Fantasy Football - Part 2, Defence

So, we're back. Let me know who you picked in goal in the comments section below. Tell me if you think I'm wrong and you chose Joe Hart AND David De Gea because F me, right?

Defence

Like goalkeepers, defenders are mainly scored on how many goals their team concedes, but are given healthy top ups for goals and assists. Due to this, picking attacking full backs makes far more sense than an old fashioned centre half. Looking at last seasons final standings it's clear to see, with the top 'true' centre back in 6th (Per Mertesacker) while Leighton Baines, Patrice Evra and Glen Johnson (I know, right?) were all ahead of him. Branislav Ivanovic placed between Evra and Johnson but played as a fullback at times and also chipped in with 5 goals which you cannot guarantee from a centre back season-by-season.

While attacking full backs can get you points at the top end of the field, you need to hope that their centre back team mates who you don't pick are doing their job.

Leighton Baines' huge point tally last season, while helped by his healthy goals and assists, also benefited from keeping 11 clean sheets and not conceding many goals. However, while Baines is good at tracking back and tackling, the majority of those clean sheets were mostly down to the partnership of Sylvain Distin and Phil Jagielka. While both earned over 100 points last season, Baines led the way, sharing their points and picking up extra with goals and assists.

This is the point, you need to think about the players you aren't picking, as much as those you are.

Here are my picks for this season.

Neil Taylor - Swansea - 4.5 million

Due to an horrific injury last season, Taylor missed the majority of the year and was covered by the impressive Ben Davies. However, Taylor is a supremely talented player who is just as happy to get forward as he is to defend and I fully expect him to wrestle his position back this season. The competent duo of Ashley Williams and Chico Flores will ensure Swansea don't ship in the goals.

Sascha Riether - Fulham - 5 million

Fulham were so impressed with their loanee Riether last season they have signed him permanently from FC Koln. I anticipate with another season in the Premier League he will enjoy even more attacking football in 2013/14. With Hangeland, Aaron Hughes and Senderos all jostling for the centre back position, you would hope they will also work hard to keep their place and defend their goal. With someone like Berbatov waiting for service, assists surely aren't hard to come by.

Darcy Blake - Crystal Palace - 4 million

A tricky pick, sort of influenced by price. However, if played at right back, has the ability to get forward and potentially send in assists for Kevin Phillips who has an excellent scoring record. Yes, Palace may concede like a sieve this season despite the Premier League experience of Ramage and Gabbidon but this guy is a punt from me. Also, if I know Palace are playing Man City and Swansea are playing Norwich, I'd make sure Blake is on the bench.

Younes Kaboul - Tottenham - 5 million

LIAR - You said no centre backs! I know, I know, but a season on the sidelines has seen Kaboul's stock slip down to a fairly cheap price. With Caulker off to Cardiff and Gallas released, expect a strong partnership between Kaboul and Dawson this season, with Lloris keeping the goals out.

Leighton Baines - Everton - 7.5 million

My splurge. It's easier to try and save your money for your strikers but Baines was up with the top points scorers last season. As I've mentioned, he benefits from a solid Everton defence and Roberto Martinez favours a different tactic to David Moyes. Last season at Wigan, Martinez employed Ryan Taylor and Jean Beausejour as advanced wing backs with three centre backs, almost a 3-5-2. I expect him to continue this attacking formation, with Alcaraz slotting between Distin and Jagielka. Playing further up the pitch, almost in midfield, will add to Baines' attacking game and help with goals, assists and ultimately points.

Smart picks

Jose Enrique - similar to Baines, often plays as an advanced defender

Cesar Azpilicueta - very attacking full back, I expect a very strong season

David Luiz - Has played in midfield numerous times, has great scoring technique (if he stays).

Avoid

John Terry - ARF!!!

Phil Jones - too heavily rotated

Aleksandar Kolarov - similar and expensive

Have a punt

Javier Garrido - if Norwich can keep out the goals, he'll get you points

Steven Caulker - Smart buy from Cardiff, let's see what he can do

John Stones - pre season or not, scoring in a shootout against Juventus like that is unreal.

Fantasy Football - Part 1, Goalkeepers

The football season is almost back! And what better way to prepare and make people think you know about football than picking a fantasy football team for 2013/14?

Imagine it, Hart in net, Baines and Zabaleta racing up from the back while Vidic and Kompany expertly tackle opposition attackers and send the ball forward to a midfield of Mata, Carrick, Hazard and David Silva, with Van Persie and Suarez banging in goals for fun.

And while the £100 million price limit could scupper the team of superstars like the one above, you can get some real bang for your buck (or one Gareth Bale) for the hundred milly.

While I haven't figured out an exact science to play the Premier League Fantasy Football, I'm going to try and explain how to maximise your points for a smaller outlay than you may expect. I've picked my own team, and while I may have potentially shot myself in the foot by claiming I know how the game works, I'll explain why I feel that this could be my best season yet! Of course all that could be wrecked by injuries, suspensions or Carlos Tevez doing a runner.

Obviously, at some points price dictated rather than sense, hopefully the rotation policy will save the day.

Goalkeepers

While last seasons leading scoring keeper was Joe Hart (158) aside from Petr Cech, joint second place keepers were Asmir Begovic and Jussi Jasskelainen, closely followed by Simon Mignolet and Mark Schwarzer. 

While picking Hart puts your 14 points better off, he also costs around 1 million more. Unless you put your goalkeeper as your captain, he won't ever win you a huge amount of points over a season as they don't score goals. Their main points come from clean sheets but even the best keepers struggle to do so for more than 50% of the season.

The next best place to pick up points is through saves. Hart, playing behind Kompany and Nastasic is forced to make less saves than someone like Jaaskelainen or Begovic. And because they do generally concede more, they cost around 1-2 million less than Hart, Cech, De Gea etc.

Also, with this seasons new addition of the Bonus Point Systems, players who play out of their skin, will be rewarded with extra points. So if Man City (Hart) beat West Ham (Jaaskelainen) 2-0, but Jussi's heroics kept it at two-nil instead of six-nil, he may end up with the same points than Hart who kept a clean sheet.

Allan McGregor - Hull - 4.5 million

While new to the Premier League, I feel this former Rangers and Bursaspor stopper has the quality to make a lot of saves behind what could a very shaky Hull defence. While he may end up conceding a hat full this season, my plan is to rotate him with my other keeper if he is playing a top four team.

Vito Mannone - Sunderland - 4.5 million

Sunderland have picked up this former Arsenal keeper on a free transfer and unless Sunderland buy a new goalkeeper, I feel he has a strong chance to be their number one. Sub goalkeepers are only used if your number one is injured or not selected on match day. It's usually easy to tell if a keeper will be picked by their form and injuries are highlighted by a red icon, allowing you to transfer or rotate in advance.

Smart picks

Jussi Jaaskelainen - cheap, will be kept busy

Ben Foster - Very consistent over last few seasons

Artur Boruc - If not rotated with Davis and Gazzaniga

Avoid

David de Gea - for the price, just not worth it,

Simon Mignolet - plays for Liverpool now so won't be as busy

Mark Schwarzer - signed up by Chelsea but won't get a game behind Cech.

Have a punt

Mark Stekelenburg - new to the league, could be the next Van der Sar

Brad Friedel - cheap as not played much last season, injury to  Lloris could see him back and we know his quality.

Britian's Got Talent and My Disgust

So the other night I happened to be in a room while the final of Britain's Got Talent was taking place. Now, I hate all this kind of rubbish. I think it's a horrible, air-headed and consumer led type of program that fosters self-entitlement and laziness, cruelly crushes people and creates 'stars' out of some of the worst sorts of people. The whole thing is a complete fix and robs people of their money and Saturday nights.

Anyway, during the final, something funny happened. A woman from the orchestra of one of the acts ran up to the front and hucked eggs at the judges. I love shit like this. I love all the unscripted stuff and took to Twitter to find out more. Who was this daring person?

Among the waste of time Tweets (I luf dat singer boy, sooooo hot #wudwelljumphim) there was a few people commenting on it. However, during this time the show came to a close and was won by a group called Attraction. A group of Hungarian dancers who use a silhouette style to make shapes and while I thought their performance in the final was pretty meh, I'd seen an earlier effort on Facebook which was very good. As I mentioned, the show is fixed and you can already see that this group has potential to go on and be the next Cirque du Soliel, making the execs very rich indeed. From what I saw, they did appear to be the best if not the most innovative.

Twitter was not happy.

The 'I'm not racist but..." comments began to come out, a prefix I find absolutely abhorrent. 'It's called Britain's Got Talent, not Eastern Europe's Got Talent, fuck off back to your gipsy caravans.' All kinds of racist and awful things, said usually without the slightest hint of realisation of how xenophobic they were. Many also had a go 'Gangnam Style' singer Psy, complaining again that Psy, being South Korean, has no right to be on BGT. No one seemed to have an issue with American singer Taylor Swift's presence, presumably as she's white, quite pretty and most importantly, not from a place British people love feel superior over.

I find stuff like this so crushingly horrible that it depresses me. What is the matter with people? They seemed so angry? It's a television program! There are much bigger things in the world than this! If you put half as much energy into something than you do moaning on Twitter at the results of a pre-determined television competition you could actually achieve something. You could probably win the fucking competition yourself.

When Britain really showed how much talent it had in last years Olympics, a lot of it was because of ethnically non-British people.

This again follows the hordes of disgusting racist remarks that followed the tragic beheading of the soldier in Woolwich, which again led Twitter to marginalise approximately a third of the entire world.

We truly live in a country that fosters the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' attitude. Don't get wound up about real world events like Syria, Turkey or the fact that we are living in a country that is illegally spying on all of us, and most of us don't even care.

Without sounding dramatic, people need to wake up and think about the important things in life instead of caring about this insignificant things.

And finally, egg throwing lady. It turned out, you are just as bad as the rest of them by apologising. Just keep your story; they are terrible people. But no, apologising to avoid any further issue suits your purpose as you've grabbed your little 15 minutes too.

Elliot Kinrade - Future History EP - Review

Hey there, I saw you looking.

It's always hard to review your friends. Even if you genuinely like what they put out, others will always call some kind of bias on your behalf. I've been friends with the boys from This Years Winner Is since we toured with them a few years back and I've reviewed their previous two releases on this blog and always given them huge regard. And why not? The two albums (especially Audiobiography) were genuinely astonishing efforts and I was sad when they called it a day.

But out of the ashes of TYWI I'm sure there will be a number of interesting new projects and I am here to review the first of those, with frontman Elliot Kinrade and his new solo EP. With help from former TYWI guitarist Ben Wilde and producer, Ste Quinn, I'd been told to expect something completely different; a cross between Justin Timberlake and Johnny Craig. When adding it iTunes I was intrigued as the genre classed it as pop.

Future History opens with 'You'd Hate To Be Me,' which is a solid track, with a sugar sweet acoustic guitar riff and a catchy chorus. I thought it was a shame that song ended when it did as I feel it would have benefitted from another chorus and the ending seemed to rather drip away rather than end with any real bang.

'So What If I'm Selfless?' is the next track and here you can definitely hear the JT inspired style, there's something very 'Cry Me A River' about it, both musically and vocally. There's a big ballad-type sound and the verse is something you'd expect to hear on mainstream radio. The build up before the chorus drops is really cool too.

The last track, 'Future History', is my favourite with a very 'Call Me Maybe'-esque synth and you can't help but to nod your head to the beat, especially the heavy drums in the build up. The chorus has a great edge to it and is instantly memorable.

I first want to attest that the quality of the recordings is fantastic and the range Elliot's voice has continued to develop since the first TYWI release but I do have a few issues with the EP.

The main thing is... I don't really get it. I'm just not sure what they are trying to do with the EP; where it's going. The genre is pop but I don't hear a pop album. This is a brilliantly composed effort, but to me that's not pop. It's too complicated with too much going on and almost forgets the simplicity of what pop music is in the first place. I mentioned the second track reminded me of 'Cry Me A River' but more like the LostProphets cover. Sometimes it just sounds a little forced.

Rather than Justin Timberlake meets Johnny Craig, what this album really reminds me of something like Owl City (but not annoying) or Lights, solid easy listening music, but I think this EP is just lacking that final piece of the jigsaw. In my opinion, the 3rd track 'Future History' is far and away the strongest and I feel that's the kind of style that is worth pursuing. I guess I was expecting more of this.

For this review I listened to the EP several times and it definitely grew on me. But I don't think that's good enough for a pop record. You need to bring in your audience on the first listen.

I don't want to take anything away from what is a very well composed EP with some great vocals. Don't get me wrong, this material is by no means bad but maybe I was expecting something different. That being said I do encourage people to go away and listen to this, just to tell me what I'm missing. Maybe Elliot will go and to become the next Justin Timberlake or Bruno Mars and I really hope this is a success for him and I will be eagerly anticipating what comes next.

And seriously guys, a pop record without one use of the word 'baby'? Come on man, pop lyrics 101.

5 ways to put on a good band night

This one's going out to all the pub landlords who read Mindlesselfindulgences. I know there's a few of you out there so listen up.

There's a common thought that live music is truly suffering and venues are having a difficult time getting band nights on. Lazy people like to blame the internet and that it gives a forum to talentless wannabes that wouldn't have ever 'made it' without YouTube etc. These same people snipe away on forums, bemoaning the lack of decent venues in their towns. This doesn't help. There are plenty of ways to get live music back on it's feet but this blog is focused on the venues. I've given bands help before.

The landlord of a boozer with a decent size floorspace thinks that putting on a band night will help pull in a few punters on the normally quiet Tuesday night. S/he thinks that it will be easy, dusts off Saturday night's karaoke speakers and expects the bands to do the rest. Then they get angry when a band shows up and play to an empty room.

It's cost me more in electricity than I've made over the bar!

So how can this fat bastard make sure Tuesday becomes Woo-hoosday! (sorry, I'm so sorry about that one).

You'll recognise these guys from any bar - crooked back and nursing half a bitter.

1. If you build it, he will come.

Or not, if you allow your regulars to bully newcomers in your establishment.

This has nothing to do with your venues aesthetic or pissy odour. There are countless successful venues that on most other nights of the week are some of the roughest places in town.

It goes without saying that kids who can afford gear to be in a band are usually from fairly middle-class families as will their friends. They don't really care what the place looks like (the rougher the better, it makes them think they're rebelling against their parents and getting in touch with their bohemian side) but they won't appreciate the lout in the Ben Sherman shirt who's 10 blue WKD's down, demanding that the artsy folk band play an Oasis cover. Just because he's a regular and can get away with that kind of thing on a Saturday night, before he glasses someone and gets off with the village bike, the people who are behaving themselves and trying to watch the band will quickly go elsewhere once he gets verbally abusive.

One of the notable examples I can think of here was a venue that tried to get bands on after the Champions League games on a Wednesday night. They weren't exactly happy when us youngsters began setting up and loudly tuning instruments as they watched their 'local sports team' get battered by a much more flowing and box-to-box oriented Portuguese club.

I've heard of a venue that turned into a club immediately after a gig night. The bouncers told the band they had five minutes to pack up their gear and when they failed to do so they destroyed what remained by throwing it across the room.

Yeah, it's a tricky one. You don't want to push away your regulars who do put money behind the till but if you want your band night to be successful, it has to be an attractive offering for bands and customers who enjoy live music.

I don't have a clue what any of these buttons do, but if everything's on red, that's good right?

2. You don't do heavy metal in dobly

Sound is a tricky entity. However, it's a little more straight forward when you think of it like sight. If you put a concrete block in front of a band, you won't be able to see them. Sound is approximately one hundred percent better at going around corners than sight but that concrete block will still limit sound A LOT. Just sticking a band in a free corner, or up on a fenced off ledge is not the best way to fully appreciate good sound. Apart from being truly bad, nothing will drive bands or punters away than poor sound. How about trying to find the best acoustics in the room? Push the pool table back against the wall or something, don't be lazy, you only have to do it twice a week!

A decent sound guy is not hugely difficult to find and someone who understands the difference between laid back blues and an explosive instrumental band will help get the levels half sorted. Attention to bands, don't expect the sound quality of Wembley Arena in a shitty little pub, it's not happening. But out on the floor, so long as the crowd can sort of make out a distinction between the instruments and vocals, rather than a wall of noise, they'll be happy enough.

A decent PA really is the very least you should muster if you want to put on band nights. Just getting your karaoke speakers out won't do and if your nights are successful you'll start to make the couple of hundred for the PA in no time. You don't need monitors or to mic every guitar amp up, so long as the vocals and bass are covered, bands should manage.

Hey look! A good band!

3. Get some good bands

This one sounds the hardest but it really shouldn't be. As I mentioned so long as a band isn't completely dire an audience will nod their head and not begin hurling furniture at them. No one expects U2 at their venue but if you can get to grips with your local scene, finding 2-3 good bands every week shouldn't be a problem.

So long as petrol is covered, a couple of beers will satisfy most bands. Money is obviously even better but I think all but the douchiest of rock stars.

Easy, done - BOOM!

The guy in chip shop said he'd told everyone!

4. If you build it, he will come - part 2

No, he won't. Putting on a night without promoting is the equivalent standing naked in your windows with the curtains closed (everyone knows that's not how you do it!). Too many venues expect the band to bring in a crowd and yeah, it's half the battle. The band bring people in because they want people to watch them. The band couldn't give a shit if people aren't taking advantage of your generous 2-4-1 Smirnoff Ice deal at the bar.

I always wondered why venues insist on bringing 20 spectators. Chances are if you can attract 20 people, it's because they like your band. If they like your band, chances are they've seen you before. If they've seen you before, why not stay at home and have those 20 fans in your living room while you rock the fuck out?

If you want your band night to be well attended, you need to make sure people KNOW there is a band night happening. Even if it's just putting a chalk board outside the venue letting people know that there will some live music on that night. Oh yeah, I'm not sure if you're aware, but there's this massive thing called THE INTERNET that all the kids are using. Social Media quite simply is the way forward. People don't read the paper, hey most people don't leave the house if they don't have to. But between looking at cats being funnt and building up forearm muscles, people spend a lot of time on the internet so get involved.

Dollar dollar bill, y'all!

5. I would literally kick a panda in the face for a fiver

And finally, for the love of God don't charge the universal it's-not-too-much-but-enough-to-make-it-exclusive £5 entry fee. Dude, I could go and see some established bands with albums and t-shirts and little badges with their logo on for around £8. Sometimes bigger bands even put on gigs for free! A fiver is a lot of money especially when you wanna get shit-faced, pull and buy a donner on the way home.

Come on mate, you should be happy with the extra meat in the room. Don't take the piss.

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If you think this blog ended quickly... Guinness made me do it!