Now that the dust has settled, we thought you might like to know what some of our winners have taken away as prizes this year in our monthly and weekly prize draws.

For the weekly prizes where we offered our winner a choice of team strip, the most popular choices were England and Manchester United kits, but we also gave away kits covering clubs the length and the breadth of the country, well from Swansea to Kilmarnock anyway.

Our monthly prize winners got the choice of Premier League match tickets and whilst our most recent monthly winner will choose a game from next seasons fixture list, the other monthly winners chose as follows:

Continue reading "Season round up" »

We reveal the winners of two Times In-house leagues

Last July, before the season kicked off, we told you about two PlayTheGame leagues solely for Times employees. One was a league of football writers, all keen to prove their superior knowledge and understanding of the game by demolishing their colleagues as the readership looked on. The other was featured in our Fantasy Football supplement, and was created to launch the live allocation facility that we introduced. You may recall the photographs of ten Times employees from various sections of the paper gathered around a table in the sports editor's office - only five of whom were there solely for the free beer and pizza.

Continue reading "So Who Really Knows What They're Talking About?" »

The Monday night match between Portsmouth and Sunderland threw up one final debutante to be added to the ranks of PlayTheGame for the 2008/09 season. The scramble can now begin to sign Asmir Begovic of Portsmouth.

The player was added at around 17:02 GMT on May 19th and is subject to the usual 48 hour notice period.

After the penultimate weekend of matches in the Premier League, Cho Won-Hee of Wigan is potentially the last player to be added to PlayTheGame for the 2008/09 season. Only a Portsmouth or Sunderland player can take this title away from him, should any player make their debut on Monday evening.

So if you want one last throw of the dice, the player was added at around 17:00 GMT on May 18th and is subject to the usual 48 hour notice period.

It has been bought to our attention that Richard Kingson came on as a substitute for Wigan's injury prone goalkeeper Chris Kirkland in their defeat against West Brom at the weekend. He therefore needs to be added to the ranks of PTG.

The player was added at around 19:00 BST on May 12th and is subject to the usual 48 hour notice period.

Unfortunately the delay means that managers will not be able to acquire the player before the Wigan match against Manchester United on Wednesday evening.

There are a small number of leagues where Kingson is already associated with a team as he was in our original lists when we opened the game in mid July. In these cases, other managers in the league will not have the opportunity to pick up this player.

Two new players have been added to PlayTheGame after the Easter weekend matches. So if you're looking for a last minute addition to your squad you can now sign up Aaron Doran of Blackburn Rovers or Chris Woods of West Bromwich Albion.

The players are being added to the PTG player lists as is normal practice for players coming through the ranks and playing in a league match.

The players were added at around 17:00 BST on April 13th and are subject to the usual 48 hour notice period.

Due to some technical issues, we are not going to be able to change the days on which the emails are sent, so despite the previous post, you can expect your PTG updates on Friday and Monday as normal.

Apologies for any confusion caused. We hope that you all have a very good Easter weekend.

As I'm sure you're all aware it's Easter this weekend and for the majority of us that means a day out of the office on Friday and Monday. As result we're going to change our email send times slightly to make sure as many people get to see the emails as possible. So don't be too concerned when you see a PTG email on Thursday, it's ok, you haven't completely missed a day of the week.

To be absolutely clear, Friday's email will be sent on Thursday 9th April and Monday's email will be sent on Tuesday 14th April.

Happy Easter from all at PTG

This one really doesn't need any introduction because you must have had your head in the sand if you are surprised by the fact that we are adding a new player to PTG today.

You know his name is Federico Macheda, you know he plays for Manchester United, you know he scored on his debut, a goal that just happened to seal victory for United in the final minute to take them back to the top of the league. Which means that all you really need to know is that he was added to PTG at 17:10 BST on the 6th April and that any claims on this new hotshot are subject to the usual 48 hour notice period.

If you have no idea what we're talking about, you'd better have a look at the match report and goals video

One new player has been added to PlayTheGame on March 23rd 2009. Josh Payne made his debut in the Premier League for West Ham on Saturday 21st March.

Payne is being added to PTG player lists as is normal practice for players coming through the ranks and playing in a league match.

The player was added at around 17:0 GMT on March 23rd and is subject to the usual 48 hour notice period.