Premier League Draft

This essay will be discussing how the English Premier League would work if it adopted a draft system, from scratch. There will be absolutely no references to academic literature, I will not be using newspaper articles to back up my points, and it is highly subjective. After writing two essays in a week, totalling 7,000 words, it is a huge relief to be able to write what I want without having to see if what Brooke wrote in 2007 complements my point. Now I’ve got that off my chest, lets move on, and stay with me, cause it isn’t really an essay (it’s more of a mini-dissertation, just without all the jumping through hoops).

Conception of the idea

Last night whilst watching Simon Mignolet make a save in the Sunderland v Everton match, I said to my housemate Tom: “Where’s Craig Gordon? Is he still injured? He cost £9m!”. His reply confirmed nothing, other than the fact that Sunderland also have Kieren Westwood in their ranks. Goodness gracious me I thought, two good goalkeepers not even playing, that’s not right.

Then Tom - the world’s second biggest football fan – said in a frustrating fashion: “The best players in the league should be playing football” (the whole Carlos Tevez affair really got to him also). I questioned him, just because devil’s advocate is a role I enjoy playing. I can’t remember exactly what I said but it must have been silly because he replied with “So you’re telling me Dimitar Berbatov wouldn’t do a job at Wigan?”. Of course he would.

To cut a long story short, we decided between us at about 9pm it would be good if we came up with a system that meant the best players in the Premier League were all playing. It would also mean we could stop players such as Shaun Derry and Emile Heskey from stealing a Premier League living. “Not tonight though Tom, it’ll take ages” I pleaded. Well folks, when the world’s 2^nd biggest football fan has something like that in his bonnet you just can’t stop him. At 11.45pm it had been completed. 

The Method

1)      Predict the final league table. This includes those that get relegated and those promoted, so effectively we had the 20 best teams in the country. It was decided Manchester United would win the league, and Reading would be promoted via the play-offs (along with West Ham and Southampton).  QPR, Wolves and Wigan get relegated so they aren’t in contention.

2)      The selection process. The league winner (Man Utd) gets first pick of each position, Reading get last. It may not seem fair to all of you, but not to worry, can’t please everyone.

3)      Formation. Each team plays a 4-4-2 cause it’s solid and everyone knows their role.

4)      Player selection.  Imagine each manager sat around a big table. Goalkeepers are first. Fergie picks Joe Hart, poor Brian McDermott is left with what we perceive to be the 20^th best keeper, cause everyone else has picked. As I say, highly subjective the way we chose players. It basically came from what we thought and what we thought alone.

5)      For positions where 2 players are required (centre backs, centre mids and strikers) we had to pick and rank the 40 best players in their position. And the way these were selected goes as follows...
Fergie: I’ll have Nemanja
Mancini: I’ll have Vincent K then
Wenger: Well in my opinion Terry is third best so i’m taking him
...
McDermott: Cool, well I think the 20^th best centre back is Brede Hangelaand, so i’m having him.
Then it goes back to Fergie who essentially picks the 21^st best centre back to partner Vidic. Etc, etc, etc.

The outcome

My theory is that Man Utd have the best players in the league apart from second centre back, second centre mid and second striker. That’s fair, surely, because they are the best team. Reading and other lowly teams on the other hand have received some very good players because of the fact that big clubs are over-run with talent (City, United, Chelsea etc). Average teams like Everton should in theory receive average (respectively, compared to everyone else )players as a result of this system. I believe if this was the case the gap between top and bottom would be a little closer with a higher quality. What do you reckon?

Issues

It doesn’t take into account club loyalty – Paul Scholes ends up at Liverpool for example. Also, we had to make decisions on players based on injuries and form etc. Would you rather have Ryan Giggs or Yohan Cabaye in your team? Giggs is a legend, Cabaye isn’t, but he’s arguably better at this moment in time. Tricky, isn’t it? Neither Craig Gordon or Kieren Westwood make the list. Tough luck guys, but thanks for the inspiration. Another issue is that Tom is a little biased towards Newcastle

So, have a look at the table below. What do you think to it all? Which team looks to have come out of it best? Who’s come out worst? Who looks to have got the signing of the season? For that one, Balotelli at Norwich gets my shout. 

Very much interested in your thoughts. Thanks to Tom - who is incidentally also the world’s biggest crickets fan - for his handy work on Excel. And if you’re wondering who the world’s biggest football fan is, that’s my mate Nathan Shaw. He loves football, he just loves talking about football...