"Going ..."
My knuckles are white, pressed against the table with tension.
"Going ..."
I'm leaning forward now attempting to harness the force, compelling the auctioneer to say that final magical word. This will be an absolute steal. Why isn't anyone outbidding me? He got 60 points last year and that was his first-ever season in the Prem ...
"Gone"
Yes. Get in there. Even though I've just blown a third of the budget on one player, I can't resist indulging in a little fist pump. This boy is the one I really wanted, he's special.
From the corner of my eye, I notice one of my mates/rival fantasy league managers give a little wink. It doesn't take long for the sniggering to start. Tony leans over to me: "Didn't you see Sky Sports News? He's broken his leg in training this afternoon. Snapped in three places. He'll do well to kick a ball before April"
- Oh FFS.
...
We started playing Fantasy League in 1996. The auction where you build your team for the coming season is the highlight of my calendar. Summer holidays must always be booked around it. Each manager has £50 Million to assemble a squad of 15 players. You can have no more than two players from each Premier League club and you must play a formation of 442, 451, 433 or 532. The process is painstaking. Each player is effectively a lot, sold to the highest bidder - following the completion of a bidding war that starts at £0 and rises in increments of £0.25 million - one at a time. Imagine the NFL draft but without air-conditioning or toilet breaks.
The fantasy league auction equivalent of winning the game in the tunnel is to arrive early with a colour-coded player list. I've been beaten by our league's version of Billy Beane (and his highlighter pens) many a time. His prefered options for left-back will be denoted by the various shades of Stabilo Boss. Fluorescent yellow representing his first choice, acid green his fifth. Purportedly he knows everything about the kid Sheffield United have just promoted from the youth team, having seen him play five minutes of their pre-season tour. Invariably his choice of a team name will be Moneyball FC, and everyone else will be desperate to finish above him.
The star strikers are always the first to be snapped up. Players only score points via goals, assists or by keeping clean-sheets if they're defenders or goalkeepers. There is no place for holding midfielders here. I don't care that Claude Makélélé hasn't misplaced a pass this millennium, have you seen the number of assists Rory Delap gets from throw-ins?
In the auction, it's impossible to buy a top player in every position as everyone is after the big names. Inflation is as bad as in the Premier League itself, well almost. Contingencies to mitigate this vary. There are those determined to make the new foreign marquee signing of the club they support the centre-piece of their fantasy team, despite having never seen him play. Experts refer to this as 'Nicolas Pepe Syndrome'.
Another approach might be to resolve to outbid everyone for Sergio Agüero come what may and then build around him with freebies. Both these strategies require a good explanation at the press conference you'll be holding with yourself in the bathtub afterwards. How exactly will Cenk Tosun bring the best out of your star man?
The fantasy league manager brave enough to ignore the transfer speculation linking one of last year's star-turns with a move to Real Madrid can pick up a potential league-winning bargain, should the player end up staying put in the Premier League. It's risk versus reward in its purest form. There are no refunds if you buy a player who is then sold abroad before real-world transfer deadline day. I 'risked' that Michael Owen would stay at Liverpool in the summer of 2004 and was subsequently 'rewarded' with having to draft in Collins John on a free to fill the hole in my team. That year the season was over for me before it started. The TV is always quickly switched off in my house whenever Michael is on punditry duty. Never forgive. Never forget.
Joint management teams, who enter the auction as best pals, are soon torn asunder. One of them has gone rogue and discarded the pre-auction game-plan, bidding five million more than they'd agreed for Aleksander Mitrovic. I guess this didn't come up when they war-gamed it the night before.
It's usually about halfway through the auction, forced by austerity to weigh up the cons and cons of signing a present-day Chelsea defender, that you notice Phil Jagielka is still playing. Maybe - like Jack from The Shining - he'll always be there. Perhaps Tony Hibbert can still do a job?
Four to five hours later and the auction is finally complete. Relief that it's over and buyer's remorse jostle each other for emotional supremacy. Those kids who were brought along by their dads under the false pretence of a post-auction barbecue - which it's now far too late to start - are all tantrumed out.
Then sheepishly Roger admits he's accidentally signed three Chelsea players. This, in turn, obliges me to confess that I've made a boo-boo with my sums and gone over budget. We'll have to start the whole thing again from the beginning:
"Harry Kane, striker, Tottenham Hotspur, do I hear any bids?"