141: Sergio Busquets, Spain, Spain, FIFA World Cup Russia 2018, Panini Official Licensed Sticker Album

Welcome to our 200th post and thank you once again to everyone who has read, liked, retweeted, shared or acknowledged anything we have churned out in the last eighteen months. Today all four of us are joining forces to pay tribute to the sparkling wordplay we have witnessed in the realms of the Fantasy Premier League and the five-a-side pitches we have had the dubious honour of playing on. As this was Mat Jolin-Beech’s idea it only seems fair to let him start proceedings. Apologies to anyone expecting a hagiographical exploration of the career of one of tiki-taka and theatrical diving’s greatest ever talents.

Bear with me here but fantasy football teams are very much like signatures. If, like me, as a bright-eyed youngster, you got your first debit card as your parents signed you up to a child’s current account as a way to teach you financial responsibility, the moment came. Flip over the brand new, shiny rectangle of plastic, and there it was. Staring back at you and a moment that could shape the rest of your life. The signature strip. Now, you could just put anything down as at that age it really doesn’t matter. Or, do what I did, spend weeks scribbling down potential signature after signature after signature.

Where do you look for inspiration? Footballers obviously. Luckily, I had a signed poster from a Premier League winner, Champions League medal holder, and Manchester United legend. The one and only David May. Oh, and Ryan Giggs. I eventually settled on something and committed pen to plastic. The deed was done. 

Since then, the basic signature has remained the same ever since. Bar the odd flourish and tweak, my signature now is essentially the same scrawl it was back then and now, after marking up important documents, like loans, mortgage applications, passport forms, job contracts and so on, it is too late to go for a wholesale change. I am stuck with it for the rest of my life.

The same now appears to go for Fantasy Football team names. I’ve rolled with the classic Sergio’s Biscuits for at least five years now. The Barcelona man can retire happy knowing that a mediocre fantasy football team is named in his honour. Never mind the many trophies he has won. Being part of the same league with a group of old school friends, most of the teams have had the same name since the formation of the League of Legends.

However, at the start of last season, I fancied a change. Something new to mark the start of the Premier League Fantasy Football draft, and to usher in a new era of luck for my mid-table warriors. Think of the glory and excitement that went with the proposed name change when the owners of Hull City AFC wanted to rebrand the club as Hull City Tigers. But bigger. 

What that new name was, I cannot remember. Although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Sergio’s Tiger Biscuits. The reaction was immediate. Shortly after the new name was submitted, WhatsApp lit up. First was an accusation that I’d stolen another name. Then it was followed up with the “Who is this?” comments. To ease the abuse and potential confusion, Sergio’s Biscuits returned. And an upper mid-table finish ensued. Think West Ham United style. So, it appears the name will be a keeper, even long after the combative Spaniard has retired. And the team will forever have a life in mid-table purgatory. Over to Rich.

In general, making shit puns is one of my strengths in life and as such I should be good at naming my fantasy football teams. However, I am not. To such an extent that I have fallen back on Olympique Mayonnaise (Olympique Lyonnais… geddit?) for about the last four years, and that is a team name I’m not even that proud of. This year I was determined to step away from condiment based puns and into a whole new hilarious realm. I failed, but here is the thought process that I went through. 

First up, there was the fantasy football censors to think of. And there was also the self-censoring which I had decided to implement but that in my twenties didn’t exist. It was probably why my team names were significantly better in the 2000-2010 period, but now I had decided to restrict myself I was starting to struggle. On this note, naming fantasy team names will always remind me of the Dulwich five-a-side league team Raoul Moatdrid who were forced to change their name because it was in “bad taste”. The league organisers might’ve had a point, but it was also very creative. So, having cast aside puns that I was very proud of, I was left with watered down current affairs based picks. Putin The Bins Out was pathetically weak. As was Wuhandsanitiser. 

I then moved onto puns based on player names. I was quite proud of Creswellian Nightmare but it had too many letters. As was Chilwellian Nightmare. Clearly the fantasy football people weren’t going to allow any word play on dystopian nightmares, although Arsenal’s Season, would’ve fitted the character limit so it wasn’t completely out of the question. Another issue I had with thinking of a team name based on player name puns is that I don’t actually care about Premier League football, and as such I don’t really know any of the player’s names. I’m not sure Virgil van Dijkhead would’ve been accepted anyway. I did, however eventually come up with one that fell in the ‘acceptable pun’ category: Vestergaarden Party. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not proud of it, but is better than some of the dross that I thought up. I had made a rod for my own back with the name though as I felt obligated to have Jannik Vestergaard in my squad, but he was a surprisingly expensive pick at £5m. Especially when you consider Leicester City don’t even f***ing play him. It took until the international break for me to think “f*** this, I need funds to pick Ronaldo” and binned Vestergaard off in favour of £4.2m worth of someone called Shane Duffy. 

I wasn’t done there though as I have two fantasy football teams, mainly because I am terrible at fantasy football and need to increase my chances of not being awful. Or increase my chances of finishing bottom and second bottom (this scenario is currently looking more likely). This led me to revisit puns on foreign team names, and I got so desperate I actually did a Google search for “strange football team names” so that I could have a base to work from. I’m almost ashamed to say that I eventually settled on CSKA Sofa, as a play on CSKA Sofia. Awful. But I had really run out of steam by this point and I figured the quality of the name reflected the quality of the team I had picked.

So there you have it, bad puns for bad teams. That said, even my good puns didn’t result in good teams. The overall take away from this, I’m bad at fantasy football and shouldn’t have made Billy Gilmour the lynch pin of the CSKA Sofa midfield. Time to whip the wildcard out. Over to Emlyn.

Owing to a lack of general footballing talent, I’ve been limited mainly to playing in University five-a-side teams alongside members of this blog, which were really more an excuse to head to campus and visit the Ram Bar for some discounted pints ahead of nights out. Nonetheless, I can look back in pride of some fine performance from both CFR Clunge, and Bolt’n Chunderers, in my uni days. We may not have won many matches, but we did have snazzy kit cobbled together from Sports Direct, Topman and H&M.

Lacking the ability to continue playing five-a-side once drinking prowess became of less importance, I’ve instead been limited to Fantasy Football League as an outlet for my football knowledge, such as it is. I’ve usually taken the tactic of constructing a team featuring as many Welsh players as possible, with the tactic unfortunately increasingly requiring adding anybody named Davies or Jones to be levered in as fewer and fewer Welsh internationals were drawn from the Premier League. This reached a nadir when I justified including Southampton’s Manolo Gabbiadini in the side on the basis it sounded close enough to Danny Gabbidon.

In recent years, the overwhelming lack of Welsh players available has led me to instead either rely on the randomly selected squads, or to attempt to craft phrases in each department. A couple of years ago, my strikeforce of ‘Propper Long Wood’ and a marginally Partridge-inspired ‘Ruddy Pope’ goalkeeping unit managed to at least trouble the top six in the league of seven. Partridge also featured as inspiration for a team name of ‘Dann! Dann! ……Dann!’, which was also used by Reading in gif form to announce his signing this summer. Then Harry Enfield, via David Brent, inspired ‘Only Mee’. Sadly this tactic of coming up with names means you have to pick the player in question, and neither Scott Dann or Ben Mee really racked up the points in their respective seasons. I’m relying on Jordan Ayew to reward my Blink 182 inspired ‘Where Are Ayewww’ side this year.

As a result, I never really had any luck with the Fantasy League selections, but do regularly partake in a prediction league against some old colleagues, with the crowning moment my league triumph in 2016. Given that my knowledge of the Premier League has declined as Reading’s exile has continued, a repeat seems unlikely, and to be fair my success probably owed as much to the unexpected Leicester triumph that year. I’ve also already been dumped out of the cup competition, suggesting a rough season ahead. Maybe don’t come to me for any betting tips. Over to Manny.

Since Crystal Palace returned to the Premier League in 2013 the vast majority of their seasons have followed a pattern of quite concerning defeats, some surprising victories steadying the ship, things looking bloody awful around Christmas before a solid lower mid-table finish with enough promise to lead Eagles’ supporters to believe that next campaign might be the one that results in a cup victory or foray into Europe. For my experiences with fantasy football please read the above. I knew things were particularly ropey around last Christmas when my unwavering faith in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang led some of my Year 9s to enquire about my overall state of mind.

My penchant for puns is barely any better than the performances of my chosen players on the pitch. In the olden days I tried to come up with witty takes on European clubs with the aforementioned CFR Clunge and Ogimpiakos being the best of a very bad bunch. Always one to bow to peer pressure I moved towards team names based on player names. I was quietly proud of my seven deadly sins’ inspired Greed, Envy, Sorloth until I realised that it wasn’t actually that funny and it didn’t look that good on paper. Last season I tried to double up with the Palace references in the form of Ayew Gonna Go Meyer Way (albeit without the spaces so it would fit) only to be let down by the German midfielder being released, Emlyn coming up with a better Jordan Ayew pun and Lenny Kravitz references not really being acceptable ever.

Thanks to a certain Ghanaian wing back/midfielder I’ve been able to dredge up some more bad music references in the form of The Only Way Is Schlupp and Schlupp The Junction. Hardly anything to write home about but until Palace sign some more comically named players or I actually become funny they’ll have to do. From what we’ve shared with you today it’s clear that we all lack the necessary wit or footballing knowledge to truly succeed in the realms of the Fantasy Premier League. Sadly I doubt it’s going to stop the four of us propping up a host of private leagues for years to come.