The 2024 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[ingsve]

Just to be clear; you mean riders you made then you would still have made for the 2011 team. Not riders you'd have made for the team for this year?

And now I wonder, what would be the best possible - of potentially not really good - team of riders eligible in 2011 still eligible this year?

Ya, I mean for the 2011 competition, Would I still have chosen the same riders or would any of them be riders that I would immediately dismiss today based on their profile and previous record from the years leading up to 2011.

 

[Squire]

I was looking through my own team from the 2013 version of the CQmanager game.

What a terrible team I came up with that year. I have no idea what I was thinking. I must have just thrown something together at last minute or something. Out of 33 picks there were max like 7-8 picks that were actually reasonable picks at the time. I ended up scoring 10600 points that year which confirms how poor the team was.

Hmm, it doesn't look that terrible, really. I think way more than 7-8 were reasonable picks at the time. You had most of the popular picks from that year. 2013 was the first year where I somewhat knew what I was doing (and was actually trying to do well instead of fanboy-picking Valverde in 2012 ), and I finished 12th with only 1200 more points than you. Coquard making up a lot of that difference, and I also did well to be one of 3 people with Herrada and one of 15 with Rebellin in the only year of his career where he was a great CQ pick.

Your impression of yours being a bad team might be because the linear progression of neo-pros wasn't that common back then, so most teams would have some uninspiring cheap guys like your Wagner and Van Leijen. Hitting the jackpot with the likes of Coquard or with Moser the year before was a bit more of a gamble. My Fraile pick in 2013 would probably have been a good one now, but then it took him a couple more years to actually break through. And you had Alaphilippe as a unique pick! Just a year too early.

Looking at the top teams from 2013, it was quite an interesting year actually. There were a lot of viable expensive picks, where some were a bit of a bust (the very popular Gilbert), some were okay (Cancellara) and some did really well (Cavendish, Sagan, Quintana). The winner SteelyDan really won it by betting hard on a couple of big-name young riders to continue their rise (Sagan, picked 3 times, and Quintana, picked 25 times) and not missing out on important cheap guys like Hushovd, Roux, Thomas, Coquard. There was also the random monument winner Ciolek (picked 13 times) in the team, just for good measure.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Just to be clear; you mean riders you made then you would still have made for the 2011 team. Not riders you'd have made for the team for this year?

And now I wonder, what would be the best possible - of potentially not really good - team of riders eligible in 2011 still eligible this year?

POGACAR Tadej
EVENEPOEL Remco
PHILIPSEN Jasper
HIRSCHI Marc
O'CONNOR Ben
VINGEGAARD HANSEN Jonas
ROGLIC Primoz
VAN DER POEL Mathieu
DE LIE Arnaud
GIRMAY HAILU Biniam
PEDERSEN Mads
MCNULTY Brandon
JORGENSON Matteo
MERLIER Tim
YATES Adam
AYUSO PESQUERA Juan
VAN AERT Wout
MAS NICOLAU Enric
SKJELMOSE JENSEN Mattias
MILAN Jonathan
COSNEFROY Benoit
ULISSI Diego
VAN GILS Maxim
RODRIGUEZ CANO Carlos
VLASOV Aleksandr
CARAPAZ MONTENEGRO Richard Antonio
WELLENS Tim
KOOIJ Olav
VAN EETVELT Lennert
PIDCOCK Thomas
ALMEIDA Joao Pedro Gonçalves
LANDA MEANA Mikel
WILLIAMS Stephen

 

[RedheadDane]

EVENEPOEL Remco

I don't think he was eligible in 2011...

Well, I suppose technically you could have picked him, if you knew about his existence, but... people might have questioned your decision.

(Is there a rule stating we can't pick random 10-year-old kids? Apart from the Rule of Common Sense?)

 

[Squire]

I don't think he was eligible in 2011...

Well, I suppose technically you could have picked him, if you knew about his existence, but... people might have questioned your decision.

(Is there a rule stating we can't pick random 10-year-old kids? Apart from the Rule of Common Sense?)

You can pick Lance Armstrong, or you can pick Eddy Merckx, or you can pick Vingegaard's kid. Or you can enter whatever combination of letters you want.

What would have been a more interesting question is what would be the current best team of riders who were pros in 2011, or riders who were picked for the game in 2011. But I suspect that figuring those out would be the same as finding the 33 highest-scoring current riders who were also pros in 2011, or finding the 33 highest-scoring riders who were picked for the game in 2011. No budget considerations are likely to enter the picture here.

 

[RedheadDane]

What would have been a more interesting question is what would be the current best team of riders who were pros in 2011, or riders who were picked for the game in 2011.

That's basically what I was asking.
Or, well, wouldn't have had to be a pro, could have been a conti-rider, or wouldn't have had to have been picked back then.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

POGACAR Tadej
EVENEPOEL Remco
PHILIPSEN Jasper
HIRSCHI Marc
O'CONNOR Ben
VINGEGAARD HANSEN Jonas
ROGLIC Primoz
VAN DER POEL Mathieu
DE LIE Arnaud
GIRMAY HAILU Biniam
PEDERSEN Mads
MCNULTY Brandon
JORGENSON Matteo
MERLIER Tim
YATES Adam
AYUSO PESQUERA Juan
VAN AERT Wout
MAS NICOLAU Enric
SKJELMOSE JENSEN Mattias
MILAN Jonathan
COSNEFROY Benoit
ULISSI Diego
VAN GILS Maxim
RODRIGUEZ CANO Carlos
VLASOV Aleksandr
CARAPAZ MONTENEGRO Richard Antonio
WELLENS Tim
KOOIJ Olav
VAN EETVELT Lennert
PIDCOCK Thomas
ALMEIDA Joao Pedro Gonçalves
LANDA MEANA Mikel
WILLIAMS Stephen

That's selected at 2011 prices, I guess. If only we could...

 

[RedheadDane]

That's selected at 2011 prices, I guess. If only we could...

If you want 2011 prices, you get 2011 results.

 

[Squire]

That's basically what I was asking.
Or, well, wouldn't have had to be a pro, could have been a conti-rider, or wouldn't have had to have been picked back then.

If you want less strict cut-off rules, then the only one that really makes sense is riders who were older than juniors in 2011. You can go to the CQ website, compose your own subranking and select riders born in 1992 or earlier. There are enough high-scoring riders that budget becomes a thing, but you can take away the expensive guys who didn't break even this year, like Roglic, Yates brothers, Laporte, Bilbao etc. and then you start getting an idea how it would have looked like. Merlier, Tratnik and Gate would have been great picks for such a team.

 

[ingsve]

Hmm, it doesn't look that terrible, really. I think way more than 7-8 were reasonable picks at the time. You had most of the popular picks from that year. 2013 was the first year where I somewhat knew what I was doing (and was actually trying to do well instead of fanboy-picking Valverde in 2012 ), and I finished 12th with only 1200 more points than you. Coquard making up a lot of that difference, and I also did well to be one of 3 people with Herrada and one of 15 with Rebellin in the only year of his career where he was a great CQ pick.

Your impression of yours being a bad team might be because the linear progression of neo-pros wasn't that common back then, so most teams would have some uninspiring cheap guys like your Wagner and Van Leijen. Hitting the jackpot with the likes of Coquard or with Moser the year before was a bit more of a gamble. My Fraile pick in 2013 would probably have been a good one now, but then it took him a couple more years to actually break through. And you had Alaphilippe as a unique pick! Just a year too early.

Looking at the top teams from 2013, it was quite an interesting year actually. There were a lot of viable expensive picks, where some were a bit of a bust (the very popular Gilbert), some were okay (Cancellara) and some did really well (Cavendish, Sagan, Quintana). The winner SteelyDan really won it by betting hard on a couple of big-name young riders to continue their rise (Sagan, picked 3 times, and Quintana, picked 25 times) and not missing out on important cheap guys like Hushovd, Roux, Thomas, Coquard. There was also the random monument winner Ciolek (picked 13 times) in the team, just for good measure.

Ya, looking at it again and given that I would most likely pick all the 6 cheapest picks I had again I end up with 16 out of 33 that I would have no problem picking again. Then there are 10 question marks for riders that have big red flags for me today that I would have to assess based on what was going on at the time and also what other options there might have been. Some of these were perhaps the best options available despite the red flags. Then there are 7 picks that I likely would not have picked today at all.

So perhaps not as terrible as it looked at first glance.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

You can pick Lance Armstrong, or you can pick Eddy Merckx, or you can pick Vingegaard's kid. Or you can enter whatever combination of letters you want.

This year, someone even chose Izzy Sharp.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

If you want less strict cut-off rules, then the only one that really makes sense is riders who were older than juniors in 2011. You can go to the CQ website, compose your own subranking and select riders born in 1992 or earlier. There are enough high-scoring riders that budget becomes a thing, but you can take away the expensive guys who didn't break even this year, like Roglic, Yates brothers, Laporte, Bilbao etc. and then you start getting an idea how it would have looked like. Merlier, Tratnik and Gate would have been great picks for such a team.

The best scoring 33 riders aged 33+, so 19 or more in early 2011 (excluding Roglic, who wasn't really cycling in 2011) had a total cost of more than twice the budget, so budget certainly enters into it. Best possible team on that basis seems to be

	cost	points won
TRATNIK Jan	121	592
ULISSI Diego	719	1145
WELLENS Tim	623	1012
GATE Aaron	177	522
HIRT Jan	52	344
NAESEN Oliver	144	431
KELDERMAN Wilco	324	607
SKUJINS Toms	668	919
ZOIDL Riccardo	33	269
MATTHEWS Michael	633	865
BENNETT Sam	302	534
KRISTOFF Alexander	726	921
QUINTANA ROJAS Nairo Alexander	50	232
MOLLEMA Bauke	242	417
TRENTIN Matteo	583	743
PRADES REVERTER Eduard	89	240
CIMOLAI Davide	76	219
DE LA CRUZ MELGAREJO David	136	270
VAN ASBROECK Tom	362	485
ABERASTURI IZAGA Jon	72	180
BENNETT George	275	382
HALLER Marco	155	260
GESCHKE Simon	85	186
LAGAB Azzedine	40	135
POZZOVIVO Domenico	189	273
WARBASSE Larry	86	157
HAGEN Carl Fredrik	71	141
MARCHAND Gianni	29	89
PERNSTEINER Hermann	72	140
SWIFT Ben	60	126
VERMOTE Julien	7	53
BRAMBILLA Gianluca	207	263
GRUZDEV Dmitriy	89	127
	7497	13279

I didn't look up what all of them were doing in 2011.

That team would have come 25th.

 

[ingsve]

Anyone else done with their team for next season?

I guess there can still be changes made. I'm gonna pay attention to the news to see if there are any red or green flags that can force a different decision but as of now I have 33 riders that I'm happy with for next year.

Currently the team is much more diverse than this year. I have riders from 17 teams instead of just 11 teams this year.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

If people want to see how our 2011 teams would have fared in 2024, the answer is not well at all. Although surprisingly only 4 out of 88 teams would get a 0 for the year. @Jakob747 would have finished first with Brambilla as their third best scorer and I would have finished second with just six riders scoring points (one of which is in single digits but would still return a profit, shout out Geoffrey Soupe).

It's still would have been a more interesting battle for first than the one we actually had this season. Similar analysis from last season

Spoiler

Rank​	Team​	Points​
1​	Jakob747​	2772​
2​	EvansIsTheBest​	2739​
3​	nvpacchi​	2137​
4​	Team Sky Fans​	1916​
5​	Kwibus​	1871​
6​	Sneekes​	1854​
7​	Barrus​	1781​
8​	joy118118​	1621​
9​	Jpettersen​	1611​
10​	zapata​	1605​
11​	Jiaying​	1580​
12​	al_pacino​	1571​
13​	togo95​	1557​
14​	theyoungest​	1463​
15​	Tuarts​	1443​
16​	Ham-N-Eggs​	1436​
17​	Mellow Velo​	1426​
18​	Moondance​	1420​
19​	AntonioRossi​	1376​
20​	Hugo Koblet​	1333​
21​	deValtos​	1319​
22​	Squire​	1289​
23​	Passista​	1283​
24​	Waterloo Sunrise​	1266​
25​	Armchair Cyclist​	1250​
26​	mc_mountain​	1195​
27​	Kvinto​	1164​
28​	ingsve​	1135​
29​	Parrulo​	1102​
30​	LukeSchmid​	1055​
31​	Kevin Rudd's Hairdryer​	1030​
31​	Spider1964​	1030​
33​	sublimit​	1003​
34​	Wiggins_fan​	1001​
35​	microdose​	922​
36​	auscyclefan94​	921​
37​	kurtinsc​	906​
38​	lancaster​	891​
39​	who dat​	871​
40​	Timmy-loves-Rabo​	767​
41​	Sasquatch​	721​
42​	Pabryan​	696​
43​	auto de fé​	642​
44​	Spare Tyre​	617​
44​	Moncoutie​	617​
46​	hrotha​	610​
47​	henry olonga​	543​
48​	The Amateur​	510​
49​	jaylew​	495​
50​	Arnout​	467​
51​	coppiman​	431​
52​	Zaschrona​	402​
53​	Libertine Seguros​	399​
54​	luckyboy​	393​
55​	XlandaluzeX​	371​
56​	Ferminal​	367​
57​	MADRAZO​	366​
58​	Bumeington​	299​
59​	mortand​	285​
60​	Jan the Man​	270​
61​	nobilis​	259​
62​	The Hitch​	246​
62​	royalpig180​	246​
64​	Kazistuta​	230​
65​	The Cobra​	205​
66​	sosososik​	190​
67​	Vonn Brinkman​	175​
68​	Blues in the Bottle​	155​
68​	tgsgirl​	155​
68​	will10​	155​
71​	jens_attacks​	154​
72​	whittashau​	136​
73​	Object​	126​
74​	Handbrake​	99​
75​	Sydney21​	93​
76​	Bicing​	80​
77​	AAC1983​	60​
77​	Jancouver​	60​
79​	roundabout​	51​
80​	Jukebox​	35​
81​	skidmark​	15​
81​	trotters aotearoa​	15​
83​	Pcutter​	10​
84​	Gotland​	6​
85​	Contre la montre​	0​
85​	Erick 8-A​	0​
85​	sigsky​	0​
85​	Rocksteady​	0​

 

[DJ Sprtsch]

Anyone else done with their team for next season?

I have a long list of 89 riders.
So far I have created three teams. I think they all look quite good, but am leaning towards one that has five riders over 500p.

 

[ingsve]

I am leaning towards one that has five riders over 500p.

Ya, that will be the big question for next year.