Here we go. We’re officially into the second half of the first round in our quest to find the best ever article in Cartilage Free Captain history, as determined by you, the readers.

We’re heading back to the Tom Carroll Regional for the bottom half of the bracket, and there are some doozies in here. Enjoy as we continue to look back at some of our best #content.

Tom Carroll Regional

FIRST ROUND

#6 — Introducing the Recurrently Generated Tottenham Hotspur (Sean)

Look, I’m not the only jackass who plays around with recurrently generated stuff. Sean decided to generate a fictional team of players using a neural network trained on every player in Tottenham’s history. Later, he then put all of them into FIFA 19.

#11 — Tactics Tuesday: Anatomy of a Goal, and of a Season (brett rainbow)

I loved brett rainbow’s Tactics Tuesday columns — they were instructive, used good examples, and written exceptionally well. Strangely, my favorites were when he used them to explain (in excruciating detail) why Tottenham were bad. Here’s a good example, from 2015.

#3 — Andros Townsend to Newcastle for £15m Purple Monkey Dishwasher (Michael Caley)

Every so often, as a public service, we like to take an extremely stupid transfer rumor pulled from the pages of one of the worst tabloids and explain to you in detail why you should be a smart football news consumer and question everything you read. This is a great example of Transfer Rumor Telephone and Michael breaks it down succinctly, and hilariously.

#14 — RGFL: Fackenham FC — Against Modern Football (Ed F.)

What’s the worst run club you can think of? Fackenham probably has it beat. This was Ed’s Recurrently Generated Football Club team, and he did a great job explaining what a garbage club it really is (or would be, if it were real).

#7 — 17 Syllables: The Cicada (The Sleeper’s Sleep)

Another in Sleep’s incredible series of meditations, he deftly combines the haiku of Bashō with the football of Luka Modric. I wish I could write half as well has Sleep does. This article still fills me with wonder.

#10 — The Evolution of Mauricio Pochettino (Jake Meador)

In this article from the halcyon days of 2018, Jake did a great job breaking down the tactical evolution of Mauricio Pochettino from his days at Southampton and early years at Tottenham to where they were at that point. (The wheels fell off shortly afterwards, but never mind that, it’s a great piece.)

#2 — Recapping the Tottenham Hotspur transfer window (Ben Daniels)

Ben hadn’t written anything for the site in a couple of years by this point, midway through the Season of Transfer Austerity, and then suddenly he shows up with... with... well, with THIS. I’m in awe. Just read it. All the way.

#15 — The Transfer Window: A Tottenham Hotspur text adventure (Dustin)

Did anyone else play Infocom text adventure games back in the day? ...No? Just me? Well, whatever, I loved them and this was my attempt to add some levity to the window. There’s even a reference to the Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die game (which was made by a friend of mine). I’m sure I found this much more hilarious than anyone else did, but dammit, I was proud of it.