Fantasy Football Fatigue...

JULIAN NASH on why he’s taken the brave decision to quit the game that’s become an addiction for so many football fans

AUGUST comes round again and for the last 20 years this has filled me with hope and expectation that this year would be the year that I would show the world that I do really know more about football than anyone else.

However, this year I have decided that enough is enough. For the following reasons I have decided to abandon Fantasy Football.

Firstly, I want my life, in particular my weekends, back. From tormenting yourself over the final make-up of your team from a Friday afternoon to Saturday morning, with last-minute adjustments after already spending hours deciding who to drop or make captain, to then following all the matches from Saturday lunchtime to Monday evening... it’s mentally exhausting!

Once you've picked your team on Saturday morning it's not as if you can do anything about it afterwards. Really, you might as well avoid football all weekend and just check your points on Tuesday morning, but where’s the fun in that if you’re actually a real football fan?

Obviously, you are at the mercy of the real managers in the Premier League. It drives you nuts when a player gets taken off a minute before they would get an extra point, or your captain, who was mysteriously left on the bench, is brought on in injury time to run down the clock.

Poor decisions can haunt you for years, too. I remember taking Dimitar Berbatov out of my team after a barren spell and then he goes and scores five in the next fixture versus Blackburn. Not putting Jamie Vardy or Riyad Mahrez in my team till after Christmas last season also makes me cringe.

The most ridiculous aspect of Fantasy Football is that you end up cheering on players from teams you despise in order to do well.You want Romelu Lukaku to score a hat-trick but Everton to lose, which isn’t very logical. The alternative is to leave out players from teams you hate. For example, I know Arsenal fans who won’t pick Spurs players, but how could you have done well in recent years without Gareth Bale or Harry Kane? At this time of year you also have to delve into the Championship records to check the promoted teams.Yet how can you really judge these players, and that’s assuming they are not sidelined in favour of Premier League journeymen? Watching Swansea v Watford or Bournemouth v Sunderland might not appear so unappealing after the summer break but keeping an eye on all the matches later on in the season can be wearing. There are also so many injustices in Fantasy Football. Player A wins a penalty but will only get an assist if Player B puts it in the onion bag. It’s not his fault if Player B mucks it up! Or how about Player C dribbling the ball, miscontrolling it but it then falls to Player D who pings one in from 35 yards thus giving Player C an assist? Fantasy football is also getting more complicated year after year.You need a PHD to work out how bonus points are arrived at and now in some formats you are allowed to change your whole team twice a season. It just keeps you sucked in! Maybe I’ve done too much research at times and tried to be too clever. Just because Jozy Altidore scored a hat-trick for USA preseason didn’t mean he was going to plunder goals by the sackful for Sunderland, did it? Trying to predict players having two matches in a week usually backfired too with managers’ tinkering. Perhaps I’m fed up as a result of only a couple of relatively successful seasons over the years.You realise that luck doesn’t really come into it so much when your same pals are first and second in your private league table year in, year out. Whatever the reasons, I’m definitely giving up Fantasy Football forever... well, until next August rolls around anyway!