The 2011/12 YFF Blog Cup

It's that time again; The 2011/12 YFF Blog Cup is here and it's bigger than ever...

1400 team, 8 rounds, 1 winner!

This all started on my YFF! AM Blog two years ago with 300 teams taking part, growing to 800 teams last year, but having joined forces with Jeremy, Neal & Never Captain Nicky Butt here on Never Manage Alone this year we have taken things to a whole new level. At set points throughout the season we will have weekends where the Top Weekly Scores from our FOURTEEN blog leagues go through to the "next round". It's a knockout so once you're out, you're out!

All 1400 teams in the Blog Leagues have a place in the Blog Cup... unfortunately I can't run more than 14 leagues across my 3 IDs so if you didn't get a space then you're going to miss out on this one - sorry. We may look to run another cup competition later in the season and we may look to add additional leagues for this, but for now I have my work cut out with fourteen!

I've outlined the The 2011/12 YFF Blog Cup schedule below:-

1st Round - Week 4 (this week!) - Top 1200 teams based on weekly scores in the Blog Leagues go through to 2nd round. 200 teams go out.

2nd Round - Week 8 - Top 1000 teams based on weekly scores from the remaining 1200 teams go through to 3rd round. 200 teams go out.

3rd Round - Week 12 - Top 750 teams based on weekly scores from the remaining 1000 teams go through to 4th round. 250 teams go out

4th Round - Week 16 - Top 500 teams based on weekly scores from the remaining 750 teams go through to 5th round. 250 teams go out.

5th Round - Week 20 - Top 250 teams based on weekly scores from the remaining 500 teams go through to quarter finals. 250 teams go out.

Quarter Finals - Week 24 - Top 100 teams based on weekly scores from the remaining 250 teams go through to semi finals. 150 teams go out.

Semi Finals - Week 28 - Top 40 teams based on weekly scores from the remaining 100 teams go through to the final. 60 teams go out.

Final - Week 32 - Top weekly score from the 40 finalists wins the cup. If we have a tie on the top weekly score then we will have a play-off in Week 33.

Prize - The winner of the Cup will obviously win the respect of his fellow managers :) but also a £50 voucher to the online store of their choice (Amazon, Play, CDWow etc). The runner up will receive a £20 voucher.

As people are likely to change their team name throughout the season I'll be tracking teams by their Yahoo IDs.

Only teams who are in a blog league when the Round 1 results are compiled can take part - if a team drops out of a blog league after Round 1 then the team replacing them in the league does not take their place in The Blog Cup.

In the event of any of the above weeks/rounds being an international break week (ZERO Premiership games) then the round will be moved to the following weekend.

It is always the Top 1200/1000/750/500/250/100/40 teams who go through, with one exception. In the event of teams being tied on weekly points at the cut off (e.g. Round 1- if the 1200th, 1201st & 1202nd teams are all tied on the same weekly total) then all 3 teams would go through to the next round.

Those who were following the blog over the past two years will know the cup competitions always work well so I hope people are looking forward to taking part. I think it makes things interesting as it's nothing to do with Overall Position, it's purely based on your weekly score in the selected week, so it gives players not doing too well the chance to have one-off weekends where they score big whilst a top player has a bad week...fantasy giant killing!

I'll make it clear on the lead up to each round whether it's a Cup Weekend to remind you....

Round 1 is Week 4, THIS WEEKEND!!! The teams with the top 1200 weekly scores in the blog leagues will go through to Round 2. Everyone else will be knocked out.

Good luck to all!