gets many things right. YTM seems to be operated by a headless chicken.

The last thing to criticise about YTM is the prize money. It's always the game with the largest amount of available prize money per entry. If you want to go down that path - have a pop at TFF which, in this regard, is an absolute and total rip-off.

Mind you, it will be interesting to see if YTM/Silent Manager/sQUID actually pay such large prizes when the entry level is likely to fall below 10,000 this season. The new Site and Payment System are both absolute shockers.

They have brought this drop in numbers on themselves though. The high entry fee, the negative changes to the game since they re-launched as YTM have led to this.

When YTM was first launched with it's two transfer windows it was everything that is good about the Sun without the ratings (which most people would say is the worst thing about the sun). Like you say 80,000 people took it up and I would say that figure would be nearer 200k by now if they had kept it the same. But they had to change the competition making it more and more like first the old Times comp, not a smart idea seeing as that one was closed due to lack of numbers , and now they have ditched Cleaver TV and are going with one of the most unpopular game providers Silent Manager. .

What they should have done 5 years ago is stuck with the new YTM formula and taken the financial hit for a couple of years, I'm pretty sure it would have paid off eventually. Unfortunately they listened to a number of people on this forum (most of whom were good at the old Times comp) and changed it accordingly. I was one of the few who spoke up against it at the time but to no avail. .

Back to the prize fund, I would have preferred a lower first prize and prizes at least down to 20th (but preferably 100th) and scrap the daft weekly fivers, also top 10 for the monthly at least and reduce that top prize. For them to state that there are 2,800 ways to win, when that is the number of fivers they are giving away is a bit of a con to be honest. If you pay £8 for a team and get a fiver back then it's not exactly a win is it, especially if you can't even have that fiver.

It's not the amount i'm complaining about it's distribution. For £8 a team I would expect more than just three chances to win (you can forget the monthly & weeklies with any seasonal teams).

TFF at least have prizes down to 20th, goals, starting XI, Divisions, Super Leagues, Club leagues plus the new Super 20's cup. These are all possible to win with seasonal teams. Plus TFF is a pleasure to play, having spent a good amount of money on their web-site and provider to make sure they get a good product, not just give it to the company who says they can do it the cheapest (Which YTM seem to have done).

Anyway to be honest I'm already wasting enough time on this comp just talking about it on here. Good luck to those who play this year.

I wonder what the total entry will be, will they even break 5k this time with all the problems ?