Lions tour teams

So there are 35 Lions tour spaces up for grabs, plus wildcard slots outside of that for the remaining top ranked teams from home nations (who applied) However, over 40 teams applied from England, so we have to choose who goes somehow. I can't decide what the fairest method is - so I'm letting you do it. Bear in mind that this IS supposed to be an elitist tournament, beating the Lions is supposed to be one of the toughest challenges in the game.

I'll explain the options in a bit more depth:

1) Ranking - pretty obvious, top 35 ranked teams go.
2) League position - Working down the league pyramid after R14, the highest placed 35 teams go.
3) Average CSR - Lots of number crunching to be done here, but the average CSR of a clubs TOP 15 players will be taken (for all clubs in the running) and the top 35 of those will go.
4) Early signups - The first 35 that signed up to play will go.
5) Hybrid - The top 15 ranked clubs will go automatically, plus the first 15 signups. 5 will go on merit (my assessment of their performance this season). If any of the first 15 signups is a top 15 ranked club, then their place goes to the next highest ranked.

Feel free to ask questions, debate etc. but we need a team together by the end of R14.

the average csr is very possible. I myself did that for the Hong Kong Brazil CC just to see how we were going to fair (if anyone's interested we are screwed -.-). for 50 or so teams so if u have about 3-4 managers it should be doable.

League postion for me. High average csr doesn't = great manager, neither does league position, but if you have someone in 1st and someone in 6th in the same league, it's obvious who you should be picking each time, regardless of high csr.

I thinnk in the end I agree with Raggs...for me it was between Ranking and League position...but Ranking can be affected by Ranking 'management' (who they pick in friendlies, 'throwing' friendly matches to change contentment etc), so I guess it has to be League position.

Whatever you choose, it needs to reflect the quality of the manager, not just the base quality of the players.

I went with average csr but ranking isn't a bad idea. The reason I don't like league position is take my league. There are three teams there that could compete in div 3 and two of the three could possibly compete for a playoff place in some div 3 leagues.

That could just be for my own personal benefit though