It doesn't make (all that) much difference WHO you pick!

 

Now, of course, it makes some difference. But not, perhaps, as much as we might wish. We fondly imagine that Fantasy Premier League is primarily a test of how good a judge of a player we are, but... I am inclined to think that this ability often doesn't make a great deal of difference.

Of course, there are always certain players who show such strong and sustained FPL points-scoring form that they become must-have for everyone: Salah and Haaland every year (until now...), Cole Palmer two years ago, Gabriel and Antoine Semenyo and Bruno Fernandes this year.

But outside that very narrow gilded circle of players whose returns are so far outside the normal range that their value is obvious and incontrovertible to everyone, there is no restrictive 'template' of obviously best picks (that is one of the most bizarre delusions in FPL-land!): there's always a pool of at least 20 or 30, sometimes 40 or 50 or more, plausible, sensible potential picks from whom you'll build the rest of your squad. And, very often, there is little or nothing to choose between these players.

I have tried running a second team a few times - making wildly different picks from my 'main team'; and at season's end, their points totals would be uncannily close. There's usually very little to choose between me and my old college buddy, my main antagonist in the game, although we rarely have many picks in common. Most of the other people I gauge my performance against, in most years, finish within a spread of only 50 or 100 points of each other - and of me. And I rather think that most of that difference can be attributed to other factors than player selection, to other fluctuations of luck.

Raya and Pickford have pulled a little ahead of the field in the goalkeeper rankings at the moment; but there are several others not too far behind - and that chasing pack is separated by just 15 points. (And a lot of the points-spread is accounted for by some keepers having missed matches; apart from Ellborg and Benitez, who've only just come into their sides, the top eleven - including Raya and Pickford -  are separated by less than 0.5 points per game.)       

Gabriel and Timber are well out in front of the other defenders, but the best-of-the-rest, the next eight top returners in that position category, are separated by just 11 points.

Things are even tighter among the midfielders, with only 2 points separating 5th and 10th spot in the rankings. [Things might have changed a bit now. I wrote this before the Gameweek 31 matches had been played.]

You're mostly only getting players in for a run of 5-8 games at a time. And any decent player will usually manage one good haul in that time. If some of your picks do a little better than that, and some do a little worse, it usually balances out over the season as a whole - to a quite remarkable degree.

Now, some FPL managers make a lot of obviously bad picks - they stick with old favourites out of sentiment, they favour the club they support too much, they ignore players from certain other clubs because of personal enmities, or they're just not very sharp at recognising emerging form. But amongst reasonably smart and engaged managers who are making consistently sensible player selections,... it doesn't generally matter that much which particular players they pick alongside the few must-haves. 

There are probably only a few hundred thousand such managers, certainly less than a million. And there would usually be very, very little to choose between them - not much more than 100 points at most, often far,  far less - on their player returns alone. I am convinced that it is luck with all the bonuses in the game - the captaincy selection and the chips - that has a far bigger impact on points totals and rankings. I'll have rather more to say on that shortly; I fear it is too large a topic to fit nicely within this 'Adages' thread.

Do these 'good' managers, the ones who make consistently well-informed and self-aware selections, always prosper in the game, do they regularly fill out the top 1,000,000 places in the global rankings? Alas, NO. Many of them will fall outside the top million; if they've been really unlucky - with multiple injuries, perhaps - they might occasionally drop outside the top 3 or 4 million. Again, it is other factors, factors mostly of 'luck', that determine your rank finish - not your basic sagacity in understanding the game and picking good players.