I've noticed some of the FPL forums being awash with posts over the past couple of weeks about this online widget that purports to assess the strength of your preliminary FPL squad - giving it a score out of 100.
With a month to go before the real game gets under way, people seem to have been going crazy over this as a surrogate distraction, seeming to find it a worthwhile challenge to see if they can push their score higher and higher, to see if it's possible to edge it up to a perfect 100.
Such A LOT of problems with this gizmo. Here are the main ones, as I see it:
1) It says it rates your 'team' - but it actually expects you to submit your whole squad (in the form of a screenshot of your FPL 'Team' page). So, it's not clear if it's rating the full 15, or just your starting 11. It also doesn't tell you if your initial captain and vice-captain picks are considered relevant to its 'judgement' on you. And it doesn't tell you if it's offering a prediction of your likely success over the whole season... or the first month... or just the opening gameweek.
2) It doesn't explain its criteria, or what its rating scale is supposed to mean. What would a score of 100 actually signify? That you're absolutely certain to be this year's Global Winner?? Or that you're fairly sure to be among the top 10,000, 50,000, 100,000?? Or just that you're likely to have a very good Gameweek 1???
If you were to try to assess your own squad on a 100-pt scale, or asked one of your more knowledgeable and objective friends to do so, you wouldn't expect anything like a 100% answer; even mid-90s would be very, very good. Heck, even if you gave yourself an unlimited budget, you wouldn't seriously expect perfection: you'd know that some of your picks were a little bit of a gamble, a hopeful hunch; while maybe some others that seem like 'bankers' will, in fact, turn out to disappoint. I think, however you define 'success', no team/squad can really be said to give you more than an 80-90% prospect of achieving it.
3) It doesn't give you any meaningful feedback, doesn't explain WHY it has rated your squad as it has, or identify the weakest members you should consider replacing. It just endlessly trots out the same infuriating glib cliché about needing to 'find some transfers to improve'. [It's probably still having a problem with the pod-bay doors too...]
So, as a tool for helping you pick your squad, it's utterly USELESS.
4) I had a little fun the other week, quickly testing it with about 20 or so squads randomly generated by FPL's 'Auto-Pick' facility.
Three things quickly stood out: a) They ALL scored in the high 80s to mid-90s; there was very little variation. b) The squads that were most conspicuously a bit weak, or downright dreadful, tended to score higher! c) It was possible to get a different score for the same squad resubmitted within quite a short space of time.
Now, I had been hoping that there might be something to this gimmick.... that a careful observation of its prognostications might enable us to deduce something about its algorithm, to divine what factors it was considering in its assessment.
I had thought, that at the very least, it might be aggregating the points scored by your chosen players last season (which of course we already know; but it might have been handy to have the calculation done instantly for us), or perhaps even be producing a slightly more subtle and complex rating of expected 'form' based on a combination of factors.
But, alas, no - it's pretty obviously just spitting out random numbers... and jeering at how seriously some people take the results! Thank you, HAL, you condescending bastard!
