This year's champion

First-time FPL manager Erik Ibsen, a Dane who supports Everton, was crowned this year's global champion, with a final total of 2,582 points (nearly 230 points lower than last year's winner - despite everyone probably getting at least 150 free extra points this year from the new 'defensive contributions' rule!). Well done to him!

Many long-time players of the game are irked that a debutant should grab the title at the first attempt. But he's obviously a very smart young guy (a medical student), and a genuine football fan who follows the Premier League closely (unlike the vast majority of the global hordes dabbling in the game, who don't generally even seem to know what fixtures are up next, and seem to treat the game as a very abstract form of gambling...). And he does say that he put in a lot of time planning his transfer moves, even plotting out possible player exchanges around turns in fixture-difficulty using an Excel spreadsheet.

Glancing through his Gameweek history, I get the impression that he's probably one of the worthier winners we've seen in quite some years. Of course, he enjoyed a massive amount of good fortune too; but he was generally making quite shrewd and well-informed decisions all the way through.

And he's turned out to be a pretty good illustration of most of the points I made a couple of weeks back on what really makes the difference in our FPL performance.

Now, he very much did not get off to a good start - at least, not in Gameweek 1: he was outside the top 75% after returning an abysmal 35 points in the opening week. But... he bravely played his Wildcard straight away to start sorting things out; and, amazingly enough, he pulled off a seemingly impossible fightback and was up into the top million by the end of Gameweek 4 - nearly in the top 500,000 the following week, inside the top 250,000 the week after that. So, he did conform to my general view of what constitutes a 'good start' - a platform for a possible record-breaking season - despite having a particularly miserable first gameweek. And he also vindicated my frequent advice that an early use of the Wildcard is sometimes useful and indeed necessary, if you have a very bad start to the season. (Although I would suggest that he was perhaps a bit over-hasty, dropping it in GW2, since we really don't know how things are going to pan out after just one gameweek, and this year GW1 was especially awful for very nearly everyone... There was nothing terribly wrong with his GW1 squad, and his post-Wildcard squad wasn't conspicuously better. So... maybe this wasn't in fact one of his 'better plays' in principle - although the results seem to have turned out for him.)

Indeed, it was almost continuous upward progress for Erik, after that shaky start: he only suffered 5 very modest 'red arrow' position drops during the rest of the season! He'd cracked the top 10,000 by GW10, and the top 1,000 by GW15; he entered the top 100 after GW21, and never dropped out of it again - hitting the lead in GW29, and holding it right through to the end of the season (beating last year's champion's record streak of holding the lead for the final 8 gameweeks).

He most definitely did get very lucky with his captaincy choices, amassing a stunning total of 611 points from his captains (although he did have a very bad run of returns from Haaland around the turn of the year!). This was not quite the year's highest number for this, but well up there among the top handful. It's probably nearly double the 'average' return from armband picks, and perhaps 30%-40% more than a 'good score' would usually be. (So, if Erik only beat you by 150 or 200 points, it was probably almost entirely down to that!)

He also got astonishingly lucky with injuries - as evidenced by the fact that he was regularly able to roll his transfers for two or three weeks at a time, to make strategic multiple switches,.... and didn't have to take a 'hit' (spend points for an additional transfer) even once. Again, for most managers, using 'hits' occasionally to fill an injury gap (not just in the squad, but in the starting eleven) is unavoidable, and it is typical to have to resort to them at least 10-15 times per season. Not to have needed any is absolutely extraordinary!

I didn't notice any particular good fortune with buying players just ahead of short-lived hot streaks - although it was perhaps a little fortuitous to be on Caicedo at the start of the season, when he picked up a few (very untypical) goals; and to pick Anthony Gordon, for one week in GW31 (before 'dead-ending' into his Wildcard the following week), when he produced a 10-pointer (the last of his only 4 decent hauls of the season!); and to be on Alex Scott against Arsenal in GW32, when he returned 12 points.  And he did get on Guimaraes, Wirtz, and Wilson very promptly when they hit form, but he deserves some credit there.

And yes, his chips almost all worked out pretty well (probably a bit above average, but not outstanding): he got a 16-point haul for his first Triple Captain (Haaland against Burnley in GW6: a popular choice, but not by any means the unarguably optimal-looking one, as Burnley were playing fairly well at that point, and Leeds and West Ham were looking rather more tempting opponents to stick multiple goals past), and an 11-point return for his second (Haaland in GW36 against Brentford, again not the most obvious 'soft target' for him at the back end of the season...). He got an 18-point lift from his first Bench Boost in GW10; his second, however, in GW33 was a bit of a disaster, yielding only a 10-point lift (Joao Pedro missed the game, and Gabriel returned a rare nul-pointer), although he still had a very good week overall. His first Free Hit in GW13 was also fairly successful, yielding him 30 points above the global average - in a generally very low-scoring week; the second, in the big Blank Gameweek of GW34 was a much more limited success (poor points from his Liverpool players, and Bowen left on the bench!), but still a handy 16 points above the miserable global average that week.

It was a far from flawless performance: you see one or two 'stinkers' in his squad at most stages of the season; and he really left a lot of big hauls on his bench. And he bought Phil Foden just before Christmas - straight after his two-week hot streak had finished!! Yes, even the global champ suffers some bad decisions and rough breaks. Overall, though, he produced an uncannily steady performance throughout the season. It will be interesting to see where he finishes next year....