The story of MY season

 

I've already summarised how the first quarter or so of the season panned out for me, and then the next third, in a couple of earlier 'self-review' posts.

An overview of the conclusion to my season can be very brief - as I took the noble, self-sacrificing decision to quit the game after Gameweek 23 in protest at the monstrosity of the 'Assistant Manager' chip. Until just now, I hadn't logged into my account since shortly after the GW23 kick-off; I have been stumbling towards oblivion as a 'zombie' account for nearly 4 months....

My one small 'cheat' was that I set up for Double Gameweek 24 before retiring (though, in haste - and before any of the Gameweek 23 results were known), and played my Bench Boost on it.

My team, for the last 15 weeks of this season, looked like this:

My ZOMBIE Team

I'd been rushed into playing my two bonus chips earlier than I might have wished, to get them out of the way before my protest withdrawal from the game. They didn't work out too badly (although could have been much better...): I picked up an extra 8 points for a Triple Captain punt on Salah against Ipswich in GW23, and a handy 33 points on my Bench Boost (though, in truth, only 11 or 12 points for my lowest-returning players in that week!) for this Everton-stacked bench in DGW24.

Of course, I'd realised that my end-season performance was bound to be massively compromised by refusing to play the potentially very lucrative AssMan chip, and cutting myself off from the considerable benefits of my two rebuild chips (or any additional transfers), and not being able to rotate anyone off my bench or switch my captain's armband around, and particularly by not being able to adjust to the late-season speed-bumps of blank and double gameweeks; but... I had thought that maybe, just maybe, if I didn't get too many injuries, I might still do OK...

However, my DISMAL LUCK this season continued, and I got a stack of injuries: Amad (lately my best player) and Jackson and Ndiaye all got struck down in that very first week, and Lewis Hall not very long afterwards. Hall was out for the season, and the other three only returned to availability fairly late on, unable to have any very big impact for me. Gabriel too, of course, missed the last 8 games of the season, and Aina was out for GWs 31-33. So, my squad was suddenly full of holes, and I put out short teams in Gameweeks 28. 31-33, 35, and 37 (when Nico bloody Jackson got himself suspended...); and in Blank Gameweek 29, of course, I was royally screwed, fielding only 5 players, with a return of 15 points (barely half of my previous worst-ever).

Moreover, Gordon had a few problems with short-term injuries and a couple of suspensions, and just not being in his best form; while Cole Palmer's output remained in the doldrums for the rest of the year. And I was left with Jordan Pickford, who had an outstanding finish to the season,... stuck on my bench - ooops!  At least Salah amd Mbeumo and Isak produced fairly well for me; but the rest of the team had melted down around them almost immediately.

Not surprisingly, I was mostly well below the global average during these 14 weeks where my team shambled on rudderless - although I did have 4 fairly good weeks early on in that run, before the injuries hit me too hard; and strangely, I rallied at the very end, managing slightly above the average score in GW37, and a surprisingly solid 67 points in the - for most people - very low-scoring GW38. 

I was losing, on average, around 150,000 places per gameweek in the global ranking during that run - finishing way outside the top 3 million. And my squad value crashed from 107.2 million to 105.0 (although it had rebounded by nearly 1 million from its lowest point of 104.1 over the closing few weeks).

Trying to look on the bright side,... at least I am reasonably confident that I will DO BETTER next year!

DON'T FORGET The Boycott, The Protest.  Even if you have played the new 'Assistant Manager' chip this time, please do criticise and complain about it online as much as possible. And raise objections to it with any football or media figures you know how to contact, and - if possible - try to find a way to protest about it directly to the FPL hierarchy (and let me know how, if you manage that!).

I worry that the fight on this is only just now really beginning: we'll have to push hard for the next few weeks to try to ensure that this silly, game-distorting innovation does not become a permanent feature of FPL from next season.

#DownWithTheNewChip