Why all this WAITING?? (Monday Music Break - No. 1)

FPL always used to aim to confirm all match details (sometimes tweaking the BPS numbers or reallocating contested assists and whatnot) and finalize everyone's scores and league rankings within an hour or two of the gameweek's last match finishing.

But this year they've switched to to not confirming everything until 9am the following morning (UK time). And that might be only a guideline, a 'good intention', a hopeful target: last week, it appeared to be quite a bit later than that. (I wonder if the Lords of FPL Towers are just too tight-fisted to pay staff overtime for all-night working any more??)

This means that in my timezone (East Asia, currently UTC+6) we perhaps won't be getting the gameweek's details straight until quite late the following afternoon. It is a little bit of a pain-in-the-behind.

But it did remind me of this song....  Lonely Boy by Ohio indie rock duo, The Black Keys. I confess I had always thought it was called 'I got a love that keeps me waiting' - which is the more powerful hook.

I wouldn't necessarily call this a major favourite of mine. It sounds great, and the hook is enormous - but I feel it kind of fails to deliver on that promise: it's like a placeholder lyric that is never developed into anything. Though there's something intriguingly meta in a song about frustration being itself inherently frustrating! The video plays into that a bit as well: whoever thought of having a dance video that doesn't properly show the dancing (no feet?!)?? Ah, so often mere irritation is a key part of a song's earworm quality....

Coincidentally, this band is on tour in the UK at the moment - three more gigs over the next few days.

Music is one of the great passions of my life; an even greater one than football, in fact! And I have dropped a few favourite songs here on the blog before. I've been thinking for a while of making that more of a feature - so, this is the beginning of a projected regular series of musical pick-me-ups to start the week.

What's up, BBC??

It has for many years been one of the central comforting rituals of my life to catch up on Saturday's Premier League action over a good cup of coffee on a Sunday morning, with the BBC's iconic 'Match of the Day' highlights programme on the iPlayer.

But this weekend, Auntie Beeb was trying to spoil my Sunday pleasure. Saturday's 'Match of the Day' somehow did not exist. Well, it did, of course - but it was stubbornly invisible to the in-site search engine. And it didn't even appear on the programme's 'Series page', which is supposed to archive all the currently available episodes.

I had to find the daily archive of Saturday's programme schedule and scroll down to the bottom to find 'Match of the Day' in its usual late-night slot (typically starting at around 11pm, UK time). Such a bother!

It's an oversight in the 'indexing', it would appear: they've posted the programme without putting up any of the usual links to other parts of the site that let you know it's there. I wonder if this is just a piece of carelessness by some overworked drone at the Television Centre, or a transient technical glitch, or.... if the bastards are actually 'hiding' the programme deliberately,... perhaps to try to promote the new(ish) feature of making individual match highlights available. (These are, admittedly, quite handy if you're in a hurry - or if you just want to easily rewatch one particularly entertaining game - but they are just the game action; there's none of the post-match discussion and analysis, and you don't even get the team lineups at the start; so, they're a very poor substitute for the normal programme.)

I am now waiting trepidatiously to see if the Sunday edition will 'appear' as normal in the next hour or so....

Luck-o-Meter 26-27 - Gameweek 2

I'll try to continue with this series of weekly reviews for a while (although they are rather irksomely time-consuming), using the simpler format I developed in the second half of last season: 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).

Well, after a mostly rather drab and low-scoring opening weekend last week, it feels as though the season is finally getting properly under way in Gameweek 2 - with most teams starting to find their form a bit (at least - in attack or defence, but not usually both!): lots of goals and some absolutely cracking games.

Red cards awarded: 

Red cards not awarded:  

Penalties awarded: The penalty against Liverpool seemed slightly harsh: Alisson made very little contact with Neco Williams's foot - and his chip had already drifted wide of the goal, was very nearly out of play before he was brought down: one of those decisions that is technically 'correct', but is always going to feel otherwise to the side it goes against. We have sometimes seen these not given; and if Sam Barrott had not called it on the pitch, I doubt if VAR would have intervened to overrule that.

Although it is, in general, a good thing that VAR is being so much more brisk in most of its deliberations this season, and so much less interventionist, I fear that this comes at the cost of it not really doing anything at all most of the time. Jaden Bogle clearly stepped on Kevin Schade's instep inside the penalty area. So.... it might have been 'accidental', it might not have been that hard a contact? Are these the criteria we're using to adjudicate these incidents now? You can't pick your foot up if someone's treading on it, even lightly, even briefly - that's a foul. I suspect the only criteria VAR is following in situations like this is 'go along with the on-pitch referee, if he seemed to have a good view of it'.

United's penalty for the supposed foul by Greaves on Cunha was decidedly soft. The Ipswich defender was rash to be lunging in from so far back, but it was not clear on any of the TV slow-motion replays I saw that he'd actually made any significant contact; Cunha appeared to have just realised that he was sliding in alongside him, and threw himself to the ground. If the referee had not given that one, I wonder what the VAR team would have done?

Penalties not awarded:  James Hill was perhaps slightly fortunate to be let off when Dewsbury-Hall crashed to the ground after colliding with him. The Everton player probably was knowingly initiating the contact, but Hill had stepped across the line of his run - albeit inadvertently - at the last-minute, making that a very 50/50 call.

Malick Thiaw definitely made contact with Omar Marmoush's ankle as they both stretched for a high ball in the penalty area early in the second-half. It was a very slight contact, it was perhaps 'an accidental collision' as both players tried to play the ball at the same moment - and Marmoush did roll around pretending to be injured for a full minute in a blatant attempt to sway the decision. So, VAR's dismissal of the incident didn't feel 'unjust'; but it did raise further questions about exactly how this sort of contact is being adjudicated - in the past, this kind of thing has almost always been deemed to be a penalty.

Tight/dubious offsides: Several Forest players looked offside when Sels first played the ball forward to set up Ndoye's opening goal, but had apparently all got back onside before anyone played the ball again (that must have been very tight...!); but there was another offside call later in the move which was apparently determined by a Liverpool defender having raised his lower leg to take a step backward at an inopportune moment. Similarly, I was happy to see Elanga's excellent opening goal allowed to stand; but the SAOT rendering of the offside call appeared to show a Spurs player playing Newcastle onside by the length of his shirt-sleeve - there is just no way that the system is accurate enough to reliably make judgements like these on margins that slim!! Liverpool may feel that nothing was going their way, as an excellent finish by Wirtz was ruled out - after a long VAR review - for Frimpong having been half a yard slow in getting back onside before providing the assist; again a very close call, and 'rough justice' - but this time clearly correct.

Goals wrongly allowed/disallowed: It seems a particularly odd quirk of the rules that a handball is only regarded as a 'strict liability' offence if it is committed by the goalscorer. In commonsense terms, Maguire having the ball kicked into his arms from close range, when his arms were close against his chest, should simply not ever be considered handball; but if it can be so considered, why should he be exonerated purely because of the Greaves deflection? Maguire was still effectively the 'goalscorer', even if he wouldn't be credited with the goal; he was instrumental in creating the goal by taking the shot.... and he got the chance to take the shot by 'handling the ball'. The decision looked quite right; but the rules are cockeyed!! Well, that's what I thought when first watching the game last night. On second viewing, his arms weren't that close to his chest, and you could make the case that he anticipated the defender was going to try to kick the ball over him and was deliberately putting his arms up to try to block it. I'm not convinced by that argument - but it certainly should have been considered. And it looks as though it wasn't, it looks as though the VAR team got bogged down in the rules minutiae of whether the 'own goal' deflection would exonerate Maguire of a non-deliberate handball, and failed to consider at all the possibility that it was deliberate. For me, a bit of a 50/50; it didn't feel deliberate or culpable to me - but you see them given both ways.

Surprise omissions/early substitutions/injuries: Mateta and Sarr failed to appear for Palace on Friday night, although Pierre Sage claimed that this was because of injury issues rather than the transfer interest around them.

It was a bit of a surprise that Iraola chose to start Macallister rather than Gravenberch in central midfield; and perhaps also that new arrival Victor Munoz was given his first start, in preference to the recently lively youngster Rio Ngumoha (one of those changes worked out much better than the other!). The least expected Liverpool selection, however, was probably Gakpo retaining his start (though being switched to the right-wing, to accommodate Munoz on the left), despite the speculation about his imminent departure from the club (he was largely invisible, although he did provide the assist for Isak's equaliser).

There was still no start for Senesi at Spurs, or, even more surprisingly, for Mateus Fernandes (though he did get on as a substitute); and the newly arrived Savinho has picked up a muscle injury already, in his short outing in the League Cup against Charlton on Wednesday night (although there was a debut for Marmoush). Maddison was missing again, after hurting his shoulder against Brentford last week; but at least Kudus and Solanke are finally fit again.

Reece James and Moises Caicedo started on the bench for Chelsea, but were brought on for the last 20 minutes or so (Caicedo soon had to withdraw again with what looks like a recurring muscle injury).

Kobbie Mainoo and Marcus Rashford finally started, at the expense of Andrey Santos and Patrick Dorgu.

Near misses:  Hull's Canadian winger was released on a surging forward run late in the game by Ollie McBurnie, but his eventual low shot, through a defender's legs, from just outside the area had Rushworth well beaten but went inches wide of the post. (He was able to make amends for the miss with a clinical finish to a lone breakaway in behind a few minutes later.)

Big misses/big saves: Phil Foden was set up with an open goal in the first-half against Palace on Friday, but somehow sliced his effort high over the bar. Shortly afterwards, Cherki's cross from the right set him up for a headed chance only a few yards out, but he didn't get a proper contact on it (he did eventually provide an assists for 2 of the 4 goals [although I'm not sure he really deserves one for being the last person to touch the ball before Cherki scores a ridiculous solo goal!!], but overall it may have been a shaky enough performance to dissuade FPL managers from selecting him at the moment). Shortly afterwards, Tyrick Mitchell headed Wharton's perfect cross wide of the post - when he had the entire goal to aim at (and at that point, Palace were still only 0-1 down).

Dan Ndoye ghosted in behind Frimpong early in the game to get a free header at the far post from a lovely cross by McAtee - but directed the effort right across the face of the goal and beyond the other post: a huge let-off for Liverpool, who were completely dominated in the first-half, and could easily have gone in at the interval 2 or 3 behind. Alisson kept Liverpool in the game on the stroke of half-time, when he pulled off a superb flying save to tip Igor Jesus's point-blank drive on to the underside of his crossbar.

Djordje Petrovic made possibly the 'Save of the Season', a flying reaction stop with his fingers somehow forcing Branthwaite's powerful glancing header from outside the near-post across the face of goal to safety, when it already seemed to be past him. Thierno Barry (suddenly the most coveted cheap forward in FPL - coveted, at least, by The Sheep - after scoring a hattrick in the Cup midweek... against Preston), squandered three excellent chances, blasting one close-range effort straight at Petrovic, then soon after lashing another into the side netting on the near-side, when he had lots to aim at on the other side of the goal, and again failing to get past Petrovic in a one-on-one in the second-half. (I wouldn't bet against him being replaced by Beto again soon, maybe even next week.) Late on, Vitaliy Mykolenko made two superb blocks in quick succession to keep Everton in the game.

Hull full-back Nobel Mendy unleashed a fierce drive from more than 30 yards out, but Rushworth was just able to claw it away from his post.

Spurs created a few moments of danger early on, with Hornicek making a good save from Tel, and Porro having an effort deflected over the bar by a block from Hall.

Dan James was played in behind for a one-on-one with Kelleher, but couldn't ultimately put his effort to lob the Brentford keeper on target. Dominic Calvert-Lewin's late equaliser for Leeds would have been well offside if.... a knackered and soon-to-substituted Schade hadn't been loitering motionless near the touchline two or three yards behind his defensive line.

The 'in form' Joao Pedro spurned a chance to put Chelsea 3-0 up against Brighton, placing his shot wide of the post when he pretty much had an open goal before him, only the keeper to beat. Towards the end of the first-half, Diego had a golden chance to pull Brighton back to 3-2 down, but put his free header right across the face of the goal.

Granit Xhaka provided one of the best assists of the weekend - but Wilson Isidor slammed his shot against the foot of the post, when it should have been quite easy to beat the keeper and convert the chance (although he was able to make amends with a very similar chance created for him by Diarra a little later).

Julio Enciso's pace got him in behind the Manchester United defence on a long lone breakaway early on, but he couldn't put his shot past Lammens. While others this week were competing for 'Goal of the Season', poor Bryan Mbeumo probably wrapped up 'Miss of the Season' when he threw himself at a cross barely a yard from the goalline, but it spooned up off his thigh and ricocheted back off the underside of the crossbar; missing from that position genuinely looked impossible.

Outstanding goals: Rayan Cherki probably tied up 'Goal of the Month' - and maybe even 'Goal of the Season'!! - on Friday night when he received the ball from Foden on the edge of the box and proceeded to dribble around the entire Palace defence.

Anthony Elanga pulled off a very sharp turn to get his shot off for the opening goal at Spurs (although the offside call on the move was extremely tight!). Victor Munoz's late second equaliser for Liverpool was very similar - but perhaps even more emphatic a finish (although a slight deflection off Murillo's toe may have taken it away from Sels).

Cole Palmer actually had quite a subdued game against Brighton - but you give him one sight of goal and he says,"I want to be in 'Goal of the Month' too!"

Leif Davis's adroit first-time finish on Fatawu's perfect cross might also have been a 'Goal of the Month' contender in another month, but.... Cherki.

Outstanding performances: Cherki - outrageous!!! Everybody's going to be buying him this week!!!  Alex Scott was also superb for Bournemouth; and it's great news for them that he's saying he wants to stay at the club. And then, yes, there was Bruno Fernandes - pulling off what might prove to be the biggest FPL points-haul of the entire season. (It will certainly be one of the top handfull.)

Big mistakes: Bernd Leno looked seriously at fault for Sunderland's late, decisive goal - opting to spread himself on the ground for a shot that wasn't yet coming, rather than trying to intercept Diarra's square-ball, and so letting it run through to Isidor lurking just beyond him.

Bad luck/good luck: Elliot Anderson had a flick at Pino going past him, but did not appear to make any contact. So, it was unjust that he received a yellow card for the non-existent foul, and even harsher that Pino then managed to convert the resulting free-kick from nearly 30 yards out. That was a terrific strike, but it was a big slice of good fortune that it crashed back off the underside of the crossbar and richocheted into the net off the back of the diving Donnarumma's shoulder!

Verbruggen was perhaps a little unfortunate to get tangled up with his defender, allowing the ball to bobble free to gift Chelsea an opening goal - though some would call that a goalkeeping error. Own goals are almost always a little unfortunate, but Joao Pedro's deflection of Pascal Gross's going-nowhere shot more so than most; and Jacob Greaves's similar diversion of a wildly off-target effort from Harry Maguire even more so. 

FPL weirdness: It is unfortunate that there's no 'qualtitative' element to the BPS tallying; and you sometimes doubt if even its 'quantitative' aspect is entirely reliable. It seems more than a little unjust that Djordje Petrovic's outstanding performance in the Bournemouth goal - in a low-scoring game - somehow only elevated him to 6th place in the BPS ranking for that match. It is doubly galling for his owners that he was only credited with 5 saves (I thought it had been more!), one shy of earning him a second 'saves' point.

Unexpected results:  Liverpool are all over the place at the moment; but even so, Nottingham Forest, who'd had a pretty flakey opening game themselves last week, would not have been expected to cause them too many difficulties at Anfield.

With Villa v Arsenal still to be played (and most FPL managers having 2 or 3 Arsenal players), the global average has already reached a very respectable 66 points. And the FPL 'Team of the Week' is now fairly well populated with well-owned players - although the Hull goalkeeper, both of Newcastle's full-backs, and Bournemouth's Alex Scott were probably not widely expected to feature in it. On Saturday there were only 3 mildly contentious (but probably 'correct') penalty decisions and a few very close (but probably 'correct') offsides, and it looked as if the gameweek might be remarkably free of error or controversy in the refereeing. But on Sunday, we saw Manchester United benefit in quick succession from an at least mildly controversial handball decision in favour of Harry Maguire for the equalising goal, and then from a very soft penalty award to Matheus Cunha. And Schade should definitely have had a penalty at Leeds. And Bruno Fernandes's super-massive points-haul, though not entirely unexpected against a promoted side, itself puts this gameweek somewhat outside of normal bounds. Thus, I think we've crept up to about a 4 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'!! 

Dilemmas of the Week - GW 2 (26/27)

Thankfully, we have not - so far - suffered the slew of training injuries that are usually so common early in the season. And it seems that even 2nd Round games in the League Cup and Brighton's Europa Conference League play-off return leg against Tromso have failed to produce any further casualties in midweek. So, it looks like there are only a few minor concerns this week.

To keep these posts more manageable, I'm 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. 

The Fantasy Premier League site itself now has a 'Player Availability' page (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 2?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

Brighton's Giorginho Rutter and Jack Hinshelwood both apparently picked up a 'knock' in training early in the week and had to miss yesterday's Conference League tie against Tromso. Hinshelwood has been one of the week's most popular acquisitions with 135,000 new owners piling in for him after his brace against Villa.

Liverpool's Federico Chiesa, very rarely a starter anyway, has picked up another muscle injury this week, once again ruling him out of contention altogether for a while.

Amad Diallo was a late omission against Hull last week because of a 'niggle'; no word yet on whether that continues to keep him out of the action.

Newcastle striker Will Osula suffered a foot injury in the Liverpool game last week, and could be out for a while.

James Maddison, only just back from his long ACL injury, hurt his shoulder against Brentford last week, and might be doubtful for this week's game against Newcastle.

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

Villa's new central midfielder Joao Gomes is starting a three-match ban after getting himself sent off for a retaliatory kick in his debut last weekend.

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

Robert Sanchez was so bad in goal for Chelsea on Monday night that there must be a serious risk of him being dropped (and who would really have wanted him in their Fantasy squads anyway?). Emi Martinez is said to be joining the club from Villa, but that might not get sorted in time for him to appear for them this weekend.

The Ollie Watkins transfer to Al Hillal is said to be very nearly finalized, so it seems he won't be turning out for them this weekend. But Villa and Spurs were both so awful in their opening games that all their FPL assets have surely become toxic for the time being anyway. With Ismaila Sarr, Jean-Philippe Mateta, Daniel Munoz, and Adam Wharton all said to be on the brink of departure, Crystal Palace are likely to be in severe disarray also, and are surely best avoided.

Savinho and Omar Marmoush could become more attractive prospects in FPL after their moves to Spurs from City (Marmoush only on loan; presumably he would be recalled the instant there's any sign of an injury problem for Haaland... or Semenyo); but they'll need time to settle in; and Spurs evidently need time to find their feet again under De Zerbi.

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

As I said yesterday, Cole Palmer was absolutely sensational against Fulham on Monday - and is perhaps the one player who might be worth using an early transfer on. Joao Pedro and Morgan Rogers were also very good in that game, but they were heavily owned by the start of the season already, and they surely weren't quite 'good enough' to convince anyone to revise their initial squad selections. Fulham's Josh King was also outstanding in that match, and could be worth keeping an eye on as cheap 5th-midfielder option. 

As I noted this morning, I think the sudden enthusiasm for Maxim De Cuyper and Mamadou Sangaré is excessive; De Cuyper might have been a smart pre-season pick, but doesn't justify using an early transfer on now, while Sangaré is still probably only the 5th or 6th most tempting pick.... from the Brentford mifield! I might have been tempted by Brighton's Jack Hinshelwood (well, I was tempted by him for my initial squad, but decided against him), but he's now struggling with a knock. 

Arsenal's new Greek left-winger, Christos Tzolis, is also looking a very lively prospect at just 6.5-million, but as with De Cuyper, is heavily owned already, and probably not worth using a transfer on this week; in any case, Martin Odegaard, also priced at only 6.5 this year, is currently looking even better (and Bukayo Saka better still - though it's really difficult to afford his 9.5 million asking price without giving up on Haaland and/or Fernandes!). The 'must-haves' from Arsenal for the start of the season, though, are looking like Riccardo Calafiori and/or Ben White.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!

Sheep Picks (22) - the two biggest transfers of the week!

 

I quite often snipe at 'The Sheep' element among Fantasy Premier League managers - by which I mean the substantial numbers (possibly, alas, an overall majority) who don't really understand FPL that well, or even follow the EPL that closely, and so make most of their decisions based on an impulsive reaction to last week's results... and/or at the promptings of FPL's own vapid pundit 'The Scout' or the many similarly unimaginative 'influencers' out here on the Internet.... or indeed just following whatever seems to be a popular pick being mentioned a lot in online discussion forums. This often coalesces into a kind of collective hysteria - where the HUGE numbers of managers rushing in to buy a certain player bears no relation to his true worth, his likely points potential over the next handful of games. The player in question might not be at all bad (though often he is); but he is not the irresistible bargain, the must-have asset that so many people seem to think

Hence, I created this occasional series of posts highlighting players I think are dangerously over-owned, are the subject of a sudden and misguided enthusiasm.

I've mentioned once or twice before in this series that the volume of transfers in for a player each gameweek (one of the filters you can select for viewing the player list on the FPL website's 'Statistics' page) is a pretty good guide to who the 'sheep picks' of the moment are. And while I wouldn't suggest that you should never consider buying the most popular transfer of the week,... that is a good general rule.

In the first week of the new season, there have been two massive frontrunners in the transfer traffic; and I wouldn't touch either of them with a bargepole.

Brighton left-back, Maxim De Cuyper, carries a lot of attacking threat, and with major injury problems for both of the club's usual starters at left-wing, Kaoru Mitoma and Yankuba Minteh, going into the season, it did seem almost certain that the young Belgian would be getting at least a few starts as an outright winger. And then Brighton had a storming opening game, against a lamentably awful Villa, and De Cuyper snagged a goal and an assist to wind up as the 'Player of the Week' with an enviable 17-point haul. So,... now everybody's piling in for him (well, 413,000 new owners this week, and counting), forcing his price to click up to 4.6 million. This is a classic case of chasing last week's points. That was almost certainly the biggest haul he'll get all season, and there is no particular reason to hope that he'll even manage double-digit returns again very often. They're away to Chelsea this week, who've started the season in terrifying form!

Now, admittedly, the two players who might displace him both seem to be in quite a bad way, and might be missing for another couple of months or so. But Brighton's sequence of fixtures in this period is extremely daunting: one of the toughest early runs for any team this season, in fact. They're an erratic, upper-mid-table side, who can struggle against anyone, they never have any reliably 'easy' fixtures; and certainly not the top four clubs, all of whom they face in the next 8 Gameweeks, three of them away. Brentford, Sunderland, and maybe Palace will also be tough tests for them; Leeds aren't at all the 'green fixture' opponent FPL's ludicrous 'Fixture Difficulty Rating' currently assesses them as, and Hull might not be either, given the impressive way they started their season last week against Manchester United. Brighton might not be keeping many - or any!! - clean sheets between now and the end of November. If De Cuyper can keep producing good attacking returns, maybe that won't matter so much; but one has to keep in mind that his points are likely to be undercut by games in which his side concede a lot of goals.

An attacking player classified in the game as a 'defender' is gold dust in FPL, and I think it would have been worth taking a chance on De Cuyper for that reason in the initial squad. However, paradoxical as it may seem, I just don't think he's worth a transfer to bring in at the moment. He's probably already produced his best gameweek of the season, and you missed out on it. His prospects over the next 8 or 9 fixtures look fairly poor. And after that, he's quite likely to be back to fighting Kadioglu for a start as a conventional left-back.

Brentford's new central defensive midfielder, Mamadou Sangaré, does indeed look a hell of a player; and I think he might be transformative for Brentford, lifting them to be more convincingly an upper-third side, and helping a number of his teammates to become rather stronger potential FPL assets. However, as with De Cuyper above, I think the 350,000-odd managers who've rushed in for him since his superb 14-point debut last weekend are greedily assuming that he'll produce double-digit hauls almost every week. And I see no case for that. Last week was clearly an absolute freak: Brentford just barely kept a clean sheet against an utterly woeful Spurs (Kelleher still had to make a few saves, despite a paucity of attacking threat from a poor opponent), while Sangaré only just barely crept up to the 'defcon' threshold to earn additional 'defensive points', and his 2 assists were both somewhat fortuitous (very low combined xA rating on the pair of them!), significantly helped by poor goalkeeping from Kinsky (prodding his low square-ball into the path of Lewis-Potter, and then parrying his weak-ish shot straight back at Janelt). I doubt if he's going to be any sort of regular - let alone prolific - producer of attacking contributions; and while he does look likely to produce 'defcon points' pretty well, they're extremely unreliable, and ultimately not worth getting excited about on their own. There's also a club quota issue to consider, with Kelleher a fairly popular cheaper goalkeeper, Thiago currently one of the most popular forwards, and Kayode a very promising 4.5-million prospect in defence; and then there are a number of other midfielders - Schade, Ouattara, Lewis-Potter, Damsgaard, and Janelt [or now, perhaps, Anthony as well] - who do definitely offer the prospect of probably much more regular attacking returns than Sangaré. This is a player who might just conceivably be worth considering as a cheap 5th-seat midfield pick if he were from a weak club; but at Brentford, he just doesn't get into the conversation.

[In Gameweek 2, Brighton - unsurprisingly - got absolutely battered by Chelsea, and De Cuyper ended up with 0 points for the week (lucky, really, that he didn't get into negative points; although many of his new owners might have patiently left him on the bench for this game). Sangaré again reached the 'defcon' points threshold, but only just, and didn't do much else in the game (registered a fairly low BPS tally - because it doesn't give much credit to defensive contributions); he returned 4 points, but was comfortably out-scored by his midfield teammates Lewis-Potter and Schade.]

A little bit of Zen (109)

 

"I need ammunition - not a ride."

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

The Ukrainian President's concise and stupendously badass response to Joe Biden's offer of sending American Special Forces to help safely extract him from the country in the hours after Putin's invasion began in February 2022 should be an inspiration to all of us - in FPL, as in other areas of life. So many FPL managers we see on the online forums are just looking for a safe way out, for a free ride - 'Please, tell me who to pick.'  They should be looking for ideas, information, perspectives: things that will help them develop their thinking about the game, and enable them to start making better decisions for themselves.  That is what I try to do when I respond to such online queries. 

I never want to tell people who they should pick; I want to try to help people understand how to make better picks. You need 'ammunition', not a ride.

'Form' in ONE DAY?

 

With a few of the most exceptional players - like Salah, like Haaland - we've seen many times how far their best level of performance is above that of the great majority of other players; and we've seen that they reach that level repeatedly, and that, when they attain it, they usually sustain it for extended stretches of the season.

Thus, although with 'normal' players, it really takes at least two or three strong games from them before we can start feeling confident that they've hit top form, with a player like this, one outstanding match is all it takes to reassure us that they're back to their best.

I believe that Cole Palmer is such a player. And his performance against Fulham on Monday night was superb in every aspect: he really looks as if he's rediscovered his best form.

And his best form - throughout the 23-24 season and in the first half of the 24-25 season - was some of the best we've ever seen in FPL!

I'm very glad that I gambled on Palmer as my premium midfield pick for the initial squad. If you didn't, I would suggest that he is the one player people need to consider bringing in as soon as possible.

Why that Bench Boost didn't go so well

That glass isn't even half full, not anywhere near 

Apparently, over 800,000 FPL managers risked their Bench Boost on the opening weekend of the season. Most of them were probably duped into it by the surprisingly large number of influential online 'content creators' who (perhaps 'influencing' each other??!!) all suddenly decided - on very spurious grounds - that it might be 'a good idea'.

Here are the reasons usually given for this bizarre choice; and the reasons why they're all completely bogus.

1)  It can give you an early lead.

Yes, it can. It probably did, for many people. But a very small early lead that will rapidly evaporate as other managers play their Bench Boost more sensibly later in the season and get better returns from it. 

To optimise your points returns over the season, you have to try to optimise your returns for every individual gameweek; and playing a chip just to get an early lead does not do that.  If you 'chase the lead' like this, you end up in a worse position overall at the end of the season.

2)  You can set up 'perfectly' for your Bench Boost attempt using the unlimited transfers available in pre-season.

Yes, you can in theory. But as I explained the other day, there are so many uncertainties at the start of the season around form, fitness, tactics, and selection that you really have no idea how well anyone's going to play, or even if they're going to play (you don't always have 15 starters in Gameweek 1; heck, you don't always have as many as 13!!). You're betting completely blind. 

You will almost certainly get a better return from this chip if you play it later in the season (even if you're not able to set up 'perfectly' for it!) - when form has settled down, and you can feel more confident about what the most promising sets of fixtures will be;... and more confident about actually having a full 15 starters.

3)  The fixtures looked really 'promising' this weekend.

You imagined they might be promising. No-one had any real idea which fixtures were going to be easy, and which not. There are almost always a lot of surprises and upsets in the opening gameweek.  

This year.... Manchester United were comprehensively outplayed by promoted Hull; Liverpool were outplayed by unfancied Newcastle, and only salvaged a point with a contentious penalty in the last kick of the match; and Manchester City were outplayed at home by Bournemouth, and barely scraped a late, narrow win; Villa got absolutely thrashed by Brighton; Spurs got absolutely thrashed by Brentford; Sunderland unexpectedly lost to promoted Ipswich; Forest lost at home to Leeds (that was always going to be a tight one; but a lot of people fancied the strong home advantage at the City Ground, and the 'magic touch' of Oliver Glasner); and Chelsea were nearly held to a draw at Fulham thanks to some horrible goalkeeping by Robert Sanchez. So, almost none of those supposedly 'easy' fixtures worked out at all as expected. Amongst the Top 50-odd FPL picks in the first gameweek, the only big returners were most of the Arsenal starters, Palmer, Joao Pedro, and Rogers from Chelsea, and Ndiaye from Everton. 23 of them blanked; another 10 didn't even play (not good for a Bench Boost!); and Matty Cash ended up with -1!! Nearly two-thirds of the most popular players came up with nothing this weekend; and that should not have been a surprise - it often happens. Gameweek 1 is always very unpredictable, and often very low-scoring.

4)  If you went without one or more of the 'super-premium' players, you could afford a 'stacked' bench (and then use an early Wildcard to switch to a much cheaper bench, and maybe bring the omitted big names back in fairly soon).

That one is actually somewhat tempting - apart from the aforementioned problem of not having any idea how most of the opening matches are going to turn out!! But I haven't seen many people following this tactic; almost everyone seems to have been hanging on to at least one of the super-premiums, and a very large number have insisted on having all three (and many of these followed the sheep to Bench Boost anyway, despite, in many cases, having 1 or 2 obvious non-starters on their bench).

The further problems here - in addition to having no real idea who to put on your bench, even if you are able to set aside more money for them - are, first, that it's always a huge risk to go without the big-name players: they're 'big names' for a reason - they often produce massive hauls,... and they often start out the season very hot; Haaland particularly so. (Some years ago, I took a chance on going without the two biggest players that season in my initial squad, and they both scored hattricks on opening day!)  Second, there is a 'cost' to the early use of chips: not only will you almost certainly be able to earn more proints from a later Bench Boost, but hanging on to your Wildcard until later in the season (when you might hit a major injury crisis, or find that there's a big shift in fixture-difficulty for several teams, or a sudden swing in form for some teams) can also be very valuable. Committing to using both of these enormously powerful chips early in the season - when you don't really know what's going on with anyone's form - is.... just silly.

5)  Well, at least this gets the chip 'out of the way'!

Um, what??? No, I can hardly believe I've seen that view expressed by normally sane and sensible members of the online community, but... Believe it or not, this has been quite a commonly expressed sentiment about the early - very early - use of the Bench Boost. Because having a second Bench Boost and Triple Captain to use in the first half of the season is a new feature of the game, only introduced at the start of the 25-26 season, many people are still confused, flummoxed, discombobulated by the fact. They don't see any real value in these additional chips, and are thus inclined to use them any old how, as if it really doesn't matter. And many of them seem genuinely worried that they might just 'forget about them', and then find themselves having to use a handful of chips one after another in December (there will be 6 or 7 gameweeks in December, so.... still not a problem).

This attitude, of course, is utterly fatuous. These chips are valuable, and you should make a careful decision about when you can use them that will give you the strongest possible chance of extracting good value from them. That is emphatically not in Gameweek 1.

Two factors are crucial to a successful Bench Boost, one 'internal' and one 'external'. The 'internal' one is that you need to have a strong squad who are all fit and starting regularly. The 'external' one is that you'd like to have all 15 squad members - or as many of them as possible, at any rate - facing weak opponents in the same gameweek.

In Gameweek 1, you simply cannot be confident that all 15 of your squad members are going to start, nor do you really know which the softest fixtures are likely to be.

The 'global average' score is a powerful indicator of how worthwhile a particular gameweek has been for using the Bench Boost in. A high average indicates that lots of players produced big hauls, and that obviously increases the chances that you might have had many big hauls among your 15 squad members. The 'global average' in this year's Gameweek 1 was a dismally low 48 points; therefore, it was a very poor week to have Bench Boost-ed in.

Now, a lot of people are claiming they did really well on their Bench Boost last week. But did they really??

Players like Sangaré, Kayode, Lewis-Potter and Janelt of Brentford, Hinshelwood and De Cuyper of Brighton, Stach and Bijol and Justin of Leeds, Dewsbury-Hall and Ndiaye of Everton, and Tzolakis of Hull did very well,... and are the type of the players that people might have left on their bench. But these players are all pretty low-owned, so it's unlikely that many people had more than one of them, and many will have had none at all. And it was entirely fortuitous that so many 'fringe' players like this happened to get really big scores in a week in which fairly few players actually returned well. 

Moreover, in most of the cases I've looked at where people have proudly shared their teams, it's pretty obvious that one of these guys should in fact have been starting. And anyway, I always maintain that, since the Bench Boost is a whole-squad achievement, you really ought only to count the 4 lowest-returning players as the true value of your points-lift from the chip, whether you'd left them on the bench or not. After all, if a player doesn't play at all, he gets shifted on to your bench; I think you ought to do the same if a player has a shit game - when evaluating your Bench Boost. Most of the Bench Boosters this week probably heavily backed Manchester United (no-one returned) and Liverpool (Van Dijk and Wirtz, two of the most popular picks, didn't return) and City (Haaland and O'Reilly, the two most popular, didn't return) - and so had a pretty dismal week in their first eleven. Getting a good bench score but a terrible score in your starting eleven.... means you made some bad choices about who to leave on your bench; and it was not ultimately a good return from your Bench Boost. 

You really need to check how high above the global average you were to assess how well your Bench Boost did. I reckon, if you're not at least 20 points above, you did quite poorly (because you'd hope to get at least 10 points above global average most weeks anyway, if you're any good at the game; and 10 points is the absolute minimum you should be making from the Bench Boost, properly counted).

Some people will undoubtedly have done quite well out of it (some people will get lucky with any Bench Boost selection in any Gameweek!!). But not many, I think. And a good outcome does not mean it was a 'good' decision. Good decisions are carefully thought-out and well-justified, and give the highest probability of success for the majority of people following a certain path. 

Playing the Bench Boost in GW1 was not that. It was a bunch of people succumbing to greedy impulse and hare-brained logic, or just unthinkingly following some online 'guru' or other. And the majority of them were punished for that. (They don't know yet just how badly they were punished; but they'll find out gradually over the next four months, as perhaps a good 60% or 70% of the other managers in the game earn substantially more from their Bench Boost chips.)

I don't think I've come across anyone who can claim to have got an effective points-lift from the Bench Boost this week of more than 10 points; most are much lower. It should be fairly easy to better that later on - once we know what's going on with everyone's form.

And - good grief! - many people were taking the same approach to the Triple Captain chip: "I don't know what to do with it, it's burning a hole in my pocket. Let's just dump it in Gameweek 1, even though I have no idea what any of the results are likely to be, or who's in form yet."

It's a kind of masochism: these people just don't want to do well in the game, they're trying to sabotage themselves. It is very sad.

"Alright, alright, alright...!"

 

We must seek uplift and inspiration from every possible source. 

Last week, I stumbled upon this Rolling Stone interview with Matthew McConaughey, talking about his lifelong love of music and listing some of his favourite songs. The man is passionate, articulate, funny, self-effacing - and has a diverse taste in music. And while many waste the riches of stardom on huge houses and fancy cars, it turns out that McConaughey is more likely to use his privileged position in the world to.... just drop everything and take an impulsive trip to Africa on the off-chance of being able to meet a musician he admires. What a legend.

There aren't many people I look at and think, "Wow - I wish I could have lived their life." McConaughey might be one of the few.

Remember - Gameweek 1 is ALWAYS shite!

 

Well, of course that is a bit of an exaggeration...  There's always somebody who manages to do well for themselves in FPL, even in the most horrible gameweeks. But Gameweek 1 is pretty regularly - almost always - utterly shite for a majority of managers in the game.

The ways in which it can be shite can very a little. Sometimes it can be quite a high-scoring gameweek, but all the big returners are completely unexpected randoms that almost nobody owns. Occasionally there are just a handful of big returners, but they're all the highest-owned players, so there's very little differentiation. (Though woe betide you if you gambled on trying to do without one of the 'big names'! Some years ago, I judged that Mo Salah and Bruno Fernandes were ridiculously overpriced, and thought they had some unpromising early fixtures, so took the chance on building an initial squad without them. I was kind of vindicated over the season as a whole, but they both nabbed hattricks on the opening weekend, so it took me nearly 6 months to make up the ground I'd lost...!!!)  More often than not, it's a frustratingly low-scoring gameweek, with most of the big teams and big players failing to produce very much.

But the main thing that makes it such a shite gameweek year after year is its sheer unpredictability.

1)  The transfer window is only half over, rumours are swirling around several players: some may get dropped - or 'refuse to play' - in anticipation of an imminent move. Others may be unsettled by the prospect of an imminent arrival challenging for their place, or leading to a radical change in the team's style of play. Ongoing transfer activity and speculation can be deeply unsettling to a team's or individual's performance in all sorts of ways. (Would Villa have taken such a battering from Brighton on Sunday if Ollie Watkins had been willing to lead the line for them? Perhaps not.)

2)  Many clubs are under new managers. And most existing managers try to shake up their tactics for the new season. None of these new ideas have had enough time to fully bed in over a short pre-season, so tactical implementation in the early weeks of the season - especially Gameweek 1 - is often pretty shakey.

3)  Many players are carrying slight injury concerns, or still suffering from fatigue after the World Cup (or the Euros, or some other summer tournament). And many have been given extended breaks, missing some - perhaps even all - of their club's pre-season training. (This year, Erling Haaland only returned to training with City 10 or 11 days ahead of their opening league game. He was able to play the full 90 minutes, but looked some way short of his best.)

4)  The promoted clubs are a major unknown quantity. Championship form just doesn't translate to the Premier League, so teams that looked great last year might be terrible this year,... but a team that barely limped through the play-offs might turn out to be much stronger than expected. They're usually undergoing major rebuilds as the new season approaches, so their personnel and approach might be radically different in the new season anyway. These days, fairly few Championship sides manage to survive even one year in the top flight; but they do often put up some spunky performances in the opening few weeks - until the big boys 'figure them out',... and they start getting demoralised by regular heavy defeats. Later in the season, it's usually fair to regard the promoted clubs as gimme opponents; but early in the season, not so much. Just ask Manchester United and Sunderland, who were humiliated by unfancied Hull and Ipswich on the opening weekend this year. (This is not an unusual occurrence: most years we get at least one 'big club' given a really hard time by one of the league's new teams.)

5)  Pre-season games don't count for much: it's good for an attacker's confidence if he can notch a good few goals - but most of these games are played at half-speed, with unlimited substitutions, and often only a few of the regular starters, so.... they're really not at all a reliable guide to how things are going to go in the first competitive match of the new season.

6)  'Form' is the great unknown: unfortunately, players don't just immediately pick up from where they were at the end of last season. Or even from how they played in a recent pre-season game; or in the big summer tournament; or even in the Community Shield, which is only one week prior and is, these days, usually treated seriously as a competitive game. As for the individual players, so for the clubs: at the start of the season, you just don't know who's going to be playing well. Some top players take a while to find their feet again, some top clubs stumble out of the blocks and may sometimes take several weeks to find their rhythm and confidence; while others - often quite unfancied, lower table sides - may surprise everyone by starting hot.

7)  Injuries tend to be much more common early in the year (players perhaps 'pushing too hard' when they're still a bit fatigued and/or out of shape). We've been pretty lucky so far this year; usually, we get quite a few players going down with problems in training in the last few days before the opening weekend.

8)  Because of transfer issues, new tactical approaches, and - often undisclosed - injury or fitness concerns, there are also usually a lot of unexpected selections on the opening weekend. Not only do you not know with any confidence who's going to play well, you don't know who's going to play at all. The main reason it's bonkers to think of playing your Bench Boost in Gameweek 1 is that you very seldom end up with 15 starters!!

I said it last year, and I'll probably say it again next year... almost everybody has a terrible opening gameweek. 

I suggest that you should actually take some consolation in this. The circumstances of the opening gameweek are so exceptional - so much more random and unpredictable than every other gameweek in the season that follows! - that the few managers who do well in it probably, in fact, don't have such great squads; they must have made a lot of dodgy picks that they just happened to get very lucky with - and, in most cases, those lucky returns will be one-offs, and those players will disappoint them badly over the coming weeks. But there's a danger that their initial 'success' will go to their heads - make them arrogant and complacent, make them suppose they don't need to consider any changes. The folks who are top in the first few weeks of the season mostly tumble out of the top million fairly quickly. 

So, don't be discouraged by a bad opening Gameweek. And certainly don't think of reaching for your Wildcard. However 'bad' you think your team is, however bad it actually is,... it will be at least a few more weeks yet before you have any idea who are the best players to bring in as replacements. Stay calm and patient. (And smile pityingly at people who brag about how well they did in Gameweek 1!)

Luck-o-Meter 26-27 - Gameweek 1

  

I'll try to continue with this series of weekly reviews for a while (although they are rather irksomely time-consuming), using the simpler format I developed in the second half of last season: 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).

Damn, the usual Gameweek 1 shit - with some teams starting unexpectedly hot, and others very decidedly not; all kinds of bizarre results.

Red cards awarded: 

Red cards not awarded:  

Penalties awarded: The very, very late award against Lewis Hall to give Liverpool a draw they hadn't deserved smarted more because of its timing (why hadn't the referee blown the final whistle already?) than because of the 'injustice' of the call. It was a bit of a 'soft' one, might easily have been dismissed as an accidental collision, but there definitely was contact to bring Munoz down, so it's hard to call it a definitely incorrect decision. Newcastle has spurned two or three chances to put the game to bed, so have only themselves to blame.

Penalties not awarded:  Nathan Collins very obviously got pulled to the ground in the penalty area at one point. VAR apparently decided to let it go on the basis that Collins is a cheating bastard who's always trying to initiate and/or make the most of that sort of contact! I sympathise with that verdict on his character; but in this instance it was not fair - that clearly was a penalty.

Tight/dubious offsides: 

Goals wrongly allowed/disallowed: 

Surprise omissions/early substitutions/injuries: It might have been a surprise to some that Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice were considered fit enough to start on Friday night (and were back to their best!); and also perhaps that Myles Lewis-Skelly is still being preferred to Martin Zubimendi (although Zubi did come on for the last half-hour, so presumably that's just a fitness issue), and that Havertz appears to have become the preferred central forward, over Gyokeres.

Diogo Dalot was mysteriously left out by Carrick, in favour of Mazraoui (but then, of course, he was brought on for the last 10 minutes - to give me a useless single point!). Then Patrick Dorgu was yanked off at half-time, to give Marcus Rashford a chance.... to do absolutely nothing. Every Manchester United player had an absolutely terrible game; they all really looked as if they were 'still on the beach'.

For Spurs, Pedro Porro and and Matheus Fernandes were apparently unfit to start, and after the game De Zerbi called out the fitness levels of Senesi, Van Hecke, and Tonali on the pitch as well - though even having most of your team 'not fit' doesn't really explain how catastrophically awful Spurs were.

Pierre Sage pulled Daniel Munoz and Eddie Nketiah off shy of the hour mark. Nobody has Nketiah in FPL; but Munoz is the 16th most popular defender, with an ownership of nearly 10%.

Ollie Watkins was omitted, apparently due to an imminent transfer to the Saudi League. And with no other fit forwards, Villa were forced to play Emi Buendia up front.

Xabi Alonso left Caicedo and Palestra out of Monday night's squad at the last minute, apparently being 'cautious' about 'minor fitness issues'.

Near misses:  The one bright spot for Coventry on Friday evening was Tchaouna's impetuously improvised over-the-shoulder volleyed lob from just outside the box (Raya probably just about had it covered, as it looped on to the roof of the net).

Igor Thiago crashed his penalty against the foot of the left post, with a floundering Kinsky having gone to the other side.

Milenkovic headed a corner against the far post, with Trafford, for once, well beaten. 

Joao Pedro flashed a volley just wide of the post from a superb cut-back from Palmer; that would have been an even better goal than his stunning opener if he'd managed to get it on target. 

Big misses/big saves: Pickford managed to tip Nketiah's fierce close-range drive on to the inside of his post to keep the game level early on - the best save of the day on Saturday. Shortly afterwards, Mateta spurned an open goal, guiding his shot against the foot of the post, when it seemed easier to score than to miss.

Sels pulled off a great flying save against Muharemovic, the second best stop of the day. A little later, Murillo played in Chris Wood - who came on for the last half-hour - but, with only Trafford to beat, the big striker uncharacteristically pulled his shot tamely wide.

Haaland whiffed untypically at a good cross from O'Reilly, and Guehi somehow managed to head wide with two-thirds of the goal to aim at. So, City really should not have been still desperately chasing the game in the dying minutes....

Fulham's best unconverted chance against Chelsea fell to Antonee Robinson when he was played in behind by Cuenca but went for a lob from just outside the box and mishit it badly.

Outstanding goals:  Very nice free-kick from Nelson Angulo to get Sunderland back into the game (although the keeper probably should have got to it...). Anton Stach's late winner at Forest was even better!

Dewsbury-Hall's fierce left-foot drive gave Everton the lead out of nowhere just before half-time; up until then, Palace had looked on top in the game, but the momentum swung against them from that moment.

Outstanding performances: Arsenal fans are perhaps getting a bit over-excited about the lively form of their new Greek winger, Christos Tzolis: he did have a good game on Friday night, but Saka and Odegaard (and Calafiori and White) were even better - so, it's hard to see how you justify using one slot in the three-man club quota on a newcomer to the league.

Brentford's new midfield linchpin Mamadou Sangaré was given an immediate start, and absolutely bossed the game. But he was withdrawn with a quarter of an hour left. And this dominant performance came against an utterly hapless Spurs. And it looks as though his assists in this game were probably a bit fortuitous and untypical, and he's mainly likely to be a source of 'defcon' points only. I'd still rather go for Schade or Lewis-Potter, or maybe Damsgaard when he's fit again, from the Brentford midfield.

Cole Palmer is back. He had the vital 'pre-assist' for Roger's goal, as well as an actual assist for his neat flick-on to set up Joao Pedro with the opener after barely 30 seconds, and created a couple of other good chances too, as well as putting one of his trademark curlers inches beyond the post and having another similar effort deflect just wide off a defender's bum. And oh, he did actually score a goal as well. But it was one of those games where he was absolutely majestic, and could easily have claimed a hattrick of goals and a hattrick of assists.

Big mistakes: Antonin Kinsky had a bit of a horror-show in the Spurs goal, tamely parrying the ball straight back to opponents for two of the goals.

Robert Sanchez looked at fault for Josh King's goal on Monday night. The skidding near-post effort bounced up a little awkwardly for him, but it wasn't that powerful and well within his reach - really not one that should have got past him. And, if we're being really harsh (his critics are), he probably shouldn't have parried Castagne's late shot straight back at the lurking Gonzalo Garcia. Chelsea's almost surrendering 2 points in a game they mostly dominated, and should have won comfortably, can be almost entirely laid at the door of their perennially dodgy goalkeeper.

Bad luck/good luck: OK, Odegaard had a great game on Friday, but his goal was an horrendous miskick!

FPL weirdness: 

Unexpected results:  Nobody expected Hull or Ipswich to start so impressively (or, perhaps, Coventry to be quite so lame; they had looked much the best of these three sides in the Championship last year). And while a lot of big clubs can be a little slow out of the blocks, Spurs and Manchester United and Aston Villa were just unbelievably bad this weekend - looking like relegation candidates rather than top-of-the-table hopefuls.

For a long time, Kai Havertz was looking like he might be the only forward to score a goal in the opening gameweek, but eventually Thierno Barry and Joao Pedro joined him; still not a great collective return from the strikers! And until Monday night, the 'Team of the Week' contained only Odegaard, Kayode, and Gakpo who had any kind of ownership at all (even Odegaard, much the most popular, is barely in the current 'Top 50' picks, and below 10% overall ownership!); although eventually the rather more popular Joao Pedro and Palmer would force their way in. Despite a lot of people having rashly played their Bench Boost chip, the global average was a dismally low 48 points. Apart from a few unexpected selections, and the abysmal performances of Manchester United and Spurs (the latter probably not that consequential in FPL, but United have 4 players in the Top 20 'most selected' for Gameweek 1!) and Villa, and Robert Sanchez, there weren't really so many 'surprises' this week (remarkably few for an opening gameweek!). And apart from Brentford being unfairly denied a penalty against Spurs, there weren't any egregious refereeing mistakes either, so it's looking like a refreshingly low 2 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.

Here we go again....!!

 

"We must imagine Sisyphus happy."

Albert Camus

This game we so love and hate does seem very like the famous mythical punishment in Hell: endless toil, constant setback... ultimate futility.

We must learn to value the effort expended for its own sake, to celebrate the endeavour to achieve, rather than achievement itself.

Only about 14 hours to go now until the first kick-off of the new season:

 Arsenal v Coventry - at 8 pm, UK time. 

Stand by your boulders....

[Yes, this is a re-post from last year and the year before. But it is so inescapably appropriate that I'm going to use it every year.  I have a deep connection with the Myth of Sisyphus.]

A little bit of Zen (108)

 

"Football is the most important of Life's least important things."

Arrigo Sacchi

What is it  with sports coaches and their penchant for paradoxes?

This year's EARLY 'Sheep Picks'

I often express my dismay and disappointment that so many FPL managers rush in for the same players - 'sheep picks' based on herd instinct, just following a fad rather than formulating a rationale of one's own.

As I outlined in my annual survey of the pre-season selection landscape over the past couple of days (Pt. 1: Goalkeepers and Defenders, Pt. 2: Midfielders and Forwards), we have an unusually broad selection of tempting options this year, with probably at least 80-100 players worthy some consideration for the initial squad. 

Given that breadth of choice, no-one should be above 50% ownership (there are strong arguments to be made against the premium options in each position category: Haaland, Fernandes, Gabriel, and Raya), and really only a handful should be much above 10%. And yet... currently, 16 players have been selected by more than 20% of managers, and a further 27 have more than 10% ownership; and many of these are not the players who should be the most selected! In the online environment today, people assume that what a lot of other people seem to be doing must be right; when, as often as not, it's quite the reverse.

When I saw the snapshot above of the currently 'most selected' starting eleven, I thought to myself: 'If you have more than 3 or 4 of those, you're being severely unimaginative. If you have more than about 6, you're probably not going to do very well.'

The 2026-27 Pre-Season 'Sheep Picks'

Oh, where to start?? There are so many this year!!

As I reasoned last week, there is a strong - just about overwhelming - case for Haaland, whatever his price, because his points-potential is so much higher than any other forward's. But in that same post I argued that Bruno Fernandes and Gabriel (and David Raya too) are simply too expensive. They had exceptional seasons last year, and it would be unrealistic to suppose that they can produce similar or greater returns this year; on the contrary, there are good reasons to expect that their points totals this time will be substantially lower. They might indeed start the season very strongly, they might well again be the top points-returners in their positions, their owners are unlikely to be dissatisfied with them; but they won't do quite as well as last year - and hence, even if they do claim the top of their position rankings again, the gap to the next best isn't likely to be all that much. You pay a big premium for a player to gain a substantial differential advantage, an expectation of a sizeable points-lift over their closest position rival; Haaland always offers that - the other three don't. These premium-price players are just about 'affordable', but probably only at the cost of going a bit light somewhere else in your squad. And it just doesn't seem worth it - when there are keepers 1-million pounds cheaper than Raya, defenders 2.5-3.0-million pounds cheaper than Gabriel, and midfielders 5.0-6.0-million pounds cheaper than Bruno Fernandes.... who might do very nearly as well.

[And even with Haaland, there is an argument that one might wait-and-see on him for a week or two. As he returned to training so late this year, he's unlikely to be fully sharp straight away, and might get quite short minutes in the first few games.]

Joao Pedro is a justifiable forward choice - but not such an obviously superior option as to merit more-than-60% ownership! Managers are getting a bit carried away by his glut of goals in pre-season. It's always nice for strikers to get their confidence up by finding the net regularly; but pre-season form rarely carries over into the start of the regular season (your granny could probably score a goal in some of these half-pace practice games). For me, he's clearly some way behind Alexander Isak and Igor Thiago as a 2nd forward pick, after Haaland.

Antoine Semenyo is a player I appreciate in the real world, but am lukewarm about in Fantasy: his returns tend to be a bit up-and-down; and he often plays well, without producing any FPL points. And with City currently looking so flakey in their Maresca transition period, I'd probably avoid any of their players - maybe even Haaland?! - for a few weeks until things start settling down for them. And I feel he was operating near the top of his envelope last time; he's another one like Bruno Fernandes who isn't likely to improve on last year's total, and might well come up quite a bit short of it. Also like Bruno - and Declan Rice - he was somewhat flattered by the dearth of points from other midfielders last year; even with a similar points total, he might be well outside the Top 5 midfield points-returners this season. Also, although 8.5-million isn't a particularly high price, it is this year in relative terms - because so few players have been given a high price this time: only 3 midfield players are more expensive than Semenyo, and no-one else is priced with him in the 8.5 tier; there are 9 players priced 0.5 or 1.0 million cheaper; and there are nearly 60 more players priced from 1.5-2.5 million cheaper - several of whom you might fancy to do nearly as well as Semenyo this time, if not a little better. (And of course, when they're that much cheaper, they don't actually have to do better than him to be preferable picks.)

Pedro Porro and Riccardo Calafiori always excite us with their attacking threat; and they almost invariably disappoint our early optimism about them. The new-look Spurs will probably take a while to find their feet, so I'm wary of taking any of their players from the start of the season. (The same argument, of course, applies to Antonin Kinsky and Martin Dubravka, currently the second and third most popular goalkeeper picks; as I mentioned yesterday, they are an appealingly cheap pairing - but it's almost always worth paying that half a million extra for a pair of starting keepers; and people who've gone for non-playing Dubravka without Kinsky ahead of him.... are just pissing 4-million quid away for nothing.)  Calafiori, as well as being worryingly injury-prone, seems to drift in and out of favour with Arteta. Timber, due back in training any day now, might well be preferred to him immediately at left-back (and indeed, Hincapie sometimes was last season); and they've just acquired Konsa as an additional option at right-back. I'm a big fan of Calafiori; but I'm not convinced that Arteta is, and I'm not confident he'll get a long run of starts. Luke Shaw is another super-popular defensive pick at the moment, presumably because he's so generously priced at 4.5 million. But his age, his injury record, and the fact that the club have been trying to buy a replacement for him this summer all counsel caution; I wouldn't be suprised to see Dalot or Mazraoui starting ahead of him at left-back. (While De Ligt and Martinez are out of commission, it seems likely that Ayden Heaven will be starting alongside Maguire in the opening games; he could be an attractive alternative for a cheap representative in the United defence.)

Virgil Van Dijk... is getting old. He was often looking so slow and erratic last season that there was a serious danger he might be dropped - or would have been, if Liverpool had any cover in central defence! He only ended up with a good overall points total because of his exceptionally good attacking returns, not his defensive performance; and that really was a bit of a freak, far more than he'd managed in any previous season (and such melee goals from set-pieces are likely to be much less common this season, as refs tighten up on grappling in the box, and defences get better at reading the set routines). Liverpool will probably be quite defensively solid most of the time, and keep a decent number of clean sheets; and Virgil will probably do quite well on the 'defcon' points, when opponents do manage to put them under a bit of pressure. But I'd expect his points return this time to be a fairly middling 140-160 - simply not worth that huge 6.5-million price-tag.

I said yesterday in my review of the forward options that the sudden enthusiasm for Dominic Calvert-Lewin is quite baffling. He had one moderately good (not brilliant) and mostly (not entirely) injury-free season last year - for the first-time ever. There's no compelling reason to assume he can pull that off again; and even if he can, he's not that strong a pick, even in his price category; in fact, I'd rate him towards the bottom of the 6-million-pound forward options. When a player who doesn't merit a 5% ownership is up nearer 30%, the odour of sheep-shit is heavy in the air.

I like Morgan Rogers as a player; but as an FPL asset, he's severely unconvincing. He's posted decent - but not outstanding - season totals over his two years at Villa; but those seasons were both characterised by a few brief bursts of high-scoring and long runs of blanks. It's not obvious how he'll fit into the set-up at Chelsea (I'd like to see Enzo Fernandez leave, to 'make room' for him), and he might not immediately be a regular starter; and even if he is, he'll probably take a little while to settle in. If we're only going for one Chelsea midfielder,.... it's likely to be Palmer that claims that spot.

At the moment, with City looking so disorganised at the back in the Community Shield last weekend, and there being so much uncertainty about the preferred defensive lineup under the new manager, we really shouldn't be taking any of their defenders in the initial squad. Nico O'Reilly hasn't looked in great form since the end of last season, and is quite likely to be displaced at left-back by fit-again Josko Gvardiol; but if he isn't, Gvardiol will surely play instead in the centre-back pair, at the expense of Marc Guehi. And yet, by some strange logic, O'Reilly and Guehi are currently the most popular defensive picks from City, with massive ownership levels. Until we know that they are regular starters - and that City aren't going to leak goals every week, like they just did in Cardiff - they shouldn't be in anybody's squad!

Declan Rice has nearly 20% ownership, young Greek winger Christos Tzolis is at 19%, and newly signed defender Ezri Konsa is at 16% and on the rise. This is presumably a response to how formidable Arsenal looked in the Community Shield this year. But Rice didn't make much impact in that game (having come on at half-time for a limping Guimaraes), and after carrying an injury all summer and looking seriously fatigued for England, he seems likely to be out of action or given rationed minutes for at least the first game or two; and anyway, his rate of returns, though fairly consistent, just isn't high enough to warrant long-term inclusion in an FPL squad (it was only that consistency that got him such a high final ranking last year, that and the fact that all of the leading creative/goalscoring midfielders had horrible seasons; he was rarely in the Top 5, or even the Top 10 midfielders over any short run of games; and I think he's unlikely to be in the Top 10 overall at the end of this season). Tzolis has looked very lively in pre-season, but there's no guarantee that that form will translate into Premier League performance; indeed, there's no guarantee that he'll be an immediate or invariable starter (it's a concern to me that the left-wing position is the only slot in the Arsenal team that isn't nailed-down to an obvious first-choice starter - and thus has to be used to give token minutes to all of the back-up players, just enough to keep them 'happy'; not just the specialist wingers, Martinelli and Madueke, but also Jesus and Eze, and even perhaps Havertz or Guimaraes, on occasion; thus, even if Tzolis does immediately get the nod as the preferred starter there, I can't see him playing every week). And folks are now getting very excited about Konsa being a 'cheap route' into the Arsenal defence!!  But is he going to start - ever??? I can't see how; he looks like back-up to the back-up to me. He's only a makeshift right-back, and he doesn't look nearly as good as Mosquera at centre-back (or as good as White or Calafiori or Timber, who can also play that position). And Bruno Guimaraes, likewise, is surely destined to be a back-up rather than a regular starter. He's got excellent value as a utility player, versatile enough to deputise ably for Rice, Zubimendi, or Odegaard - but he's not actually better than any of those three in their particular roles. (Many Arsenal fans have grown disgruntled with Odegaard in the past couple of seasons, and were assuming that Bruno would immediately displace him. That never seemed likely to me, since Odegaard is very tight with Arteta, and plays a crucial role in organising the implementation of his coach's tactical instructions on the pitch; in that, he's probably become pretty much irreplaceable - at least in Arteta's eyes - even if his performance-level had tanked; but he was clearly back to his very best in the Community Shield - so Bruno is surely going to be bench-warming as soon as Rice is fully fit again.)

Illiman Ndiaye is another player I really like, but he had a pretty underwhelming season last year, in large part because David Moyes kept shunting him around to different positions, rather than regularly starting him in his preferred left-wing slot; and also, perhaps, because there was no regular - or reliable - forward playing in front of him. I don't see that changing this year. In fact, I rather fear that Everton 'over-performed' last year, and might slump into relegation trouble again this time. There are a lot of good midfield options at 6.0-million this year, and Ndiaye doesn't really look to be the most promising of them.

Issa Diop and Milan van Ewijk are way out in front as the most popular 'budget' defender options. But if you go without one or more of the premium picks, it shouldn't be difficult to find an extra half million to spend on your 5th defender - so that you can actually get someone decent,... rather than someone who's likely to ship 80-100 goals over the season!! Even if you do insist on having a 4.0-million-pound player to stretch your budget, I'd rather have Coventry's Bobby Thomas.

Meanwhile, Pascal Gross and Enzo Le Fée are the two most popular 'budget' midfielders - why? There are so many more tempting (and also temptingly cheap) midfielders at Brighton alone! Gross is now 35, and has surely been reacquired more for dressing-room 'influence' than for regular starts. Le Fée is a decent player, but there are at least half a dozen other options in that price-bracket who should be getting more attention.

So, good grief, that's at least two-thirds of the Top 30 or so current picks who are at least rather dubious, if not outright bonkers choices!!!