THE HOFF 20

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the HOFF.

The HOFF was suggested by a few of the whatsapp members, and will basically work as an all time league table. Initially, the HOFF has been created with just 20 players, some on the whatsapp group, former prizewinners, contributors etc. The next move will be to make the table up to 50 members, and we’ll primarily draw on members of the FFUK whatsapp and facebook groups. Alternatively, if you would like to see your name on the HOFF, let us know, and we’ll add you in the next update.

Here is the overall table:

To explain, the league table is based on all overall rankings recorded from previous seasons. For each player above, we have incorporated all previous FPL rankings.

We have then scored each player based on, Years playing, Average rank, Best finish and Worst finish. This has given each player a HOFF Rating.

We have also shown the current overall rankings for reference although this does not affect the HOFF Rating.

As we can see, Jamie Stewart (JDS) is 1^st overall in the HOFF table, this is because he has the highest Rating. Jamie has been playing for 9 seasons, his Worst finish is relatively high, finishing 322961^st is by no means embarrassing, and that was his worst season. But Jamie has also excelled, his Best finish being 127^th in the world, back in the 2009-2010 season. Now this also means that Jamie has a decent Average rank, of 71,598^th. Impressive considering he’s been playing for 9 seasons.

The reason we have taken into account all of these scores, is the HOFF would be otherwise biased towards people who haven’t been playing long but have achieved very good overall ranks. Case in point is Lester Deeble who has only played 1 season, but finished very well, 11,913^th in the world. This means that although Lester’s Best finish is not earth-shattering when compared to some of our high achievers, his Worst finish is very high, and his Average ranking is the same, all 11,913^th. As Lester has only played for 1 season this is accounted for in the HOFF, where he sits at 6^th overall.  Of course, if Lester has another good season this time round his Rating will improve. The same goes for Mark Turnbull who also finished well in his first season (2015-16) with an overall ranking of 32616. Lester and Mark top the charts based on both Average ranking, and Worst Finish, though they sit mid-table for Best Finish, and are among the lowest for Years playing.

Now let’s look at some more general findings.

I was happy to see Tim McEwan so high up the list in 4^th overall. You might not think it by looking at Tim’s current ranking but Tim is in fact an FFUK legend. The reason for this is that Tim has done well, and consistently well. And don’t we love consistency! Of the players with more than a single season under their belts, Tim has the highest Worst finish, 109,428^th, which in fact was last season 2015-16. If we took last season out, Tim’s Worst finish was 57,470^th. That’s his worst finish for 5 years. Get it together Tim. FFUK needs you. Don’t give up.

Another surprise was the excellent Best finish scores for numerous FFUKers.

Joining Jamie in the Top 3 are Chris Galloway and Neil Stewart. In the season before last Neil did a whopper, achieving 139^th in the world (little did we know that Jamie had actually surpassed this excellent finish previously). Further, our very own Chris had a bit of a special finish of 379th back in the same season when Jamie had his Best Finish. This means we have 3 players amongst us with Top 500 finishes. I bow to you all.

The next best club shows that a further six of our number have achieved Top 10,000 finishes. This is a good ranking, I would love to be amongst you lads. Duncan Hannigan, Daz Russell, Paul Baker, Tim McEwan, Rich Harrison and Matt Cox have all had superlative finishes in previous years.

And that leaves the rest of us. Ultimately, you can see that I for one, am 17^th overall. This is why Chris Galloway says I don’t know anything about fantasy football! The reason for my poor Rating is due to my consistently bad Worst finishes and therefore Average ranking. If you want to join me down at the bottom then your best plan of attack is to take lots of hits. I was surprised to see that Paul Baker has had the highest Worst Finish, of 2,822,966^th, but like Chris, Paul has been playing for ten years, and he’s made up for it with his high finishes. I however, have not done so (though I’m trying hard), and hold the title for 3^rd Worst finish overall, and that was only the season before last. That’s embarrassing.

My brother Steve Cronin in 20^th has a similar problem, but he’s only played two seasons, and only one seriously, the current season. As Steve has been above me all season except this week, I won’t say too much, oh and he also took a prize last season too. Hmph.

And if your name hasn’t been mentioned, that’s probably a good thing as it means you’re somewhere in the middle. Mark Leathem was another surprise there, a Best Finish of 13,095^th in 2010-11 and a decent Worst finish of 396,282 in 2011-12 is not too shabby at all.

And that’s it for now. See what you think of the HOFF.

Next up will be a Top 50 update, and in the meantime we will integrate this information into the HOFF tab (above).

Enjoy, and as always, best of luck to one and all.