Fantasy football pre-season

Today I've been getting on with the essential football pre-season ritual that is choosing my fantasy football team. I've been doing this for more than ten years now, and I have to say that if there's a drab midtable dogfight on TV knowing that the end result will actually matter when it comes to end of season bragging rights makes it that bit more interesting. I also think that by making you take an interest in other teams it makes you a bit more knowledgable about the game. But anyway...

This year my knowledge is at a very low ebb. While I saw quite a lot of Match of the Day highlights last season I saw few (none?) premiership games from start to finish. This makes it hard to build up the background knowledge that makes picking a fantasy side easy. So I've been doing something I haven't done for years - dropping last seasons results into a spreadsheet and looking for clues.

This is actually a good exercise in modelling. For a start it highlights the limits of models - your only data is based on past performance, but you're trying to predict the future. The variables are often linked - but in a hard to define way.

So I'd just decided not to bother with Manchester United defenders this season as Roy Kean's retired and the midfield won't give them much protection - when I remember they've signed Michael Carrick to replace him. To work a model would have to adjust for all kinds of things.

On the other hand the model has highlighted a few things. First top players are lousy value for money. The folks who worked out the prices put a big premium on the players who score the most points - so the best investments are in the middle level players. Similarly goalkeepers and defenders offer much better value for money than midfielders and forwards.

However the goal of the game is not to produce the most cost effective team - it's to score the most points. So at some point you stop trying to save money and like Roman Abramovich on a shopping spree you realise that you're never going to win the league unless you pay waaaay over the odds for the top players. It's around about this stage that I ditched the model and started tweaking - so and so out - so and so in...

End result of all this nonsense? A starting 11 of

Van de Saar
Finnan
Kishishev
Terry (c)
Ferdinand
Carragher
Mendes
Carrick
N'Zogbia
Bellamy
Ameobi

and on the bench

Bennet
Lennon
Morrisson
Horsfield

Logo 2.0

Todays consumer is hyper sensitive to changes in the cultural landscape, which they recontextualise into their own communications. < / web 2.0 >

Here's a bunch of people making fun of web 2.0 logos

What's so funny 'bout peace love and understanding?

I'm sure pop culture used to include protest songs. It's been years of war in the Gulf, in Afghanistan, in Palestine, and now in Lebanon, and there still isn't anything worth singing at a protest rally that's made it onto MTV...

No more heroes

.Con

I've been reading .con, a history of the .com boom and bust. It takes place at pretty much the time I was leaving university and going to work in the web industry. Indeed one of my old CVs mentioned having 'a ringside seat' on the whole affair.

I'd love to be able to talk to myself as I was then. I remember thinking two things

a) The .com bubble was clearly ridiculous and couldn't last
b) Internet business was the only way to do business

Clearly these positions would have been hard to reconcile, but I'm pretty sure that's what I was thinking. It was a kind of 'all those .com's are dumb, but this web thing is really going to work'. Clicks and Bricks was the buzzword for that state of mind I seem to recall.

In my defence the company I was working with at the time made a point of not dealing with .coms. We worked for real businesses who paid cash, not stock options, and most of the projects I worked on made money for someone - often a lot. So perhaps I did know what I was doing - but I doubt it. If I'd been working somewhere with stronger Kool Aid I think I'd have swallowed it all...

Duff numbers

Duff was actually on a four year contract for Chelsea, so this year they'll actually show a profit on selling him. 17 million / 4 years is 4.25 million a year, so if we really did pay 5 they're 750 k to the good.

All of which is pretty academic when you're Roman Abramovich.

Testing

Toxics Appeal

Duff in for how much?

Football finance is one of the most misunderstood things around. Even journalists who should no better have been trumpeting the 'Newcastle only paid #5m for Duff' story as if it's news.

When a transfer fee is announced it's in everyone's favour to exaggerate it. So the selling club will tot up all the potential add ons, extra payments, performance bonuses etc. in order to claim that they got an offer too good to turn down, while the buying club do the same to demonstrate their level of ambition.

The truth is that for most transfers there's a 50% cash payment up front with the rest spread over a few years. I seem to remember there's some sort of different regulation for payments relating to overseas transfers from the UK that makes them more financially attractive as well.

Anyway, the key point is that the stock market is the only place where what gets talked about is cold hard cash. We acquired an asset (Damien Duff) and we are committed to at least #5m. Future payments aren't mentioned - but I wouldn't be surprised if they're linked to appearances, champions league / UEFA qualification, international appearances or even goals scored. All of which could easily push the 'newspaper figure' up to the #10m talked about.

The other thing to look for is what it takes to balance the books. Like most assets player registrations are depleted over the life of the asset on the balance sheet. So assuming the reported 17m Chelsea paid for Duff was real and he was there for three years that leaves 6.8m to go, so the Chelsea accounts will only show a 1.8 million loss on the deal. More likely though some of the agreed #17m was still outstanding and we've got him for exactly what it cost for Chelsea to break even.

While I can't think of examples off the top of my head this is a very common pattern in football transfers, and one the press almost never notice.

I have a plan

Mostly it involves doing a lot more blogging than I have been lately. I'm aiming for a post a day. Not including the blogging I do for work