Was just wondering if anyone is interested in one of these? I saw it done on another forum and think it's really interesting. I know there isn't a huge soccer-fan population here, but I said I'd put it out there and see whose interested. Basically...

What is it?

Basically, we would have two threads. One for draft picks and one for discussion of draft picks. People who are interested would agree to pick footballers from the history of the premiership according to a predetermined order in turn until each participant has a team of eleven players. It would be up to them to decide what formation to play them in and they would be obliged to do one final post at the end where they sum up why they chose as they did and how they would envisage their lineup working together as a team.

The idea is a rip off of the American drafting system for their professional sports. Here is an example of what I am talking about.

Why?

Because it's fun!! If you're sad like me, you like discussing and debating best of lists and arguing over which sports teams or players from the past were better. And a process like this can help you reach a better understanding of the game or open your eyes up to players or ideas that you had never heard of before.

Sounds good, rules?

- You can only take players who participated in at least 50 premiership games during their career (this means that one season wonders are excluded from consideration - a player will need to be on a squad for more than one season);
- The player is assessed on the basis of how good he was during his period in the premiership only. Therefore, if you selected Edgar Davids or Youri Djorkaeff for example - you would be getting the Spurs and Bolton versions respectively - not the guys who destroyed European football at Juve and Inter during their primes;
- Selection order will be randomly decided by a draw from a hat and will go ABBAABBAABBA and so on;
- Clock expires on a drafter after 24 hrs. After that time, the next player on the list will be allowed to go and it will up to the skipped player to post a pick in the draft thread at their earliest convenience;
- When someone has completed a pick, they should pm the next in line to inform them that it is their turn;
- The Draft thread is for picks only and should be left uncluttered. There will be a separate thread for discussion of picks;
- People are obliged to go to google images and put up a photo of the player they are selecting and provide some sort of spiel as to why they are drafting them at that time;
- After each participant has selected eleven players they are obliged to put one more post in the draft thread which provides a final formation and discusses the tactics that would be ideally employed in an imaginary game;

Ok, I'm still interested

Good! Please bear in mind though that these things can go on for weeks until they are finished. It is also worth noting that other people will rate players differently to you and will sometimes make picks that you perceive as being retarded. It's more fun for everyone though if you can refrain from simply posting along the lines of "he's crap and that's a terrible pick" and instead trying to explain why you think selections are good or bad.

Finally, while it stunts discussion for the first round and a half or so, it is best not to mention undrafted players. So, if Roy Keane is selected with the first pick - try not to say "Vieira is much better in my opinion". Now, obviously one would assume that everyone up for participating in this kind of thing would be aware of how similar the two players are - but as things move beyond the obvious choices people who are less willing to put in research or don't know as much about the game as a whole shouldn't be let off the hook by others mentioning the best players available in the later rounds.


Okay, so that's the general idea. I think we would need a minimum of 6 interested posters to make it worthwhile/interesting. Any more than 6, great!

So I guess, let me know if your interested, and we'll get it started ASAP!

sure, i'd be in. sounds like fun.

Banter. In.

Shouldn't you do this at the start of the season?

I think because it encompasses the history of the Premiership back to the 92-93 season then it doesn't matter when it starts. Obviously player like Cantona and Keane can no longer earn points.

Although that does raise a good point, how does the scoring work?

Oh, sorry, I must confess that I just read the title, and thought it was odd that you were starting a premiership fantasy pool in the middle of the season. I'm retarded, I'll read the OP's in the future. Carry on.

Join in? You can have first dibs on Liverpool players?

I don't have the historical background for this sort of thing. But I'll enjoy reading the thread to learn.

I'd be interested (especially if I get to pick Shearer in my team!)

i did it on 2p2 and I'd love to do it here too. Does anyone have the same champ man that was used for it, cause that was almost all of the fun. It was fun drafting, but then "seeing" it get played out on champ man made it even better


edit: What I suggest is how we did it on 2p2 where we have a seperate draft thread and a banter thread. I will heavily mod the banter thread for people being dumbasses on strongly hinting at a player or fully mentioning a non-drafted player by name. If someone repeatedly abuses the non-drafted name mentioning I will ban

OK, because I'm dense...

We are drafting players with 50+ Premiership games under their belt
We then pick a season to represent their statistical impact
We each have a side of 11

Aside from that, i don't know how it's going to work, so explanations would be appreciated, but I am interested, for sure...

Also, this is based on the FA Premier League which began in 1992, right?

On a related note, anyone ever play Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe (old PC game). Like football (soccer), but with Bladerunner overtones and some violence. One of the best PC games I ever played.

I think it should be done from around 1980 onwards, rather than strictly Premiership.

In my opinion that would be more fun because at least we could compare players from the great 80's Liverpool sides with today's players, and also the 80's teams of Nottingham Forest, United and Everton etc.

This is cool but it's going to be pretty difficult picking players as it is!

So is there enough interest to run with this? And yes, I agree that there should be a picks only thread and a discussion thread.

I don't like the 1980s onward idea. Quite frankly, I'd only be able to accurately judge about a dozen players from the 80s. The rest of the players I'd have to be basing my opinions on what I've read/heard. I'd imagine there'd be alot of others in the same boat as I.


I'm happy to get this shit started if everyone is still up for it?

would I be correct in assuming that all the following are interested:


Jam-Fly, rinswun, LJB723, mr paddyx, kdawgcometh, james D, mercury69


If so, that's 7. Usually, it's best if there's like 20 of us picking players, because then the real fun begins as you have to start selecting lesser known player. However, with 7 of us, it would mean each of our 11s would be a bit stronger than usual and it would be over quicker. Either way, I still think it's worth doing it.

i'm still interested for sure.

mercury - i have played speedball 2, but on the megadrive. absolutely awesome game, probably my favourite game on the megadrive outside of streets of rage and 2 crude dudes.

Basically, we draft 11 players in alternating picks. Each player must have played 50+ games in the Premiership. The players are judged on their overall performance in the Premiership (remember, Premiership only. If you pick Edgar Davids, you get the Spurs Davids only, not the Juventus Davids. If you pick Beckham, you get the Man. Utd version, not the Madrid/Milan/LA version etc.).

We pick players in one thread, and discuss the picks in another thread. It's mostly about just discussing and comparing players. It gets interesting as some people rate players higher than others, and it's up to them to prove their point.

When everyone has made 11 picks, they make a final post with tactics, strategies, how their team will play, why they are the best team etc.

Hopefully, when the final teams are picked, we can have a cup competition between the teams and end up with a 'best team'. The cup competition will be done through voting system (probably on a soccer-specific forum as we don't have a big enough soccer community to get an accurate/big enough vote). Or if anyone has that Champ Manager that KDawg was talking about htat would be awesome.

Okay, I'll set up the two threads. Please let me know if you DO NOT want to be involved, as I'm assuming the 7 I listed are interested

Shall we use this thread as the discussion thread? hardly any point starting a new one?
Remember, the other thread is just for people to submit their picks. Don't post anything else in that thread.

i know of no 'historic' champ/football manager but if there is one i gotta be given a link, it would be awesome!

excellent first pick though you forgot to mention his celebration was perhaps the simplest and best plus the most copied on playgrounds and park pitches across the uk. also once witnessed at the Grosvenor Casino in Brighton when my friend won £1600 on 1 hand hitting a royal flush whilst playing 3 card poker. great times.

Pretty sure I've won this already. There's not 11 players combined who come close to challenging Ryan Giggs



Hey Rinswun, where are you from.. are you English? You said your friend won £ in Brighton.

yep, originally from london (twickenham) - came to uni in Brighton 7 years ago, got a gf, got a job, got a degree and havent gone back to london yet! pain in the arse commuting to and from griffin park for home games though!

Ok cool, I always assumed you were Canadian (the avatar I think... what is it with some of you guys and hockey? I dont get it, lol!)


On that note, I heard LJB is preparing his first pick.. Jason Lee!

Ha! You dick!

I was going for Schmeichel. Looks like I have to re-think now.

I propose we also get to pick a manager... is it too late to suggest that, or can we do it from round 2?

Yeah I don't mind, sounds like a good idea. What about subs? Since there's only 7 of us, we would could do subs without it dragging on.

Also, I assume we are judging teams on the basis of how well they would perform over the course of one season?


Btw, all great picks so far. The only I'm not sure about is Cech, there's a few other keepers I'd rate higher than Cech

One sub.


Some players have made their names as subs... I know who I'll be picking, if I get chance.

we can do a full roster of subs sincce there is very few of us, but save the subs for the end

Yeah I agee. We pick 11 players first, then we move onto subs. 5 or 7 subs? and are we doing managers?

The picks are moving along at a nice pace, I must say!

And with only a couple more selections before I get two picks in a row, be prepared... :-)

Subs and a coach...Not against it, but could use a reason why. We don't have any injury bug to dodge and the effectiveness of a coach is often somewhat intangible.

There has to be a manager, definately.


And lol @ me having Giggs and Cantona. Seriously, it's impossible for my team to lose already. Doesn't really matter who I pick from this point on, Cantona would create so much space for everyone, no defenders stand a chance. Mwahaha!

I've just noticed that I pick 4th ever single round!

I'm not so sure about the manager thing. Only 4 managers have ever won the Premiership (Fergie, Kenny, Arsene and Jose) and ususally unsucessful managers, which is a lot, get sacked pretty quickly. It we made the manager choice a historical pick I think it would be better.

historical, as in from any time in history?

I don't really mind either way with the manager or subs. The only thing is, the kind of idea is that we'd be 'managing' the teams, as in, we would chose what tactics we'd play and how our team would work. Therefore, what else would a manager add? It would make more sense to chose a good man-manager than a tactical genius since we outlined the tactics?

As I said, I don't really mind either way.

isn't the point of doing the draft having us be the manager and having us put together a squad in the style that we want?



as far as the champ man sim, on 2p2 I think it was 02/03 that was used and the players were manually put in and since there were 20 of us, we were each assigned a team and the director levels were put to as low as possible so that there'd be no sackings. Historical players statistics were manually put in as fairly as possible by the poster that ran the sim

with 7 people it may be a bit hard to do that, but if it can get pulled off, that'd be pretty awesome

Great pick Jam Fly. Every team needs a creative visionary who pulls the strings, and you've just picked one of the very very best.

We're moving at a rate of knots now boys. Mercury is picking as I type this so I'll have my next one in provided Merc doesn't take him.

Loving KDawg's pick. Although LeTiss only really worked in an environment where he was the best player so you may have to deliberately sabotage your team...

No gripes, as I got my man, but LBJ should have held off for my roundabout (#3) pick. No worries...back to KDawg now, I think...

Have I mis-read the OP in the other thread?

I thought I was last in round 1 and first in rounds 2 and 3? Then 7th in 4,5 etc etc. Sorry if I caused a balls-up.

EDIT: Copy and pasted from picks thread:

4) The order goes like this.
1st round- 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
2nd round - 7,6,5...
3rd round - 7,6,5...

Oh, farg, maybe it's me misreading...let me check...

Yup, sorry, I messed up, although it's a bummer not getting a couple of picks in a row after all that lol

I retracted my pick...sorry about the mix-up

its a snake draft so its snaked through picks ie

1234567765432112345677654321 etc etc. unfortunately you dont get to pick again until the end of round three then first again in round 4. stevie g wont be around by your next pick though dude, sorry

ignore my last post, i am wrong. just going by all the prev snake drafts i have done but this one seems to be different, nice pick on stevie g. he would have been my next choice for sure! damn

Ah it's cool. Merc has deleted his pick and I think only I saw who it was and I'm not going to tell anyone so we should be back on track. I'm dreading the next 2 rounds though. It's going to be hard to get any of the players I'm thinking of at the minute!

Great pick in Gerrard. Regretting I didn't pick him. Tough choice though, Gerrard or Scholes.

yeah the order goes like this
123456
7654321
7654321
1234567
1234567
7654321
7654321
1234567
1234567
7654321
7654321

Double post

Yup...back on track...Thanks for keeping the pick info to yourself, LBJ! Shhhh :-)

once gerrard went i had to go with the other one!

I need clarification please, before I make my next pick.


Can I pick Fernando Torres? He's played 50 times for Liverpool, so I think I should be able to.. right?


I know he's new, and there's many names I have dating back to the start of the Premiership to have as my main striker, but this guy is so damn good it's scary... and I want him.

In more ways than one? Even though I am het, I will admit Torres is a sweet little puff pastry of a player...


About the 50 appearances, though, nothing in the rules stated that the required 50 had to be within a certain time frame, therefore if Torres played his 50th on Sunday, it's all good. As far as I'm concerned, anyway...On the other hand it does say "up to 2009", which could imply this season or not...

Ruling needed!

Yeah, I'm waiting!


I'll be gutted if I can't pick him. I can think of no one who would link up with Cantona better (Shearer, just maybe but he's gone), they're perfect for each other, it would be so lethal.

You're running these matches in your mind, aren't you? :-D

I'd love to see VR sims of these games with rotoscoped player images and a wide array of skills, like Speed, Passing, First Touch Control, Heading, Accuracy, etc...That would be soooo awesome....