Season 27 Week 16 processing...

Started the thread early this week so we could keep up to date on the arrival of Order Sheets.

No orders yet from the usual non-senders/late senders Westham, Birmingham and Real Madrid, everybody else seems to have negotiated the easter mail successfully.

I will update this if they arrive.

Paul Hemmings wrote:

Started the thread early this week so we could keep up to date on the arrival of Order Sheets.

Order sheets have arrived from Charlton and Man City, so far.

I will update this as they arrive.

Mine posted today.. Expect it to arrive on Saturday!

Fixtures: 
 Westham v Liverpool Watford v Arsenal
 Charlton v Chelsea Villa v Plymouth
 Leicester v Fulham Birmingham v Man City


Westham v Liverpool Likely Lineup;
Siegrist:GK,Christie:RB,Thompson:LB,Song:AM,Collins:CL,Dann:CR,Collison:DY,Mcgeady:PM,Cole:CF,Jarvis:RH,Taarabt:LH
Gulacsi:GK,Fabio:LB,Klavan:CL,Coates:CR,Gunter:RB,Huddlestone:AM,Aquilani:PM,Zaha:RW,Slimani:CF,Tevez:TM,Moses:LW

It would appear West Ham have found a formation they are comfortable with! Mcgeady relishing being the main man in this hammers team, dictating play for a Hammers team who have struggled in recent weeks. Will the manager appear in the dugout to inspire his team to a victory over Liverpool this week? As for Liverpool i guess Andrew realised that Aquilani enjoys his best form at PM. Tevez got his first goal for the Reds last week will he be able to continue his goal scoring form? Or will he miss the game to visit disney world? Its a classic Wingers vs Winghalves... However i feel Liverpool have the quality over Westham in this game.. However the teams around Liverpool in the table will be hoping for a Draw or Home Victory.


Watford v Arsenal Likely Lineup;
Lloris:GK,Clyne:RB,Rose:LB,Stones:CR,Kompany:CL,Dier:AM,DeBruyne:RH,Barkley:DY,Rooney:TM,Kane:CF,Bale:LH
Forster:GK,Sagna:RB,Koscielny:CL,Cahill:CR,Shaw:LB,Flamini:AM,Schneiderlin:DR,Giroud:ST,Berahino:S2,Ozil:TM,Nasri:DL

This week see's the rampant Watford would see him pitted against the Gunners who seem to have reverted to a more familiar lineup. Watford last week Watford made a rare change to there winning formula with Rashford taking the place for Kane.. However i expect normal precedings to resume with Kane leading the line. However Pogba was sent off and i'd expect Ross Barkley to take his place in midfield. It seems Watford have all the keys to unlock defences at the moment! With majority of there play coming from there wide plays in DeBruyne and Bale.. Taking it in turns to provide for the hornets. As for Arsenal its not all doom and gloom with there showing vs Plymouth showing plenty of positives however they couldn't get the result they wanted or needed at this point in the season! With there lineup more traditional now it would appear they are going to keep themselves settled for there away trip this week. However will Shaw give up on the Dominoes pizza's n time to keep up with DeBruyne? Will Sanga be capable of defending vs Bale? I feel this one is going to be there for the taking for the Home team. 


Charlton v Chelsea Likely Lineup;
Mignolet:GK,Cesar:RB,Kolarov:LB,Henderson:AM,Luiz:CL,Willian:DL,Lucas:CR,Lallana:DR,Coutinho:TM,Mane:ST,Firmino:S2
Mcgregor:GK,Filipe:LB,Vlaar:CL,Lovren:CR,Kelly:RB,Anita:AM,DiMaria:DL,Falcao:ST,Afellay:TM,Remy:S2,Mikel:DR

It would appear that the front 3 of FMC were at it again. Causing havoc in the brum defence.. but even when they couldn't find a solution Lallana stepped up and impressed. Tom brought in Van dijk this week to shore up his defence maybe Lucas caught wind of this transfer as he Man Marked Fellanini out of the game. Maybe a natural CF would have the nouse to shake his defender? Charlton have leap frogged Chelsea in the league table and win here would further compound the Blues season.. The blues seem to be missing that cutting edge at the moment with Falcao, Afellay and Remy poor in front of goal as of late.. However there up against Mignolet this week will they be able to catch the Liverpool goalkeeper on a bad day ? 


Villa v Plymouth Likely Lineup;
Butland:GK,Coleman:RB,Brady:LB,Mccarthy:AM,Bruma:CL,Maguire:CR,Eriksen:DR,Dembele:DY,Coquelin:BW,Bony:CF,Chamberlain:DL
Cech:GK,Bellerin:RB,Gibbs:LB,Fernandinho:AM,Ramsey:DR,Vermaelen:CL,Welbeck:ST,Wilshere:TM,Vardy:S2,Delph:DL,Alderweireld:CR

Well the Villa boss doesn't like to do it pretty! He may feel a bit aggrieved with last weeks opponents being restricted in number of shots allowed but still scoring 50% of them! Coquelin continued his dominant display in midfield and Afobe did well in the absence of Bony. However with the tactics employed currently by the Villa man you'd believe he's going back to the Big man up front. With the sale of VanDijk who will take his place will Maguire get his debut for the Villans? Rumour has it that a certain spanish wizard is on his way to the midlands.. will this result in the rough and ready villa changing tactics? As for Plymouth... Continue to go about there business in a nonchalant way.. If only we could all find it that easy! It would appear The Pilgrams have kept faith in Wilshere and he's keep Mahrez on the bench! However will Rob rough up his opponents this week? never seen anyone use above 5 aggression but with Wilshere's glass legs you'd have thought the Villans will get a bit Dirty this week... 

Leicester v Fulham Likely Lineup;
Jansson:GK,Briggs:RB,Buttner:LB,Capoue:AM,Demichelis:CL,Chiriches:CR,Valencia:RW,DeJong:DY,Adebayor:CF,Dawson:CC,Gnabry:LW
Reina:GK,Davies:LB,Walker:RB,Mangala:CL,Skrtel:CR,Sane:DR,Schweinsteiger:AM,Negredo:CF,Sanchez:ST,Cisse:S2,Toure:DL

It would appear the Foxes are out of idea's at the moment couldn't even muster a single shot vs West Ham.. Doesn't bode well, the mid season clear out hasn't helped his cause. Will the foxes boss take his currently formation and switch over to PEP? Or will he forsake his current formation all together and go for something a bit more orthodox? Fulham boss had seen enough from his team last time out to keep faith in the ISF formation and has might a slight tweak and put the ageing Bastian in the middle and brought Sane in to try and inject some penetration.. Kid is having a storming second half to the season IRL. This week will see the arrival at the back and a departure from midfield at the cottage aswell a listing on the TL to boost the coffer's. The front 3 this week for Fulham surely must find there scoring boots.. otherwise the championship beckons, even is a single point is dropped against the rival teams Liverpool and Arsenal it would mean certain relegation!

Birmingham v Man City Likely Lineup;
Krul:GK,Rafael:RB,Clichy:LB,Wanyama:CL,Evans:CR,Nani:DY,Herrera:DR,Hernandez:ST,Fellaini:CF,Jovetic:S2,Payet:DL
Hart:GK,Cresswell:LB,Lescott:CL,Smalling:CR,Richards:RB,Paulinho:DL,Drinkwater:DY,Dzeko:CF,Carroll:ST,Aguero:S2,Gundogan:DR

Well this game could be a real championship football classic! Could Brum do Watford a favour and take some points from the league leaders or has Geoff his team motivated enough for the away trip? Both these teams play very open football.. With no reason for either side to change personnel it would seem both teams are going to stick with the 3 DY in midfield and it will be a ding dong of a match. With the only decider being who is going to be the more clincal of the 2 sides.. With that in mind i feel that City may just edge it with Aguero being the man for the big occassion. or will former City striker Jovetic provide some firepower this week ? Who knows... 

Over to you Paul!

Another great read from Phil, thanks mate.

Reset underway...

This will include the retention of all the NEWs from game two and all the late deals from game one last week, so this should give you a comprehensive inclusive TP report for the whole 14 day period.

Did you manage to receive my orders in time Paul?

Phil@fulham wrote:

Did you manage to receive my orders in time Paul?

yes, only Westham, Birmingham and Real Madrid are missing this week.

Data entry underway...

Friendlies are underway, I expect the league games to kickoff either Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, more info to follow...

The friendlies have finished but I have to go out now, so I'll start running the rest of the games tomorrow morning...

The reserve, youth and schoolboy games have kicked off...

This season I have added far more new players to the database than have retired and we are currently up to the Ks which is about 37,000 players which is way more than I ever designed the system to handle in the 14 day timeframe, so I am going to have to re-design the retirement system.

First step is to lower the retirement age for players in the non-league down from 36 to 31. So from now on any player going into the non-league and who is over30 will retire at the end of that week. The better ones will make their way onto the veterans database for use at backroom staff.

Once that is in operation I will decide on any further measures that might be needed. Ideally we should have no more than 25,000 players on the database and to be really efficient it should be around 16,000. This will greatly speedup the various resets that the system does before running games.

So if you've had your eye on that experienced player knocking around in the non-league, and there are plenty of them now with the league restructuring this week, new him quickly or he might be gone forever.

Just out of curiosity would it be possible to have a "retire" command? And would it be possible to retire people under 31? Let's says there's a player we new'd in but ends up being a dud and ends up in the vanorama league could we "retire" that player to free space on the database as I'm sure a lot of the players won't make it to the big league's.. .... just a thought.

The missus has put her foot down and told me that the computer cannot stay on all through the night running games and doing resets, unfortunately the only room for my office is the box room which is right next to our bedroom and she can hear it happily whurring away all evening. So I have to get the size of the system back under control so that it fits back inside the normal working day 14 day timeline without spending evenings and weekends on it. I have gone a bit mad with adding clubs and players to the system but in my defence I wanted to see just how comprehensive I could make things, bit of a programming challenge that I have greatly enjoyed, although it does tend to consume me, hehe.

Shouldn't affect our core leagues though and we will still have plenty of teams and players for you to scout and buy, and plenty of clubs to loan and sell players to. If it all woeks as I envisage we should be able to get back to the normal Wednesday morning league game kickoff times.

Phil@fulham wrote:

Just out of curiosity would it be possible to have a "retire" command? And would it be possible to retire people under 31? Let's says there's a player we new'd in but ends up being a dud and ends up in the vanorama league could we "retire" that player to free space on the database as I'm sure a lot of the players won't make it to the big league's.. .... just a thought.

For me the most time consuming thing is the adding of new players to the database and because of that I need to control when those players are deleted from the database, else I may well be re-adding players somebody has retired.

The second phase of the redevelopment will be to retire players who play in the non-league in real life but we'll see how phase one goes first. Second stage will also include folding up the Hellenic League which has 32 teams but only 3 managers so that cant happen until the end of the season that way I can promote the three managers down there into the english non-league's lowest division.

League games will kickoff at 1200 hours...

It feels like this week could be crucial in the league for some of you, many fingers will be crossed and much praying for divine intervention will be heard I suspect. 

None more so than in Italy where both the leading sides have tough fixtures, Juventus travel to Ancona which is not the easiest place to win and win they must if they are to keep up with leaders Inter, who have a tough game as well at home to improving Parma. It was about this time last season that Juventus's ageing squad dropped off the pace slightly, will the same happen again now those players are a year older, we shall see I guess.

A tough week also in store for Schalke as they chase down Gladbach at the top of the table, Hamburg away is never an easy game can the "best team in Germany" prove it by winning the league, Schalke also have the small matter of Bayern Munich in the Champions Cup semi-final, which is running as I type this.

Champions Cup semi-final results, hot off the press

Barcelona 3 Watford 1 a very even game. 
Schalke 5 Bayern 0 Schalke steam roller over Bayern who didn't even have a shot.

Europa Cup Semi-finals

Roma 2 Valencia 3
Liverpool 3 Gornik 1

Paul Hemmings wrote:

Champions Cup semi-final results, hot off the press

Barcelona 3 Watford 1 a very even game. 
Schalke 5 Bayern 0 Schalke steam roller over Bayern who didn't even have a shot.

Used all their luck up when they played Inter by the looks of it,

Copa Libertadores

Fluminense 1 Santos 4
Flamengo 1 Corinthians 3

Paul Hemmings wrote:

Copa Libertadores

Fluminense 1 Santos 4
Flamengo 1 Corinthians 3

Geoff pays you right Paul? 

Why do I never ever beat him?

Tom@Charlton wrote:

Paul Hemmings wrote:

Champions Cup semi-final results, hot off the press

Barcelona 3 Watford 1 a very even game. 
Schalke 5 Bayern 0 Schalke steam roller over Bayern who didn't even have a shot.

Used all their luck up when they played Inter by the looks of it,

Don't I know it!!!

Confederations Cup

Cosmos 3 Wollongong 0
Harrisburg 1 Chicago 2

European Cup Winners Cup

Brondby 1 Bilbao 0
Wednesday 4 Chelsea 2

European Cup

Cherry 3 PSV 2
Porto 2 Gladbach 4

Fairs Cup

Spurs 2 Lazio 0
Innsbruck 2 Dortmund 0

Intertoto Cup

Fiorentina 3 Grasshoppers 1
Atletico 2 Wimbledon 1

Tom@Charlton wrote:

Paul Hemmings wrote:

Copa Libertadores

Fluminense 1 Santos 4
Flamengo 1 Corinthians 3

Geoff pays you right Paul? 

Why do I never ever beat him?

*wink*

arent you playing him again in the league ?