This guy had the worst fantasy football week you could possibly imagine
The popularity of Fantasy Premier League has soared in recent years, as fans worldwide look to get a small taste of the highs and lows of football management. This is one of the lows.
For those not familiar with FPL, it’s an online game where “managers” pick a squad of 15 real-life Premier League players, using a notional budget of £100m in “fantasy cash”. Managers then score FPL points based on the performance of the 11 players they pick each week - goals, assists and clean sheets etc - transferring players in and out as the season progresses.
For many it’s a bit of fun that helps keep them interested in games that don’t involve their favourite team. For others, it’s practically a way of life and can send devotees into bouts of joy - or the pits of despair. It's there where we join our hero, Pete Picheta.
Pete, from Poland and a member of a league named Galway Super League, played his “wildcard”, which allows managers to tear up their teams and build them from scratch without incurring the usual points penalty for making more than one transfer a week.
He came up with a team that most would be happy with, albeit with a couple of players that may have raised a few eyebrows.
Brighton midfielder Jonathan Hogg was drafted in, thanks his rock-bottom £4.4m valuation, to make room for more expensive players. Injury-prone West Ham striker Andy Carroll took his place in Pete’s frontline despite not having scored a league goal yet this season.
What followed was the kind of onslaught of bad luck that would make any dedicated FPL player wake up in a cold sweat.
Not only did his star player Alexis Sanchez not play (with speculation that his head wasn’t right after Chile failed to qualify for the World Cup), but his captaincy passed to Carroll, whose sending off meant a whopping points for his poor FPL owners.
Without a solitary goal, assist or clean sheet (even an own goal from Chelsea’s César Azpilicueta, just to rub it in), his ‘Chuligany’ team of 11 players scored a miserable 11 points.
To put that into context, players get just two points for showing up and playing 60 minutes or more.
If the unfortunate guy had left his team well alone, he’d have been at least 11 points better off. We feel for you, Pete.
On the bright side, he may have had a nightmare week, but he can still hold his head high. He remains top of the Galway Super League on 469 points for the season, and is still ranked a very respectable 152,626 in the world among over 5.2 million teams.
Chin up Pete - there's always next week!
