Thank you, #FFScotland community!
Fantasy Football Scotland's first season is in the bag!
The season is over. All 228 fixtures played and 38 GWs completed. Rangers are champions and Hamilton have been relegated, but more importantly thousands of Fantasy Football Scotland managers have been triumphant in their private and public leagues. Congratulations to you all.
And if you didn’t get your hands on any virtual silverware this season, the new campaign (and a shot at redemption) is just weeks away!
It’s fair to say FFS’s first season has been an eventful one - imagine launching a fantasy football game in a season as disrupted as this one… [facepalm emoji]! More fixtures were postponed this season than any other Scottish Premiership season before. The Covid-19 pandemic made picking players for your FFS team fraught with risk - one GW had no fewer than 14 players self-isolating!
We lost a large chunk of our user base during the first two or three months of the season as postponements and Covid-19 disruption hit hard. This was understandable - fantasy football isn’t much fun when so many of your players are locked in their own homes.
As frustrating and infuriating as it all was at times, we feel the game and the app is now stronger for having faced so many challenges in its first season. Development and refinement continued over the course of the campaign, always taking into account feedback from our users. This will continue into next season and beyond.
In fact, a number of new features will be added to the game and app for the 2021/22 season. Every one of these improvements have come from suggestions made by our loyal and dedicated user base. These will be rolled out over the summer. We can’t wait for you to see what we’ve been working on!
In the meantime, there’s time to reminisce on what the last 10 months or so produced. Remember when James Tavernier (a.k.a #AlwaysCaptainTav) simply couldn’t stop scoring, finding the net 11 times in the league before Christmas? Or when Aberdeen scored just once in 11 games as Lewis Ferguson’s goals and assists dried up?
Odsonne Edouard started the season as the most-owned player by some distance, but the French striker took until the new year to truly find the goals trail, still finishing as the league’s top scorer with 18 (and as FFS’s most-owned player). This was a similar story across the league - where were all the goalscoring strikers in the first half of the campaign?!
Three Rangers defenders (Tavernier, Connor Goldson and Borna Barisic) topped the charts for the most points scored by any player this season, illustrating just how difficult Steven Gerrard’s team were to break down. Indeed, Rangers defenders (and goalkeepers) quickly became must-have FFS picks.
Heroes were made of Ross Callachan, Devante Cole, Jon Guthrie, Jamie McGrath and others who surpassed all pre-season expectations. Zeroes, however, were made of certain Celtic defenders (let’s just agree to never say the words ‘Boli Bolingoli’ or ‘Shane Duffy’ ever again).
Some big names, like Ryan Kent and Mohamed Elyounoussi, delivered, while others underwhelmed - we’re not angry, Lawrence Shankland. Just disappointed.
FFS’s first season certainly was one to remember. Thanks to everyone who played the game. To everyone who tweeted and emailed us and especially to those who blogged and podcasted about us. We truly value the community that has sprung up around FFS.
We hope to see you back for next season when we’ll do it all over again! Stay safe.
Team FFS