Welcome to the free world of "professional webdesigners" LOL

I've developed several (WSOS) of the day. Feel free to reach on over
william@webdevelopmentgroup.org. I'll be more then happy to help out.

WILL-

Places like Odesk and Freelancer are for people who are prepared to work for low pay for some reason. So naturally you are taking a risk, you may well find someone who knows what they are doing but you will get many who have limited experience.

Personal recommendations are always helpful, and getting to know someone rather than asking people to compete is a good solution. If you have to find someone through online means look at their interactions with others for a sense of their character.

What type of app development do you want?

Thanks for the responses, I will get back to everyone in due course.

I am looking for an English Fantasy Football App - Similar to this one League 2 Fantasy Football
but using all top 4 of the English football divisions, not just 1. It would need to be self updating, with uptodate player records, scores and rankings as well as transfers and the like.

I seem to be getting some good offers and some bad ones, it's just 90% of people are from the middle east and can't communicate sufficiently to understand fully what I want to do.

I will still recommend oDesk but you need to go through the hiring process in the right way.

1) Provide clear instructions in job posting.

2) Search contractors with your required skills and capabilities using the advance search tools ( the potential contractors mostly have enough work that they don't go and bid on projects but needs to be invite to the post).

3) Guage them through email interview with technical questions and all.

4) I would prefer agencies over individual contractors as they usually have project managers (the middle man) with better communication and technical skills and review the work before submitting to you.

You can keep posting on various programming forums and you may get some proficient app developers

Dont overlook your local programmers. Try locating a computer user group. That is an excellent place to find developers, or at least referrals to qualified people.