FF247 McDonald’s Fantasy World Cup Team 2014 – Last 16
With the group stages now complete the good people of McDonald’s have given us all even more work to do but with it the chance to freshen up our squads and restructure according to who has qualified and who we feel has the best chance of success in the next round. From here on in you have unlimited transfers between each round starting with the last 16. The deadline for this is Saturday 28th June at 5pm UK time. Ahead of the competition we published our first ever official FF247 team and so we have great pleasure in now telling you how it has fared so far, what our squad is for the next round and a bit about the strategy behind our choices.
The story so far…
The team itself has amassed 315 points and we are pleased with our performance so far. Our general strategy last time out was to go a bit top heavy and try to maximise points from our strikers while having a more budget friendly midfield and defence but with plenty of options for changing each day. It’s fair to say that while Neymar and Messi pulled us out of a few holes the lack of Colombian midfielder’s kept threatening to bury us! Our choice to fill up with heavy forwards nearly bit us as Ronaldo was the other and while he looked like he was going to flop he just about did us proud with a goal in the final game.
The FF247 team found itself in Potstar B in Pottys Dodgy 32 competition and we are delighted to say that having led from the front we managed to maintain this form until the bitter end and we topped the group with no late dramas and so we progress to the last 16 with a tie against Jon 9838. Jon may have a slight advantage here strategically then with being able to see what we have picked but our attitude is simply ‘that’s our team – beat us then!’ We appreciate that there are a good many teams that bettered our total but still found themselves knocked out but that’s the luck of the draw and you can only beat what’s in front of you. (Wasn’t much!).
Our last 16 team
Strategy
We have tried to spread the team / squad out over the game days to give ourselves plenty of options each day and in particular to give us a viable captiancy option as many times as possible until we land on the one we like! In goal we like the prices more than we like the potential for clean sheets we must admit, but at £3m and £2m the combo of Cillessen and Karnezis was still hard to overlook and served us well in the qualifiers. In defence we have doubled up on Germany and when quizzed why the panel responded ”They’re playing Algeria, duh”, fair enough then. We opted for Sakho over Evra on the basis that “He’s got a lot more points, I think”. Scientific it ain’t but when pushed we were surprised, nay shocked – “I had a look at OPTA stats and he’s made most clearances and has made a serious number of passes”. In layman’s terms that translates to a shed load more points in this format so Sakho it was. Oh and Evra is still on a yellow card which counts going forward.
In midfield we have gone double Colombia which means a triple allied with Yepes at the back. When we asked if this was overkill the panels response was “please don’t mention Colombia and overkill in the same sentence”. We left it at that and backed away slowly. Our choice of Argentinian coverage was a tough one. We were surprised to find that Mascherano was  leading the scoring by some way and as such we have plumped for him rather then Di Maria. His ability to tackle and recover balls obviously stands him in good stead for the point bonuses in this game. A goal or two from Di Maria will ruin this theory in a heartbeat as you certainly won’t be hearing the words ‘goal’ and ‘Mascherano’ in any sentence this World Cup! (we secrectly hope we cursed that right there).
Up top we’ve gone fairly obvious here with Neymar and Messi as we suspect many will. There are a good few options for the all important ‘third’ spot namely Benzema, Robben, Van Persie and whisper it quietly Fred! Fred could well be the differential here as he started the Confederations Cup in similar fashion to this and ended up the top scorer. One for the brave though we feel and as such we have gone for Muller of Germany. Essentially not actually an out and out forward but he’s already shown that doesn’t really matter and we feel that Germany will have far too much for Algeria  in this one. We hope!
OK, being a lover of number crunching I thought I’d do some analysis of the points scored so far by each player vs their cost, then try and load it based on who they will be playing by looking at how many goals the oppo scored for GK/DEFS or for how many the conceded for MID/FWD
Logic being if you have players of similar ability go for the one with the easier opposition
Stuck all the numbers in excel, played around with a few fudge factors and got
Team Player Pts Pos Cost Vs. Ratio Con Scored Offset Final
ALG Rais MBOLHI 19 GK 1 GER 4.75 2 7 2.38 2.38
GRE Orestis KARNEZIS 18 GK 2 CRC 2.25 1 4 0.64 1.61
NED Jasper CILLESSEN 18 GK 3 MEX 1.50 1 4 0.43 1.07
ALG Rafik HALLICHE 21 DEF 1 GER 5.25 2 7 2.63 2.63
CRC Oscar DUARTE 32 DEF 3.5 GRE 2.29 4 2 0.33 1.96
GRE Konstantin MANOLAS 25 DEF 2.5 CRC 2.50 1 4 0.71 1.79
CRC Giancarlo GONZALEZ 33 DEF 4 GRE 2.06 4 2 0.29 1.77
CRC Cristian GAMBOA 26 DEF 3.5 GRE 1.86 4 2 0.27 1.59
BEL Daniel VAN BUYTEN 38 DEF 4.5 USA 2.11 4 4 0.60 1.51
CRC Junior DIAZ 24 DEF 3.5 GRE 1.71 4 2 0.24 1.47
ALG Nabil BENTALEB 19 MID 1 GER 4.75 2 7 1.58 3.17
CRC Yeltsin TEJEDA 21 MID 3.5 GRE 1.50 4 2 0.30 1.20
COL Juan CUADRADO 30 MID 6 URU 1.25 4 4 0.25 1.00
GRE Ioannis MANIATIS 20 MID 3 CRC 1.67 1 4 0.67 1.00
ARG Fernando GAGO 19 MID 4.5 SWI 1.06 6 7 0.07 0.99
COL James RODRIGUEZ 39 MID 8 URU 1.22 4 4 0.24 0.98
MEX Hector HERRERA 26 MID 5 NED 1.30 3 10 0.35 0.95
ARG Javier MASCHERANO 28 MID 7 SWI 1.00 6 7 0.07 0.93
ALG Abdelmou. DJABOU 19 ATT 1 GER 4.75 2 7 1.58 3.17
ALG Islam SLIMANI 23 ATT 2 GER 2.88 2 7 0.96 1.92
GER Thomas MUELLER 36 ATT 8 ALG 1.13 5 6 0.15 0.98
NGA Ahmed MUSA 23 ATT 4.5 FRA 1.28 2 8 0.43 0.85
ARG Lionel MESSI 35 ATT 10 SWI 0.88 6 7 0.06 0.82
This team left me 8m left so I upgraded Djabou to Neymar as it seemed a shame to waste it (Neymar was the next big money striker in my ranking, Final score of 0.75 compared to Messi 0.82)
Its entered into the Nearly Boys as IP1963 if you want to have a laugh at the dice having no memory (starting pts 188, it was a 2nd team I had been playing with but without the pseudo scientific analysis)
Brilliant! I think. No idea what it means to be honest but it looks great!
so top points per minutes played ? sorry i don’t think its that scientific ! sorry to pop your bubble
And Alex take no notice of me ! i am a grumpy odd fool, your on the right track to become a top FF Manager !! research and analysis is a massive key to being successful !!!
I’m not expecting it to be right, there’s also the effect of defenders points being skewed by goals and assists (an attacking defender also cares about how good the opposition defence is) as you said points per mins played, points based on how good the rest of the side is and a never ending set of other factors.
What it did do is give me a set of numbers to allow a choice to be made without my own preferences and prejudices coming into it
Just wanted to see how even a crude model performs against a player choice and a total random pick
It ended up picking a load of players I never would of considered, so i’m interested to see how it gets on against the one I picked using all my skill and judgement ( it’s probably going to thrash me)
Love stats vs judgement Alec, we went on a bit of both to be honest, hopefully the right mix…
Guys what happens when a match goes to extra time and penalties?clean sheet?minutes played?goals in penalties?,does anything count after the 90th min?
yeah exactly, that’s my thought too. and again, what if a match ended up in penalties and again, if the mcdonalds start giving points on the penalty taker or goalkeeper if he makes any save?
From http://en.mcdonalds.fantasy.fifa.com/rules end of section 5
****Actions occurring in extra-time count towards player points. However, penalty shoot-outs have no effect on player points.
From the rules on the McD site:
****Actions occurring in extra-time count towards player points. However, penalty shoot-outs have no effect on player points.
thanks man!
you’re taking 2 midfielders from argentina! ok, but i find it shaky.. no questions about the other choices. but you know, i hit 89 points from midfielder by taking gerrad, ozil, di maria, bentaleb, valbuena and KDB ! it’s so visual no one played that good, but see the points range?
Yep it picked 2 Argentina Mids, neither of which I had in my side I picked myself, I had 3 Argies Di Maria, Maxi Rod (cheaper punt hoped he’d play) and Sergio Aguero
Its why I like playing with numbers to see what gets spat out,
Any thoughts on who is the ideal 3rd striker (after Messi and Neymar)?
– Benzema
– mueller
– RVP / Robben
Cheers and best wishes.
Mueller for me ATF, though Benzema may continue to do well.
I think Chile can stop Neymar and have gone Benzema, Mueller, Messi!
I’m just pondering the exact same moves, I think I’m going Neymar over Muller.
Might be a very heated game. Loads of goals. Chile defense did well this tournament, but usually it’s their offense that counts. Hope it will be a 3-3 game or something, with red cards, yellow cards and so on.
SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Chile def. looked better this tournament, FIFA corrupt as hell though. Might go Brazil’s way.
I agree Magic, just sold all my Brazilians.