SEASON 2003-04

Summary of the SWENGLAND league from 2003-04, highlighting yearly achievements including "Manager of the Year" awardees, top teams in the Masterleague, and prominent winners across various leagues.

 For me, the worrying thing about the Allswengland League is that is dangerously close to replicating the Scottish Premiership! The same old teams winning everything all the time. As most of you know, we changed the transfer rules some years ago, now due to the Ring fencing of players by certain managers which made the art of spotting a player such as Isak, this season, and getting them in your team, so that only one other manager could have said player, a tactical art. For example, when I won the championship, I had spotted the scoring power of Andy Cole, at that time, playing for Manchester United. I quickly drafted him into my squad, which meant that only one other manager could have him. Good old Andy banged the goals in right left and centre that season, and I wrapped up enough points to win the league. But there was an obvious loophole in that role, because managers, or sets of managers who had more than one team in our league, could not only by that player early on, but sharing around, depending on fixtures in the match league and league positions in the master league.

Some people pointed this out and a vote was had. Following the vote, we changed the rules to the current ones we have today regarding transfers, and I have often thought about resurrecting the old system in a one-off league, similar to the reality league, but following the old transfer rules. Administering the old transfer rules was not easy. Managers had to be aware of who had who and avoid transferring into their squad, a player who was already playing for two other managers. Player sheets had to be produced every single week and for every single change that was made sometimes things went wrong. The system definitely disadvantaged people who were not computer savvy for a start.

So, now we can have who we want and when we want, unless we are playing in the reality league. This means teams are very similar and managers that run the teams meticulously are generally, (not always) at the top end of the master league. So, if you look at the top 10 below, you will see the first six teams managed by managers who have already won the championship in seasons gone by.. Add that to the fact that some of these managers have more than one team that also appear in the top 10 right now, you can see a right old familiarity logjam. One product of all of this amusingly, was that Tom was so successful in seasons, past that he was accused of insider-trading, somehow, using AI to select a team on a weekly basis, that was going to accrue the most points! How ironic, then, that the accusers themselves were certainly guilty of Ring fencing in the early years of Swengland.

Still under the old transfer rules, season 2003-04 saw a first win for The Williams Mafia. The first of many! Don John managed his Tasturs to top spot and was Manager Of The Season. It was great to see RUSTAN win the Bror Lefin, named in honour of his fathe, and The mafia were at it again with UNBEATABLES winning the Matchleague Premier. THE RIVER GRIZZLYS, who no longer are with us won Matchleague One. We were still in the early infancy of a website but the weekly posted updates were a thing of the past.

NEXT WEEK: History repeats itself.