GUIDE / MONDAY
Keeping a league table by hand
The weekly sum, the three places it goes wrong, and why the matchday award matters more than the table.
The Monday sum, in full
Anyone running a league without a platform does the same four steps: add up each team's eleven scores, convert totals into goals, pair the teams by the calendar, and update points, goals for and goals against.
Ten minutes of work that goes wrong in three precise places. First the conversion: 84 points is four goals, not three, because the first goal comes at 66 and one more every six. Second the goal difference, which must be updated for both teams. Third the head-to-head rule at the end of the season.
The fourth mistake is not arithmetic but archival: after ten rounds nobody wants to re-check, so an error made in round three survives until May.
Head-to-head, which almost everyone applies backwards
When two teams finish level on points, the common rule looks at head-to-head first. That means something precise: a miniature table built only from the matches those teams played against each other.
The common mistake is to use overall goal difference instead. It changes the outcome more often than you would think: a team can have the better overall difference and still have lost the head-to-head, and in that case it still finishes behind.
With three or more teams level, the mini-table covers all of them, not pairs. That is the part that becomes genuinely laborious by hand.
Why matchday awards matter more than the table
A table is a list, and a list pasted into a group chat gets read by two people: whoever is first and whoever is last. It does not tell you anything about that week.
"The lucky one won with 67 points while someone else scored 79 and lost" gets read by everyone, and someone replies. Same information, told so that the reader recognises themselves in it.
The awards that work describe an injustice or an excess. The ones that do not work are the ones that come out identical every week: by the third nobody reads them.
That is why the Lucky one and the Hard done by appear only when they genuinely exist. Rounds where everything went as it should produce no awards.
Table points or total points
There are two ways to decide a fantasy season. Head-to-head with three points a win, like a real league. Or total points, where whoever accumulated the most fantasy points wins.
The first is more fun and less fair: you can have the best season and finish third. The second is fairer and flatter, because by midseason the winner is obvious.
The usual answer is to keep both: the table decides the title, total points break ties and award a consolation prize.
Where this page's data goes
Into your browser, and nowhere else. No account, no server, none of your scores on a machine of ours: closing the tab deletes nothing, but changing device does.
It is a deliberate choice with a stated price. In exchange you do not have to register to do an addition, and a league among friends stays among friends.