Author Archives: Keysersoze

Since my October blog – there hasn’t been much football played due to the international break with only 4 league games and 1 European game. The good news is across the 5 formats my ranks have risen by 148k combined places. The bad news is this all came in FPL where I have risen by 156k, in dream team, telegraph and sky I have dropped since my last update.

It was clear after my disastrous start I wouldn’t be challenging any leaderboards this year. In previous blogs I explained what led to this (villa and Man U blocks/ not having Antonio and mainly avoiding premium defenders) so this season became all about getting respectable ranks and trying to recoup league entrance fees. Anyway going into the busiest month of the season here are my teams.

FPL- rank 96k – with 5 green arrows in a row. This is likely to become my most successful team this year? My aim is still top 10k (can’t see my beating last years 1.5k) I still have my WC- and will try to hold until the deadline. This week will probably see coady become reguillon. It’s tough to go against Salah (although I have gone with James twice this season!!) An additional challenge is in my local 20 man mini league a mate has an incredible rank of 1k at the moment.

Fanteam 12k – similar to FPL I have my WC still, do have 2 transfers here. Aim will be to get in the money. No major issues – Christenson probably needs to go

Dream team – rank 26k- a million miles away from last years 12th place finish. Got abit unlucky with 3 Tottenham players. Will try and hold decembers transfers although matip may need to go?

Telegraph – 37k – do have quite a lot of transfers left (34) A lot of money in the bank (4.5 million) so need to upgrade soon

Sky- another where I’m not making progress – 15k- although I do have a lot of transfers 35- and captains covered, again a lot of money in the bank too (5 million)

So that’s where the teams are, lots of opportunities in December to make progress, and with 2 wildcards to play, new dream team transfers, and more transfers than most in telegraph and sky- it’s an exciting month ahead for me. I’m hoping for more progress come my December blog. Thanks for reading and I hope you all have great festive periods both in the fantasy world and real life with loved ones.

In my 6th blog at the end of august I talked about my awful start in all 5 formats https://keysersozefantasyfootball.sport.blog/2021/09/06/blog-6-trying-to-bounce-back-after-a-poor-start-in-all-5-formats/ at the end of September in my 7th blog I talked through how good progress had been made (478k total place rises across the 5 formats) https://keysersozefantasyfootball.sport.blog/2021/10/11/blog-7-progress-is-slowly-being-made/ This time at the end of October my ranks are largely the same (3.4K total place rises across the 5 formats with rises in just 2 games) The good news is I’m slightly ahead of the pack with wildcards to use in both fanteam and FPL, and quite high transfers left in sky and telegraph, with no major surgery needed in sun. (Note all 5 teams below are my best ranked team in each format)

FPL – current rank 252k- rise of 7k since last month. I’m pretty happy with the team. This weeks transfer is likely to be traore to trossard. I’m currently taking a gamble with James as captain. I got burnt by this same call in week 9. The longer term plan will be to move Vardy and alternative big hitters (Kane/ lukaku/ ronaldo) my aim is still top 10k.

Dream team – rank 21k- drop of 500 places over the month. no transfers planned straight away. I need to keep an eye on the matip situation, and might have to accept Walker won’t play this week. I ideally will want lukaku back in after the break (but can only afford with Foden or mahrez going out). I have made various big mistakes with this team- I brought Christenson in a week later than planned costing me 26 points, transferred benrahma out (owned him for 2 weeks and got 0 points) picking KDB over Foden (costing me 25 points) Man City going out the league cup wasn’t ideal but at least that isn’t until 20/12.

Sky rank 11.6k – drop of 1.6k since last month. 36 transfers left. Picking Traore on my overhaul for Monday’s game was annoying- so he will go now probably for Gallagher. I Probably need a city defender in there, but no major issues at the moment.

Fanteam- here I have seen my biggest drop – down 4.5k to 15k. Again traore needs to go with my free transfer. No major issues.

Telegraph – 3k rise since last month- rank 34k – 35 transfers left – again no major issues- probably keep konsa for the 1 game ban.

So there we have it, hardly any progress, but the teams aren’t looking too bad, and I have the valuable chips and transfers left. Hopefully I will make some bigger progress in November. I accepted early on this year was going to be a struggle after my most successful season in 14 years playing last year. Remember these are just games- stay positive and enjoy them for what they are. Thank you as always for reading

In my 6th blog I talked through my awful start in all 5 formats https://keysersozefantasyfootball.sport.blog/2021/09/06/blog-6-trying-to-bounce-back-after-a-poor-start-in-all-5-formats/

The good news since then is across the 5 formats my rank has improved by a combined 478,500 places with rises in 4 of the 5 games. The bad news is my ranks still aren’t great and it’s likely to be a long season ahead, to try and turn a profit. Here I review my teams and reaccess my season targets (all teams below are my best ranked teams)

FPL rank 259k- I will start here as this is where the majority of my progress has been made (455k rise since my last blog) I still have my WC to play and have no immediate plans to use it (4 more weeks until the next international break so this could be an option) There are issues (traore) who will likely become rapinha (but not this week due to international issue with him) Pre season aim was top 10k which is still the target, can’t see me challenging last seasons 1,594th.

Dream team – drop of 18k to 20.5k- this is my most successful game and where I enter most of my cash leagues – so disappointing to see it’s the only game where I dropped in rank. I have mentioned previously my struggles this year, and focused on block defences and chasing price rises which I haven’t really done previously. My target was top 100 (after coming 12th and 58th in the last 2) but can’t see that happening now. The positive is I have all 5 transfers in hand. Wan bissaka and traore will be going- likely for something like Grealish and Christenson

Sky 6k rise to 10k. 38 transfers left. Quite a few issues now (alonso/ Torres/ traore) I described this as my weakness format at the start of the season- so have been listening to a couple of pods on this and definitely feel I understand it better now. Pre season aim was top 1k so that’s still the aim. Only played this for a couple of years and don’t think I have ever got that high. Do have white already for the Arsenal single days.

Fanteam decent progress here (considering only 37k players) up 9.5k to 10.5k. I entered 4 teams so am still hoping to turn a profit. Still have WC and like in fpl no immediate plans to use it. Again I have traore so he will be going.

Telegraph – another big rise here of 26k to 37k. This is the game I spend the least time on, and I’m not in any cash leagues. 36 transfers left. No major issues but Bruno probably needs to become ronaldo which needs 2 moves

So there we have it, progress has been made but combined ranks of 336,500 across the 5 formats shows there is plenty of work to be done. I’m still spending a lot of time on fantasy (as doing the euro games too) so hopefully the effort will be rewarded as the months go on.

Thanks for reading as always, and I hope your seasons are going well.

After my best ever season in fantasy last year, both in terms of prize money (£7.7k) and ranks (12th in dream team and 1,500th in fpl) my anticipation for the new year was high. I felt well prepared in the weeks leading up to kick-off, I had started listening to a couple of pods for the first time (I usually just read articles, but I’m really enjoying DT tonic and sky’s 3 for 1, I also listened to the big telegraph preview) I had spent plenty of time on my research too, so reflecting after 3 weeks what’s gone wrong.

Looking back to the euro’s I didn’t have a great tournament, I won my local ‘official game’ league by a point, but lost my local dream team league by a couple of points (my first local league defeat for 5 years) I didn’t really challenge in any of the national leagues I entered or fanteam. I know some of the big name fantasy players had a complete break over the summer to recharge, and can see the benefits of this, last season was an intense compacted year, and then with the euro’s we were straight back to it.

The other factor is my teams largely had similar players across the multi formats. I went big on the villa defence, Harvey Barnes and Danny ings, and only had Antonio in 1 out of 22 teams.

So just how bad has my start been, I will review each format below, and know we have a very long way to go. Perhaps it feels worse than it really is because a lot of the big names seem to be doing very well, also maybe it’s because I haven’t got a format where I’m excelling on to compensate for a poor performance elsewhere. Maybe I need to accept I’m playing too many formats and distracting myself. Yet here I am in the international break currently preparing my champions league teams for fanteam and the official game 🙂

On top of the playing, I run 3 local leagues, so it’s the recruiting/admin/ updates from these too. The other factor to accept is I’m usually a slow starter- but the reality is if you want to challenge against the best nationally how much of a lead can you afford to give them.

FPL – rank 714k – I made the call to captain ings last week over bringing in Antonio (costing me 14 points- I’m looking at this as 10 points- as do have 2 transfers in hand now as opposed to needing a -4 in week 4. I’m likely to bring in ronaldo and traore for ings and Bruno. I decided against Antonio and was hoping benrahma could cover him, also because I liked ings fixture (team news then revealed they had 3 players out) the question remains how long can I go without Antonio. I won’t be wildcarding yet. I’m relatively happy elsewhere- white and ayling I still see as good value. I need to monitor veltman, and Barnes will likely become rapinha. Toney will go at some point too. I got abit unlucky with 2 covid cases (white and veltman – leading to my only transfer so far being tsimikas to coady last week to field 3 defenders (or I may have brought in Antonio) I was put off Marcal by his rotation risk. I need to see what happens with the DCL injury too.

Sky- rank 16k and 44k – lesson learnt here don’t go full block defence, and certainly not on both teams, on a team with limited bonus potential. 9 players in both teams were the same with just Antonio/benrahma and Mbeumo/Toney being different. At least I haven’t used any transfers. Here’s where I’m currently at for the overhaul too

Fanteam – 4 teams – best 20k/37k worst 27.5k/37k – again I went ings captain last week over bringing in Antonio. Barnes may need to go. I will hold the WC for now. Ronaldo will come in for ings. I brought in tanganga for tsimikas which is looking a poor choice now.

Dream team -best team 2.5k out of 556k, I would rate this as my best format, and to be honest this is probably the best start I have ever had, and this team is my saving grace so far. Why I’m disappointed here is my other teams aren’t looking great with low budgets to play with- all 9 under 180 with 7 under 144. I changed my tactics this year and went for 8 block defences (Brighton/ Everton/ West Ham/ Liverpool/Man U/ Tottenham/ villa/Leicester) I even had 3 villa defences. Largely influenced by Tottenham’s extra games in Europe (moura) the league cup games (ings and DCL in all 10) and the some of the bigger teams playing each other early doors. I also went with Mahrez in all 10 and Barnes in 9.

Telegraph – awful – best 63k – worst 83k- there can’t be that many more teams playing I would have thought? 39 transfers left (brought in Kane) Really poor picks in defence going for slightly cheaper options (dawson over coufal – now likely to loose his place to zouma) Godfrey covid- will he get back in? Firpo and white both had covid too. So 3 of the back 5 had covid. A poor pick up front too- I didn’t realise Antonio was only 0.6 more than Toney.

So there we have it, not great or maybe I’m being too hard on myself. Thanks for reading- I hope you have had a better start than me. I’m not panicking yet, and will stick with what has worked in the past for me. I will review things in the next international break and hopefully will have made some progress

One of my other passions in life other than this crazy intense game we all love, is international travel- and I have currently visited 33 countries. Now you might be thinking why am I writing about this in a fantasy football blog, and the simple answer is the ‘challenges’ and ‘funny stories’ my travelling while ‘trying’ to play fantasy has led to.

In my 4th blog I talked about how I have been lucky enough to win profits of approx 11k from ‘fantasy’ this in turn has led me to be able to experience some great holiday destinations, New York probably being my favourite, Rome probably my favourite European destination. I also think one of the main reasons I enjoyed my best ever fantasy season was very likely to do with travel limitations and restrictions over the past year, meaning more time to spend on ‘fantasy’ whilst stuck at home.

Now what are the main ‘challenges’ of playing the game whilst on holiday. Of course time difference is a big one I think Bali was the most extreme I experienced being 7 hours ahead. Another is wi-fi access, now this has improved dramatically over the years, with European access now just coming out of your allowance in most cases. The Wi-Fi password is now expected by travellers in restaurants, as soon as you sit down. My lowest point in my fantasy career was having to leave the wife in a restaurant (their WiFi didn’t work) in Greece whilst I ran back to the hotel for wi-fi to check Hazard was playing (and transfer him in to multiple teams) vs wales in ‘euro 16’ after an injury scare only to see them then loose 3-1 a couple of hours later.

Now the other challenge is explaining to your partner whilst despite being in these amazing locations, your still spending hours checking ‘football stuff’ as she calls it. In some cases being away makes watching games in bars or round the pool easier, as long as the wife has a cocktail in hand. The times we are away usually mean I’m away for the international games. Our anniversary is in June, as is the wife’s birthday which is 1 DAY!! before the euro’s start, she has already planned 3 celebration events, and I have already made my excuses for the first one with her work friends to ensure I can check line ups/ watch the Italy- Turkey game.

Being away also can also work in my favour and give me more time with no work constraints. Going back to the Wi-Fi issue my 2nd worst fantasy memory was in Croatia, where we visited a nearby island for the day, only to see me scrambling around once I saw timo Werner was starting vs South Korea in the 2018 WC, I brought him in to about 20 teams across all formats, only to arrive back via boat to the mainland to watch the 2nd half and see them dumped out 2-0 to the underdogs. This ‘Werner’ experience ultimately led to me largely avoiding him in fantasy this year so something positive did come out of it in the end.

The other thing to note is watching the premiership abroad is so much easier than watching it at home (without spending a fortune on subscriptions) every hotel room has the games on, as do all the bars, including games not even shown back home. You can certainly see why so many international players play FPL.

I also have some great football memories whilst being abroad, and this years international tournament will be my first one since 2004 where I haven’t been abroad in some capacity during it. I was in Spain in 2008 and 2010 whilst they won the euro’s and World Cup. I even ended up staying in the same hotel in Sweden, as the Peru football team in their final warm up game for the World Cup in 2018. Even earlier memories saw me visit the ‘camp nou’ during euro 2000, and buying a ‘figo’ kit only to see him score past England a couple of days later (and then move to Madrid that summer) I also have great memories of watching the famous 5-1 vs Germany (2001) in a British bar in Spain with my family. Things don’t always go quite to plan though, in Euro 16 I was ridiculed by my friends, while away in Greece, after making plans to be at the ‘quarter final vs France’ in a pub with them, only to then see us humiliated by iceland.

As for watching live games abroad in stadiums, that’s probably one step too far for my wife. I did however get her to a baseball game in Canada, and we both got very into bastketball there too as we watched 3 games in fan zones seeing Toronto win the nba title for the first time in their history. My best football live game abroad remains watching Hamburg on my ‘stag do’ where they beat the drop on the final day of the season vs Schalke (57,000 great atmosphere)

So there we have it, I hopefully will get back to some holidays when it’s safe to do so, but at the moment it’s certainly easier for me to manage my multiple teams whilst being in the U.K. Although I’m no doubt going to be stressing around the wife’s birthday, not over what present to get her, or what restaurant to take her to, but instead thinking of who Ukraine’s starting goalkeeper will be.

Good luck all in any euro games your playing, feel free to share any ‘fantasy’ stories or challenges you have faced whilst being on holiday in the U.K. or abroad.

Now as much as I enjoy football, and playing fantasy, the main reason I put so much time into it is mainly to try and win ‘cash leagues’ and to see some rewards for my efforts.

From an early age I had an interest in gambling, and in particular numbers and stats. Gambling was a big part of my family growing up, in particular horse racing as opposed to football betting. My favourite yearly sporting event to watch is probably still the ‘grand national’.

Even at school I would make bets with friends, on things like football matches, games of pool, poker games or even big brother evictions 🙂 I understand the dangers of gambling, and have always kept within my means, and am relatively sensible on bets. Even when I started my first ‘sun dream team’ mini league in 2007 as a casual player there was a small entrance fee attached £5 per player.

As I detailed in a previous blog, while I understood there were big prizes available on fantasy football. I thought people were just getting lucky, as opposed to much skill/time and effort being involved and due to the entrance fees and cost of making transfers (premium phone calls) I also thought there was an element of a ‘con’ being involved by the organisers.

My biggest regret in ‘fantasy’ is not becoming a serious player sooner (I started in 2016 after playing for 9 years as a casual) why this is a regret is largely due to the much bigger prize money that seemed to be available years ago. Whilst I’m not suggesting these games would have been any easier to win or challenge in, there certainly seemed a lot more available of them (daily mirror/star/record etc) and they also used to have alot more prizes available (top 50/ manager of the week/ month etc) now it seems all the top fantasy managers in the country are competing for a couple of prizes.

Every year I see ‘dream team’ drop its prize money and place payouts (the euro game pays out 1 person) and whilst fanteam does offer big prizes looking at their seasonal league most of the big winners are massive multi entrants, also this brings the top players in the world to the table. For me my preference would be to make them ‘gambling games’ and charge everyone a small entrance fee to play (£2 per team) to create some extra prize money, unfortunately I cannot see this happening anytime soon. It certainly seems the future of ‘fantasy’ in the U.K. in terms of big prizes is fanteam.

In terms of prize winnings, I am no expert by any means, many well known players in the ‘community’ have won life changing amounts.I am however coming off the back of my most successful season yet with £7,700 of winnings, this was off around £250-300 of entrance fees. Just over 5k came from dream team, 2k FPL and the rest fanteam and sky. I should also point out I imagine these seasonal ranks I achieved (12th in dream team and 1,600th in FPL) will be my PB’s for many years to come if not forever? So I certainly am not expecting a seasonal win like this again. In terms of career wins I have won £12k off probably an investment of just under 1k. I would estimate 9-9.5k has come from the ‘sun dream team’ format. The majority of this has been won in national leagues (online groups etc) only £1,400 has come from my local league. The only problem with these national leagues is they are extremely hard to win, and you find yourself completing against the top players in the national leaderboard too.

In terms of risks involved, of course sending money to people you don’t know comes with risk, I usually stick to £10/£20 entrance games, although I even know of a £200 a head game (far too rich for me) I have never personally been affected by someone taking the funds although I have heard of this happening, so I think always try and do abit of research of the group/ individual, and only enter what you can afford, whilst setting yourself a budget to start with, and don’t spend winnings until it’s in your account (I’m currently waiting on £275 from an fpl league still) Sky offer a great feature where they hold the funds (the sun did this a few years ago) and this would be my preference.

There is a great mix of cash leagues out there to suit all budgets, many are ‘novelty’ leagues too, which add a bit of fun even if your team as a whole isn’t doing too well (monthly league/ weekly eliminations etc)

Again thanks for reading and please share any cash league stories or your successes in them, and good luck to anyone entering any euro cash leagues.

After 11 years of playing ‘Sun dream team’ (see my #2 blog https://keysersozefantasyfootball.sport.blog/2021/04/27/blog-2-transition-from-casual-to-serious-player/ I began to play other game formats in 2018

There were quite a few reasons for this, alot of the articles on Twitter I was reading were focused on FPL or Sky. I was enjoying moderate success in the Sun’s game (few thousand in prize money) alot of the top players I interacted with were also playing in different formats (the FB group I’m in also had a good league combining scores across the different formats) so I wanted to challenge myself further. One of my best friends also had quit the sun’s game many years ago, and was now a big fan of FPL so I wanted to challenge him, and I felt a lot of my friends saw FPL as the better, more complete game.

I think back to some of the dark days of ‘dream team’ trying to defend a dodgy reporters ‘man of the match’ or algorithm to my mini league players. On top of these things I saw more formats as a chance to try and win more cash leagues.

My first season in FPL couldn’t have gone much better, and I ended with a rank of 10,335. Sadly I didn’t enter cash leagues in this season, and wanted to use it to learn the game, also to see if I could adapt to playing different formats at the same time. It was nice to win my local friends though (and this year we now have a cash league set up) Admittedly after this first year I thought the game was pretty easy and I had cracked it, I didn’t understand all the fuss of a top 10k rank, as in ‘Sun dream team’ I was now inside the top few hundred and in the World Cup edition even had a few teams inside the top 50. I quickly came crashing back down to earth in my 2nd FPL season and finished 284k, losing to a few of my casual mates in the process. I’m pleased to say I have just set a new PB coming 1,594th in my 3rd season.

I think that’s one of the main differences between ‘dream team’ and ‘FPL’ in that a decent player in DT through having access to entering 10 teams, you would always expect to find them inside the top 1k, whereas in FPL due to the wider player pool and massive captain score differences, a good player could easier find themselves outside the top 500k. Yes 8 million enter throughout the season, but recently 53% were inactive (no transfers for 5 weeks) and yet decent players still find themselves struggling, I guess the bench also helps the inactive teams.

I certainly regret not entering FPL sooner, I think the bench and all the chips initially put me off. I also didn’t use to follow the teams not in Europe that closely due to this being key to the ‘dream team’ format. I really enjoyed FPL this year and achieved a great season in prize money (which I will update on in my next blog)

As for other formats, I have started playing telegraph, Sky and fanteam in the past couple of years. I will start providing regular updates on my Twitter next season on these, as due to a personal issue, had to reduce my focus on these in December and missed a few weeks so I’m only having an average year on these although am in profit still on fanteam. Sky is the game I still struggle with the most. I find it’s format of having all your transfers in hand (same as telegraph) hard and would rather have a deadline to use them by. I’m also still getting to grips with the 3-1’s. Planning the captaincy days isn’t an issue for me, I also need to understand sky’s bonus point system more too.

I like the way each game has their own features, of course certain things are frustrating but I enjoy them all in different ways. I also love the way usually if you don’t own a player in one format you usually hold him in at least one other so it doesn’t totally ruin your weekend if they score a hatrick. At times it feels like managing my teams are a full time job especially the games with transfers between games, I was managing 19 teams at the start of the season and that didn’t include the champions league games to come on fanteam. Despite the stress of the recent season, I’m preparing to put myself through it all again this summer across 4 formats and multiple teams for the euro’s.

Once again thanks for reading, feel free to share you experiences on playing multiple formats of fantasy at the same time, and which game is your favourite. Next time I will discuss cash leagues, and some of the recent successes I have had in them

In my first blog https://keysersozefantasyfootball.sport.blog/2021/04/25/how-i-started-playing-fantasy-football/ I explained how for 9 years, I operated as a casual player, winning my local league just once, although I did manage 3 other cash place finishes. I wasn’t a terrible player, I just didn’t really understand the game, the rules fully, and the tools that were out there.

Every year I would enter my 1 team (I had no idea multi’s existed) I always enjoyed the game, and the banter with friends, but that was the extent of it for me. Of course I knew through the Sun newspaper, there were big prizes available, but at this stage I myself wasn’t entering the official league and I was just manually working out points for my mini league. I guess I thought players winning big were just having amazing once in a lifetime seasons, I had no idea it was the same players, challenging year on year not just in ‘sun dream team’ but the other big national newspaper games too.

Sometime around 2015, I came across sites like ‘fantasy football scout’ and ‘fantasy football geek’ however at the time I wasn’t playing FPL which these sites were largely geared towards. It was the summer of 2016 where things really changed for me, when I joined Twitter and joined a ‘fantasy football group’ on FB which was focused on sun dream team (let me know if you want to join)

The first thing that shocked me, was that previous BIG national winners were on here, not only were they active, they had known each other for years, many since the late 90’s. They would share tips, and had their own mini leagues between themselves. On Twitter I was amazed at the size of the community and the levels of amazing content people produce.

I think it was a mix of seeing the success others have had, wanting to get better myself, and ultimately win some cash leagues that led to my hours spent on ‘fantasy’ to increase dramatically since summer 2016. Results came almost immediately and I have won my local cash league (approx 35 players) 5 years in a row since then and the World Cup version (a future blog will cover cash leagues in more detail) I began playing multiple teams for the first time often to join the enjoyable ‘novelty’ leagues with different unique features rather than just traditional leagues.

Upon joining cash leagues with these top national players, there was definitely doubt at the beginning (am I wasting my money/ are they trustworthy/ will I be able to compete) to my surprise I began challenging and winning some of these too. I even started running some of my own leagues before too long.

In terms of the increased time spent on ‘fantasy’ I find myself spending hours keeping up to date with injury news/ setting alarms for transfers and team news/reading match reports/ analysing stats/ as well as providing updates for the leagues I run. The actual watching of football may surprise some people in that other than Man Utd games, I don’t watch that many other full games, however I do watch highlights of all prem/ fa cup/ league cup and international games.

The move from being a ‘casual’ player was really about understanding the ‘inner workings’ of the games, building budget/ making transfers at the right times/ looking ahead at fixtures and understanding match ratings.

For the next 2 years until 2018 I was still only playing ‘sun dream team’ my next blog will detail my move into multiple formats. Feel free to share how you moved from being a ‘casual’ player. Thank you for reading

As a 35 year old, my earliest football memories start in 1992, when the premier league started. I think this was a great age to be when sky brought much more game access to the masses. I’m a Man Utd fan (my dad supports them, as did my grandad who attended the 1968 European final) and I was your typical football mad kid. Subbuteo, match and shoot magazines with the league ladders. Sticker albums (I still have my completed original 1994 merlin album) I owned the first fifa in 1994. I loved The ‘pro match cards’ with the big heads, as well as the ‘Corinthian figurines’ with the big heads.

From a young age, I was very good with numbers and stats (I now have worked in finance for 16 years) My first knowledge of fantasy, was when in summer 1994- the paper our family purchased ‘the sun’, announced the launch of ‘dream team’ As a 8 year old, this sounded amazing to me, and I ran my first mini league with a few friends and my dad where I worked out the points. I have no idea how many weeks I actually did this for, or if it ran the whole season, and of course at that age no money was involved. My hobby that would later become an obsession had began.

Incredibly I didn’t do anything fantasy related for another 13 years. Of course I would see it in the paper every year, but I think my family used to put me off it by saying about the high cost of telephone charges (those old enough will remember you had to ring a premium number for transfers)

Instead I focused on playing football, and played 9 years as a child and 5 as an adult (we were a very successful team in our county- but I was never more than a decent player in my town, I was never paid to play) In recent years 5 a side has been the extent of me still playing.I also spent a lot of my youth on football management games, I was never really that into FIFA or PES except having some heated games with my brother

My fantasy journey started up again in 2007, aged 21 where after a split from a long term girlfriend, I wanted something to do to keep me busy, and set up my first local ‘sun dream team cash league’ entrance was £5 and it still runs to this day although the entrance is now £10- we get between 20-40 every year. I used to actually work out all the points (as you used to have to pay to enter the Sun, and otherwise this would put some of my friends off)

I came 2nd in the first season, the game was almost a ‘pick and stick’ back then and I think it had 2/3 transfer windows only allowing 3 transfers. For the next 9 years, I was the very definition of casual player, my local league had 9 different winners in its first 9 years (I have now won the last 5 and World Cup version) I had no idea of blocks, 3 for 1’s, I wouldn’t look at fixture runs, team news was also a lot harder to get back then.

So that was how I got into fantasy football, in my next blogs I will focus on my transition from casual to serious player, cash leagues, playing multi formats as well as memorable and funny stories along the way. Please comment with your early memories of fantasy, or how you got into it, or your memories of the football memorabilia (pictures below) I mentioned. Thanks for reading