Fantasy Football

I am giving the Fantasy footie a big go this year for the first time in several years, mainly due to being in a works league for the first time in 5 years. Also because it is much cheaper this season.
About 5-6 years ago it cost £6 a team, although if you managed to find a promotion code you could sometimes get them for half price.
This season you got a free team plus it was 12 teams for £14.99 at the start, then 10 for the same price once the season started.

So I've ended up with 35 teams dotted around various leagues :)
3 in the works league, 2 in the Fiso forum, 2 in the Footy challenge league, 1 in the Facebook league, 1 in the Google league, and the remaining 26 set up into my own league.

Having this many teams means a mad rush every match day trying to find out who is injured and likely starting line-ups, and trying to balance the season long 30 transfers limit against short term gains.
The strikers positions have been a bit of a nightmare early on as the obvious picks at the start were probably Rooney, Aguero and Torres as Van Persie was a non playing Arsenal player.
Rooney and Aguero were both injured early on meaning RVP came in with Jelavic, Jelevic didn't do too well and then got injured meaning a switch to Berbatov who has now also got injured costing another transfer to Fletcher. I would have gone back to Jelavic but the early reports were that he wouldn't start :(
Suarez is usually a risky pick as his really good weeks are balanced out by many bad ones, Peter Crouch is a safe option for regular points but rarely has those exceptional weeks, Demba Ba has started well as he did last year but he dropped away badly last season and I have to remember that there is another African Nations cup next year and I've got Toure in most teams.

So far it's been good with all the teams in the top third out of around 250,000 entrants, 6 teams are in the top 1,000 with a best of 52nd, my league is 16th after a high of 12th, and I'm 1st, 2nd and 4th in the Works league :)
Today won't be good as Villa and West Brom players aren't really in my thinking at the moment, and Monday's Hammers v QPR game is only good from a fantasy game point of view if Nolan scores ...a hat-trick :)

R.I.P John Bond

Former Hammer John Bond sadly passed away at the age of 79 today :(
Probably remembered better these days as the manager of Norwich and Man City in the 70's and 80's he had made over 400 appearances for the Hammers in the 50's and 60's.
Part of our 'B' team in the glory years in the mid sixties with Brown, Brabrook, Byrne, Burkett, Boyce, Bovington, Bobby Moore and Brian Dear :)

Premier Predictions (Week 6)

Week number six already, games on Saturday, Sunday and Monday (hope Green plays).

Arsenal v Chelsea
Everton v Southampton
Fulham v Man City
Norwich v Liverpool
Reading v Newcastle
Stoke v Swansea
Sunderland v Wigan
Man Utd v Tottenham

Aston Villa v West Brom

QPR v West Ham

Premier Predictions (Week 5)

After week 4's dramatic ending let's do it all again :)
Saturday and Sunday games only this week, and some hard games to call considering possible European hangovers for many of the teams.

Swansea v Everton
Chelsea    v Stoke
Southampton v Aston Villa
West Brom v Reading
West Ham v Sunderland
Wigan v Fulham
       
Liverpool v Man Utd
Newcastle v Norwich
Man City v Arsenal
Tottenham v QPR

World Cup 2014 Day 2

England 1 Ukraine 1
Can't really comment or rate this game as I fell asleep during the first half and woke up just in time to see us get the penalty near the end :(

England v Ukraine

Game 2 kicks off in a few hours as England hope to build on last weeks great start.
Terry and Walcott are injured and have been replaced by Livermore, Lallana and Sterling.
Adam Lallana was a bit of a surprise but the other two proved the old adage that if you're English and play for Liverpool or Tottenham you will play for England.
That said Raheem Sterling does look like he has the makings of a star, he looked the biz last year when he scored 5 goals against my local club Southend in the Youth cup.


Not yet 18 he has 2 kids, plays in the Premier league and has an England call up. Could be a great story or a tragic one, we shall find out soon?

Premier Predictions (Week 4)

Here's this weekends games ... predict away :)

Norwich v West Ham
QPR v Chelsea
Stoke v Man City
Man Utd v Wigan
Arsenal v Southampton
Fulham v West Brom
Aston Villa v Swansea
Sunderland v Liverpool
       
Reading v Tottenham
       
Everton  v Newcastle

World Cup 2014 Day 1

A good start for England with a 5-0 hammering of Moldova :)
They played well but didn't need to be at the top of their game against a really poor side.
Sometimes in these type of games it gets scrappy if you don't score early but we were helped out in the 3rd minute by the Dutch ref giving a penalty for handball which a lot of refs wouldn't have?
Lampard banged it in and it was all plain sailing from then on :)
Lampard scored again and Defoe made it 3-0 at half time.
The second half was pretty dull as we seemed happy to hang on to the 3-0 but after bringing on Walcott and Welbeck we livened up and Milner finished off a great move to make it 4-0, for some reason Milner didn't seem too happy at scoring his first goal for England in 32 games probably realising he was once again lucky to be on the pitch after another poor performance, Baines got the 5th with a massive deflection from his free kick and the only downside was Terry's late injury.
My Ratings - Hart 6, Johnson 7, Baines 8, Lescott 7, Terry 8, Gerrard 4, Milner 5, Lampard 9, Cleverley 8, Oxlade-Chamberlain 8, Defoe 7, Subs - Carrick 5, Walcott 6, Welbeck 6 + England Fans 10

James Collins made sure he was fit for the Hammers next game by getting sent off for Wales against Belgium, they would have struggled with 11 men so no surprise that the Belgians won 2-0.
Northern Ireland were unlucky against Capello's Russia losing 2-0 including a dubious penalty.
The Republic left it very late against Kazakhstan with Keane and Doyle scoring in the last 2 minutes to give them a 2-1 win.
Looking around the other games some of the big names didn't have it easy, Germany only scored 3 against the Faroe Islands, France beat Finland 1-0, Portugal only managed a 2-1 win against Luxembourg, Italy drew with Bulgaria, Norway lost to Iceland.
Bosnia had the best result of the night with an 8-1 away win in Liechtenstein with Man City's Dzeko getting a hat trick.

World Cup 2014

The World cup is here again and we kick off tonight away to Moldova.

The England squad
G - Hart, Butland, Ruddy
D - Terry, Johnson, Lescott, Jagielka, Cahill, Baines, Walker, Bertrand
M - Gerrard, Lampard, Milner, Carrick, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Cleverley
F - Defoe, Walcott, Wellbeck, Sturridge


Injured - Cole, Carroll, Rooney, Young, Jones, Parker
Dropped - Kelly, Henderson, Downing, Green

World Cup Fixtures
07/09/12 A Moldova
11/09/12 H Ukraine
12/10/12 H San Marino
16/10/12 A Poland
22/03/13 A San Marino
26/03/12 A Montenegro
06/09/13 H Moldova
10/09/13 A Ukraine
11/10/13 H Montenegro
15/10/13 H Poland

Friendlies
14/11/12 A Sweden
14/08/12 H Scotland

Redknapped

So Harry boy has gone back to Bournemouth as an advisor!!
didn't realise they were rich enough to need Swiss bank accounts?

Comment

The decision to moderate comments was made so I could weed out the downright nasty stuff that some bloggers get, but so far I've just been inundated with dozens of adverts for short term loans and slimming aids?
This one made me laugh as it was from an American company but seems to have been translated from a foreign language using an online translator -
"The transaction terms are very short for instant loans and ranges at the hands of 10 to thirty one days. 
The very loan provides the actual cash in quick and in easy way without each and every personal treasures. 
Not upfront charges are unquestionably levied from you have" ????

West Ham 3 Fulham 0

Comfortable win against a poor Fulham team, Andy Carroll was causing the Fulham defence problems which left gaps for everyone else.
An early Nolan goal was followed by a Winston Reid header and Matt Taylor banging one in.
The second half was fairly even and Jaaskelainen had the chance to show he's not that bad with a few decent saves.
The Hammers midfield was solid, Nolan catches the eye but Diame was excellent and Noble hardly puts a foot wrong.

Slight worry was injuries to Carroll, James Collins and Demel after Matt Jarvis missed the game through injury, hopefully all will be fit after the International break.
Fulham were poor and even with Berbatov coming on in the second half showed very little.

Going Down?

Poll Result - Just 13 votes in the "who will get relegated" poll, so if you are right this will be the bottom of the table in May.

13 Arsenal
14 Aston Villa
15 West Ham
16 Norwich
17 Southampton
-----------------
18 Reading
19 Wigan
20 QPR

Personally think Wigan and Reading wil survive, but the people have spoken :)