Clowder Press. FC Clowder City

FC Clowder City

Monday, 28 October 2024 12:11

Can the feline factor influence the beautiful game?

During the Euros this summer we ran an experiment to see if we could predict the outcome using cat-based criteria: ailurophile players, players with cat-like names, or countries with a high cpp (cats per person) rating. Would the feline factor offer any advantage? (Check out our substack posts for June 13 and 22 for more insight into the core skills shared by cats and footballers.)

It did not really work.

But no social anthropologist gives up after one shot, so we are going again. The next high-profile competition will be the World Cup in 2026 ,although the qualifiers start in March 2025, so in the meantime we plan to conduct a much smaller field experiment.  

We are going to play Fantasy Premier League (At least, Roger and I are - Belvedere, as has been explained  prefers a different shaped ball) using only players that have a feline connection.  For those of you who don’t know, FPL is a magnificent online game played globally by at least eight million football fans.  

FPLers may skip this bit, but for the rest of you, the idea is this: you select a squad of 15 from the 20 teams of the English Premier League. You choose two keepers, five defenders, five midfielders and three forwards. You cannot have more than three players from any IRL team, Every week of the season you select a team from your squad.  Your players amass weekly points  depending on their performance in the real world. There’s  lots of other twiddle data crunching, studying form, assessing variables, playing differentials, making canny transfers etc etc, but this is it basically It. All the joy of the game with none of the cold and mud - very cat.

Our team is FC Clowder City
Our strip will be orange with black stripes. .Players will be selected using these feline criteria: 

* owned by a  cat or cats
* have cat-based names or nicknames
* come from a country with a high cpp rating
* look like a cat
* have any tangential connection to cats or feline principles

 

We will be using development data from two Clowder Press titles, How Cats Work and Be More Cat, to help make our choices. 

The squad is not yet complete, but we have plenty of time as we will not enter the fray until  Game Week 12,  23 November, after the second international break .This is where we are at the moment. 

Goalkeepers
• Bernd Leno (Fulham FC)

Cat pictured with their goalkeeper, Bernd Leno of Fulham FC.

Defenders
• Kyle Walker (Manchester City)  
• Ruben Dias (Manchester City)  

 

 Midfielders
• Kevin de Bruyne  (Manchester City)  
• Joao  Felix (Chelsea FC)
• John Stones (Manchester City)  
• Mykhailo Mudryk (Chelsea FC) 
• Thomas Partey {Arsenal FC}

 

 Forwards
• Mo Salah (Liverpool FC)
• Brennan Johnson  (Tottenham Hotspur FC)

 


As you can see, we are five players short and top-heavy with Manchester City men. Lateral thinking will be required. 
I will update you when we have got the squad together.  The experiment will run until the end of the season, 17 May 2025. 

Go FCCC.





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