I HATE the 'Assistant Manager' chip (Short version)

 

Last week, FPL unveiled its big innovation for the second half of this season: the new 'chip', previously identified only as a 'Mystery Chip', is now revealed as the 'Assistant Manager' chip.

In the intitial announcements on the FPL Facebook page, there was a terrifying lack of detail about how this - insanely complicated - new bonus was actually going to work. And although they rushed to revise and amplify the rules concerning it, I fear there are still a few holes in them. I think I will have a more extended rant enumerating the many insanities and inanities of this silly new gimmick soon; but I will try to keep this initial response to the news fairly brief.

What I love about this game of ours is its simplicity. It is closely tied to the game we love to watch every week, English Premier League football. It makes you a virtual 'manager', allowing you to assemble a squad of players and choose a starting eleven each gameweek, and to earn points for specified game actions by the individual players you've chosen within each gameweek.

I've said before that I don't particularly like the game's current 'bonus chips' (a relatively late introduction), as they are superfluous to the regular gameplay, and an irksome additional element of randomization (you only have about a one-in-three chance of getting much from them, and perhaps only a one-in-ten chance or less of doing really well from one of them). However, they do at least fit within the regular structure of the game: they simply give you more points for things you already earn points for.

This new bonus chip is something completely different, it falls entirely outside the points structure of the game as we know it. Instead of points for individual player performances in a single gameweek, it gives us points for team results over a run of gameweeks. So, it is essentially a completely separate side-game crudely grafted on to the game that we enjoy at the moment. 

Moreover, with the existing bonus chips that I don't like, there is at least some proportionality: the chips can be worth little or nothing if you get unlucky with them, and rarely yield much more than 15-20 points for each. This new chip is potentially worth such a HUGE number of points that it will completely distort the outcomes of the game - and will thus, alas, be impossible for most FPL managers to resist using (though I'd really love to see a mass boycott of this abomination).

To make things even worse, the new chip doesn't just offer points for one thing, but for a whole range of things: not just for wins or draws, but also for goals and clean sheets. And it offers yet a further set of potential bonus points for gaining a win or draw against a team currently well above your chosen manager's team in the league ranking. And, unlike any of the other chips that have ever been tried in this or any similar game, they want to impose 'charges' for it. You will need to give up a small amount of your player budget to play the chip, and also sacrifice part of your player quota from the club you pick for it - over-complication upon over-complication upon over-complication, all completely needless.

It might be an intriguing challenge, but... it has absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH THE REGULAR GAME. It is a gimmicky side-game idea that would be better accommodated within the occasional 'Fantasy Challenge' series.