They Had The Star

Every season there is one player who you have to have on your team if you want to do well. In the last two years it has been Henry and then Lampard. This year it was Ronaldo.

Between the 1 Jan 2008 and 1 April 2008, Ronaldo went on a crazy points scoring spree. He pulled in 131 points in 13 matches, even though for one of those matches Man Utd had a bye.
Even without my calculator I can tell you that for one third of the season, he was averaging 10 points per game.

But at the same time there were other players also doing well. And Ronaldo was the most expensive player in the game, by £1.5m; perhaps the money spent on him could have bought two slightly cheaper players also of high calibre, whose points total would exceed Ronaldo's?

I have a friend who refused to have Henry in his squad, and then refused to have Frank Lampard in his squad. Maybe he didn't want to jump on the 'popular' bandwagon or something. He never finished higher than midtable in our mini-leagues.

The top ten managers from the 2007 / 2008 season all had one thing in common - they all had Ronaldo in their team before the New Year. Here's the data of the date they transfered Ronaldo into their squad, and who they traded out in his place:

#1: 22 Sept, Lampard
#2: Had Ronaldo all season.
#3: 13 Nov, Fabregas
#4: 27 Dec, Lampard
#5: 7 Sept, Lampard
#6: 1 Sept, Scholes
#7: 30 Sept, Downing
#8: 15 Sept, Lampard
#9: 29 Dec, Lampard
#10: 3 Sept, Lampard

So from 1,714,595 managers, the top ten all had Ronaldo in their team by christmas time, and most of them had traded Frank Lampard in order to do so.

The lesson? Some players you can trade, others you have got to have. Whilst you need different players from a rival manager in order to overtake them, you have to ensure that you are not trading out the season's star player to do so. The top ten managers of 2007 / 2008 can't be wrong!