The Double Gameweek that never was....

"Double, double toil and trouble...!"

Or..... the Double Gameweek that isn't now going to be!

FPL enthusiasts have been brimming with excitement all year about the prospect of late-season Double Gameweeks - which have traditionally (though wrongly) been viewed as the best and only option for playing the bonus chips (an excitement exacerbated - and complicated! - this year by the appearance of the 'Assistant Manager' as a third bonus chip...).

But really, Double Gameweeks are only a big deal when there are a lot of teams with double-fixtures. And that would only ever happen if all, or very nearly all, of the games rescheduled from the FA Cup Quarter-Final weekend were placed in the same gameweek. Since this year, for the first time, the League programme was suspended on that weekend, and thus no fixtures were lost that week and needing to be rescheduled,.... there was never going to be a BIG Double Gameweek this season.

Yet people had still been fondly hoping that the rescheduled fixtures from the Semi-Final weekend would provide some compensation, create a Double Gameweek of some consequence.

Because the teams facing a Cup quarter-finalist or semi-finalist also lose a match in those weeks, and get a compensating double-fixture, the quarter-finals could produce up to 16 doubling teams (although, typically, at least one club from a lower league usually manages to stay in the competition that far; and occasionally some of the Cup teams may be drawn against each other in the League that week, reducing the number of teams affected by cancelled matches; in some years, only 10 or 12 teams might have got double-fixtures like this); similarly, the semi-finals can affect up to 8 teams (but in some years, only 4 or 6). In the absence of the traditional BIG Double resulting from the FA quarter-finals, everyone was pinning their hopes on a fairly big Double to come out of the semi-finals. And most years in the past, that would have fallen in Gameweek 36 or Gameweek 37.

8 teams having a double-fixture in the same gameweek would give you the chance to select an entire squad of doubling players (although it's not always worth doing: one good fixture is generally better than two tough ones, so there will almost always be some single gameweek players who will produce better returns than doublers). However, sometimes the League will assign the rearranged fixtures to different gameweeks. Heck, sometimes, even if all the games are rescheduled in the same midweek cluster, they may decide to attach the earlier ones to the preceding gameweek, and the later ones to the following gameweek - creating two small gameweeks rather than one big one.

And - oh, woe! - this year, Manchester City and Aston Villa made it to the semi-finals, but were drawn to play against each other in the League that weekend, so.... only 6 teams would have a double this year, rather than 8. And the reschedulings were split over two different weeks. And then, as a final indignity, the League, in its fathomless mischievousness, decided to deem that the Forest v Brentford game was still part of the FA Semi-Final weekend (GW34), even though it had been shifted to the following Friday. and thus wouldn't get a double-fixture after all. WTF??

Oh, and for the first time that I can remember, the bulk of the fixtures were moved forwards rather than back ('anteponed') - into the preceding Gameweek. So, the much-anticipated Double Gameweek 36.... isn't going to happen.

And in the forthcoming Gameweek 33, we have only 4 doubling teams. And of those, only Arsenal (ironically, the only one of the four teams not actually in the FA Cup round) has a good double-fixture. It's not only a very small Double Gameweek, but a fairly SHIT one - with mostly middling teams and unpromising fixtures. Nothing much to get excited about at all: certainly not for the Triple Captain chip (which should have been used long since by now, anyway).

For the Bench Boost, well.... there may be some prospect for getting something out of it. In general, you wouldn't bring in doubling players unless you thought they were going to do better than single gameweek players; and thus you wouldn't expect to have any doubling players on your bench unless your entire squad had double-fixtures (which is always hard to achieve, even if there are a lot of doubling teams to choose from). However, you tend not to get that many points from defenders and keepers, so even the small lift of 2 additional 'appearance points' for a second game-start can be a significant propoortional lift to them; but even with that possibility, you still might not favour them over your regular starters in those positions, even if they only have one match. Given that your bench almost invariably consists of your 4th and 5th defenders and your weakest forward or midfielder, plus the back-up keeper, it might be possible to find doublers for all or most of those slots - and legitimately claim that they still wouldn't be first-eleven choices, even with the extra game. And so your bench might be augmented slightly by the Double Gameweek. (Also, having at least a few doublers in your starting eleven as well slightly reduces your chances of having someone not play at all in the gameweek, and so drag someone off your bench as an auto-sub. That, however, is a very minor consideration.)

But really, whenever you choose to play the Bench Boost, the quality of fixtures is more important than the number of them; and even more important than that is the confidence that everyone - all 15 squad players - will start.... because if anyone is missing, your Bench Boosti s screwed.

Don't get hung up on the Double Gameweek Myth. It's not necessarily the best time to play the Bench Boost - never has been. Double Gameweek 33 looks like it could be a promising opportunity for the Bench Boost (not a great one, but better than nothing); but there may be better options for your squad - it depends on which fixtures you like most, and when you're most confident of having everybody start.

GOOD LUCK!

 

BONUS CHIPS - who needs them?

 

I dislike FPL's 'bonus chips' - for me, they are an unncessary gimmick, just a further randomising element in a game that is already plenty random enough.

And they are a relatively recent innovation, only being introduced into the game for the first time in the 2015-2016 season.

Even the best players won't manage a double-digit haul much more than once every three or four games on average across the season; and they'll probably 'blank' (i.e., produce nothing beyond basic appearance points), or only return a very low score, at least one game in every three. So, you won't get a really good haul from your regular captaincy pick more than one week in three (unless you're very, very lucky). And even when you do, it's unlikely to be your best haul of the week - because, if you have a good squad, there are usually at least 5 or 6 potential candidates for the captaincy (and very often one of your other squad players will surprise you with an outstanding week, while all the 'usual suspects' falter....). So, even getting the captaincy choice 'right' for an individual gameweek is largely a matter of luck, something that only comes good for you perhaps 20% to 30% of the time.

Now, there are certain fixtures where you might reasonably expect your star player to have a particularly high chance of a big score (and a particularly low chance of a poor score); but in practice, it doesn't often work out like that. I don't think the 'soft fixtures' actually produce significantly better outcomes most of the time. The odds in your favour are, hopefully, slightly enhanced if you choose your fixture to play the Triple Captain chip wisely, but you're still probably more likely to be disappointed than pleased with the outcome; and things can go very badly wrong. (Last year, I bet on Haaland against Bournemouth. The Viking was in smokin' form, and Bournemouth had started the season dreadfully, were deep in the relegation zone and conceding goals every week. This week, of course, was the week they suddenly began to turn things around. And our Erling apparently picked up an injury mid-way through the first half, and didn't reappear after the break - although it looked very much as if he might have been carrying some problem from the start, as he was completely off his game. The most in-form player in the league at the time faces one of the weakest defences.... and comes away with 1 point! Shit like this happens in our game all too often....)

And yet, at the other extreme, you might once-in-a-blue-moon (I mean, once every decade... or two....) happen to pick the week in which your favourite captaincy choice produces a monster haul for your TripleCap!! Even more galling, there are some people who seem to play the chip completely randomly on some not particularly fancied player... who produces a blinder out-of-the-blue - like Noni Madueke in Gameweek 2 of this season. Yep, it all too often happens that someone can take a wild punt on a frankly idiotic choice for the chip, and come away with 50, 60 or 70-odd points. There's little skill in it, little justice, just a huge amount of randomness.... and LUCK!

The Bench Boost chip isn't much better. You can identify gameweeks which seem auspicious to play it because of their heavy density of unbalanced fixtures, and perhaps even a good number of double-fixtures ('big' Double Gameweeks can indeed offer a significant lift to your Bench Boost return; but there aren't many of them to aim for - well, only ONE this year! - and it's a risk to wait until the very end of the season for this chance to play the chip); and you might even carefully 'set up' for them, with judicious use of transfers in preceding weeks - or perhaps the deployment of the Wildcard - to try to ensure that you have a stronger bench than usual, and a full bench. But that's the main problem with this chip: you really need to be absolutely sure that all 15 squad members are going to start in order to take advantage of it - and that hardly ever happens. It has been as rarely as 3 or 4  times in the entire season for me (and not on weekends with many 'good' fixtures!). Last year I was geared up to play my Bench Boost 3 or 4 times,.... and every time I found myself undone by one or two last-minute injuries, unable to go ahead with using the chip on a bunch of good fixtures because I suddenly had huge gaps on the bench.

Even on a Double Gameweek, it is quite possible for all of your bench players to disappoint in both games and leave you with a single-digit return for the chip. If you have to use it on a Single Gameweek, you can easily end up with next-to-nothing. And a haul of 15-20 points is really about the best you can reasonably hope for; most of the time, you'll probably come out with a bit less than that. But, again, some people can get absurdly lucky with the chip, racking up 30 or 40 points or more on it.

It's just a roll of the dice!  Why do we need this extra gambling element in the game??  We DON'T. 

But gambling, alas, is addictive. Too many FPL managers enjoy this additional thrill of uncertainty, and would be loath to give it up.

At least these chips are still tied to the regular points-scoring structure of the game, still rewarding shrewd choices of players for the current fixtures. This season the game's controllers are threatening us with a further novelty, an as yet undefined 'Mystery Chip'. There has been much speculation online about what this new chip will turn out to be. There are a number of possibilities that aren't too wacky, such as additional points for one week for defenders or for forwards (encouraging you to switch to a different formation for that week). And I'm quite fond of the Super-Captain chip they have in Fantasy World Cup, which retroactively assigns your double-points captain bonus to your highest-returning player in the Gameweek (a rare example of a de-randomising chip; I like that!). Even the 'Limitless' chip they usually have in the international competitions (a Free Hit with the additional benefit of an unlimited budget) is harmless fun.

But I have a foreboding that the FPL overlords may be plotting something far more extreme for this new chip - something far more randomising, and far more remote from the normal structure of the game. I do hope I'm wrong; but I get a sinking feeling in my stomach every time I think about it. They're supposed to be announcing it just before it becomes available for use in the second half of the season, so we'll find out in a month or so. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

It is obviously too much to hope for that FPL would scrap the Triple Captain and Bench Boost chips. But we really don't need ANY MORE 'bonus chips' like this added to the game.