It may be early days yet but PlayTheGame managers have been busy identifying potential transfer targets since the season started.
Actually, many have been doing it since their player allocations. This process is far from scientific and relies on a curious combination of statistics, opinion and news before being filtered by the mother of rational thought killers: personal preference. Bearing all that in mind we have prepared a list of players most likely to lose value as the season goes on and as such perfect for use as bargaining chips in pursuit of one's transfer targets, whoever they may be.
Paul Scholes (central midfield player, Manchester United) - The pass master as he is known within PlayTheGame circles is peerless when it comes to the successful passes category. No one in the Premier League comes even close but Scholes will be 33 in November, will likely lose playing time to one of Owen Hargreaves or Michael Carrick when the duo return from injury and is always just one lunge away from a horrific tackle that will see him sent off and suspended. As such, it may be time to offload the maestro to an unassuming fellow manager who does not see the writing on the wall or indeed here.
Wes Brown (right back, Manchester United) - After several seasons marred by injury, the Manchester United defender is generally viewed as a player who has failed to live up to expectations, but Brown has quietly put together an impressive run of performances that has driven his value to new heights, namely in the Defence, Average Goals Against and Clean Sheets categories. However, beware the pending return of Gary Neville whose recovery may have been delayed but is unlikely to be put off much longer.
Alexander Hleb (right midfield, Arsenal) - The slight and deceptively quick midfield player has proved that he can take a knock or two but even by his standards the midfielder has taken a beating in the current campaign. Hleb is particularly adept at controlling the ball in tight spaces, but this results in many a defender kicking lumps out of the pride of Belarus. Hleb is tough but he is not invincible. If possible, look to offload him to a Gooner in your league whose sense of proportion has been affected by visions of The Invincibles season of 2003-04 brought on by Arsenal's strong start.
The African contingent (various) - El-Hadji Diouf, Michael Essien, Didier Drogba, Salomon Kalou, Kolo Toure to name just a few of the Premier League's top players who will miss a significant number of matches next year thanks to the African Cup of Nations. The tournament starts on January 20 and runs until February 10 so those representing the countries which advance to the final stages will miss more than three weeks of the season.
Kasper Schmeichel (goalkeeper, Manchester City) - The bubble will burst for both Manchester City and the young Dane. There is no arguing with the club's results thus far but it is a safe bet that a slide down the table will begin soon. The question is how far they will drop and the answer to that may very well be connected to young Schmeichel. He has kept clean sheets more often than not to start his career but has looked less than certain at times, particularly on set pieces and crosses which may very well be down to the fact that at barely six feet tall, he is very much on the short side at his position. A lack of experience may also work against him but even more worrying is the return from injury of Andreas Isaksson, a Sweden international.
Comments (5)
Hi there
I understand the ruling on transfers is that 50% of a leagues members have to agree it.
I have tried to make a couple, but didn't recieve a single response, same as when I tried to start a some discussions and forums.
Shame really.
PTG: Bill, 50% of a league's members have to approve a transfer for it to go through (no response for 48 hours counts as a vote in favour of a transfer) but two teams need to agree it first. As for your comment about the forum and polls in your league, it sounds like a poorly supported one though don't give up as it sometimes takes league members a few months to get used to the game. If the situation persists we suggest either taking your chances in a different public league(s) or forming one of friends, colleagues or family members that is bound to be more communicative for the 2008-09 season.
Posted by Bill Ainsworth | October 8, 2007 3:42 PM
Posted on October 8, 2007 15:42
There are many who could surely be added to this list -
John Terry would attract a lot of interest if anyone offered him up for sale. Taking into account his lack of goals in the past couple of seasons, his determination to play through multiple injuries - which will surely end in a lengthly spell out before too much longer, and chelsea's transitional period post-Jose, he would not be a player i'd be in a hurry to pick up.
Posted by Thomas McCluskey | October 8, 2007 8:56 PM
Posted on October 8, 2007 20:56
Hi,
Could you explain to me the ruling of the notice pickup system. If a player is on notice and two managers have him as first choice pending claim, how do you decide who gets him?
PTG: Philip, every PTG manager is assigned a waiver priority ranking when their league was formed. This ranking is the reverse of the order in which players were allocated. When two managers place a claim for a player, the manager with the higher waiver priority ranking secures the player and his/her waiver priority drops to last. You can see your league's waiver priority ranking on the Add/Release page (under the My Team tab) by clicking the Notice Priority List link (next to the Pending Notice Claims header).
Posted by Philip Cohen | October 8, 2007 9:58 PM
Posted on October 8, 2007 21:58
Hi.. about offloading Paul Scholes, have you gone stark raving mad?! I'm writing this on 9th October and Scholesy is already on a whopping 613 successful passes, a full 209 MORE than 2nd place Fabregas on 404 SP's!
I'd bet money that no other player on earth has this kinda pass average on the same number of games, so to transfer him would be soccer suicide!
I agree that its a matter of time before the Ginger Genius gets sent off for some kung fu lunge, but his SPs by the end of the season will virtually guarantee you maximum SP points, and I sense that Hargreaves is another sicknote, plays a game then has 3 off sick, and Carrick looks about £15 million overpriced, so Scholesy IS the man at ManU!
Posted by Sid Lizard | October 9, 2007 8:48 AM
Posted on October 9, 2007 08:48
Hi, Back at the start of the season I couldn't get any of my mates to take an interest in this game because they just wanted to play a simple one which they already knew, so I entered public leagues. The annoying thing that happened was that my teams got locked into leagues because they filled up before I expected. I had one team left available and then around the start of september it was placed into a public league automatically called Tottenham Hotspur 8 without me doing anything. So now I have no way of entering a new league, and the managers in the leagues which I am in are not playing the game very much. Should I put this down to a game design fault or is there something you or I can do about it?.
Posted by N.Mansfield | October 12, 2007 9:24 PM
Posted on October 12, 2007 21:24