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Some of NeverManageAlone’s grizzled veterans may remember the old blog cup started by this community’s Founding Father, Nik Argiropoulos. Based on the now-defunct Yahoo fantasy EPL game, the blog cup was a once-each-five-weeks head-to-head, single-elimination tournament that crowned a blog champion at the end of the season.
My recent article on the official game’s FPL Cup had the unanticipated side-effect of rekindling quite a bit of nostalgia for Nik’s tournament. The comments section of that piece ended up serving as a path down memory lane for some of NMA’s older hands, and it wasn’t long before an impromptu idea was born: Let’s bring back the blog cup!
To that end. veteran community member and frequent chat participant CreweGuy has generously volunteered to run the NMA Cup for us. Like Nik’s tournament, it’ll be a head-to-head, single-elimination format that will whittle down the pool of players to a single champion at season’s end. Instead of the defunct Yahoo platform, the 2019-20 NMA Cup will be based on our Fantrax-11 league.
And although H2H competition won’t begin until game-week 26, if you’re a Fantrax-11 manager, you’re already vying for the Cup! That’s right — the top 128 teams after Round 25 will qualify for the elimination rounds, so if you have a Fantrax-11 side, you’re in pool play right now! (Don’t worry, that’s about all remaining actively managed teams, so if you’ve been playing since the single-digit game-weeks, you should qualify for round 1.)
Full rules and details can be found in CreweGuy’s Fanpost. NMA would like to extend a huge “thank you” to CreweGuy for stepping up and volunteering to take on this immense effort. We’ll look to make the Cup a regular feature every season, and perhaps even add an NMA FPL Cup next year!
We’re excited to offer a fun new dimension to your fantasy experience, which will also serve as an homage to the guy who over a decade ago started the website that would ultimately morph into nevermanagealone.com. As a further tip of the cap to Nik, I’m including a link to what community member Ken M and I believe is Nik’s very first post. It hit the internet over ten years ago, and I think you’ll enjoy reading it whether you were with us then or not (you may have to be patient; it takes a long time to load on my computer). http://yahoofantasyfootballuk.blogspot.com/2009/07/early-picks-week-1.html
Finally, remember that community member 1998jjb is still competing in the official FPL Cup, and as far as we know he’s the last NMA representative who is still alive in that tournament (only 0.8% of the players who started are still standing). He’s currently in a very tight Round 8 matchup — be sure to show him your support in this week’s Live Chat!
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What do you recall of the old tournament in Yahoo days? Will you let tournament weeks affect your tactics? Are you even more excited about our final Sunday when all 20 EPL teams will kick-off at the same time, confirming all 20 lineups before the final Fantrax deadline? Please share with us in the comments!
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