The ONES you should be watching

 

Not players you should be watching out for (still far too early to be giving much thought to that!)... Rather, the online 'experts' I think are most worth giving your attention to.

As I've said a few times before (most notably here), the self-styled FPL 'gurus' are mostly moronic charlatans (and even the handful of 'good' ones aren't really all that brilliant or insightful) and are best avoided. The people I look to for help in understanding the game are online tactical analysts. And these, I believe, are the best of them.

My Top Youtube Resources for helping with FPL

Chirpy Geordie Adam Clery remains my No. 1 favourite: amusing as well as informative - and he doesn't go on too long. He was doing regular tactical breakdowns for FourFourTwo's Youtube channel over the past couple of years, but a few months ago he launched his own Adam Clery Football Channel (ACFC), in partnership with the UK's The Independent newspaper.

A very close second is Cormac McAinsh of Football Meta.

I also rather like the style of DK Falcon, although his output is a bit more intermittent - and he puts out a lot of more 'broad topic' pieces reviewing, for instance, the evolution of Pep Guardiola's tactical ideas. He's done quite a fun one of the overall history of football tactics from the game's inception in the mid-1800s to the present.

I think Chris French's Football Made Simple is also very good - although he also tends to do more broad overview discussions than breakdowns of individual matches. Also, some of his videos run just a little long, and - for me - I find that he sometimes gabbles a bit, racing on just a little too fast in his delivery, without enough appropriate phrasing or pausing to give us time to fully grasp what he's saying (particularly as he swaps very quickly to and fro between talking about the attacking and defending sides in a match, and seems to assume that you will have memorised the entire lineup for both teams as thoroughly as he has!). So, yes, he can be just a little bit hard work at times - but worth it. [He's recently started running an online Introduction to Tactical Analysis course. Unfortunately, I can't currently spare the time or the money to give it a try myself, but it looks very interesting. He also puts out an occasional newsletter via Substack that you can sign up for.]

I really like the Tactical Football Fanatic too, although his posting has been very sparse over the last year.

Football Manager Insider also has some good stuff (a bit of a Liverpool bias lately; but that might be down to them being champions, favourites to retain the title, and hyper-acive in the transfer market this summer - rather than a personal affection!).

Zekko Football is also sometimes worth a look; although he's another presenter who tends to rush his delivery a bit, and his diction is so poor that I often find it impossible to follow him without cueing up the closed-caption subtitles! He is perhaps a bit over-prolific too; I don't find his content compelling enough to be worth checking in on two or three times a week. He does a lot of breakdowns of recent games - especially in the Premier League - which can be informative (perhaps particularly useful if it's a game you happened to miss!); but I find most of his pieces fairly superficial, describing what happened in some detail -  rather than teasing apart how and why it happened.

Finally, one of my more recent discoveries in this field that also shows a lot of promise is Tactics Dojo.

Alas, I find most of FourFourTwo's Youtube content these days very dull and obvious (though the print magazine is still very good), and The Athletic isn't much better (the weekly 'podcasts', in particular, usually hosted by Ayo Akinwolere, are just painfully over-long...), but their occasional tactics or squad-building episodes with J.J. Bull and Jon Mackenzie are still worth a look. (I wish J.J. would branch out on his own. I think he could give Geordie Adam a run for his money as the most entertaining and accessible content-creator of this kind.)

I have a strong affinity for The Purist Football as well, though this is more of a 'general interest' channel than one that's ever likely to be directly useful in the week-to-week trench warfare of FPL. He only puts out a video every month or two, at most, and they tend to be more philosophical essays on the state of the game than dissections of particular teams or players. For me, this video on the impact of Guardiola's ideas, good and bad, is essential viewing.

I also have a soft spot for Alex Moneypenny's The Different Knock. He's an Arsenal uber-fan, so his channel is pretty much exclusively focused on The Gunners. But his breadth of knowledge and tactical acuity are very impressive; so, often the observations he has to offer on Arsenal will have direct or indirect relevance to other Premier League teams as well.

I thought The Football Analyst had looked very promising; but he soon seemed to give up on his Youtube platform, after posting some interesting stuff early last year. However, he's still posting some good pieces on his website. [I would particularly recommend an article of his from this time last year on Fabian Hurzeler's 'tactical identity', and this most recent one assessing the prospects of Benjamin Sesko.]

I also often enjoy The Athletic's Tifo sub-channel on Youtube, for more general observations on the game. They've recently started a fun little mini-series on The Entire History of Football.

I really think any of these channels - even frivolous little Tifo!! - will help your football understanding (and hence, your FPL prospects!) far more than following any so-called FPL 'experts'.