Be content with 'good enough'

It's impossible not to indulge in a little thrill of schadenfreude, not to gloat just a little bit over the (slightly more than) 1.6 million FPL managers who hazarded their Triple Captain chip on Erling Haaland against Coventry this weekend.

They were, no doubt, hoping for a high double-digit return; and he yielded only a solitary goal (though, in a low-scoring match, that was sufficient to net him all 3 bonus points as well: we must take our consolations where we may). It was particularly frustrating that City had such an off game all around, and that Coventry were suddenly so much better than they'd looked in their two previous outings; and that Haaland actually had some more decent chances, but failed to convert them - he was twice played in by immaculate through-balls from Cherki, but both times slammed his shot too close to the keeper, Carl Rushworth.

It's important to try to keep a sense of perspective in situations like this.

Almost no-one ever manages to average 5.5-6.0 points-per-game over the whole season, and very few players ever exceed a 7.5-8.0 ppg average over any extended run of games, even when they're in blistering form. Even Haaland gets a lot less than 9 points in at least two games out of every three. 

So, that haul was really pretty respectable, well above average. And it was a 'good' return for the Triple Captain chip (75% of the time, it returns little or nothing!!).

People are only disappointed, dissatisfied with this outcome because Bruno Fernandes just got a once-in-a-blue-moon 23-point haul in the previous gameweek (and a lot of people had been fortunate enough to play their Triple Captain on that). Their hopes and expectations were unreasonably inflated by that reminder of what is - very occasionally - possible with the chip; and they felt under pressure to try to make up that ground lost to so many rivals in Gameweek 2.

But you can't allow yourself to think like that. You have to be happy with whatever you get from the 'bonus chips'. Around half the time, your Triple Captain blanks! Not infrequently, he may even return a score of just 1 point or 0 points; cases have been known of a Triple Captain missing a penalty, getting sent off, etc, and actually returning triple negative points. So, you have to be grateful for any return at all; 4 or 5 points is a pretty fair return ('better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick'), and 8 or 9 points is actually quite good. Double-digit returns are a rare freak, and you should be happily surprised if you ever benefit from one; not greedily expecting it to happen.

The 'disappointment' of the Haaland TC-ers this week, though, does give some encouragement to those of us who held off playing that chip. There is a reasonable hope for us of getting a similar or better haul from our TC play, and so making up the ground that those 1.6-million gained on us this week. With Bruno's monster return last week,... we really just had to write that off as unrepeatable, uncatchable; we'll have to try to claw most of that deficit back through our ordinary weekly hauls. It can be done, but it will be a long hard road.