Choosing a Fantasy Football Captain!
Is there an art to choosing a captain? Picture the scene… Its 11:20am Saturday morning and all is not well! The kids are buckled up in the car, the wife is stood at the front door jangling the car keys in your direction, her arms are folded and a single stream of muffled gibberish is filling the air. The dog sits, whimpering at your feet as you are sat in front of the computer sweating profusely, it senses your despair. Its decision time – Lukaku-Walcott, Walcott-Lukaku, or maybe Baines?? Sound familiar?? It’s a simple enough question and one we all face every week, the outcome of which though will have far-reaching implications. Your demeanour for the whole weekend, nay your demeanour for the whole WEEK is to be set with just a few simple touches of a button or clicks of a mouse. We’ve all been there haven’t we?!?!?! Yes, it’s the weekly task of making your Fantasy Football captain choice. What really should be a relatively simple decision is full of pitfalls, snares and blind alleys!
This article will attempt to make this outcome a peaceable one, it will expose some myths, and facilitate through reasoning to make Saturday mornings a more relaxed occasion.
To familiarise and pinpoint certain captain strategies firstly we need to examine the different types of gamers. At the start of the season we all have varying aspirations, attitudes and expectations for the season, there are 4 main types of player I have identified but within each there are many multileveled layers which represent the different personalities we represent.
No-hopers
Regular players of fantasy sporting games refer to these teams as ‘Ghost teams’. These guys often start the game enthusiastically but by week 2-3 have totally lost interest. They don’t care where they finish and their team is soon forgotten. Oddly if the person they’ve left as their captain turns out to be one of the league’s top scorers they can do surprisingly well and in H2H leagues this can be very frustrating if you chance upon one. Their expected finish isn’t pretty, but to be honest they’re really not bothered!
Also-Rans
This group has a very relaxed attitude to the game. If they remember to do their team at all it often involves a hasty glance at the fixtures the evening before the deadline and then a quick decision for captain choice. They tend to attempt the more risky captain strategies with the occasional safer option thrown in, but there’s no clear-cut strategy. If these guys finish in the top Million they’re happy!
Players
Now we’re getting a bit more serious. These ‘players’ are similar to the above group, but what the ‘Also-rans do sporadically this crowd does on a weekly basis, and they are also known to keep half an eye on fixtures, team news, injuries etc. Captaincy wise they play it 50-50 between the higher risk philosophy and the safer bets. Expectations wise, these people will generally settle for a top 100 000 finish!
Elite gamers
Nerd alert, these guys are turbo geeks, and are regarded by their local community as social misfits. The time required to attain this level of gaming means that the majority of this group are either unhappily married or extremely single. They analyse every detail of the game which starts with knowing the fixtures for the following 6 weeks. They perform daily searches on the internet, they gate crash football forums and scour social media sites looking for snippets of information on player price changes, team news, injuries and all other aspects of the game. Captaincy decisions are normally a very safe affair but they have been known to have an occasional risky punt. If these weirdo’s don’t finish in the top 10 000 then they become extremely anxious and ravaged by inner turmoil.
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So now we’re familiar with some of the personalities (or lack of them!) involved with the game we need to look a bit deeper into the different forms of safe and risky captaincy systems that have been referred to.
The following captain strategies all come with a risk assessment factor, which will be in the form of a rating from 1-10,a rating of 1 is a level headed, rational, textbook approach up to 10 which involves throwing caution to the wind and finding some obscure ‘differential’. So let’s jump in at the deep end………
Captaining someone who’s ‘Due one’
There have been a couple of occasions where I’ve heard of this innovative (!) captaining approach being used, I have to tell you, I’m disgusted! If u EVER use this as a reason to captain anyone in any format of any game you need to give it up! This statement has no place in the gaming world and you are a on a one way trip to no-where. The reason why somebody is ‘due-one’ i.e. not scored any points of any significance recently, it’s because they’re struggling, it doesn’t matter who they are or what’s their status if they’ve hit a barren spell it’s because they are out of form and should be avoided at all costs.
This policy should not be used either as a one off punt of as a long term method.
Risk Assessment rating 10
Captaining someone because they did well in the same fixture the previous season
There is a simple term to this theory with a complicated explanation, I introduce the ‘Butterfly effect’
In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependency on initial conditions in which a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. Ok, for those of you born north of the Watford Gap, I will explain. This means that there are such an infinite number of factors which dictate the mind-set and the circumstances of an individual to score for a specific team against a specific opposing team on a certain date, that to recreate them the following season with the corresponding fixture is impossible! If you were to be charitable you could say that the said person might have a more positive outlook toward the game, but this most definitely does not point to a guaranteed Fantasy point haul and really should be dismissed as it takes no account of either the players current fitness or the form of both the player or the team.
This system should not be used as a season long concept but only in emergency situations should it be considered as a one off gamble.
Risk Assessment rating 8
Captaining a defender
Every week we hear of a FF player deciding to Captain a defender, usually it comes in the form of Baines or well any of the Chelsea back line. (Ivanovic and Terry are normally the favourites!) Be warned, this rationale is fraught with danger! If we look at the statistics of last season’s top scoring defender we see the problem. Coleman of Everton played slightly out of position for a defender with an advanced role and was able to score 6 goals in the season and kept 15 clean sheets. Now bearing in mind defenders can only keep one clean sheet per game, aside from bonus points the most points he is likely to receive is 6 points (12 with the armband on it) and in this case this was roughly 1 in 2.5 games for Everton last season. If you’re that much of a mystic Michael to predict the one in 6 (ish) games that he scored then you’re faring slightly better, again without bonus points(although on this occasion if a defender does score he is more often than lot allocated bonus points) you are likely to receive a haul of 8 points, doubled to 16. Now although this isn’t a bad tally the risk outweighs the rewards. To truly benefit from the captaining of a defender you plainly and simply just have to be lucky, you would have needed to have stumbled upon the 1 in 15 games that he both scored and kept a clean sheet, a whopping 12 points (24) without bonus. If you think that 1 in 15 is a good return for your decision then go for your life!
This system can play dividends but is very risky it may pay off on occasions but sustained usage WILL end in failure!!
Risk Assessment rating 6
Favourable Fixtures
These little gems come and go as the season progresses. Also as time goes by the whipping boys in the league become apparent. They usually come in the form of at least 1 or 2 of the newly promoted sides, a couple of strugglers from the previous season and anyone that would inexplicably sell half of their first team to their rivals in the transfer window! Almost every game-week throws up some ‘bankers’, which invariably involves a top 6 side playing at home to a bottom 6 one, but tread carefully, all that glistens isn’t gold! Quite often these ‘goal fests’ don’t live up to their expectations. The predicted result often occurs but the avalanche of goals doesn’t. Occasionally as well there is an upset within a fixture, this is due to the truly unpredictable nature of football and the reason why all bookies have big cars!
This formula does actually remain one of the safest in the captaincy game, it can periodically throw up a high dividend return, but mainly gives us a middling to average one. If you are planning on using this as a long term method then be prepared to expect the occasional blank!
Risk Assessment rating 3
The Form Player
Generally speaking I’m not a lover of statistics, I’m more of a gut instinct kinda guy, but stats don’t lie and can’t be argued with. Every year we all strive to find the most reliable fantasy player. Previous seasons we’ve had standout individuals like RVP and Michu. Last season we had a glut of (arguably) 4 players who this season all have a ‘predicament’ which might hinder their progress.
Aaron Ramsey: with a crowded Arsenal midfield might struggle to shine
Yaya Toure: if Aguero can have a relatively injury free season, then Yaya’s set piece contribution will be significantly less
Nibbles: has gone to pastures new (incidentally, he is the only man I know who can eat an apple through a tennis racket!)
Daniel Sturridge: it will be like Dolce without Gabbana
Yes, the form player is the go to guy, week in and week out he performs at a consistent level, for him it’s not about always getting double figured scores but it’s about ticking over with a goal or an assist most games (leading to additional bonus points)
This is the safest of all known captaincy theories, not always the most exciting but as a long term system it is usually the most rewarding. He is the default choice when no other options are available.
Risk Assessment rating 1
Decision time!
So with the season fast approaching its decision time! Do we want to be the maverick with a hedonistic approach to captaincy? You’ll hear from this person once every blue moon boasting about how he gave the armband to the obscure Crystal Palace defender who came on as a sub and scored twice. Or do you want to be swathed in victory wreaths, Potty proctor medals and Marks and Spencer vouchers? This means having a fairly rigid almost boring ideology on captaincy and choosing the inform player who has scored the previous 7 weeks? The choice of course is yours, for me though there is a definite correlation between captaincy risk and success, the more you gamble and chances you take the less likely you are to receive a higher ranking, but you might have more fun?!?! That’s why we are all different, you set your target for the season and you have to play your hand accordingly.
I know which path I will be following this season (I’ve got my eyes on a natty cardigan at M&S!) but if you find yourself pushed for time with your wife jangling car keys at you on a Saturday morning and you’re at a loss as to what to do just stay calm and repeat this mantra ‘Class is permanent, but form is everything’
Have a great season and good luck!! 
Interesting take on the personalities of gamers
I believe in form players in my captaining policy.