Once again, the siren call of a Double Gameweek

With Arsenal suddenly having a Double Gameweek scheduled this week (only confirmed in the last few days, after they booked their spot in the League Cup Final last Tuesday), a lot of folks are getting frantically excited about the possibility of playing a bonus chip in GW26.

I had been tempted to title this quick post on the prospect, The Double Gameweek Delusion. I have written before that the value of Double Gameweeks for a bonus chip play is massively over-estimated by the FPL community - it's a misguided superstition that has been elevated to the status of a cult. However....

Well, as a Bench Boost opportunity, this coming Gameweek certainly looks like a waste of time. You should only really count the points returns of your weakest players (the ones you properly should have left on your bench: many people try to delude themselves into thinking they've done well from the chip by stacking the bench with some of their best players!). If a doubling player is worth having, he's probably worth starting; hence, you won't generally have doubling players on your bench unless almost your entire squad are enjoying double-fixtures - and that's not going to happen unless we have a really BIG Double Gameweek (which are almost uknown these days: we won't get one at all unless all the fixtures postponed from FA Cup Semi-Finals weekend get rearranged to the same gameweek; and that won't be until the very end of the season - a dangerously long time to hold on to your bonus chips, for such an uncertain hope of any advantage...). Here, it's difficult to see value in any Wolves players, even playing twice. (Even if they should produce a marginal advantage over your regular squad players with their lone fixtures, it's very unlikely to outweigh the hassle of using up transfers - which should always be seen as having some effective 'points cost' - to move them in and out again.)  And your Arsenal players obviously aren't going to be on your bench! So, there is no Bench Boost opportunity here.

As a Triple Captain prospect, though.... perhaps there is a case to be made.

Gabriel looks like being the most popular choice. Timber might be an equally strong option. And some might fancy Declan Rice, who's been their most consistent source of 'assists' (as well as producing an occasional goal!) - although his form has looked a little muted of late. And a bolder ploy could be to gamble on an attacking player like Madueke or Trossard or Havertz (the main argument against being that there is much more rotation risk in the attacking positions).

In general, goalscoring midfielders (who get more points than forwards for the same attacking contribution, and might pick up additional points for a clean sheet and/or 'defensive contributions'), or forwards in such freakishly good form that they might well return a multi-goal haul, are the best options as captain or Triple Captain.

But Arsenal are having an exceptional season: their defence is miles better than anyone else's - picking up a clean sheet once every two games, and only conceding an average of 0.65 goals per game. Thus, they do seem to have a very strong prospect of picking up at least one, possibly two clean sheets from this pair of games. And, of course, there's a chance that a defender could earn 'defensive points' or bonus points as well (although that's probably a fairly remote prospect: you rarely earn 'defensive points' against weaker teams; and defenders don't often earn bonus points in a game where their team has scored a few goals...), and perhaps even chip in an attacking contribution (although that's rather a lot to hope for from a defender, even a comparative goals-and-assists monster like Gabriel).

If you choose an Arsenal defender who starts both games, it's reasonable to expect that they should return at least 8 points this gameweek, and perhaps in the 10-15 point range. That's a pretty decent return on the captain's armband.

However, betting on clean sheets is always a precarious hope: even the weakest teams can occasionally surprise you with an uncommonly spirited performance (Brentford, particularly, but also Wolves of late, are actually pretty dangerous in attack), and late goals can appear out of nowhere....

Punting the TC on Gabriel or Timber this week is a high-floor/low(ish)-ceiling kind of play; it's a fairly conservative option for the chip - one that gives you an unusually strong chance of having a player who'll produce an 8- or 10-point gameweek, but a fairly remote likelihood of a really big score.

There are going to be at least TWO more Double Gameweeks this season. So, bolder FPL managers will probably hang on for one of those to play this chip. (Manchester United could still get one, if Brentford reach the semi-finals of the FA Cup; that could make a Triple Captain bet on Bruno Fernandes or Bryan Mbeumo very tempting...)

But going for an Arsenal player this week is a very alluring bird-in-the-hand option: it almost certainly won't produce the biggest Triple Captain return of the season, but it does seem to offer a much stronger-than-average prospect of a decent 8-10 point return. (NB  Again, people like to brag about the total points they received from their Triple Captain pick, tripling the number of his actual game contribution. But, of course, he would have played for you anyway, and he would have been your captain anyway; so the actual value of the chip is only his basic points return - the extra points that you got from making him Triple Captain rather than just captain.)

But be warned... the particular hazard of this Double Gameweek is how unusually protracted it is: Arsenal's two games are nearly a full week apart, and with an FA Cup tie against Wigan intervening. There is a not insignificant chance that an Arsenal player you bet your Triple Captaincy on here will get injured before the Wolves game next Wednesday....

So, are you feeling LUCKY??

More ways to SELF-DESTRUCT

 

The FPL forums have been awash with nutters talking about using their second Wildcard this week. Yes, in Gameweek 22, barely three weeks into the New Year! Does THE MADNESS know no end??!!

The reasons why this is an overwhelmingly BAD IDEA ought to be obvious to anyone who has played the game for more than a few years

They are as follows:

1)  For any chip, there is more risk in using it earlier in its period of availability rather than later. During half a season, there will usually be at least a few, possibly several reasonable - perhaps pressing - occasions to potentially use a chip. And some of these may crop up unexpectedly, at little or no notice: you don't know they're going to happen until they happen. Thus, the later you can leave it to play a chip, the more confident you can be that there won't any longer be a better occasion to use it arising later on.

2) The general 'leaving it later' principle above is particularly true with the Wildcard because it is a 'rebuild chip' which allows you to make substantial and lasting changes to your squad, rather than just a one-off switcheroo to allow you to earn extra points in a single gameweek like all the others. It is potentially so valuable that it really should not be thrown away lightly, at the first sign of any difficulty in your squad. You tend to accumulate need for a Wildcard over time, as drop-offs in form and injuries and suspensions progressively weaken your squad. If things look bad this week, they might be even worse in another week or two!

3)  A crisis requiring a Wildcard to rectify it can also arise very suddenly: it is not uncommon to pick up 4, 5, 6 or even more injuries (or suspensions, or fallings-out-of-favour with the manager) inside a week or two. That is the kind of catastrophe for which you may need your Wildcard. And they can occur at any time (although they tend to become more common in the final third of the season...).

4)  Although this threshold will decrease slightly later in the season, you don't really want to be considering a Wildcard unless you have a case for making at least 5 or 6 urgent changes to your squad. If players aren't unavailable - through being injured, dropped, transferred out, suspended, etc. - it's never absolutely urgent to replace them, it's simply 'elective'. You should be able to carry under-performing players on your bench for a week or three, while you stock up more Free Transfers for a 'mini-Wildcard' shake-up. You can even sometimes take a chance on leaving a few 'holes' on your bench (hang on to non-playing assets) for a little while. And if an immediate change seems likely to be particularly valuable to you, it's OK to take a 'hit' - spend the extra points on it - a few times a season. Blowing a Wildcard for only 3 or 4 - non-urgent! - changes is A COMPLETE WASTE.

5)  At the moment, no-one should have such an urgent case for multiple squad changes. Although there have been a lot of injuries over the past month or so, mercifully, so far none of these have affected any of the really 'big' players: Josko Gvardiol is the only high-owned FPL asset who's been ruled out for a long spell. Moreover, we all just enjoyed an extra 'mini-Wildcard' this year, with the unnecessary additional transfers doled out for AFCON barely a month ago. If you used those sensibly to strengthen your squad during December (or saved at least some of them to allow yourselves a few extra transfers during the injury-ravaged month of January...), there should be absolutely no need to consider multiple squad revisions - or any at all! - just now.

6)  You don't want to be using a Wildcard at a time where there is more than usual uncertainty about what's going on in the Premier League, and perhaps an imminent possibility of significant changes in the FPL player-comparison landscape. And that is very much the case at the moment, in late January. The mid-season transfer window doesn't close for another 11 days, and there's usually a late rush of activity right before the final deadline (this year, on the evening of February the 2nd); some players might yet leave the Premier League altogether, some new big names might join from overseas. And even if you don't fancy any of the new arrivals themselves, you need to be mindful of the disruptive effect they can have on team selections and playing styles, of the possible knock-on consequences for players you do own, or might like to own. These impacts will not make usually themselves fully felt until at least a few weeks after a new player has joined - or left - a club; so, for this reason alone, it is utterly, utterly DAFT to consider using the Wildcard before the second half of February, at the very earliest.

7)  Quite apart from the upheaval of the transfer window, we are deep in the 'midwinter doldrums' now: almost every team is suffering poor or fluctuating form, most players are obviously getting tired or jaded, and many are probably carrying some sort of niggling injury. A crop of new more serious injuries is arriving every week. If you use the Wildcard now, there is an elevated risk that most or all of your new selections might lose form or become unavailable altogether within a few weeks: that is why you shouldn't use it in January. 

8)  There are also some more particular factors affecting the overall player-comparison landscape just at the moment. The five main ones are: a) additional upheaval caused by the turnover of managers around this time of year (Maresca and Amorim have just been replaced; Glasner had looked likely to go, but might survive; Frank looks under extreme threat, Dyche, Espirito Santo, and possibly even Howe also at some risk); b) the immediate and dramatic improvement displayed by Manchester United on being freed from the shackles of Ruben Amorim; c) the upturn in form and fighting spirit starting to be shown by all the clubs at the bottom of the table, making relative 'fixture difficulty' much more difficult to assess; d) the return of AFCON players (most of the more popular FPL choices went deep into the tournament and have only just rejoined their clubs; Senegal and Morocco were in the final last Sunday, and it is not clear if - probably rather unlikely that - their players will be back, or able to be immediately reintegrated into their club sides this weekend); e) the conundrum of Cole Palmer (and perhaps also of Mo Salah and Ollie Watkins); he's playing again at last, and faces a short run of fairly 'easy'-looking fixtures over the next month or so; many FPL managers are bringing him in just because of this enticing fixture-run - but that's almost certainly dangerously premature. He's still being troubled by recurring muscular discomfort, and is obviously a long way short of full stamina and match sharpness (he looked absolutely exhausted at the end of last week's game against Brentford, and he hadn't even been all that 'busy' in it - compared to his usual all-action standards); he isn't yet anywhere near his best, and looks like he might take at least a few more weeks to get there. If/when he does, he'll almost certainly be worth having; but because he's so expensive, that's probably going to require at least three or four transfers - not just one - to accomplish, to reallocate budget around a squad. The only other 'premium' players this season - Salah, Watkins, and Saka - might present a similar dilemma; we know they have the potential to make an enormous FPL contribution - but they haven't been doing so thus far; as soon as that changes, we may want them again,... and we may need to make multiple changes in one gameweek to achieve that. (You don't necessarily need a Wildcard to make these changes; in fact, you really shouldn't. But the point here is that there are a number of likely circumstances that might make you want to make substantial changes to your squad again in the near future - and these might undo many of the changes you've just made with your silly, premature Wildcard.)

Now do you see???

And, oh gawd, some people are talking about using their Bench Boost too. There's a much simpler argument against that. With so much injury, fatigue, and important European and domestic Cup games cramping the schedule at the moment, and thus a heightened rate of unpredictable player rotations - you can't count on anyone being a guaranteed starter at the moment; and thus it's very unlikely that all 15 of your squad will start (which is the bare minimum criterion for considering a Bench Boost play). Also, just about no-one has a really strong bench at the moment (you usually have to use some saved transfers or a Wildcard to 'set up' an optimum squad to get a really good Bench Boost return). And, even if this weekend's games were happening in less unsettled February or March, it still wouldn't be a good gameweek for a Bench Boost: there just aren't that many attractive fixture match-ups!!!

People considering either of these chip plays this week (or, good grief, yes, the Triple Captain or Free Hit too), are just BORED, IMPATIENT, or DEPRESSED (taking the recent run of terrible gameweek returns too personally: wake up, people, it's been SHIT for everyone lately!!), and looking to cheer themselves up with a whacky and impulsive move. All you are doing, my friends, is shooting yourselves in the foot. You'll get no decent advantage from these chips this week; and you will soon be ruing your choice when an obviously much better - or more necessary - occasion to use them comes along.

Always risky to play a chip after a break

 

Well, certainly one of the 'bonus' chips (and as I said yesterday, the Free Hit should really be regarded as one of these too). Though, in fact, even a Wildcard play is a bit of a shakey proposition directly after an international break, as you really want your new selections to return good points for you straight away.... and in these gameweeks, there is too much uncertainty about that.

WHY?  Because the disruption of the usual club routines for the better part of two weeks tends to have a negative impact on team and individual form, and makes game outcomes more unpredictable.

Certainty, of course, is impossible in a game like FPL; but if you're going to risk one of your valuable bonus chips, or implement a major rebuild with the Wildcard, you want to have a high degree of confidence that all of your players are likely to have good games. And you just can't have that level of confidence about likely performances in the gameweek straight after a break, just as you can't in the early weeks of the season, after the summer lay-off.

Even if players aren't physically fatigued by long-distance flights and heavy game-minutes, and haven't picked up some injury niggle that hasn't yet been publicly announced, they can often be emotionally depleted by a particularly high-stakes game (especially in this most recent break, where World Cup qualification was on the line for many teams). But more importantly, their usual routines have been broken: they've been playing with different teammates, working with different coaches, implementing different game tactics and set-piece routines to what they're used to with their clubs. And when they return, they have limited time to get back in the swing of things, with only a day or two of training before their next league match; detailed tactical preparation, in particular, can be very difficult on such a tight schedule. And even the players who stayed at their clubs, while they should be feeling fresh and well-rested, will also have missed out on full training with their regular teammates for 10 days or so.

This is why we get so many wild fluctuations in form, so many 'unexpected' results straight after a break - and thus, why it's such a big, and probably unwise, gamble to play one of your FPL chips in such a gameweek.

[I'm here trying to kick off a new series, where I aim to sum up a key idea about FPL rather more pithily than usual (though I don't have the knack of brevity, I know!), with the main point being stated in the post title. I realise at least some of the entries in my other attempt at a more concise series of posts, 'In a nutshell', may also qualify for this new category. I may have to ponder on whether there's any value in having two labels.]

Upcoming prospects for Bench Boost (and Free Hit!)

 

Now, of course, the best time to play the Bench Boost chip will vary for each manager - probably more so than just about any other aspect of FPL 'strategy', as it depends on all 15 members of your squad (whereas, for the Triple Captain, the options are pretty much the same for everyone - especially at the moment this year!). However, as I pointed out the other day, the Bench Boost is a chip whose value derives from the collective return of the full squad: you not only need to have all 15 players starting their matches, you want to have as many of them as possible playing weak opponents. 

And sure, you will focus mainly on the fixture-difficulty for your 'usual' bench players. But the fixtures for the starting eleven can be very relevant also: if some of them are facing especially tough fixtures, you might not really want to start them that week (you probably don't want to bet on your Arsenal and Liverpool players, for instance - or not all of them, anyway - when they're playing each other). And there may be opportunities to tweak your squad - with a splurge of saved Free Transfers, or perhaps even a Wildcard rebuild a week or two beforehand; or, this year, with the over-generous award of additional Free Transfers for the start of AFCON in Gameweek 16 - to take maximum advantage of an unusually appealing set of fixtures in a particular gameweek.

This year, for the first (and, hopefully, last!) time, we are getting an additional Bench Boost chip, which has to be played in the first half of the season - before the end of December. Some people were so befuddled by this surprising and unnecessary rule change that they spent the chip very early (many even in the very first week of the season - which was completely NUTS!)

It has always looked to me as if the most promising gameweeks for this first Bench Boost would come in the latter part of its eligible window, over the coming month or so.

In fact, this coming Gameweek 12 might look especially appealing - with Villa playing Leeds, Bournemouth playing West Ham, Chelsea playing Burnley. Palace playing Wolves, Liverpool playing Forest, and Manchester United facing a recently out-of-sorts Everton. That is one of the most 'lopsided' sets of fixtures we'll see all season. But I am a little wary of it, because it comes straight after an international break, when there are increased uncertainties about players' form and fitness: travel fatigue as much as game weariness can take the edge off players' performances (South American internationals, in particular, are often rested for the first game back, just because they've had to endure such long return flights), and minor injury problems may not have been disclosed. Also, the disruption of usual club routines, and especially the shortage of time to conduct tactical preparation, means that almost all teams will be something below their best this coming weekend - and some match outcomes (more than usual!) may therefore be surprises.

Gameweek 13 is also promising, with Villa playing Wolves, Brentford playing Burnley, Liverpool playing West Ham, City playing Leeds, and Spurs playing Fulham - although Arsenal being drawn against Chelsea may give pause to managers with a lot of representation from those two teams (surely everyone now has 3 Arsenal players; but it's quite easy, at the moment, to get by with 1 or 0 picks from Chelsea!). And City against Leeds is probably a prime opportunity to chance the Triple Captain on Haaland, so that's a tricky dilemma.

Gameweek 14 doesn't look so hot, with a lot of quite finely balanced match-ups, and only United against West Ham, City against Fulham, and Palace against Burnley looking likely to be really one-sided.

Gameweek 15, though, might be another fairly good prospect: Brighton playing West Ham, Newcastle playing Burnley, Liverpool playing Leeds, City playing Sunderland (certainly not a gimme, but Haaland will probably fancy it...), and United playing Wolves. However, Arsenal away to Villa, Chelsea away to Bournemouth, and Brentford away to Spurs might perhaps go either way, and if you have a lot of players from from those teams, the Bench Boost might look a bit too risky. But if you've managed to save up a few transfers over the preceding weeks, you mightt have the opportunity to optimize your squad this week with a 'virtual Free Hit' (being able to immediately undo any changes that you want to, with the 5 Free Transfers being made available in the following Gameweek 16).

Gameweek 16 is a bit less enticing: although Arsenal, Villa, and Brentford have soft opponents, a lot of matches in this batch - United/Bournemouth, Liverpool/Brighton, Burnley/Fulham, Palace/City, and the Sunderland/Newcastle derby - might all be very tight, 

The fixtures in Gameweeks 18 and 19 include a lot of top-of-the-table clashes, where most FPL managers will have too many players pitted against each other to be able to expect a really good overall haul. And I'd tend to avoid those gameweeks anyway, because the matches are crowded together in the Christmas holiday week: family distractions, more limited preparation, and usually abysmal weather tend to hamper performance in these games, and you rarely see the best of anyone; and a lot of players may be getting rationed minutes, or be rested altogether for one of the games.

Moreover, that's a bit far away to plan for - so much might have changed with form and injuries by then. And, especially with something like the Bench Boost, which requires all 15 players to be fit, and starting, and at their best, it is too much of a risk to leave the chip until the very end of the available window for use: if a rash of late injuries suddenly renders the ploy invalid, you might have only one more week in which to play it, or..... no remaining alternative at all.

That last point also argues against leaving the BB until Gameweek 17, but bold managers might be tempted to give it a try, if they fancy Arsenal against Everton, Bournemouth against Burnley, Brentford against Wolves, and City against West Ham (although that could be possibly the strongest opportunity of the season for a Haaland Triple Cap!). However, Villa/United, Brighton/Sunderland, Newcastle/Chelsea, and Spurs/Liverpool will be rather harder to call.

And of course, all of these gameweeks with an unusually large number of one-sided fixtures - and/or some close match-ups where you might want to avoid having several of your best players facing each other - are also prime candidates for playing the Free Hit chip.

You don't want to be playing any chips early in the season, if you can possibly help it, because tactics and selections, team and individual form take a month or two to settle down - after the dust of the summer transfer window has settled. And this year, the pattern of the fixtures definitely creates a heavy bias towards using them at the very end of the available window. Heck, some lucky people haven't even used their Wildcard yet; and most people with any sense will still have all the others. Hence, we're faced with the challenge of how to make the best use of 3 or 4 chips within the space of just 7 or 8 weeks. This kind of 'overcrowding' is not an enhancement to the game. The introduction of the additional chips this year was yet another stupid idea from our FPL overlords.

NB:  You can't rely on FPL's 'Fixture Difficulty Rating' (as in the screencap at the top of this piece) as an indicator of likely outcomes. It is only, at best, a very crude guide to the relative status of clubs. It seems to take no account of factors like the form or fitness of key players, only 'expected performance' based - initially - on last year's results. It is ludicrously slow to update its assessments, doesn't appear to have much, if any, weighting towards recent results (as it ought to), and maintains an entrenched prejudice against promoted teams, even if they're doing well (4th-placed Sunderland are still considered an 'easy' opponent for almost everyone?!). The FDR grid is a handy reminder of what the fixtures are; but you have to use your own knowledge and judgement to decide which games are actually likely to be very one-sided or very tight, and which team will be the more probable winner.

How much is a Bench Boost worth?

I thought I'd better follow up on yesterday's post about calculating the value of the Triple Captain chip with a companion piece on its cousin, the other 'bonus chip', the Bench Boost.

As with the Triple Cap, FPL managers often like to self-deceive about the extent of their success in playing this chip. Because the points scored by all 15 squad players will be counted for the gameweek when this chip is in play, they will often protest that team selection "doesn't mattter" - and so contrive to accidentally-on-purpose leave some of their best players on the bench. If 'bench players' end up recording 2 or 3 - or even 4! - of their best individual scores of the week, then of course it will appear that their bench collectively produced enormous points,... and that can all be credited to a canny deployment of the Bench Boost chip, so these folks like to claim. But of course, that just ain't so.

Even if we go through the motions of trying to make a normal team selection, with the players who look likely to have the week's shakiest points prospects left on the bench, many of us may still fall prey to this idea that "it doesn't really matter" and be a bit lazy or hasty in deciding the starting eleven; even if we're not consciously stacking the bench with some of our more promising prospects, we might subconsciously be guilty of it. 

And even if, by a freak of good fortune, the 4 poorest prospects left on your bench have returned uncommonly well, contrary to your honest expectations - that isn't worth much if a lot of your starters have returned 'blanks'. The Bench Boost is indeed a reward for collective excellence, and you ought to evaluate it in terms of the overall return from all 15 players.

I follow two 'rules of thumb' for gauging the success of playing my Bench Boost:

1)  Decide my 'bench players' after the event, based on the lowest points returned from my squad (bearing in mind the 'formation rules' on eligible team selection): thus, I only count 4 of my lowest player scores as the value of the Bench Boost.

2)  Consider my squad total score against the gameweek's 'Global Average', to get an idea of how much bettter I did - if at all - than in a typical non-Bench Boost gameweek. (I typically manage around 10 points better than the 'Global Average'; in a 'good' week, around 15 or so better. So, I don't consider I've had a successful Bench Boost unless it's put me at least 25-30 points above the 'Global Average'. I'll make mental adjustments to that rough scale of comparison, based on how high-scoring or low-scoring a gameweek it was. But in most gameweeks, 15 points above 'Global Average' would probably still represent a very poor return on the Bench Boost, and 20-25 points barely adequate.)

Now, in practice, your Bench Boost is rarely going to be worth all that much - because, inevitably, you have your weakest players left on the bench. And, very often, you'll find that at least one of your squad doesn't play that week for some reason, so you'll only have 3 players (or sometimes even fewer....) contributing from your bench. Typically your bench consists of a back-up goalkeeper, a rarely-used (and perhaps ultra-cheap) 5th defender, and whoever your other 2 weakest players look likely to be on that week's fixtures. It's not a recipe for huge points!

That being the case, the Bench Boost can benefit significantly more from a Double Gameweek than the Triple Captain does: because these are players who are unlikely to produce any big returns, even minimum 'appearance points' from a second fixture will give a useful proportional boost to their total for the gameweek. However, if you follow my austere policy of only counting your lowest-returning players as comprising the value of your Bench Boost, you really need just about the entire squad to be enjoying a double-fixture (if only your usual bench players have double fixtures, they'd probably become preferred starters for that gameweek, and your 'true' bench, with only single fixtures. would probably not score quite as well) - and BIG Double Gameweeks like that don't happen any more. (The only week where we could sometimes see 12-16 Premier League teams enjoying a Double Gameweek at the same time was when FA Cup Quarter-Final participants would have their League games from that weekend all rescheduled to the same gameweek [and that didn't always happen; sometimes they were split...]. But since last season, the Premier League is suspending its match programme on the Quarter-Final weekend, so we don't get any postponements from that any more.)

This season, we've been given the novelty gimmick of a 2nd Bench Boost, only valid for the first half of the season - when there are no Double Gameweeks anyway! And as I observed in relation to the Triple Captain chip earlier in the season, now that Double Gameweeks are so few and so small, there's no reliable advantage in them any more (to be attractive possibilities for etiher type of Bonus Chip, at least one of the two fixtures for each of your players needs to be against a really easy opponent; and you have no idea if that is going to be the case until very shortly beforehand). 

It is a huge risk to wait until the last few weeks of the season on such a slim possibility of a slightly enhanced return for those chips; it's certainly not worth passing up favourable combinations of fixtures in gameweeks earlier in the season.

As I mentioned last week, it's best to stay agile and be prepared to play your Bench Boost opportunistically - any time when you feel really confident that all 15 of your squad players are going to start, and most of them, at least, are facing promising fixtures.

Of course, it also helps if you've managed to assemble a particularly strong squad, and one that is especially targeted towards the gameweek's weaker fixtures. In the past, we've generally liked to try to play the Bench Boost chip immediately following a Wildcard, so that our squad is fully optimized for form and fitness, and for the coming week's fixtures. 

Since last season, the new rule allowing us to bank up to 5 Free Transfers has effectively given us the theoretical opportunity of further 'mini-Wildcard' plays, where we could substantially remodel our squads if we've managed to save up extra transfers for a few weeks. In practice, it's incredibly difficult to save 5 FTs - and probably self-harming to try! - but being able to use even 2 or 3 transfers at once can be a significant advantage in optimizing the squad for a Bench Boost attempt. And, of course, remodelling this way, rather than with a Wildcard, enables you to make your changes right on the eve of the gameweek, thereby minimizing the risk of injuries removing some of your squad (a major hazard, if you're having to 'set up' for your Bench Boost using a Wildcard the week before).

Also, this season we have the further unnecessary gimmick of being given additional Free Transfers in Gameweek 16 (supposedly to ease the impact of players departing for AFCON; but at the moment, it's looking very unlikely that anyone will own any African players... apart from Bryan Mbeumo). The odd way this GIFT is being implemented - giving us extra Free Transfers, up to a maximum holding of 5 of them - means that, in order to best take advantage of this measure, we need to use up all of our existing Free Transfers by Gameweek 15. And if we've managed to save up quite a few of them, Gameweek 15 might then be a promising opportunity for the first Bench Boost. Or Gameweek 16, when we'll suddenly find ourselves magically in possession of another 5 Free Transfers. Or possibly even in Gameweeks 17 or 18, when we should still be reaping the advantages of those recent major rebuilds.  (FPL's needless largesse in Gameweek 16 could also be seen as giving us an additional 'mini' Free Hit in the preceding Gameweek: we could use saved Free Transfers to substantially recast our squad for one week only, undoing all of the changes again immediately with the extra transfers being given us for the start of AFCON.)   [I wrote a follow-up piece here - with a bit more detail on this issue of which gameweeks (in the first half of the current season) look most propitious for possibly playing the Bench Boost.]

However, even if you have managed to optimally 'set up' your squad to use this chip, you should consider 10-15 points - fairly counted - for your Bench Boost as adequate; anything around 20 is a very good return; and 25+ is absolutely outstanding.

But, again, as with the Triple Captain, you should temper your expectations, and realise that the chip can easily return little or nothing. If you have a dismal Bench Boost score this season,.... maybe you'll get a big one next time. That's how the game goes.

This season's 'early MADNESS'

 

Every year in FPL, we seem to get one or two particularly common 'ideas' floated in the last days of pre-season that are.... little short of BATSHIT INSANE.

This year, the front-runner seems to be the bizarre notion of dropping the Bench Boost chip in Gameweek 1. That would most definitely be popping the cork.... prematurely.

I discover that some folks in FPL-land think this is not so bizarre, and indeed a 'legitimate tactic' that you might contemplate in any season. (FPL actually rounded up a bunch of its so-called 'experts' to discuss this, and they nearly all claimed it was at least an option worth considering; but the reasons they gave were all so daft that they inadvertently made the case against perhaps even more strongly than I will now attempt to do.)

Now, OK, there are two unusual factors this year which might make the idea superficially tempting, for a moment.

The first is that we've just been given TWO Bench Boost chips for the year, for the first time - one of which has to be used in the first half of the season. Faced with this unfamiliar and unexpected bonus of an 'early' Bench Boost, a lot of FPL managers are completely bamboozled as to what it might be any good for (most have always bought into to the not-unjustified but dangerously overestimated benefits of playing the Bench Boost in one of the Double Gameweeks at the back-end of the season, and have no conception of how to take advantage of it in any other circumstance), and are being tempted to just get it out of the way.

The other is that the opening weekend's fixtures do look somewhat enticing for a few of the top clubs and players: Arsenal face nearly-relegated-last-year Manchester United (although United have always remained capable of springing the occasional upset, and they are at Old Trafford for this one), Liverpool are at home against a Bournemouth who've had almost their entire defence poached from them over the summer, newly crowned Club World Champions Chelsea have a moderately enticing home fixture against Crystal Palace (although they've had a limited 'pre-season', and might still be a bit knackered from playing in that big tournament only a month ago), Spurs are at home against promoted Burnley (but they had much the best defensive record in the Championship last year; and a lot of promoted sides make a spirited start to their EPL careers, even if they usually then soon slump towards certain relegation), City are up against Wolves (but again, that's away, and Wolves can be a very dangerous side; while City are in a bit of a rebuild, and still looked hopelessly vulnerable to the counter-attack against Al Hilal last month). Forest are at home to transfer-ravaged Brentford, Newcastle meet defensively shakey Villa (though that's away, and Villa usually enjoy a big home advantage; and the painful Isak transfer saga has blighted the Toons' pre-season), while Everton and West Ham face the other two promoted sides (but those fixtures really might go either way: the established sides are both away from home - and they're hardly the pick of the Premier League crop; both, in fact, might be in relegation trouble again this season...).

So - that's an OK set of fixtures, perhaps, but not a really great one.

But there are more important reasons why it's plainly bonkers to blow the Bench Boost chip in Gameweek 1:

1)  It's one of the most uncertain gameweeks in the entire season. Major transfer activity at a number of clubs means that, even more than usual at this time of year, it's a real toss-up as to what the opening lineups are going to be (some players might still be in the midst of transfer discussions as the first FPL deadline passes, and be omitted from a squad because of that, even though they're still at their current club; while recent arrivals probably haven't trained with their new teammates enough to get an immediate start). And increased rotation/shorter minutes for top players is also a much greater risk, when players are not yet quite back to full competitive fitness for the season. Injuries are also far more common at the start of the season, as some players push themselves a bit too hard, when still well short of optimum fitness; so, the risk of last-minute dropouts is perhaps slightly higher in Gameweek 1 than at any other point in the season. Having all 15 squad members looking certain to start is the first essential for a successful Bench Boost. In Gameweek 1, it is very, very unlikely that you will have all 15 players start.

2)  As well as the questionable match-fitness issue (almost no-one is likely to be at their best on the opening weekend, even if they do get a start), we don't really get any reliable indications on team or individual form from the mostly very uncompetitive pre-season games. So, we're all betting blind on the opening set of Premier League games: we really don't know what's going to happen with any degree of confidence - and there are often a few big surprises on the opening weekend of the season.

3)  Budget is so tight at the start of the season that no-one can afford a really strong bench. After just two or three months, shrewd FPL managers have usually managed to grow their squad value by 4 or 5 million pounds, at least 2 million of which might go to the bench. Also, quite often, you'll find that you can do without one or two of the premium picks you wanted at the start of the season - suddenly expendable because of form  or injury issues - and that can give you a huge amount of extra money to redistribute through the rest of your squad, including the bench. In Gameweek 1, you probably haven't got more than 17 or 18 million pounds' worth of talent on your bench; but quite soon, you could conceivably have 20 millions' worth, or even a little bit more. Which of those benches is likely to earn more points?

4)  Even if there weren't all these uncertainties about form, fitness, and lineups - the first weekend's fixtures just aren't that good.

And, as I just observed to one of these poor Bench Boost nutters on a forum: "Knowledge of how a gameweek is likely to play out is crucial to achieving a good Bench Boost (along, of course, with a high degree of confidence that all 15 players will start). Thus, literally EVERY gameweek after the first is a better week to try the Bench Boost."

There are obvious, incontrovertible benefits to waiting on the first Bench Boost a while - until you've built a slightly stronger bench, until you're more confident who's going to start and who's in the best form, until you come upon a really good set of fixtures. There are no conceivable benefits - and many likely, almost inescapable hazards - to gambling it in the opening Gameweek.

DON'T DO IT!!!

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 Double 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 proportional 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.