A LONG 'vacation'

 

Good gracious, what is this??

Thanks to the odd scheduling quirk that we have an international break this week, followed by the Quarter-Finals of the FA Cup on the first weekend of April, we're now faced with nearly three weeks without any Premier League football!

Since the quarter-finals of the European competitions don't kick off until 7th/9th April (and only 5 of our 9 participating clubs are still involved there, after a disastrous 'Round of 16' in the Champions League), I imagine the 14 Premier League sides no longer in the FA Cup will be taking a nice warm weather break somewhere around the Mediterranean as soon as everyone's back from the internationals. (Spurs and Newcastle, out of Europe and the Cup, can take a proper holiday....)

I can't recall such a long interruption to the League schedule ever happening before. It's really a bit too long of a break, I fear - too disruptive of regular fitness and tactical preparation routines, likely to lead to some odd hiccups in form when the League resumes. But... time enough to worry about all of that next month!

After the relentless FPL onslaught of the last few months - often two games a week since early December, and endless injury problems as a result - it will be NICE to have a little bit of a rest from it all.

I feel like a song to celebrate this welcome 'time off'. Here's an old favourite from my childhood, Bing Crosby and the cast performing 'Busy Doing Nothing' from the charming 1949 film adaptation of 'A Connecticut Yankee At King Arthur's Court'. This upload to Youtube has combined the song with a montage of clips from classic comedy duo Laurel & Hardy.

That's better. I feel quite jolly now!

And, darn it, that chorus punchline might be the most Zen thing I've ever posted on here:

We'd like to be unhappy,

But we simply don't have the time.

Keeping oneself occupied is the secret to a contented and fulfilled life. That might be just that little bit harder for the next two-and-a-half weeks...

TOO MUCH of a bad thing?

 

My favourite Geordie football analyst, Adam Clery, dropped a new video last week, examining whether and why the Premier League is proving a very dull watch this year. (Yes, it is, but....)

Although he highlights a number of problems - injuries, fatigue, and the increased use of rotations and substitutions to try to deal with this; and widespread stalemate in the tactical landscape at the moment - he also offers the useful corrective observation that... this is not completely new. Our football has always had a lot of shit elements: 'dark arts' in running down the clock, stifling defensive tactics, dour tactical struggles resulting in sterile, low-scoring games - these have always been with us. Adam reminds us that Arsenal's last title-winning side. the celebrated 'Invincibles' of 22 years ago, while they pulled off a few thrilling wins, sometimes against their biggest rivals, well, they also ground out an awful lot of bore-draws in that long unbeaten run.

This video suggests that, although this is indeed a rather disappointing season in many ways, there's also a major issue of perspective at play - making it seem much worse than it is. These days, it's possible to see every Premier League game in full - if you have the time and the financial resources available to you. It's certainly become quite accessible for big fans to watch every minute of every one of their club's matches - an experience that in the not-too-distant past was available only to the relatively small numbers of supporters who were able to attend every single match, home and away, in person. There's also a lot more discussion and punditry available now, not only on the initial satellite and terrestrial TV coverage, but on the many analytical Youtube shows like Adam's. And then, of course, there's our modern digital environment, where reactions to matches are instantly - and endlessly - shared through social media platforms; and, alas, it is very much the essence of this media environment to fixate upon the negative more than the positive.

So,.... maybe modern football wouldn't seem so bad if we watched a bit less of it??

I'm not convinced about that. But we'll have a little chance to put that proposition to the test during the three-week hiatus in the Premier League schedule that now yawns before us.

Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 31

 

The disruption of four teams suffering a Blank Gameweek was the major curveball for FPL this week (and, of course, that wasn't - or shouldn't have been - at all unexpected; it should have been planned for weeks out). And there was a fair bit of fatigue evident, after a week of hugely consequential midweek games in the European competitions for 6 of the 16 sides playing this weekend.

These weekly 'summaries' have been getting a bit too involved - and excessively time-consuming for me! - so I've been aiming to keep them briefer recently. I made just about zero progress on that resolution for the first few weeks, but.... now I've hit upon a new 'format', which might help: a tabulation of the major types of 'lucky' incidents. 

I will try to resist any extended commentary (although I probably will still indulge in a few diatribes about any particularly egregious penalty or handball incidents).

Red cards awarded: 

Red cards not awarded: 

Penalties awarded: 

Penalties not awarded: Manchester United have a good case that Amad Diallo had been briefly held back in the area and should have received their second penalty of the evening from referee Stuart Attwell. The oversight was compounded by the fact that Bournemouth immediately broke down the other end and won a penalty of their own (which also resulted, rightly enough, in the sending-off of Harry Maguire) to tie the score again. So, this decision turned the result of the game. To be fair, all three penalty shouts in the game were rather similar, and all kind of 50/50: a hand placed on the upper arm or shoulder of the attacker, only briefly and without much force (well, the Jimenez foul was straightforward, and extended tug on the shirt, but the other two were both brief hand-on events, which can be very hard to judge), the victim seeming to exaggerate their reaction, twistng violently off-balance and going down. If the referee happens not to have noticed the fleeting illegal contact, he might suppose that the attacker is merely 'simulating'. However, the TV pictures gave a much clearer view, so it is a mystery why VAR did not intervene here.

It really looked as if Danny Welbeck should have had a penalty too, when a stumbling Konate clearly through his arm out across the forward's midriff to prevent him reaching the ball. VAR does not seem to want to have anything to do with penalty decisions these days.

Tight/dubious offsides: Welbeck looked just off for his second goal, but it was allowed - and we never saw an SAOT picture to justify the call. We don't like to see goals ruled out on super-thin margins; but, unfortunately, the whole decision process in inspiring zero confidence at the moment.

Goals wrongly allowed/disallowed: 

Surprise omissions/early substitutions/injuries:  Alisson and Mo Salah were missing for Liverpool, after picking up muscle problems in the Champions League game on Tuesday. Romeo Lavia was subbed off just short of the hour (probably no-one owns him in FPL, but it's a worrying sign that Rosenior may be prone to early substitutions). Xavi Simons was left on the bench by Igor Tudor.  

Malick Thiaw was unexpectedly omitted from the starting lineup in favour of Sven Botman - but came on for the last half-hour or so; time enough to concede two goals and return a nul-pointer. That had a big impact for FPL, since he was already a fairly popular defender pick, but had more than 500,000 new managers come in for him this week as a short-term replacement for blanking players like Gabriel, Timber, O'Reilly and Guehi.

Near misses:  Igor Jesus nearly scored an own-goal early on, when an attempted back-headed clearance looped on to the crossbar. Mathys Tel let fly a dipping drive from distance that was brilliantly tipped on to the crossbar by a flying Matz Sels. In the second-half, just-returned-injury Lucas Bergvall managed to race in unmarked on to a square-ball to the back-post - but was unable to put his shot on target.

Newcastle started brightly, and Elnnga had a great chance for them in the opening minutes, blasting a powerful header only inches over the bar. A little later, a long-range curler from Chemsdine Talbi was only just finger-tipped away from the top corner by Ramsdale at full stretch, one of the saves of the weekend.

Big misses/big saves: Mathys Tel let fly a dipping drive from distance that was brilliantly tipped on to the crossbar by a flying Matz Sels. And the Forest keeper made another good stop near the end, from a strong Solanke drive from the edge of the area. But apart from that, Spurs were barely in the game: indeed, the BBC highlights made it look as though they might easily have lost 5-0 or 6-0 - they are starting to look like Dead Men Walking.

Konstantinos Mavropanos headed clear from under his own crossbar twice - to keep West Ham in the game against Villa. And a screaming 30-yard drive from Ross Barkley had to be fingertipped over the top by Mads Hermansen.

Outstanding goals: John McGinn's deft 20-yard curler was the 'Goal of the Week'; although Harry Wilson's was a close second, and we also saw very nice finishes from Danny Welbeck, Zian Flemming, and Beto.

Outstanding performances: Harry Wilson once again had a bit of a stormer.

Big mistakes: The usually dependable Lewis Dunk gifted Liverpool an equaliser with a ridiculous back-header that played in Kerkez behind him for an easy goal.

Bad luck/good luck: Hugo Ekitike had to go off after just a few minutes, apparently with a dead-leg (although it did not appear that there had been muvh if any contact made with the Brighton player; I wondered if perhaps he'd jarred ot twisted his knee in spinning away from the challenge).

FPL weirdness: I usually restrict these weekly roundups to what's happened on the pitch (and the FPL points allocations related to that), but.... this week there do seem to have been a lot of problems elsewhere - with the FPL website. I've seen numerous complaints in the last few days about Free Hit changes having failed to be acknowledged in the gameweek summary (annoying; but probably to the victims' ultimate advantage, since playing the chip this week was almost certainly a huge mistake), or once or twice about a Free Hit having apparently been shown as activated when the manager had not chosen that (seems unlikely, but.... who knows? The FPL Gnomes are endlesssly inventive in contriving new ways to screw up our beloved game....). And one of my best friends - who I suppose I must believe - insists that his weekly team selection was 'forgotten': not such a disaster as it might have been, since he'd already made the necessary transfers to ensure he had bench cover for his blanking players (and they would all be subbed in automatically, even if FPL had ignored his chosen starting order); but he'd wanted the captain's armband on Wilson rather than Palmer, so that cost him a valuable 7 points. If this was indeed a ccmmon type of glitch this week, many managers will no doubt have suffered even more heavily from it (although I would think that a majority were probably banking on Bruno Fernandes as captain, last week and this). 

I have encountered this exact glitch quite often in the past myself, a team selection being initially acknowledged, but then somehow 'erased' again at the start of the gameweek; but I haven't suffered it for some years now. I believed that it was the result of the FPL servers getting overtaxed in the last hour or so before deadline, so started avoiding last-minute team selection - seeing it as an essential precaution. (Of course, that might just be a superstition of mine. I don't suppose FPL would ever let on if this were a known problem; so there's really no way we can ever know for sure.)

I'm afraid we must accept that, in addition to all the randomness regularly inflicted on us by team coaches and the members of PGMOL, there are times when we can't even rely on the game itself to reliably record our teams for us.

Unexpected results: Liverpool losing is not really a 'surprise' any more; but Chelsea getting such a thorough spanking from Everton was a bit of a turn-up. A derby game is always tough to call; and, given Newcastle's yo-yo form this season, their tendency to be lacklustre after a big European game, and their poor record over the past decade against Sunderland, a defeat for them, even at home, was not really unexpected either; although the extent of their capitulation - after a promising start - was perhaps a bit of a surprise.

The FPL 'Team of the Week' at least includes Bruno Fernandes and Harry Wilson this time; and in a gameweek with so many forced squad changes for everyone, probably quite a lot of people would have been starting Kelleher, Welbeck, and Keane as well; although the latter was eventually edged out of the lineup by 'randoms' like Pinnock and Bijol, and it's still a pretty oddball collection overall. Moreover, these 'non-random' stars of the week were in a lot of squads anyway (especially Fernandes, Wilson, and Kelleher), so it's difficult to see how anyone will have gained much advantage from playing the Free Hit or Wildcard - unless they got very lucky with some of those less expected big returners! Thanks to a good haul for the popular captaincy pick, Bruno Fernandes, and excellent defensive returns for Everton, Brentford, Leeds, and Villa, the global average isn't nearly as bad as it might have been, but still a pretty meagre 38 points. I see from scanning the mid-sized leagues I'm in that the points distribution this week is particularly skewed: the great majority of managers are around or somewhat below the global average; and quite a lot are way down in the teens or single-digits. However, there is a very long thin tail, with some people having picked up a number of those unpredictable good hauls, just from having brought in new players fairly randomly for short-term cover in the blank gameweek; quite a few people seem to have managed something in the 50s or lower 60s, and that looks like a very good score this week; but a fortunate few somehow managed to get up into the 70s and 80s, and a handful even scraped above the 100-point threshold (though not by much...).

Of course, there is an increased likelihood of this kind of thing happening in a gameweek in which everyone is being forced to make multiple changes, but this unusually high number of completely unforeseeable good returns has made this an even more chaotic gameweek than most of us anticipated. And then, on top of all those wildly unpredictable hauls, we also seem to have seen a large number of FPL website glitches possibly robbing some people of some of their selections for the week; I don't know that there's any way to verify this, or to estimate the scale of it - but I've seen so much griping about it online, I'm fairly sure it has been occurring at a significant level this week. Even if we did know for sure how many people had been affected by problems like this, it's still difficult to quantify its impact in terms of the 'luck' factor I usually try to address in these posts - since I've thus far focused them exclusively on incidents in the game action. However, I do feel that if there has been a significant amount of FPL letting its managers down through 'losing' their team changes, that probably ought to be worth at least another 1 or 2 points added to the weekly 'Luck-o-Meter' total; but since we don't really know if it happened or not (I'll keep my eyes peeled for further reports, and possible conclusive evidence - or even an admission of fault from FPL?!). 

The large number of good returns from random players (in a week in which their ownership was likely to be - randomly! - higher than usual) probably ought to be worth a couple of extra 'Luck-o-Meter' points too; but again, since I haven't previously thought about how to quantify and incorporate this sort of factor into these weekly roundups, I'll refrain from making any adjustment for that either. Not much terrible refereeing, at least, so perhaps only a 5 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'. But it really feels as though, in practical terms, it ought to be a lot more - especially if there really have been a lot of screw-ups with the FPL website this week!!

This time, IT MATTERS

 

My scorn for the League Cup knows no bounds. 

I have always - always; ever since I was a child - felt that a second domestic cup competition is otiose, and ridiculous. I am rarely even aware of the earlier rounds being played, and I seldom bother to watch the Final (except in that one glorious year, back in the 1980s, when second-tier Oxford United managed to win it - one of the great small-club triumphs in English football history; just a pity it wasn't in the proper cup...). 

The tournament's flimsy credibility hasn't been helped by having a succession of unlikely sponsors insist on splashing their name on the trophy - a somewhat contemptible one in the gambling company Littlewoods, along with simply ludicrous ones like its current backer - the energy drink that isn't Red Bull; and, back in the day, the Milk Marketing Board supported it for a long while: calling it the 'Milk Cup' made it sound like some sort of confectionary...). 

My feeling is that the competition could become more useful and relevant - and less of a strain on an already dangerously overstuffed top-flight schedule - if it were restricted to clubs outside the Premier League.

However, we do have an unusually significant match-up in this Sunday's Final: Arsenal and Manchester City, the two teams vying for this year's Premier League title. And the game happens to come at a particularly crucial moment in that title race, as City's challenge seems to be evaporating after they tamely dropped points in their last two games - to allow the leaders to pull out a rather daunting 9-point gap.

I have an inkling, therefore, that this year's League Cup might actually decide the League title as well. City, I think, really, really, really need to win this game - to lay down a marker that they're not giving up the challenge yet, to try to put a bit of a dent in Arsenal's growing self-confidence. They still have a game in hand over their rivals, and they are slated to play them at home in Gameweek 33. If they could win both of those, Arsenal would be facing a very nervy run-in.

But if Arsenal can beat them on Sunday, they'll go to The Etihad in a month's time with no fear - and they'll probably win again there. City NEED to win this game - not for the worthless 'consolation prize' trophy, but to keep the title-chase alive.

So,... I might actually watch the game this year!  [Well, I'll try. Since the UK coverage is on the dreaded ITVX, I very much doubt if I'll be able to get a viable stream.]

[Well, what do you know? ITV seems to have upped its game - at last. It has been so notorious for so long for not having sufficient server capacity to maintain a stable stream on popular live events that I've largely given up even bothering to try it over the last few years. But it worked a treat last night! (Maybe only because comparatively few people are interested in watching the League Cup Final, even when it is between the two best teams in the country??)

I confess, I am pleased to see Arsenal 'wobble' a bit, and City re-energise their title challenge. Arsenal fans should probably be a little worried by the manner of the defeat: their team was complettely dominated in the second-half, and had no response. It was a performance so lacking that it suggests they might struggle in a number of the remaining games, not just the crunch match at The Etihad. It is uncertain, though, whether the long wait before they play in the league again will amplify or diminish the psychological impact of this result.]

High variance - why this gameweek is likely to make such A BIG DIFFERENCE

 

It's not often a Blank Gameweek hits so hard!

But this season, there are really only two teams that anyone in FPL is likely to be trebled-up on. Arsenal and Manchester City are way out ahead of the field at the top of the table. Almost every other club has lost many key players to injury and/or suffered very up-and-down form; the other would-be title contenders have all had pretty disappointing seasons (though at least Manchester United have rallied strongly since the turn of the year). Arsenal and City are just in a different class to everyone else this year; and they've both reached the League Cup Final.

So, the League Cup Final, which in many years is merely a minor annoyance, this time is a body-blow. More than half of the top dozen or so most popular players in FPL this season are from Arsenal and City. 

Raya is by far the most popular goalkeeper choice; but Donnarumma is 6th, and Dean Henderson (who also has a Blank, because he would have been facing City in the League this weekend) is 8th; even the absence of Wolves's Jose Sa is going to inconvenience well over 1% of FPL managers. So, probably about 45% of managers in FPL are missing their first-choice keeper this week; and quite a few may have found themselves missing both keepers.

And many managers will be missing 4 or 5 others of their regular starters too. If they have been imprudently holding on to some Palace (and/or Wolves!!) players as well, and/or have suffered some additional injury problems, some might be looking at having to make 8, 9, 10 changes this week. Almost everyone is having to make at least 4 or 5 changes.

Think about the consequences of that. In most gameweeks, it's very rare that anyone makes even as many as 3 or 4 changes; most of the time, we get by with only 1 or 2 transfers in a week; quite often - if we've been lucky with injuries - we'll put out a completely unchanged squad.

But this week,... almost everyone is making multiple changes to their starting eleven.

Moreover, in most gameweeks, there is a high degree of similarity between most people's teams (not as much as many people suppose: there is never a clear-and-obvious 'template' eleven...). There's usually a handful of players who are so much better than everyone else in their position category that almost everyone owns them. And at the moment, those players are Gabriel, Timber, Rice, Semenyo, Haaland and O'Reilly (or Nunes). Outside of the TOP TWO, only Bruno Fernandes, Harry Wilson, and Joao Pedro are currently such compelling and almost universally coveted picks.

This week, we have to change out half or three-quarters of our regular starting eleven - and there aren't any particularly obvious replacements to choose from. Almost no-one else has suddenly come into particularly compelling form (Tavernier, possibly; Cunha or Casemiro...); and no-one has a really good fixture this week (Liverpool, Villa, and Spurs appear to have the most over-matched opponents; but they've all been in horrible form in the league recently....). 

So, this week, there is likely to be an exceptionally high degree of dissimilarity between selections, with everyone making multiple changes, and a pretty much wide open choice of what those changes might be... and uncommonly low predictability (because of rocky form and mostly very closely matched fixtures) as to how any of that is going to play out.

Most weeks, we're just buying one or two lottery tickets; this week, we're all buying a whole fistful of them!

And all of that means that there is sure to be an extremely broad spread of points this week. And that, in turn, means more volatility - more chance that you can have an exceptionally poor week and/or that others around you can have an exceptionally good week. Of course, things could work out in your favour; but they could also go very strongly against you. There is going to be exceptionally high volatility in the rankings this week, with a lot of people seeing big swings in their league positions.

Overall, it's almost certain to be an extremely low-scoring week. Many people have used a 'hit' (or several!), spent points to assemble a starting team, and so start off at an immediate disadvantage.Many more are making do with fielding a team that's at least one or two players short. Even more, who've just about got a full eleven, but have little or no cover left on the bench, are going to find that injuries or rotations leave them with less than eleven scoring players.

And, as I already pointed out above, most of the 'best' players are missing from this gameweek; and most of the fixtures that are going ahead don't look particularly promising.

Anyone, however, who does manage to field a full eleven, and hasn't had to spend any 'hits' to do so (or only 1 or 2 of them...) is in a position to achieve a big points-gain on the majority of managers, even without getting a particularly big points total. If the global average is only 20-30 points, a haul of 50 could give you a huge lift in ranking.

* NB;  The prospect of such a powerful points/rank lift should not have tempted anyone to use a Free Hit or Wildcard this week, because those chips will - absolutely definitely - be worth even more a little bit later in the season. Over 160,000 people are on a Wildcard this week, and over 1.3 million are using the Free Hit (according to Google AI, that is; so, it's probably a completely made-up figure - but it does sound plausible). Those folks should get a useful lift this week. But that advantage will almost certainly be wiped out (perhaps wiped out two or three times over) when they are smashed by the even bigger Blank Gameweek we face in GW34, and/or they find that they can't optimise their squad for the last few weeks of the season, when we should have one or two juicy Double Gameweeks.

There is, in fact, quite a good chance that people who played one of those chips won't even do that well out of them this week - because, as I observed already, there's a dearth of obviously in-form players to choose, or inviting fixtures to bet on. Moreover, I tend to think (in my more pessimistic moments, anyway...) that more of our decisions go badly than well (there's more bad luck in the world than good luck!), so making a large number of changes - especially when you don't really need to (many people playing chips are getting tempted to go a little crazy and change almost everyone) - is generally counter-productive. I suspect that, for the most part. people who made the minimum number of changes they could get away with this week will do better than people who splashed out with a chip.

And then.... well, people who chose to play a chip this week (or left themselve 'no choice' but to do so!) are fundamentally not smart managers. We could foresee the Gameweek 31 hazard months ago, and there is absolutely no reason to have been exposed to more than 5 or 6 blanking players this week (a problem that should have been easy to deal with, using a couple of saved transfers and/or hits). So, people who made dumb choices to get themselves into such a mess are also likely to make dumb choices trying to get themselves out of it, and you wouldn't fancy them to do particularly well in this gameweek (they don't deserve to do well).

[I was prompted to these reflections by encountering on one of the FPL forums the other day one of those arrogant oafs who insists on boasting about how good his rank is currently. I mildly pointed out that there was a good chance his rank would slip this week (he was a proud, naive Free Hitter), and he whined that I couldn't possibly have a 'crystal ball' to know that. Well, I didn't claim to know for certain; I'd said 'probably' - it was merely a significant statistical possibility. People in the top few thousands of the rankings are usually insulated from big single-week drops (or rises) in rank, because things get spread out up there: there aren't many other people within a narrow range of points. But that's in a normal gameweek. In a gameweek like this one, with such an exceptionally high variance in likely points returns, there will be a lot of big swings in rank, and even people at the very top of the rankings wno't be immune to them.

As I pointed out to the noxious oaf: There is a difference between WHAT WE CAN KNOW and WHAT WE CAN ONLY GUESS AT. Unfortunately, it is a difference that almost nobody in FPL-land seems to comprehend. 

We can know that there is going to be unusually high volatility in the rankings this gameweek; it just requires a basic understanding of statistics.]

Dilemmas of the Week - GW 31 (25/26)

Arsenal, Manchester City, Wolves and Crystal Palace, of course, have a Blank Gameweek this week - because their League games have been rescheduled to allow Arsenal and City to face each other in the League Cup Final on Sunday. At least, we don't have to worry this week about possibly unexpected rotations ahead of another important European clash - since there aren't any more of those until the beginning of April; indeed, there isn't even any more Premier League until April 10th! However, the teams who played in Europe this week, particularly those who had big games on Thursday - Villa, Forest, and Palace - are likely to be showing signs of weariness from that. And I'd imagine some of the Champions League participants too, probably Newcastle in particular after their emotionally draining double-header against Barcelona, will be a bit depleted by those games, even though they happened on Tuesday. At least there don't seem to have been too many new injuries over the past week; so, hopefully, this can be a fairly brief round-up.

I am trying to streamline these weekly round-ups a bit from last year, restricting myself for the most part to just the injuries etc. affecting players that are likely to have a major significance in FPL; and also, of course, only to new injuries - I figure everyone should be aware of players who've already been ruled out for some time!  

[For some years, I have found the 'Injuries & Bans' summary on Fantasy Football Scout the most reliable resource for this kind of information; although this site, Premier League Injuries, is a very good alternative (often a little quicker to update, I think - though it did go through a bit of a glitchy period for a while last year).  Go check these out for more comprehensive coverage. 

I see the Fantasy Premier League site has added an improved 'Player Availability' page this year (though hidden under 'The Scout' tab?!). That also seems to be reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date, but god knows how it's supposed to be 'organised' - maybe by 'date of injury'? Obviously, arranging it by club and alphabetical order would be more sensible; but the denizens of FPL Towers seem to have a deep aversion to the sensible.]

I've recently discovered this additional resource, the weekly Predicted Lineups from Fantasy Football Edits. My longtime standby for this sort of news, Fantasy Footall Scout, does usually provide some explanatory commentary on its predictions, even including reminders of the key injury concerns, and sometimes also some discussion of possible alternate selections; so, if you like a bit more detail with your 'probable lineups' for the week, that could still be the preferable roundup to look at. But because FPL Edits is so stripped-down, it's rather more straightforwardly accessible, easier to scan through quickly; and I think it's also perhaps a tad more reliable with its expected formations and lineups, and a little quicker to update.

So, what are the conundrums we face ahead of Gameweek 31?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

Jurrien Timber was pulled off just before half-time against Everton last week after suffering a heavy knock, and he wasn't able to take part against Leverkusen on Tuesday. Apparently an ankle problem, though not too serious: Arteta claims to be hopeful that he might be available for the League Cup on Sunday. That might just be the usual 'smoke-and-mirrors', but.... it doesn't seem like a problem that we should be still need to be worrying about for Gameweek 32 in the second week of April.

A fair old injury crisis at the back for poor Chelsea this week: Trevoh Chalobah was stretchered off against PSG on Tuesday with an ankle injury; not as bad as first feared, but could sideline for six weeks or so (enough to put his World Cup chances in jeopardy). Reece James finally pinged his infamous hamstring again towards the end of last week's Newcastle game; still being assessed, but his previous history with this sort of injury doesn't inspire optimism that he'll be playing much further part this season. And Malo Gusto and Benoit Badiashile were both wiped out by illness this week (there's something going around...). Goalie Filip Jorgensen also missed out against Newcastle with a sudden groin issue; and that, apparently has required surgery, which means he's likely to be unavailable for most of the rest of the season (good news, at least, for Robert Sanchez - and anyone who still owns him in FPL).

James Tarkowski was an unexpected absentee last week against Arsenal, having allegedly picked up a late knock in training. Moyes has been oddly enigmatic in failing to give any details at all on what the problem is or how long he might be out for; but if you need to ditch a player to make room for one of your blankers on the bench this week, he's suddenly looking like a prime candidate. (And, given that he's the third highest scoring defender in the game this year, after only the gobsmacking Arsenal pair of Gabriel and Timber, how was he owned by only 11.5% of FPL managers??)

Emile Smith Rowe was another surprise omission last week, having suddenly complained of feeling a muscle problem in training shortly before the game.

Mo Salah is another doubt this weekend, having asked to come off with a quarter of an hour left against Galatasary on Tuesday after feeling stiffness in his leg.

Noussair Mazraoui is another who's been down with illness this week, though Michael Carrick is bullish about him being OK again this weekend (though not a regular starter, anyway!).

Sandro Tonali had to come off with a muscle problem (groin and/or hip??) against Barcelona this week, and looks very doubtful for this weekend.

Sunderland defensive stalwart Dan Ballard (owned by nearly 4.0% in FPL) had to come off against Brighton last week with a tight hamstring; seems not too serious, but makes him a doubt for the derby game. Robin Roefs, however, might be back - at least on the bench - this week.

Yet more injury woes for Spurs: Yves Bissouma (although he hasn't been getting regular gametime this year) missed out at Liverpool last week because of a muscle injury. And Dominic Solanke was unable to take part against Atleti on Tuesday because of a hip problem - although Tudor seems hopeful that he'll have shaken it off in time to face Forest on Sunday.

Wolves - remarkably - have NO PLAYERS listed as injured this week.

Do we have any players who are dropped, or not looking likely to get the starts we hoped for?

Leeds's Gabriel Gudmundsson, sent off for two yellow cards against Palace last weekend, is the only suspension this week. Wow!

Tyrique George is a loanee from Chelsea, so can't play for Everton against them this week.

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

A lot of people have been turning against Haaland for his patchy returns in the past couple of months or so. But that's always a high-risk strategy: even if he hasn't scored much recently, he is still the best forward in the league, and playing for the best creative team in the league (well, OK, Manchester United are making a fight of that at the moment; but one of the best creative teams....).

I observed ruefully last week that Spurs players had been looking like poison for a while,... and Liverpool players were suddenly not so very far behind them in the under-performing stakes. But Spurs were immeasurably better at Anfield last Sunday; and Liverpool weren't. But perhaps Liverpool have now turned their form around with a much better performance in the Champions League? (Although, that was only against Galatasaray; and they had a very poor game....)  I'd still treat Fantasy selections from both teams with extreme caution; especially Spurs! But in the last few months, it is Florian Wirtz who's been making Liverpool tick; and now that he's back from injury, we're seeing immediate results. (Having Szoboszlai released from the right full-back role helps enormously too! Although Frimpong still doesn't look at all convincing there, especially defensively.)

Did anyone play so well, you have to consider bringing them in immediately?

Cole Palmer, despite still only looking at around 85% or 90% of full fitness, came very, very close to a 20-point game against Newcastle. And I'm still banging the drum for Marcus Tavernier too; he put on another superb display for Bournemouth - without actually being rewarded with any FPL points (he is now very much due). Dwight McNeil, suddenly back in David Moyes's good books after being in limbo for most of the season, is starting to look pretty tasty too.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!

Free Hit? Just say 'NO'!!

 

Damn, an awful lot of folks seem to be playing their Free Hit for this Gameweek. An awful lot!

I mentioned yesterday, as one of my 'Signs that an FPL manager isn't much good', that doing so was suggestive of simply having not thought ahead. We've known that the League Cup finalists were going to have a Blank Gameweek in the league programme this week since before the start of the season; we've known who those finalists were going to be for just over six weeks now; and we could have made a pretty good guess as to who they were going to be at least a month before that. This blip in the schedule should not be taking anyone by surprise.

What's more, the other two clubs blanking this weekend, their scheduled league opponents, Crystal Palace and Wolves, are not really clubs that anyone should have any FPL players from at the moment. There's not even that much reason to be trebled-up on either Arsenal or City right now. Arsenal's attacking players haven't been scoring enough goals, or even getting regular enough starts, to be in serious contention this season; even the great Bukayo Saka has faded into FPL irrelevance. For most of the season, Gabriel, Timber, and Rice have been incontestably the three Arsenal players to have; but Timber just picked up an injury, and Rice has had a bit of a lull in productivity recently - so, you could easily drop either of them, if you hadn't already. Even from City, there's been no overshwhelming case for a third pick for a while, after Haaland and Semenyo. And Haaland's returns have sputtered since the turn of the year; a lot of managers have already started deserting him. Nico O'Reilly has recently been about the most popular third pick from the club, but he too has just picked up an injury.

So, really, most smart FPL managers should not have found themselves with more than 4 or 5 players blanking this week; and it should be pretty easy to move a couple of them on to the bench for the week, and offload any others - even if it might cost one or two 'hits'.

If you did have exceptionally high exposure to this Blank Gameweek, you should have started offloading a few surplus players a few weeks back - and/or started trying to save up a few extra transfers even further back - to deal with this problem.

Yes, if you are still trebled-up on both Arsenal and City, and you somehow have one or two or three Palace and Wolves players too, and have maybe picked up one or two additional injury worries as well,.... then you could be in Free Hit territory.

But that was a situation you should have been able to anticipate the approach of, and taken earlier action to avoid. And even if that is where you find yourself,.... you might still be better off spending as many 'hits' as you need to in order to fill all the holes in your starting eleven; or compromising a little and accepting that you may just have to field a side one or two men short this week.

Because.... in Gameweek 34, the FA Cup Semi-Finals are going to wipe out four games from the league programme that weekend, not just two. The line-up probably wasn't quite as easy to predict as it was with the League Cup finalists. And the qualifiers were confirmed with only a little more advance warning; in fact, quite a lot less effective warning, very little time to save up any extra free transfers - because there are now no further Premier League gameweeks for the next three weeks. On that weekend at the end of April, we'll not only be missing City and Arsenal again (almost certainly), but also Chelsea or Liverpool, and West Ham or Leeds - and whoever those teams are drawn against in the league in that gameweek. Now, as it happens, probably no-one in FPL owns any West Ham or Leeds players at the moment, and not very many from Chelsea or Liverpool. But still, it's likely to be a significantly worse disruption than this week - and it might have been even worse.

Moreover, so close to the end of the season, and with the likelihood of Double Gameweeks in close proximity - probably, hopefully shortly afterwards - you really don't want to be messing your squad up with a lot of short-term changes at that point. You might be able to avoid the catastrophic impact of so  many missing players in that Gameweek with saved transfers and 'hits', but.... you're probably going to want most or all of those players back in immediately - which is going to cost even more transfers.

However difficult this looming Blank Gameweek may be to survive without the Free Hit, you should try to do so,... because Gameweek 34 is assuredly gong to be way worse, for at least 95% of us.

A little bit of Zen (86)

"Only dead fish swim with the stream."

Malcolm Muggeridge

This quotation, or sometimes a slight variation of it, seems to get attributed to all sorts of people online, including.... Ernest Hemingway (I'm not sure he was ever that funny; not often, anyway). But it seems to be most commonly and convincingly credited to Muggeridge. He was a journalist, essayist, and satirist of some repute in his middle years, but by the '70s and '80s (the time of my childhood), in his dotage, he had declined into an endlessly parodiable - and possibly, to some extent, consciously self-parodying - bombastic social commentator on late-night discussion programmes on the television, a cantankerous grouch-for-hire.

Rediscovering this old gem of a line has got me wondering if I should rename my 'Sheep Picks' series on here (lampooning the foolishness that the 'herd instinct' in FPL so often leads people into),... or at least start illustrating it occasionally with some dead fish photos.

Signs an FPL manager doesn't know what they're doing

I pointed out last week that it is misguided - morally reprensible, and usually unhelpful anyway! - to copy selection ideas from the teams of FPL managers who appear to be doing well. Even a genuinely smart manager rarely has his squad exactly the way he'd like it. And a squad that's been successful in recent weeks, or even for the whole season thus far,... really has no more chance (or not very much more) of doing well in the upcoming gameweeks than a randomly chosen selection. Things change constantly in FPL; and no-one can foresee the future. So - looking at what other people have done in the past is really of very little help.   Don't do it!

In fact, you can probably derive more benefit from critiquing the teams/squads of recently successful managers (because, as I said in that post last week, just about nobody's squad is ever 'perfect'). You may even find it consoling when you start to recognise that most of the people doing really well (particularly in the global league; but really, in any of the very big leagues, for clubs, countries, broadcasters, etc.) aren't really all that insightful, after all; they've just been very lucky with a lot of their picks;... but they're also usually making an awful lot of basic errors, which might eventually cost them their present eminence in the rankings (though, in a league of hundreds of thousands or of millions, there will inevitably be quite large numbers of people who manage to continue to be unreasonably lucky for most of the season...).

Here, then, are my....

Top Ten 'Red Flags' that show an FPL Manager isn't really much good

1)  Having David Raya in goal

This isn't a criticism of David Raya; he just happens to be the most conspicuous recent example of a more general phenomenon (Raya is, for the second season running, the most popular keeper in FPL - despite not actually being the highest points-scoring one...). People want the 'security' of going for a very consistent keeper with a high-performing club who'll keep a lot of clean sheets. But there are all sorts of reasons why this is almost never a good idea (I went into the David Raya example in much more detail here). It's not just Raya: it's any keeper from a top club - there's no good reason for choosing Alisson or Donnarumma either. Goalkeepers at top clubs tend to be expensive; but there isn't that much of a spread of points returns across keepers, so even the very best of them won't usually give you many more points than the second or third or fourth best - and one of those is likely to be much cheaper. Keepers at the best defensive sides rarely end up being amongst the top-returning FPL keepers anyway, because you earn better returns from saves and bonus points than from clean sheets. [OK, Raya is actually in first place at the moment; but mainly because he's played at least one more game than everyone else. There are a number of others who are running him pretty close ovreall, and have done better than him over runs of games.] Even if a keeper like Raya (or Donnarumma, etc.) does end up being the top returning keeper by some margin, you could almost certainly still have got even more points from a pair of cheaper keepers with good fixture-difficulty rotation. But the most powerful argument of all is that of 'club differential' advantage: in a club with a lot of good players, the keeper isn't likely to give you as much of a points-lift over his near rivals (even if he is the No. 1 overall) as some of his defenders or attacking players will. This season, Gabriel, Timber and Rice have all been much more valuable picks from Arsenal than Raya.

2)  Not having a decent back-up keeper

Even Raya (or Alisson or Donnarumma, etc.) won't be a good bet for a clean sheet against every opponent. And every keeper may pick up a knock for a week or two, or suffer a token rotation once or twice at the latter end of the season. You really need a decent second keeper that you can utilise as necessary. And, as I just explained above, in most years you're much better off going with two decent mid-priced keepers who enjoy convenitent rotation around the most challenging opponents.

3)  Carrying 'dead wood' on the bench

Even at the start of the season, when budget is tight,... it is a dangerous false economy to have non-players on your bench; they'll quickly land you in hot water if you get a few injuries/suspensions, and no longer have any extra men spare to bring in to cover an unexpected rotation. And they tend to deplete your squad value, rather than grow it. Having a full and strong bench becomes even more important as the season goes on - particularly in the bleak midwinter months when we're often hit by multiple last-minute injuries and surprise rotations almost every week, and often need to call on automatic substitutions to fill out our starting eleven. There are occasions when you may wish to - or have to - carry a player on the bench for a week, maybe even a few weeks (a top player, a player who's increased a lot in value since you first acquired him, may simply lose you too much squad value through the dreaded 'transfer tax'; if you sell him, you might not be able to afford to buy him back); but in general, an injured player (or a player who's no longer getting regular starts, or is clearly in very poor form) is a liability - and you need to get them out of your squad straight away. FPL managers who frequently have an injured player (or two, or three!) on their bench, often a player who's been out for a week or two already, and isn't expected back any time soon,.... don't know what they're doing.

4)  Being too 'template'

Now, I dislike the notion of the 'template'; I think that, like many of FPL's irksome buzzwords, it is ill-defined and over-used. People seem to develop the exaggerated notion that there is, at any given time, a single 'best eleven' - that almost everybody owns. In fact, of course, selection decisions are never that clearcut: there's usually a pool of at least 30 or 40 most popular players who form the bulk - but almost never quite all - of most people's squads. And the thing is, popularity does not equate perfectly to quality; with many picks, there's a kind of collective hysteria, a mass stupidity behind them (the 'sheep pick' phenomenon I so often criticise on here). Many of the 'most popular' players are actually quite misguided selections, poor picks. And emerging talents, less well-known players who are just starting to hit useful form, will, at first, generally only be recognised by relatively small numbers of more astute football-watchers. Any FPL manager whose squad consists entirely of the obviously most popular players of the moment... is probably not really all that good.

5)  Having too many long-term holds

The essence of the game is that you have to rotate constantly, to try to find the players in the very best form for a short run of games at a time. Getting a player like Salah last year or Palmer the year before, who'll return high points again and again with remarkable consistency across the entire season,... is a freakishly rare event. There are rarely more than two or three players a year who come anywhere near to justifying long-term inclusion; in many seasons, there will be none. Any team/squad that's had a large number of its players unchanged for a long period.... probably isn't much good.

6)  Having a weak midfield

The midfield is where most of the points come from. Midfielders get more points for a goal than forwards, can more easily earn the new 'defensive points' than either defenders or forwards (although fairly few are actually the right profile of player to do so regularly), get a free extra point for a team 'clean sheet', and tend to be more likely to register assists and pick up bonus points as well. And a good many of them are really 'forwards' generously misclassified by the game as 'midfielders' (Semenyo, Mbeumo, Cunha, Trossard, Saka, Gordon), or at least fairly free-scoring advanced midfielders who might be expected to score nearly as often as a good centre-forward. Even in this untypically low-scoring season, this awful, awful season in which so many of the usual big producers in midfield have disappointed,.... 12 out of the top 24 FPL points-returners are midfielders. There is no excuse for going light in the mdfield, even - especially! - in the 'fifth seat'. The fourth and fifth midfield slots, in fact, are potentially the most valuable in the entire squad, and the ones you should be concentrating on rotating the most often - to get the most points from them.

7)  Having too many (any) safe-and-steady picks

With few attacking midfielders producing really well this year, while many defensive midfielders have had their points returns buoyed by the new 'defensive points' (but also by their scoring rather more goals than usual this season...), there has been a temptation for a lot of FPL managers to go for more seemingly 'dependable' options - like Declan Rice, Elliot Anderson, or James Garner. And indeed, players like these (and Enzo Fernandez and Casemiro and Ryan Gravenberch too) are in the Top 20 midfield points-producers at the moment. But.... only Rice is in the Top 5. And while there is something very reassuring about a player like this who'll give you a fairly steady drip-drip-drip of points, rather than many big gameweek hauls,... you really need to be chasing those big hauls! You really need to be looking to earn a minimum of around 6 points per game from every member of your starting eleven; and since it's almost impossible to get that from your keeper and defenders, even with hyper-efficient rotation, and since (as just mentioned in the previous point in this post) midfield is where most of the points come from, you really ought to be aspiring to more like 7 points per game from all 5 of your midfield slots; almost no single player ever achieves those sorts of numbers over a season - you have to rotate through the most in-form players. Those central defensive midfielders are only yielding 4.0-4.5 points per game; even the oustanding Rice is only producing about 5.5 points per game; that's just not enough to justify having even one of them in the squad as a season-long hold. Yet this year, many managers can be found with two or three of them; they don't know what they're doing. Almost every week you have one of these players in your squad, you're losing 1 or 2 or 3 points to someone who's making better use of rotations in these positions. [It doesn't only happen with more defensive midfielders; they just happen to be the obvious example this season. Last year many people were impressed with Morgan Rogers's excellent debut season with Villa; they bought him at the start of the year, because he was cheap, and held on to him all the way through, because he was mostly delivering decent points with a fair amount of consistency. But he only managed a season total of about 160 points: not anywhere near enough for a season-long hold!!]

8)  Too often starting four or five defenders

Related to the two points above about the paramountcy of optimising points returns from the midfield, a further sign of weakness in this area is the number of FPL managers who are regularly starting four or even five defenders. Yes, defenders have got a very useful little lift to their returns this year from the new 'defensive points'; and midfielders and forwards have, on the whole, been slightly disappointing. But still, we only see 2 defenders (both from Arsenal, of course) in the current Top 10 FPL points producers - and only another 7 in the next 20. And it's actually even worse than this; because defenders tend to start nearly every game (as long as they're fit); and, as I just observed in the previous point about defensive midfielders, they tend to be relatively slow and steady in their returns. They might constitute one-in-three of the best points-returners over the season, but they probably quite rarely manage to be one-in-four or one-in-five of the top points producers over any short run of games. There will certainly be occasions when especially favourable fixtures for your defenders and/or form or injury issues affecting some of your more advanced players may make it a smart choice to start four, or sometimes even five defenders. But such occasions will be fairly rare - the exception rather than the rule. FPL managers who are doing it every week (even this season, when the usual massive differential between defenders and more advanced players has been considerably eroded) are just pissing away points.

9)  Having too many double-ups and treble-ups

Taking too many players from the same club fails to spread risk: it leaves you dangerously over-exposed to negative impacts from an unexpectedly bad performance from that club - or to that club having a blank gameweek. And, frankly, there aren't usually many clubs who are good enough all around to justify taking three players from them. If your squad isn't drawn from at least 7 clubs, ideally 8 or 9 or 10, you're probably storing up trouble for yourself.

10)  Having obviously 'sentimental' picks

Being swayed by one's emotions and personal preferences is one of the greatest dangers in the game of FPL. Whenever you see a manager who has three players from a club who aren't in very good form at the moment (looking at you, Liverpool), you can be fairly confident that this manager is a fan of the club - and is making selections with his heart, not his brain. Such emotional biases can relate to individual players, and/or to previous experience in FPL, as well as to real-world club loyalties. People who have Salah in their squads this year are obviously idolaters who can't get over their admiration and gratitude for all the points he's delivered over the last several years. Sometimes, too, these emotional influences can work in a purely negative way: anyone who doesn't have any Arsenal defenders in their squad, despite their massive dominance this year, is obviously prejudiced against the club - and that prejudice is harming their FPL choices.

And  a couple more quick 'bonus' ones to finish with....  

You usually have to go digging around in a manager's history a bit to discover this (unless they happen to have played a chip in the current week you're looking at), but how they've used their chips can be very instructive. If they've played a Bench Boost in a week when some of their players had quite tough fixtures, and one or two were even doubtful starters, then they're not very good. If they often use their Wildcards quite early in the window, and sometimes to make only three or four changes with them, then they're not very good.

And of course,.... it's A VERY BAD SIGN if you find that a manager obviously hasn't thought ahead about a major hazard in the game. At the moment, for instance, top sides Arsenal and Manchester City have a Blank Gameweek this weekend, because they're playing each other in the League Cup Final (and their scheduled league opponents, Wolves and Crystal Palace, are also missing a fixture). This has been known for some weeks now; but many FPL managers are behaving as though they are completely blindsided by it. There is no very good reason for being trebled-up on either Arsenal or City at the moment (though many, it seems, are trebled-up on both); and even less reason to have any Palace or Wolves players (though a few might still have Dean Henderson, or one of his defenders, from the period earlier in the season when they were returning good points; and perhaps some might still have one or two Wolves players that they brought in for their Double Gameweek a few weeks back). But if you had high exposure to this Blank, you should have been moving out surplus players already, or at leat saving up transfers, so that you could move out as many players as necessary this week (and, hopefully, bring them back, if you want to, as soon as possible thereafter). People who are being panicked into using their Free Hit this week (which will surely be far more needful for most people in the bigger Blank Gameweek caused by the FA Cup Semi-Finals in Gameweek 34), or find themselves having to burn lots of 'hits' in order to put out a full starting eleven,.... just didn't think ahead. And that's BAD FPL management.

All of these points should be pretty clearcut and uncontentious. Yet, somehow, many FPL managers seem to ignore them, or even to be in stubborn denial about them - even the supposedly 'good' managers.

Go on, take a careful look at the teams of any of the online FPL 'gurus' or 'experts'; or at those of any of the top 5,000 or 10,000 or whatever in the current global rankings. I guarantee you that almost every one of them will betray some of these telltales of fundamental incompetence in the game.