The FPL website has bugged the crap out of me for years, and I've complained a number of times about how glitchy it can sometimes get - how, for example, it's dangerous to leave team selection until too close before the weekly deadline because the site is quite prone to crashing altogether when traffic volumes peak.
This year, I gather (from perusing various online forums about the game), the smartphone app version of the game has proven particularly unstable and frustrating in the opening weeks, forcing many people to have to turn to the web version instead in order to get their weekly housekeeping taken care of. I only ever have the web version at my disposal, as I am an avowed smartphone refusenik.
And I've been especially vexed by the fact that there no longer seems to be any option to 'stay logged in' for any extended period; and, indeed, I was often being logged out every hour or so. Also, when I did log in, my password was otten somehow 'forgotten' by the system, and I was having to go through the tiresome rigmarole of reopening my account with a 'recovery code' sent to my email.... sometimes multiple times in a day.
Annoying as this was, I was getting kind of used to it.
But then, our FPL Overlords escalated to the next level of vexatiousness, and stopped sending me the recovery code.
Now, I thought at first that the recovery code emails had just gone astray somehow, or been delayed for a little while. I checked in my spam folder a few times; I chccked my Inbox every hour to see if the codes had yet shown up; I requested a code to be re-sent several times. But this was Friday evening, just before the Gameweek 2 deadline, so things were getting rather critical. And in my timezone, the deadline is in the wee small hours of the morning; I really didn't fancy staying up all night for what was seeming increasingly likely to be a vain pursuit of regaining access to the account in time to update my team. So - I gave up on it. No team tweaks for me this week!!
However, I hadn't quite yet given up hope that this noisome glitch would eventually resolve itself, and my account be restored to me.
But over the weekend, the bastards revealed that they still had one further level of escalation: yep, they suddenly stopped recognising that there was a Premier League/FPL account 'associated with' my email address, and wouldn't any longer even give me the option to request 'recovery codes' that they wouldn't actually send.
Well, except that they didn't quite expunge my former account from their consciousness... If that email address was now 'unknown' to them, I should have been able to use it to open a new account, shouldn't I? But, oh NO - they weren't having that, either.
Now, if I deluged them with trenchantly worded emails about this business, perhaps they would relent and magic my old account back into existence. Maybe it would reappear naturally, if I just waited long enough - patiently trying to log back in every day, for a week or several..... And, sure, I have several other email addresses I could have tried to use to create a new account (albeit that I would have missed the first two gameweeks, so any whole-season goals or objectives I might set for myself would already be out of the window).
But you know what? I just couldn't be bothered. I took this as a sign from Fate that I wasn't meant to take part this year.
Heck, maybe I'm used to it - since I stopped taking part a little over half-way through last year as well (in protest at the noxious inanity of the dratted 'Assistant Manager' chip).
And I have often joked - with friends, and in various online forums I frequent - that I really enjoy thinking about the game more than playing it, and actually having a team of my own in competition isn't that compelling an element of my interest in FPL.
Maybe I'll return to it next year. Maybe I won't. (It might depend on how many more unnecessary changes the game's overlords try to foist on us next year!)
But what I chiefly love about the game is the added incentive it gives me to follow the Premier League more attentively - and the different perspective it gives me in my watching of the football every week. That, I believe, can continue.
And I have also come to enjoy reflecting on my experiences, insights, and opinions relating to the game of Fantasy Premier League, and to find satisfaction in sharing some of them with other enthusiasts - on platforms like this blog. That will certainly continue.
Cruel Fate has kicked me out of the game. But, in the words of Bernie Taupin, "I'm still standing...."
