The Rules

Driftaway Fantasy Football | My gaff; My Rules

The Rules - items in red have been changed from last year.

THE AUCTION

The Auction is completely different this year, it’s all being done by email and by blind bids. That is, you have no idea who else is bidding, nor how much. You start with £125million. Stage 1 - The Premium Players will be sold in randomly grouped sets of 5. The results of this part will be published and we move to Stage 2 - all unsold players will be re-grouped into sets of 3 and you’ll be able to bid for them. These results will be published and we move to Stage 3. Any remaining cash from your £125mill will be removed and you’ll get a fresh £80million, from which you’ll fund your Multi-Player purchases. I’ll give you a list of the Multi-players – those who have more than one copy - and ask you to indicate those you want, in order of preference. Picking order will be determined by a small test of skill. The limit on selecting players from one club is unaltered, you may name as many players as you like from one club, but only four of them will be counted. So, if you name four Arsenal boys in the first XI, and three more on the subs bench, the subs will only come on for other Arsenal players.

TRADING

As the season progresses, the players’ prices will alter,(slightly faster this season) depending on their performances, so it will be possible to make, or lose, money on players you buy. When trading you will always pay or receive the full pool price. There are some limits on your transfer activities, though. You may buy one player each week without penalty, (we’ll call this your ‘free’ buy) but each further buy will cost you 4 points, in addition to the cash for the player. One ‘free’ buy can be saved and used in a subsequent week, giving you two buys without penalty, but this is the maximum allowed, you cannot save more than one ‘free’ buy. Four times during the season you will be allowed to buy as many players as you want without being penalised. One of these ‘free’ weeks must be used during the January transfer window, the others you can use whenever you like.

SCORING

Players are classified as goalies; defenders; midfielders; or strikers. The team you select must contain a goalie and from 3 – 5 defenders. The rest can be any mixture of midfielders and strikers you like. They score points as follows:-

GOALS 4 points for a goal. 5 points for a super-goal = hit from outside the penalty area. 8 points for a MEGAGOAL, scored from within the scorer's own half of the pitch (thank you, Christy). 1 point for an assist (pass to the goalscorer). 2 points for an assist where the scorer needs a maximum of 2 touches. No assists will be given for passes completed in the players' own half of the pitch. 3 points for scoring a penalty. 2 points for earning a penalty. 2 points for saving a penalty. Minus 2 points for conceding a penalty. Minus 2 points for failing to score a penalty. Note – assists are sometimes not as clear as we would like, due to intervention from defenders, goalies, crossbars etc. As a general rule, deliberate playing of the ball by a goalie (saving, blocking, punching out a cross) will not affect the assist, but the same action from a defender that delivers the ball to the goalscorer will remove the assist. Deflections by a defender (e.g. a partial block of a cross, ball hitting him at very close range, back turned to play) will not affect the assist, but the same action from a teammate will give him the assist rather than the original player. There are bound to be cases that aren’t that easy to analyse, and in such cases I’ll tend to favour the attacking intentions of the player.

DEFENCE Defenders score 4 points for a clean sheet (no goals conceded); 1 point for conceding just 1 goal; minus 1 point for conceding 2 goals; and minus 1 more point for each extra goal conceded. So letting in 4 goals costs you 3 points, 5 goals costs you 4 and so on. Goalies score in the same way as defenders, but they start with 5 for a clean sheet, 2 for conceding 1 goal, zero for 2 goals and then minus 1 more point for each extra goal. In other words, goalies score 1 more point than defenders for each result.

MIDFIELD Midfielders score 2 points if their team wins; 1 point if they keep a clean sheet; 1 point if they win by 3 clear goals; and minus 1 if they lose by 2 goals or more.

EVERYBODY Defenders, strikers and goalies all get one point if their team wins. And anybody conceding a direct free kick from which a goal is scored will lose 1 point.

NASTY INCIDENTS A red card in the first half is minus four, in the second half minus three. Furthermore, if your man’s team is not losing when he’s sent off, but then goes on to lose the game, it’ll cost you another point. Own goals cost you minus three points.
To qualify for defence or midfield points the player must be on the field for at least 22 minutes. So if he goes off injured his substitution must be at 22:00 or later. If he comes on as a substitute it must be at 69:59 or earlier (I know this is not 22 minutes from the 90 minute mark, but they nearly always play some added time, so I’m being generous.) Anyone playing less time will not usually be counted as having played, and a substitute, if available, will play instead. The exception is when the player scores some personal points – a goal or a red card for example – in which case he will count no matter how long he’s on the field. You cannot benefit from being sent off. So if a player is sent off after 10 minutes and his team then lose 4 – 0, he will now still score the same minus 3 as the other defenders. On a more positive note, anyone who scores a goal or assist will now be eligible for the team win / midfield points, no matter how long he’s on the pitch.

TEAM SELECTION

Although you may have the entire Tottenham team in your squad (there are some mentalists out there) you will only be allowed to pick four of them in your first XI. You may put the others on the bench, but they will only be able to substitute for other Tottenham players. So the limit is four players from any one Premiership team in your first XI at any one time. If you pick too many, the last named player will not count, and will be substituted, if appropriate/possible. At the start of the season you pick your team – 1 goalie, 3 – 5 defenders and the rest a mixture of midfielders and strikers. This selection will stand until you decide to change it. You’ll probably want to do that now and again, usually when your defenders are playing against Man City, Chelsea, or West Brom. In which case, email me at davetrahar@gmail.com or give me a ring on 01992 638096 or 07544 502677 and tell me who’s in and who’s out.

It’s worth noting that the most successful managers are always those who change their selection regularly. In addition to your starting 11 you can name five outfield substitutes and any number of substitute goalies. We’ll ask you to number your subs, and they’ll be used in that order. Any outfield player can sub for any other – so it’s possible to have a defender sub for a striker, or vice-versa - providing it doesn’t break the 3 – 5 defenders rule. Note that your substitute goalies don't count as part of your 5 sub allowance - you may have as many of them as you want in addition to your regular subs.

INCOME

There are four ways to accumulate the money you’ll need to buy James Rodriguez, Mueller and Neymar when they sign for Brighton in January.

1. Your weekly wage – everyone gets £500K.

2. Goal and clean sheet bonuses - £100K each.

3. Gambling. You’ll each be invited to join the Sky Sports Super Six Driftaway League. This simply entails registering an email address and a pin number. Thereafter, each week you’re asked to predict the scores in 6 matches, usually Premier League games but occasionally from the lower divisions when there aren’t enough PL games on Saturday. Whichever of us posts the best set of predictions will be awarded £Fantasy2mill. This will reduce my admin workload considerably and has the added bonus that you can win REAL MONEY, usually £250K for an all correct forecast, or £5K for the best score of the week if nobody wins the jackpot. Occasionally, Jeff Stelling goes mad and ups the jackpot prize to £1mill. What a nice man. I’ll email each of you with details of how and where to register before the big kick off.

4. SkillCash. We calculate the score of your first XI and compare it with the score of last week’s first XI – i.e. what you would have scored if you had left your team unchanged. Every extra point earns you £100K. For example – if last week’s XI would have scored 13 and your new selection scores 18 – you get 5 x £100K = £500K. You can’t lose any money, but you can only win by astute team management.

OTHER STUFF

Your squad will be a maximum of 20 players. Until kick off of week 25 you can trade players with other managers, but after that you can only trade through the pool. If one of your players is sold out of the premiership, you’ll get his full pool price as compo. There’s no compo for injured blokes; if you want to get rid of a metatarsal victim you’ll have to sell him. You now get the full pool price for players you sell to the pool, and you can charge what you like for sales between managers. We will again be competing for the John Charles Cup, a single leg knockout right through.

The ‘Satisfaction’ points system, whereby your players will leave you if you don’t pick them enough, will apply to all players this season, and you’ll find the Premium players get hacked off pretty quickly if you don’t pick them. Each player will receive a ‘satisfaction’ rating each week, according to the following rules. If you pick him in your first 11, he gets 2 points if he plays, 1 point if he doesn’t. If you put him on the subs bench he gets 1 if he plays, none if he doesn’t. If you drop him completely he gets minus 3 if he plays and scores some points, minus 2 if he plays and scores zero or minus points, and none if he doesn’t play. So a player who’s turning out regularly for Swansea but not getting into your side could quickly slide into minus figures. If he reaches -13 then you’ve lost him, but you’ll get plenty of warning as the colour of his ‘SP’ (satisfaction points) cell on your teamsheet will gradually change from Green = OK, through Yellow, Orange, Dark Orange, and ultimately Black. If you practise a bit of team rotation you’ll have no trouble at all

On designated weeks - see the Schedule - the lowest scoring team will be 'Chopped' by Old Nick, thereby losing their chance to win a couple of bottles of primo A1 plonk from the renowned cellars of Chateau Driftaway.

There may be occasions when the ownership of a goal or assist is in doubt. A couple of seasons back the press and TV boys all gave a goal to Andy Cole, even though the slo-mo clearly showed he hadn’t touched the ball, and we've also had Peter Crouch’s first Liverpool goal, or was it an oggie? In all such cases the decision of the Secretary will be final, though if you believe you've got some evidence to sway the decision, please let me know. I will do my best to avoid taking points away from a player just because I don’t like the diving little ~~Rooney~~ smeghead.

I think that’s about it. Any questions – 01992 638096 or email to davetrahar@gmail.com