The Double Gameweek Delusion (again)

 

Gameweek 33 is our only substantial Double Gameweek this season - and not as substantial as it might have been, with Arsenal unexpectedly crashing out of the FA Cup at the hands of second-tier Southampton the other week, meaning that Arsenal and Newcastle are now omitted from the list of doubling teams.

But it's just not a great set of fixtures. City have Burnley (away) in midweek, but Sunday's crunch match in the title race against Arsenal before that (likely to be a very dour game in which Arsenal play for the draw...). Bournemouth have Newcastle (away) and Leeds (home) - neither of them a pushover. Brighton have Spurs (away) and Chelsea (home); really tough to predict those - strong teams, but in dreadful form recently. Burnley might fancy their chances against Forest on Sunday (although that is away), but must be expecting a drubbing when they face City. Only Leeds, with a home game against Wolves and an away match at Bournemouth, may have a decent prospect of two wins - although it's a hell of a long trip down to the south coast,... and Bournemouth are starting to look very dangerous again.

So.... NO-ONE - not even Manchester City - has a good Double.

And, unless a player has at least one really inviting fixture - ideally, two - it's rarely worth betting on them in a Double Gameweek, in preference to dependable high points-returners who stand a strong chance of giving you a good haul from their single fixture.

Every time there's a Double Gameweek, we see people burning through transfers, even spending 'hits' or using their Wildcard or Free Hit, to load up on 8, 10, 12, even 15 doubling players, in the fond hope that this will inevitably net them a massive points total for the week.

The foundational assumptions prompting this mania are: 1) that you are guaranteed a minimum of 4 points from a doubling player; and 2) that a doubling player will - or at least can - give you twice as many points as a single-fixture player.

Both of these assumptions are simply WRONG.

1)  Nothing is ever 'guaranteed' in this game. Players might get injured or suspended in the first of the two games, or just be deemed in need of a rest for the second; or get restricted minutes across both of them (particularly if their team is still involved in Europe). And defenders can easily get fewer than 2 points in a game; indeed, it's quite possible for a player to rack up negative points once in a while. The 'baseline' expectation from a Double Gameweek player is considerably less than 4 points.

2)  Even if a player plays all of both games, almost no-one ever manages to perform at their maximum level twice in quick succession. Even with two 'easy' fixtures, it's vanishingly rare for a player to produce two good FPL returns in a Double Gameweek. With the significant risk of limited minutes, or only appearing in one of the two games, the reasonable expected median return for a double-fixture player is far less than twice what it would be for a single-fixture player - but no-one in FPL seems to be able to grasp that.

In almost every Double Gameweek, around half of the top returning players are usually single-fixture players. At least some of the top returners in this Gameweek 33 are likely to be the same players who would have been the strongest prospects in any other week - even though they only played once: players who are being widely jettisoned in the Double Gameweek mania - such as Bruno Fernandes, Igor Thiago, Harry Wilson, Gabriel, James Tarkowski, Jordan Pickford, Caoimhin Kelleher, etc.

A second set of appearance points is a nice lift if your doubling player has a strong chance of some sort of decent return in at least one of the two fixtures (especially for a defender or keeper, who you wouldn't generally expect to have a high chance of a big haul; this is why having some doubling players on the bench can help a Bench Boost). Otherwise, it's a huge gamble to bring in players from mid- or lower-table clubs that you usually wouldn't bother with - and it rarely pays off.

In the grip of this Double Gameweek frenzy, people also seem to overlook the cost of transfers (even if you don't have to use 'hits' now, all transfers are valuable, and it makes sense to regard them all as effectively 'costing' 4 points; consider, if you use up a Free Transfer now, an injury crisis in a week or two's time might necessitate you taking a 'hit' that you could have avoided if you'd still had that earlier Free Transfer in hand). If you're using up a lot of transfers to bring in these doubling players, and are probably going to use more to get rid of most of them again as soon as possible - that is almost certainly going to wipe out whatever advantage you might gain from their playing twice this week. But, of course, this is an 'invisible cost'; many FPL managers don't even notice it,... or can easily persuade themselves to ignore it. They will feel terribly smug if they get a big gameweek return with their many-doublers ploy - not taking into account the cost of the transfers it consumed,... or the possible negative impact of being stuck with some sub-optimal players in their squad in subsequent gameweeks,... or the fact that many managers who made few or no changes to their regular squad did just as well, or better.

It's perfectly fine, indeed a good and necessary thing to 'load up' with doublers to an extent: good players from good teams with at least one good fixture. But a lot of DGW Delusionals are going for Burnley players, who are likely to get battered twice, or Leeds players just because they're cheap, or players from currently awful Chelsea just because they used to be good last summer, or geriatric Danny Welbeck who's extremely unlikely to start in both games....

Be very careful about which doubling players you pick for a Double Gameweek. Don't use too many transfers on them (and be mindful of how you're going to offload these 'temporary assets' again). And don't ditch your best single-gameweek players for them!