The 'BAD Picks' revisited

 

At the start of the season, I wrote a couple of provocative posts, here and here, criticising some of the most widely popular initial squad picks as being, in my view, non-optimal. I already did a quick review of how these views had panned out, about a third of the way into the season (which was the appropriate frame of refence, since I had been considering these mainly in the context of early-season prospects in the initial squad; although many of their owners had clearly been hoping that they might be not just long-term holds but season-long holds...).  Now, at season's end, I thought I'd revisit those opinions for one last reassessment.

I kicked off my first batch of 'ones to avoid' with a pair of goalkeepers, Matt Turner and Mark Flekken. Turner, of course, was only ever seen as a 'budget enabler', but I maintained he was a bad pick even in that context: he obviously had no hope of ever getting a start this season (wasn't even second choice at his club), and hence brought no value whatsoever to an FPL squad, and indeed, was likely to lose squad value. He bled owners every single week, losing more than half of them by season's end - but the sell-off was so slow and gradual that he didn't drop in price until the middle of the season, and only fell by that solitary 100k step (which was much better than I'd expected). But it was a silly pick. Fabianski, also priced at 4.0, obviously had prospects of getting some starts over Areola at West Ham; and there were other 4.0 keepers, like Dubravka, who were at least first back-up at their club. The only explanation for the pick was that naive managers were noting that Turner - who'd started some games for Forest the previous season - appeared to be the highest-points-earning cheap keeper; though he clearly wasn't going to be again this year.

Flekken was much improved this year (he'd had a sigificant negative delta on his performance between the sticks, an xGC figure well below his actual number of goals conceded the previous year), and, because of Brentford's vulnerability in defence, he was able to rack up a huge number of saves - which compensated for his paltry tally of clean sheets. He'd actually sneaked up into the Top Five keepers by the end of the season. However, 'Top Five' is nothing to get that excited about. Sels had performed far better for the same price; Henderson had performed much about the same, and in general more consistently, for the same price; and Pickford once again emerged as the best FPL keeper, having only cost 0.5 million more at the start of the season. My main misgiving about him, actually, had been the fact that Brentford's opening five fixtures looked really tough; but in fact they pulled off a - very lucky and undeserved! - surprise win in their opener against Palace, and didn't get spanked as hard as might have been expected by Liverpool, City, and Spurs (although they were spanked); and Flekken picked up some nice saves points in all of those games. But that would have been crystal ball stuff; there were no reasonable grounds for expecting that he'd produce decent returns from that run of fixtures. Flekken might have been a decent second-choice keeper for the season, but he never should have been anyone's No. 1 pick: he did a lot less badly than might might have been expected, in that opening run and over the season as a whole; but he didn't really do well.

Ezri Konsa is a decent defender, but was never going to be anywhere near a top pick for FPL; yet over 10% had gone in for him at the start of the season, and his ownership remained strong throughout, having only just dipped to 9.5% at the end of the year. He only barely scrabbled above 100 points, and only just made it into the Top 20 4.5-million-pound defenders for the year - outscored even by Dean Huijsen, who'd only played two-thirds of the season.

Kobbie Mainoo, likewise, is a great player; but not much of a prospect for FPL. The 5% who piled in for him at the start of the season must have been unduly swayed by his eye-catching performances for England in the Euros,... or were perhaps just diehard, delusional Manchester United fans. Of course, his season was cut short by injury; but in the half he played, he barely averaged more than mere 'appearance' points.

I was sceptical about Kai Havertz also. Of course, his season too ended prematurely. The 10% of managers who'd gone for him at the start of the year were feeling pretty smug when he bagged a big haul in the opening game against Wolves. And he continued to look very sharp for a while, producing 3 further goals over the next 6 games. But it was never a devastating rate of return; and it soon began to peter out, even before his injury. My argument had been that people were failing to take enough account of the fact that Havertz was newly reclassified as a 'forward' in the game, which would massively reduce his points return for the same number of goal contributions he'd produced the season before. There were also legitimate concerns about whether Arsenal were about to bring in a specialist forward, and about whether Havertz might not play some games in midfield rather than up-front, even if they didn't. Again, I have nothing against Havertz: I think he's a fine player, and has been very important for Arsenal - but he's just not a great FPL prospect as a forward (as it turned out, particularly this year, when so many of the cheaper forwards performed really well).

I was tempting fate rather more with my second batch of disrecommendations - as I acknowledged that these were all in fact very good players, appealing picks, and might do very well... well enough, indeed, for their owners to feel satisfied,.... and be very reluctant to entertain the thought that their selection might still have been non-ideal. Some of them, in fact, did so well that they might have challenged my initial assessment. (Nearly, but not quite....)

David Raya was by far the season's highest-owned keeper (nearly 20% at the start of the season, up to an incredible 32.6% by the end) - yet he was nowhere near the season's best keeper: that's a sign of something going very wrong in people's decision-making. He ended up as the third best keeper in FPL, but quite a long way adrift of Pickford and Sels, and only very narrowly above Flekken and Henderson, who cost 1 million less. My rejection of him might have looked particularly suspect early on, as Arsenal started a little shakily, and were strangely vulnerable at the back a few times - which allowed Raya to earn 7 saves points from the first 5 matches. His team recovered something of their previous solidity thereafter, but he still recorded nearly twice as many saves as in the previous season - which is not something that anyone had expected. But even with that small but handy unanticipated lift to his points total, Raya was not worth the money: there were at least 4 alternatives who could give you the same points or more at a lower price-tag (and Alisson might well have done better than any of them, if he hadn't suffered a couple of spells out with injury). And my main argument had in fact been that, even if he were to be the season's best goalkeeper (and I conceded that was possible, although I thought top three or four was more likely), he still wouldn't have been a great FPL pick because of the club quota restriction, and the fact that there were so many other players from Arsenal who might be more valuable to you. (Gabriel and Saka were pretty much essential at the start of the season; and you might well have wanted a second Arsenal defender as well,.... and possibly Arteta for the 'Assistant Manager' chip. and from time to time, another of their midfield options, like Trossard, Odegaard, Merino, Martinelli.)

Pedro Porro also threatened to make me look foolish (in the eyes of his adoring owners, at least!) by coming up with a goal in the opening game, and then managing a clean sheet against Everton in the second. However, he produced nothing else until the 4-0 drubbing of floundering City in Gameweek 12. Spurs, of course, had an uncommonly horrible season, plunging into the relegation zone. I won't seek any credit for 'foreseeing' just how bad things would get for them, because I didn't; I didn't anticipate that Porro would come up shy of 100 points for the season and finish outside the Top 30 defenders. My argument had been that he wasn't such a surefire source of attacking contributions as his backers supposed (most of his previous season's impressive haul had come in a handful of games where he was being played more as a wide midfielder than as a full-back; that's not his typical deployment), and that he probably wasn't quite going to be worth his premium fee - when there were alternatives like Munoz, Kerkez, and Robinson to consider.

But, oh dear, it does look like I was 'wrong' about Josko Gvardiol, who made a late run up the defender charts to claim 1st Place at the very end of the season. How can I say someone was a 'bad pick' when he was the Best Player in his position??  Well, I'd still dispute that he was really the Best Defender: Gabriel and Alexander-Arnold would have beaten him, perhaps quite handily, if they hadn't missed a bunch of games with injury; Van Dijk was right on his heels; and so were Milenkovic, Kerkez, and Munoz, all much cheaper. You don't want or need more than one or two premium defensive picks - certainly not in the initial squad, when budget is still uncomfortably tight - and it was probably wise to go for at least one option from both Liverpool and Arsenal as long-term holds, because they both have a much more solid defensive record than City. I admit, I anticipated that Gvardiol's season-haul would be quite a bit lower, and that he was unlikely to be among the top defensive contenders: but my reasons for expecting that were all perfectly sound - Pep usually rotates his defenders a lot, Gvardiol was only an (almost) ever-present this year because there were so many injuries to the rest of the defensive roster; he did eventually get shifted back into central defense, where his goal-threat largely evaporated (I thought this might happen sooner, more often; but it was an obvious, almost inevitable risk to his output); and I thought it was unlikely that he could repeat his level of goalscoring output from that hot streak at the end of the previous season (his owners were briefly getting their hopes up, when he bagged 3 in 5 games, from Gameweeks 6 to 10; but over the season, he only managed one more than he'd netted in a handful of games the year before). 5 goals for the season is excellent for a defender (and he had come close to picking up quite a few more); but 153 points is one of the lowest Best Defender totals in history, and very dubious value for a 6-million-pound spend. If you went for Gvardiol at the start of the season, and stuck with him - you got lucky: he performed right at the very top of - if not a little above - what could reasonably have been relied on from him for the season. But it still wasn't a great pick, season-long; and not objectively a 'wise' pick last August.

I got a lot of hate and scorn for including William Saliba in that list as well. But my argument on that was simply that he wasn't going to be as good a pick from the Arsenal defence as his partner Gabriel - and he wasn't.

I cited Cody Gakpo as well, because, although I rate him very highly, I couldn't see how he was going to fit into the Liverpool side. Although he was integrated more regularly and effectively in the second half of the season. he only started just over half of the year's games - and got very short minutes in a lot of those. His season total of 127 points was actually outstanding for the number of minutes he played. But, unfortunately, in FPL, you just can't take a chance on a player who isn't a guaranteed starter every week.

I also, at other times early in the season, called out the massive adoption of Harry Winks and Morgan Rgoers as 'budget enablers'. There was a decent case for Rogers, of course - a fabulous young talent who'd just graduated to a regular start with a top-half side and was rapidly establishing himself as their most important player... for only 5 million. Winks, though, wasn't even an invariable starter, and offered just about zero attacking potential - and was in a side who were obviously doomed to go straight back down to the Championship. The 5th Midfield spot is probably the most important 'differential' position in the squad, and you simply cannot afford to go light on it.

Rogers I commented on a number of times over the season. While his opening price-point was very tempting, I thought it was inappropriate, self-deluding to compare him only to players costing 5.0 and less; he should really have been considered in the 'cheap' midfielder category of 5.0-6.0 - and in that, there were a lot of strong alternatives. Rogers ended up being - narrowly - the best of the bunch (well, apart from Semenyo, who nipped ahead of him on the final day!) over the season as a whole. But he never managed to produce a run of high-returns together, just a string of solid performances with the odd goal contribution here and there. In any sequence of 5 or 6 games, there was invariably at least one of the other cheap attacking midfielders, often two or three or more, who out-pointed him; therefore, it was self-limiting to treat Rogers as a season-hold purely on value-for-money terms; it was a bad choice, although he's a great player (such paradoxes abound in FPL; the inability of many managers to recognise them is probably the main reason for under-performance).  The 5th Midfield spot is probably the most important 'differential' position in the squad, and you have to constantly rotate the most in-form options into that spot.

Many people, I'm sure, are still going to obstinately 'disagree' with all of these assessments. But I'm happy to stand by them: I think they were all accurate, remarkably prescient. Only Gvardiol surprised me a little; and even then, not enough for me to recant my original verdict.