Last chance to BANISH the AssMan!

 

As I've mentioned, often, I absolutely HATED the silly innovation of the 'Assistant Manager' chip, which I think RUINED the game for everyone this season.

If you're signed up for the regular FPL updates, you should have received an invitation in the last few days to participate in their End-of-Year Survey.

It includes questions about what you thought of the 'Assistant Manager', and whether you'd like to see it again next year (please, God, NO!!!!). PLEASE, EVERYONE, fill this in, and make sure to be as negative as possible about the dratted AssMan chip!!!

How to answer the FPL survey

If we don't all complain about it vociferously, there's a very real danger that it (or something even worse...) will be included in the game again next year - and RUIN IT FOREVER. This may be our one chance to make our displeasure with the chip heard.

There is also a space at the end of the questionnaire for you to address any other areas of complaint. I would suggest throwing in some criticisms of the AWFUL 'Player Info' screen, or various other aspects of the data presentation in the UI, the lack of any ready way of reviewing the player-by-player contribution to your team performance over the season, or, of course, the urgent need to revise the bloody 'BPS'....

#DownWithTheNewChip

How to use the Assistant Manager chip

 

Setting aside my profound antipathy towards this silly new gimmick chip for a moment... I thought I'd put together a few key thoughts on what you need to consider if you are going to use this chip.

1)  Since the adoption of an 'assistant manager' involves paying a transfer fee, you may have to use one or two transfers to juggle your squad to free up the money (it's not very much money; but it has the potential to be a bothersome inconvenience). Because an 'assistant manager' is treated as part of your per-club player quota, you may also need to make transfers to get rid of a third player from a club that you want the manager from. And you will almost certainly need to give yourself the flexibility of changing your manager during each week that the chip is active, potentially costing you 2 more transfers. Thus, you really ought to try to get as many Free Transfers as possible saved up (under a new rule this season, you can now bank up to 5 FTs at one time) to help you deal with these issues when you decide you want to use the chip. It is also probably worth trying to avoid using the 'Assistant Manager' chip in the run-up to one of the season's two expected 'blank' Gameweeks (GW29 and GW34, when a number of League fixtures will be cancelled because of Cup ties on the same weekend), since you might also need a lot of saved Free Transfers to negotiate those. Similarly, for a major 'turn' in fixtures, when the difficulty of the upcoming fixture sequence shifts drastically for a number of teams at around the same time, you may want to have as many Free Transfers in hand as possible to be able to make multiple squad changes in a short space of time.

2)  The so-called 'table bonus' (for obtaining a result against a side ranked 5 or more places above you in the League at the start of the Gameweek) is HUGE: it is the most important aspect of the 'Assistant Manager' rules, and has to be the main focus of strategy for this chip. (It's worth 10 extra points for a win, 5 extra points for a draw. Absent that bonus, you only get 10 points for a 2-0 or 4-1 win. Even a 0-0 or 1-1 draw with a 'table bonus' can be worth as much as a win without one. So, one successful use of the chip to obtain this bonus is likely to be worth as much as or slightly more than backing a top manager for two wins in a double gameweek. If you can pull off the 'table bonus' twice in a double gameweek, that can be some very big points.)

3)  Unfortunately, it's impossible to know exactly which teams are going to be 5 or more places above your target 'Assistant Manager' team until the end of the preceding gameweek; particularly so this season, when the majority of the table is so tightly packed together that it is very possible for most teams to rise or fall several places in only one or two weeks. With the 'Assistant Manager' being in play for three weeks, you can't expect to know which teams/managers will be most likely to produce good returns in its 2nd and 3rd weeks when you first activate it (and, of course, there may be changes in form or injury troubles affecting the picture too). Also, it's rather easier for players to maintain consistent form over an extended period, and sometimes to do well even when their team isn't. Team form, by contrast, can lurch very suddenly from one extreme to the other, sometimes even from week to week (ahem, Newcastle). But even more importantly for this chip, team form is much more fixture-dependent; a good, in-form attacking player can score goals against almost anyone, but teams mostly settle at a level - where they're likely to beat certain teams and likely to lose to others. Moreover, the fixtures rarely or never line up obligingly - so that you have a run of three fixtures that all look like likely wins (and include a double gameweek, and a few likely opportunities to earn a 'table bonus') for the same club. Unlike our best players (most of the time!), the same manager can't be expected to have anything like the best chance of the best return in successive gameweeks. This is the reason why it is almost certainly going to be essential to change your 'assistant manager' every week in order to derive maximum value from the chip - or at least to be able to keep open your option to do so.

4)  There is also an 'opportunity cost' involved in choosing a manager from a top club. You might well be trebled up on players from that club. And whenever you choose to take three players from the same club (something better avoided, if possible, because it does expose you to a risk of very heavy impacts from occasional bad results or an unexpected postponement), it's because you regard all three of them as extremely valuable. If you're picking a manager who cannot earn a 'table bonus' in that gameweek, the most he can earn for you with this chip is 10-12 points (and, of course, it can be much less); that is likely to be not much better - and potentially rather worse - than you might hope to get from any of his players. At the very best, his advantage over one of those players is likely to be uncertain and only fairly marginal. Plus, of course, there's the possible inconvenience of having to sell a player from that club to make room for your manager, and/or the disadvantage of losing the opportunity to bring in a third player from that club while you have that manager; and the fact that this can cost you additional transfers (you'll probably want to get that third player straight back in when you finish using this manager....). By contrast, choosing a manager from a club from whom you'd never want more than 1 or 2 players - if any - represents a 'pure profit' on the use of this chip; there are no concerns about needing to use up extra transfers to make room, or worries about a player you've been forced to drop or go without potentially out-performing your manager. (Of course, you won't have lost all of the dropped player's points, because you will have brought someone in to replace him, who might have done very nearly as well; but having to drop a key squad player to accommodate your manager pick does undercut the manager's value to some extent - particularly in a double gameweek [when these players may be part only a small number having the advantage of playing twice, and are thus likely to outscore almost everyone else]. To correctly identify the true value of the 'Assistant Manager' chip's return, you should calculate if there's a surplus of points earned by the third player from the manager's club who you might have chosen over the points you got from the player you have instead of him.... and deduct that points difference from the AM score for the gameweek.)  For these reasons, managers from top clubs do not represent 'good value' for this chip.

5)  Because, like the other bonus chips - Triple Captain and Bench Boost - the 'Assistant Manager' chip can potentially gain a big points-lift from being played in a Double Gameweek, there is a further 'opportunity cost' to be evaluated when you decide on a DGW chip use. In the upcoming DGW24, for instance, many people are currently favouring playing their Triple Captain on Mo Salah; if this works out, it could well be worth 20-30 extra points for the gameweek. However, setting up a bench with doubling Everton players and playing Bench Boost could potentially bring you 30 or 40 extra points, or even more. It is very unlikely that either of this week's double-fixture managers, Arne Slot or David Moyes, can reach 20 points (though Moyes at least has the theoretical chance to pick up a 'table bonus' against Liverpool, which would boost his return substantially; and he may have the better prospect of a comfortable win against Leicester).

6)  Because the 'Assistant Manager' chip has an extended activation period of three gameweeks, rather than just the usual one gameweek, you need to be very wary of playing it at any period when you might potentially want to call on one of your other chips. This would certainly include any likely blank and double gameweeks (until you've finalised a desired 'chip strategy' for making the best use of all your bonus chips, in the light of the likely Double Gameweek opportunities), when you might need Free Hit or Wildcard in order to put out a full eleven for a week with a lot of postponements, or want to use the Triple Captain or Bench Boost to take advantage of extra fixtures in a gameweek. Arguably, you might also want to steer clear of using it in February, while there is still an elevated risk of sudden postponements due to bad weather.

In summary:

Focus on the possibility of extra points for the 'table bonus', not just secure wins; look for managers/teams and fixture runs that look like they could offer good opportunities to win some of these bonuses.

Consider fixture runs for multiple clubs, not just one, within the period of possible chip activation - and be prepared to change your manager selection every week, if necessary.

Be ready to take risks. You're going to have to bet on low-ranking clubs, clubs who've performed poorly and/or inconsistently for much of the season, to have the chance of getting these 'table bonuses'. There's a very good chance they'll often let you down. But if they don't, it will be worth it!

Beware the managers from the top teams. It might be easier to predict their results, but missing out on the 'table bonuses' is a massive disadvantage. And there are further risks involved in having to go without one of their players - who has the potential to score more points than the manager (and very probably will at least slightly outscore another player you have instead of them, especially in a Double Gameweek - which will detract from your 'Assistant Manager's contribution).

Carefully weigh up the merits of the Double Gameweek opportunities for each of your bonus chips: Triple Captain or Bench Boost will be better options for some of them.

Try to stock up as many Free Transfers as you can, to make activating and using the 'Assistant Manager' chip as painless as possible. (And try to avoid using the chip when you need to save up Free Transfers for other reasons, such as a big 'turn' in fixture difficulties for several teams, or a looming Blank Gameweek.)

Be careful about using the 'Assistant Manager' chip in a period when you might want to use one of the other chips instead - particularly around the Blank and Double Gameweeks. (You might have chosen to use it to take advantage of a Double Gameweek; but if you've played the chip a week or two ahead, you can't change your mind if circumstances relating to the attractiveness of that Double Gameweek change. And remember that using the chip may create an extra drain on your stock of saved transfers - something you'd like to avoid in the last few gameweeks before a Blank or a Double.)

This damned new chip is, of course, in play now. But, rather than playing it,.... I urge you all to quit the game in protest as soon as possible; or at least commit to refusing to use the chip. And please also criticise and complain about it online as much as possible.

#QuitFPLinGW23         #DownWithTheNewChip

A Commitment (and a Confession)

As I've been promising - and advocating for others to do too - for several weeks now, I have renounced the game of Fantasy Premier League for the rest of this season, in protest at the introduction of the new 'Assistant Manager' bonus chip, which I see as a stupid, pointless, and game-ruining gimmick.

And, as I shared on here a couple of days ago, since FPL refuses to let me delete my squad or remove it from competition without also relinquishing my entire account - with its competition history, and the mini-leagues I administer - into oblivion too, I find myself obliged to let my team go on without me... a 'zombie' team, shambling on inexorably toward the end of season without any intelligent direction.

And so I find myself with a slightly abashed confession to make: I did 'cheat' on the terms of my original resolve to quit the game as soon as the Assistant Manager chip went live.... just a little bit.

I was resigned to having my squad slowly eroded by injuries (or transfers!) or shifts in form over the remainder of the season, and probably being mightily shafted by my inabiliity to use my remaining 'rebuild' chips, or to adapt with transfers to the major speedbumps of the blank and double gameweeks we encounter later in the year, or to ever rotate my captaincy around fluctuating form and fixtures. But I did decide to hastily use up my two bonus chips, the Triple Captain and Bench Boost (earlier than I would have liked, possibly far from ideal deployments). And I also set up as well as I could for the upcoming Double Gameweek - and, hopefully, for the rest of the season - with some final transfers.... in what was technically Gameweek 24. (And, as you can see in the memorial screenshot at the top of this post, I've got my Bench Boost in play this week - on an Everton-stacked bench.)

All I can say in my defence is that I did this in a mad, guilty rush, immediately after the last Gameweek deadline closed (so, before any of the GW23 games had been played, and thus with no knowledge of what new shifts in form we might see, or what injuries and suspensions might emerge over the weekend),..... and I did feel bad about even that slight departure from my high-minded intentions.

I hope any regular readers (it looks like I do have a few already?) can forgive me this small lapse. I hope I can forgive myself.

I do sincerely believe that this new Assistant Manager chip is worth fighting against - as consistently and emphatically as we are able. Please join me in this righteous crusade!

Join The Boycott:

#QuitFPLinGW23         #DownWithTheNewChip

So long, farewell.....

 

I'm DONE for this season.

I have thrown in the towel - in protest at the introduction of the ridiculous, unnecessary, game-distorting 'Assistant Manager' chip.

However, since one of the many infuriating deficiencies of the FPL user-interface is that it does not allow you to delete a team without deleting your entire account, I am obliged to leave my team going as a dormant - or 'zombie' - competitor. 

[I'm not so concerned about losing my prior game history, as I've lost my account twice before for various reasons, so only have one or two previous seasons recorded under this one. I prefer to keep my own records of progress anyway. And I'm not keen on having a publicly available record published on the Internet - I value my privacy too much!

However,.... it seems I would also delete a couple of mini-leagues I administer, and I don't want to do that to the other participants. So, I'm stuck with having to remain nominally involved in a game I'd rather walk away from completely.  Sigh.]

Nonetheless, I am ever on the lookout for a new 'challenge', a new focus for my boundless curiosity.... So, I am finding myself quite intrigued to see what will happen to an unchanged team over the remainder of the season.

Last year, a competitor in my local mini-league had an outrageously lucky start to the season and was 200 points or so ahead of the field by Christmas. But sometime around January or February, he somehow got himself locked out of his account (although his 'form' had already started to crumble a bit while he was still active). I think it was only in the penultimate week of the season that I and another competitor finally managed to overhaul him.

I'm top in that league again at the moment, but without a very substantial cushion; so, I imagine it will not take my local rivals very long to outpace me. But it will be interesting to see.

I've set up what I hope will be a strong squad for the remainder of the season, and it should continue to produce pretty well - unless I get hit with a lot of injuries. But of course, I will get slammed by the blank and double gameweeks that I can't adapt to. And I won't be playing that 'Assistant Manager' chip, which is potentially worth a huge number of points....

So, farewell then, my friends.....

But, as Arnie would say..... "I'LL BE BACK!"

A-glitching we will go!

 

The new 'Assistant Manager' chip (AssMan to its friends - though I don't think it has many of those...) has been available since the close of the Gameweek 23 deadline last Saturday.

Many FPL managers are rushing to use it straight away - partly because the Double Gameweek for Liverpool and Everton next week offers an opportunity to extract more points from it (though also from the other two bonus chips, so it might be a slightly tough call as to which is the best to go for),.... but also because - as I gather from all the grumping on the forums - a lot of them regard the damn thing as so insanely over-complicated, and so problematic to fit in alongside plans for your other chips, it's better to use it at once..... simply TO GET IT OUT OF THE WAY.

And a lot of these early adopters have been discovering that IT DOESN'T WORK!  Well, it seems that on the mobile app version of the game, activating the new chip seems to freeze up the rest of the game... making it impossible for you to carry out any other needful tweaks to your team, such as making transfers or substitutions or swapping your captaincy around. Awkward.

It seems there's probably a software update you have to install to get the game working properly again on your phone.  And the web-based version of the game does not seem to have had these problems, so if you can log into your accounnt through a browser, you should be fine. 

But BE WARNED: it would be unfortunate if you left it until just before the Gameweek deadline to make your weekly team tweaks,.... and suddenly found that you couldn't do anything.

It is really not unexpected that the introduction of this new chip might cause a major snafu. It is a very complex addition to the game - lasting longer than any previous chip, introducing a completely new set of points rules, and introducing the major new element of 'managers' (who nevertheless still operate in some ways like - and interact with the game interface for - players: they cost a transfer fee, changes of manager use up a transfer, and they count as one of your quota of three 'players' from any one club). That is an awful lot of new stuff to assimilate into the game.

The FPL Gnomes really should have done some beta-testing on the idea first, but..... Ooops.  Oh, no: they were in such a headlong rush to get this damned thing out, they probably didn't even do any alpha-testing....!

They ought to have done some public consultation on such a major and disruptive change to the game format too. (If they had done, I think they would have got very substantial negative feedback on the idea; not from the majority, probably; but a significant amount from the more intelligent and committed players - enough, hopefully, to make them realise that this idea should have remained part of the dumb-but-innocuous 'Fantasy Challenge' side-game series, and not been incorporated into the main game.)

I absolutely bloody HATE this stupid new chip - and I am urging everyone to please consider quitting the game, or at least refusing to use the damn thing. 

And if you can't bring yourself to do either of those things, please do criticise the Assistant Manager chip as vigorously as possible on any relevant social media channels you use, raise objections to it with any football or media figures you know how to contact, and - if possible - try to find a way to protest about it directly to the FPL hierarchy (and let me know how, if you manage that!).

#QuitFPLinGW23         #DownWithTheNewChip

Report Card (2)

 

A couple of months ago, I was giving myself a rueful C- for my performance in the first quarter of the season,... though indulging in some light optimism about a slow-but-steady improvement after a string of early misfortunes in the opening weeks of the season. How have things gone since then?

Well, I continued dogged - but not too spectacular - upward progress: 110 points above global average (3 'bad' Gameweeks, very slightly below the average) over the next 9 gameweeks, scrabbling up almost back into the top million (it can take a very long time to drag your way clear of bad beginnings: by GW5 or 6, when most of the eventual global leaders were probably at least in the top 500,000, if not the top 100,000, I was still barely inside the top 5 million!). I take particular comfort from the fact that my squad value leapt by nearly 4 million quid in those two months - a sign that a lot of my picks are proving quite shrewd.

However, I was still suffering quite a lot of bad luck. I'd decided to take a chance on Iliman Ndiaye, being impressed by his early-season form before he'd actually scored much; and he gave me a nice return in his first match for me, against Ipswich, but then had quite a long fallow run (came back into form for a while, after I'd dropped him; but then got injured again.... one to watch for a budget forward option next year, perhaps). I got on Matz Sels, Jarrod Bowen, Lewis Hall and Jorgen Strand Larsen quite early, and in December, Amad Diallo too; but only Sels proved a strong long-term hold, the others soon picking up injuries. I dropped Mbeumo during his lull in form in November, and then he suddenly started scoring like a monster again - despite some unfavourable-looking fixtures. I took a punt on Giorginho Rutter as a fifth midfielder for a while, but his points dried up, and then he got a season-ending injury. And I retained optimism in Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson perhaps a bit too long after Chelsea's form began to falter badly in early December. (Not sure how long I would have ultimately held on to them, as I stopped playing at the end of January, in protest at the absurdity of the new 'Assistant Manager' chip. Jackson, of course, picked up an injury immediately after that. But Palmer was still giving intimations of threat, and had some appealing fixtures - so, there was certainly a case for retaining him until some time in April....); I was gutted that I hadn't given Palmer the captain's armband for his last really big haul, in Gameweek 15. Even worse, I'd gone in for Enzo Fernandez during his brief hot streak - which abruptly ended when Romeo Lavia got injured, requiring Enzo to revert to being one of the deep pivots, rather than pushing up alongside Palmer.

In general, I would say, my selection decisions all looked pretty sound, often prescient; but few of them gave me any long-term returns - I had a lot of bad luck with injuries or crashes in form almost immediately I brought someone in. The most egregious of these was Bukayo Saka, who I only managed to find room for in GW12, and in GW17 picked up a hamstring problem that would sideline him for nearly half the season.

January went rather nicely for me, with 100 points above the 'global average' in just 5 gameweeks (although that was with the benefit of Triple Captain and Bench Boost chips working out quite well in Gameweeks 23 and 24). But then I quit the game in a huff, just as things were starting to go well...

So, the second quarter of the season was probably a solid B for me, maybe even a B+ (and getting near to an A in January...). Alas, the stupid innovation of the 'Assistant Manager' Chip spoiled the season, and drove me to abandon the game for the year. But honestly, it was going to be a godawful year for me anyway. I still hadn't quite got back into the top 1 million at the end of January, and probably would have struggled to reach the top 500,000 by season's end - which might have made it my second worst year ever.

BOYCOTT the New Chip!

 

I have written before about why I think FPL's silly innovation of the 'Assistant Manager' Chip is a terrible idea in principle (and also about why it's badly thought out, and severely impractical, difficult/dangerous to use...).

And I mentioned in those posts that I was so appalled by it that I am inclined to quit the game in protest - when the new chip becomes available, after Gameweek 23.  (You could just refuse to use the chip; but I don't think that will be a sufficiently clear and emphatic denunciation of its introduction into the game. Others - probably the great majority - will use it. And since it is likely to be worth far more points than both of the other bonus chips combined, it will effectively determine overall rank outcomes for the season on its own. If you soldier on in the game without using the chip, you'll have to suffer a really terrible end to your season....  I'd rather just not bother.)

You might perhaps find this new chip merely a tolerable irritation for this one season only; maybe even you're intrigued by the challenge it poses.

But if you like 'challenges' you can do Bridge problems or Sudoku. The game of Fantasy Premier League already presents a well-defined challenge - and this innovation falls utterly outside of that existing definition. It is a completely new game, grafted on to the old one - and spoiling it.

And the danger is that if we tolerate it now, it will become a permanent feature of the game, and RUIN IT for all time. (With the further - horrific - possibility that, additionally or instead, other bizarre new rule changes will now be introduced every year.... to keep up a continual 'novelty factor'!!)  I DON'T WANT THAT; and I don't think anyone with any sense, anyone who truly loves the game of FPL, does either.

So, I'd like to propose that we start trying to organise a boycott. Denounce The New Chip online at every opportunity. And if you, like me, decide it's appropriate to quit the game in protest - do so straight after the close of Gameweek 23. And make sure EVERYBODY knows why you've done it.

We can beat this thing. But it's going to take a lot of effort....

#QuitFPLinGW23         #DownWithTheNewChip

The biggest PROBLEM with the 'Assistant Manager' chip

 

I've already explained why I so dislike this vile novelty chip the FPL powers-that-be are foisting on us this year - briefly here, and in elaborate detail here.

There are a number of irksome obstacles to deploying the damn thing at all (which may perhaps be enough to dissuade some people from bothering to use it). 

Many on the online forums have been bitching most about the 'transfer charge' for your selected manager for the chip, complaining that it overstrains an already inadequate player budget. I think that's a greatly overstated complaint: the sums are relatively trivial, and shouldn't have much of an impact on your squad strength. But the initial purchase of your manager is likely to necessitate you having to sell at least 1,... maybe 2 or 3, or even 4 players in order to free up the necessary cash; and that is a substantial irritation.

A rather greater irritation, to my mind, is the restriction of your per-club player quota - meaning that you will be denied the opportunity to bring in a third player from the same club as your selected manager.

However, both of these annoyances pale into insignificance beside the three-week duration of the chip - coupled with the prohibition of using more than one chip at a time (it was not originally specified that the new chip would be bound by this old rule; but that point has now been clarified - to everyone's disadvantage). Being blocked from the possibility of using any other chip for three whole gameweeks is a HUGE handicap - one that should perhaps make all of us question whether we want to use this chip at all. Its potential rewards are indeed enormous (game-distorting, unfair), but the risks attendant upon it could also prove to be quite disastrous.

There are TWO 'blank gameweeks' in the latter part of the season (when some teams will miss their scheduled league fixtures because of the League Cup Final or the FA Cup Semi-Finals), followed by a pair of Double Gameweeks, in which the clubs who had games postponed will make them up by playing twice in a few days, within the same gameweek. There will now be an additional Double Gameweek, just for Liverpool and Everton (replacing the fixture cancelled a couple of weeks ago because of Storm Darragh). There may yet be others added to the schedule, because of more severe weather or other unexpected events.

Blank Gameweeks can affect multiple teams, and can easily wipe out half or more of your squad. And so, you really want to try to keep your Free Hit available to help protect you from the potentially devastating consequences of a big - and perhaps quite unexpected - Blank Gameweek.

Double Gameweeks are prized as particularly good occasions to try to take advantage of the game's regular bonus chips, the Triple Captain and Bench Boost. And it is often desirable to 'set up' for the Bench Boost by playing the second Wildcard a week or so before the target Double Gameweek, to optimise the squad (getting in as many players with double-fixtures as possible, and as many players as possible with the best fixtures) and to try to ensure that you will have a full bench for that week (which is the first essential for a successful Bench Boost).

Rescheduled fixtures typically only have their dates confirmed a fairly short time ahead. At the moment, there is still no date fixed for the postponed Everton v Liverpool match. It seems likeliest that it can be slotted into Gameweek 25 or Gameweek 28, or perhaps even as late as Gameweek 33.  But it is very possible that we still won't know when it is to be played when the 'Assistant Manager' chip first becomes available (after the deadline of Gameweek 23). Since almost everyone who hasn't yet used their Triple Captain chip is now hoping to play it on Mo Salah in that unique Double Gameweek for Liverpool, those people will probably feel precluded from trying to use the new chip until a new date for that missed Merseyside derby is announced.

Having the Free Hit available to help negotiate the Blank Gameweeks in GW29 (League Cup Final) or GW34 (FA  Cup Semi-Finals) is probably even more valuable - if not essential. 

And the 'BIG' Double Gameweek following the postponements for the FA Semis (probably in GW36 or 37, but possibly earlier; GW33 also looks like an 'available slot') is the prime opportunity this season - the only obviously good one - to use the Bench Boost chip.

Because we don't know exactly when these Double Gameweeks will be - and we might not know for sure until just a week or two beforehand! - it's pretty much impossible to plan how to use the 'Assistant Manager' chip..... either to take advantage of them with that chip, or to avoid them so that we can use other chips instead. The bloated three-week duration of the chip makes it completely unmanageable.

So, many managers would probably have preferred to use a multi-week chip straight away in January. After that, there are few if any convenient gaps in the schedule that would allow you to play it without messing up your plans for your other chips. But the churlish FPL gnomes have strangely decided to delay the launch of the new 'Assistant Manager' chip until the beginning of February - so, it is now really difficult to identify good opportunities to use it without compromising, or completely abandoning, your original chip strategy. Most of us are looking at trying fit 7 weeks of chip play into just 15 gameweeks - and that's a huge headache.

Now, as I mentioned the other day, the 'Assistant Manager' chip is going to be worth far more than either of the two existing bonus chips - and probably far more than both of them combined - so it might be worth sacrificing your previous plans for these other chips in order to try to maximise your return from the new chip. Some folks have conjectured that it could be worth more to play the 'Assistant Manager' chip in a Double Gameweek (although I think it would probably not yield as much as a good Bench Boost return from a DGW; and perhaps not even quite as much as a really good Triple Captain return, unless you manage to successfully exploit the bonus for a result against a much higher-placed team in at least one of the two fixtures).

But this all becomes insanely complex to try to calculate. Because.... there are very limited opportunities to get a good return from any of the bonus chips; and so, where it seems that the 'best' week for two (or now, all three) of them might be the same, you have to try to estimate whether 'Chip A in Best Week' + 'Chip B in Second Best Week' is likely to be worth more or less than 'Chip B in Best Week' + 'Chip A in Second Best Week'. That's plenty hard enough with just two bonus chips that both benefit from Double Gameweeks; adding in a third - which has a longer duration, and might conceivably wipe out two opportunities (two Double Gameweek opportunities!) to play the other chips - makes it close-to-uncomputable.

Moreover, it can be really valuable to stay flexible - and opportunistic - in your approach to the bonus chips. It may be that at a certain point in the season, you find yourself with an unexpectedly strong bench, and suddenly - for the first time in ages -  everyone appears to be fit and likely to start.... in a week (though only a regular Single Gameweek) where almost everyone has a really good fixture. When circumstances come together for you like that, it's probably going to be your best chance to use the Bench Boost chip - much better than gambling on getting good fixtures in a Double Gameweek (because you don't know for sure who's going to be playing who until very shortly beforehand) and that you're going to have everyone still be fit for it (even if you 'set up' with a Wildcard in the week before, you can still be hit by a rash of last-minute injuries); this is particularly so when, this year, there's seemingly only going to be ONE 'big' Double Gameweek, and it doesn't fall until the very end of the season.

Something similar might happen with a Triple Captain opportunity. Although it's obviously much more difficult to get 15 fit players in your squad in a week when nearly all of them have good fixtures than it is to ensure that one of your handful of star players is fit to play in one of his most promising fixtures, and there are thus usually several tempting opportunities to risk the TC chip in a season,.... nevertheless, unexpected shifts in team form can suddenly make it appear that your best player's best chance of a big haul is in a different game to any of the ones most anticipated in the early part of the season.... perhaps it may even be in the next game.

Thus, I would argue, ruling yourself out of being able to play either of your bonus chips for three weeks at a time may have an enormous - and perhaps quite unforeseen - opportunity cost.

But ruling yourself out of being able to play the Free Hit could be.... absolutely catastrophic. More widespread and serious 'extreme weather' events than Storm Darragh could very conceivably wipe out most or a weekend's fixtures (or, occasionally, even all of them; but at least that's the same for everyone; and we'll all later enjoy an extra - HUGE - Double Gameweek!). So could other forms of disruption, such as a major terrorist incident or widespread industrial action or another pandemic scare, or.... well, King Charles is 76 years old, and hasn't been in the best of health; as we saw with his mother's death two years ago, the passing of a monarch could lead to major fixture rearrangements over two or three gameweeks across a season. 

Such eventualities might be relatively remote, but they're extremely possible. And if such a thing were to occur in a gameweek where someone has their 'Assistant Manager' chip in play..... they are terminally screwed. Small though the risk may appear to be, it's not one I'm sure I'd be willing to take.

But I really don't want to spend any time even attempting to address these endless conundrums. For me, the 'Assistant Manager' chip is a game-ruining abomination - and, in order to make sure that FPL does not try to make it (or, god help us, perhaps some other innovation that's even worse...) a recurring feature of the game, we really need to protest against the idea as strongly as possible, in as many different ways as possible.

I like the idea of simply refusing to use the chip. But I fear it will not be an emphatic enough gesture to have much impact on the FPL hierarchy. (Many FPL managers might simply forget to use the chip, or be too daunted by its complexity; and more and more managers get disillusioned with their progress and drop out of the game during the later stages of the season. So - a mass refusal to use the chip would not become apparent until the last opportunity to deploy it [GW36] has passed; and it might be largely masked by all these other reasons why the chip might have gone unused by many people.)

No, if we are to make the FPL 'bosses' take notice, I think we need to encourage as many people as possible to drop out of the game at the moment that this horrendously gimmicky new chip comes into force - immediately after Gameweek 23. [I did so, quitting after GW23 in hopes of setting an example for others.]

#QuitFPLinGW23         #DownWithTheNewChip

I HATE the 'Assistant Manager' Chip (EXTENDED version)

When the FPL Facebook page first announced the new chip last week, I was so appalled that I left a comment likening the revelation to.... waking up on Christmas morning to find a turd in your stocking.

I explained briefly the other day why I didn't like the newly announced addition to Fantasy Premier League this year - the 'Assistant Manager' Chip to be made available in the second half of the season.

Today I thought I'd take the time to enumerate my objections to it more fully:

1)  It is a radical departure from ALL previous chips introduced in this, or any similar game, or even just mooted for possible introduction.... or dreamed of in jest! Fantasy games for international tournaments have typically had a chip where you can get a doubled-points 'captain' bonus without needing to designate a captain, automatically receiving the addition for your highest-performing player in the gameweek (I like that one...), or a suped-up 'Free Hit' where you can remake your squad for a single gameweek with the additional advantage of having the budget cap removed (just a slight riff on the two 'squad makeover' chips we're familiar with in FPL). Over the past year, FPL has been running occasional 'side games' under the 'Fantasy Challenge' banner, which have offered novelty points systems such as defenders getting more points, or forwards getting more points, or players from particular clubs getting more points - inviting you to consider a major squad makeover for one week, to adapt to this modified points weighting. And this has prompted many FPL managers on the forums to joke about even wackier new bonus possibilities.... such as extra points for players with beards, or players with double-barrelled names (Definitional problem: Does a double-barrelled name have to be hyphenated? Sorry, Emile, yes it does!). But the point about all of these is that they are just small modifications to the existing structure of the game, simply allowing you to earn more points - for one week only - for things you already earn points for.

Sometimes, variations in the rules might allow you to earn points in slightly different ways, for different kinds of game actions. In the last Fantasy Euros tournament, additional points were awarded for 'ball recoveries'; although it was rather unclear how this was defined or tabulated, it did add an interesting extra wrinkle to the game, potentially giving a big boost to the points returns from defenders and defensive midfielders. And the popular Swedish Fantasy Football game, Allsvenskan, does something similar, wtih additional defensive points available for actions like this, and additional attacking points awarded for every 2 'key passes' (rather than faffing around with the obscure and often perversely erratic 'Bonus Points System' that FPL inflicts on us!). But again, these are just small modifications to the points structure: we're still getting points for defined game actions by individual players week by week.

By offering points for team results over a number of weeks, this new chip falls completely OUTSIDE the current scope of the game.

2)  By extending the duration of the chip far beyond that of 'normal' chips (which have until now, without exception, been effective for one gameweek only), by adding in 'charges' for it (a sum of money to be deducted from squad budget and an impact on your club quota for players!), by making it variable from week-to-week (this wasn't mentioned in the early posts about the chip, and I think might be part of a series of subsequent 'revisions' they've made to the rules: you can now change your choice of 'assistant manager' in each of the 3 weeks that the chip is in play). by awarding points for such a swathe of different things (wins and draws and goals and clean sheets.... and additional bonuses for getting a result against teams 5 or more places higher in the table!!), they have made the new chip absurdly over-complicated - needlessly difficult to understand, difficult to evaluate (this alone may, I suspect, put many people off using the bloody thing at all).

3)  The imposition of a 'transfer cost' for your chosen manager is particularly irksome. Although the sums of money demanded are relatively trivial (from 0.5 to 1.5 million), you will - if you're making as close to full use of your budget as possible (which you should always be striving to do!) - find yourself obliged to make at least 1 or 2 transfers to free up some extra cash before you can activate the chip... and make do with a slightly suh-standard squad of players while the chip remains active. Moreover, they've added in (this feature appeared to be absent in the first published version of 'the rules') the provision that subsequent changes of manager choice within the three-week period of the chip being active will cost you a transfer.... so, that's a bummer too.

4)  The additional bonus for team performances against clubs higher in the table seems to me to be a particularly unnecessary over-elaboration. Originally, there was no explanation offered of how the 5-place gap between clubs was to be defined. It might have been at the time of kick-off of the game in question, at the deadline of the Gameweek in which the match is played, or at the deadline of the Gameweek in which the chip first becomes active,.... or at the moment that the chip is played (all perfectly possible, and all potentially very different!!). 

It now seems that they intend that the gap is measured at the start of the Gameweek in which the indiviidual match is played (although the wording still isn't absolutely clear on that point: "at the start of the Gameweek" isn't enough, when a number of different Gameweeks mght be understood as relevant to the applicaton of the rule; they really need a few more words in there to specify what they mean with absolute precision). And the (late added?) ability to change 'assistant managers' from one Gameweek to the next potentially gets over the problem that it would be nearly impossible to predict where or how big gaps in the league table would be more than one week in advance (particularly with the middle of the table so congested as it is so far this year: there are currently only 8 points separating 3rd and 13th positions, and only 5 points between 4th and 12th!). However, I think most FPL managers were originally expecting - and probably hoping - that this would be a set-and-forget deal where you simply chose one manager for the chip for all three gameweeks. (The 'club quota' rule will restrict the extent to which anyone can take advantage of this facility: you're not going to want to waste transfers on removing someone from your squad when you happen to have three players from the club with the most promising manager for that gameweek; you'll probably rather pass on that manager option than use a transfer, and sacrifice a top player [when you treble up on a club, it's because you regard all three of those players as extremely valuable....]. Hence, most FPL managers will have at least one, maybe two or three clubs whose managers are effecively excluded from consideration for this chip.)

And one final potential problem on this: the league's ranking is occasionally determined on alphabetical order alone. Now, this is really just a formatting convention; I believe there are 'tie-break' rules in place - even if it's ultimately just a coin-toss?! - for deciding the crucial European qualification and relegation places at the end of the season. And in practice, everyone considers teams with equal points, goal difference, and goals scored to be in a tie - even though one of them will be listed higher than the other. It would seem rather unfair, for the application of this aspect of the chip, if two such clubs were not to be treated equally - i.e., that they're not both regarded as 5 places above your manager's team, even though one of them is listed only 4 places above. It might be an unlikely eventuality, perhaps one that won't arise this year; but it is something that the FPL gnomes ought to have considered and clarified in framing the rules for the new chip - and they have omitted to do so.

5)  There is, I feel, a dangerous lack of proportionality about this chip. It is potentially worth 2 to 3 times as much as the other two bonus chips combined! And since it is offering points for team results as well as game actions, and over a number of weeks rather than just one, its minimum return will certainly be far higher (as the other chips carry a significant risk of returning zero points, or close-to-zero; the 'Assistant Manager' chip clearly does not); its average return is likely to be far higher too. And it's difficult to gauge what its upper-end might be; but certainly far, far more - perhaps over just one week, and certainly over its full three-week span - than the Triple Captain chip... and substantially more than the Bench Boost (unless you manage to get a very, very good return from that in a Double Gameweek).

Thus, it will be the single biggest determinant of FPL rank outcomes this year. (Well, after terrible refereeing decisions, anyway....)  And that, to me, does not seem FAIR.

6)  There are still a number of lacunae in the 'rules', unexplained gaps about how things are supposed to work with this chip.

They seem to have now added in a gloss about a manager leaving a club having no impact on the chip: you will continue to get the points from that manager's (former) club, unless you select a new manager. (Thus, it's not really a 'manager' chip at all, but a 'club' chip.) That seems somewhat illogical and unfair: if you're supposed to be getting points for the manager, you would expect to stop getting points for him if he loses his job... or start getting points for him from a new club, if he switches clubs.

And this still doesn't address the issue that there can be a number of other ways in which the manager may not actually be 'managing' the club, without having left it. If his assistant has taken over because he's absent with illness or a personal problem - why should you still get points for your manager? If he's serving a touchline ban and not able to coach the team directly this week - why should you still get points for you manager?  If he's been suspended because of allegations of misconduct - why should you still get points for your manager?  Most people would surely feel that you shouldn't (just as you shouldn't - but apparently will - when he's been sacked by his club!). 

However, at the moment, I suppose we must assume that the intention is that this is really a 'club' chip, and you keep getting points from the designated club, regardless of the status of the manager - but this hasn't yet been explicitly stated. And I suspect this has the potential to cause some controversy later on - particularly if we had a manager suspended by his club in a 'Me Too' case.

Moreover, the rules also fail so far to specify whether you can choose to go without an 'assistant manager' during one of the gameweeks that the chip has been activated for (if you perhaps decided that you'd just much rather bring a more expensive player into your starting eleven than continue with a manager that week). I suspect that the interface won't let you remove a manager without adding a replacement; but they don't appear to have said as much (yet). 

In addition, the rules appear to remain silent thus far on whether there is any possibility to cancel the chip before its three-week span is up. As I went on to elaborate more fully here, a raft of unexpected postponements could be devastating if you're not able to to use the Free Hit to create a workaround squad. And if you had your 'Assistant Manager Chip' in play in such a gameweek, you'd almost certainly want to cancel it, if you could. And to me, it would seem fair that you should be able to do so - voluntarily giving up the benefits of the remaining weeks of the chip (perhaps even all three of them!) for some more immediate advantage. However, I imagine that the absence of provision for this in the rules is intended to mean that it won't be possible. [This point was subsequently clarified; but it had not appeared in the first published version of the 'rules' for the new chip.]

I think there's potentially also some doubt as to whether you could choose to use the 'Assistant Manager Chip' for less than the full three weeks by playing it right at the end of the season. Again, I suspect the chip will cease to be available after Gameweek 36; but this hasn't been specified as yet.

7)  There is also - as yet - no reference to whether the chosen manager would be subject to penalties for receiving yellow or red cards in a game. The commonsense answer would be YES, since the chip is represented as making the selection of a manager directly analogous to that of your players. But since the rules omit to say anything about this, we should probably assume that the answer is in fact intended by FPL to be NO.

8)  For some unstated reason, the launch of the chip has been delayed until Gameweek 24, at the beginning of February (originally it was said that it would become available at the beginning of the second half of the season - i.e. from Gameweek 20). Because of the chip's bloated duration, this actually leaves fairly little time in which to take advantage of it; and it will be difficult to juggle it around other priorities for using the other chips. [I discussed this problem much more thoroughly in a further post a few days later.]  

Also, of course, with the late-season reschedulings around the League Cup Final and the FA Quarters and Semi-Finals, we often don't get three weeks' notice of the new fixture dates. So, trying to plan how to use this new chip alongside the existing ones is just going to be horrendous.

Again, there was originally no explicit statement as to whether the new chip would follow the usual rule that only one chip may be played at a time. Since it is utterly unlike any of the other chips in any other respect, it was not unreasonable to suppose that it might not abide by the one-at-a-time rule - and that is what many FPL managers seemed to hopefully assume at first. But now there has been a clarification that other chips will not be available during the three weeks this chip is active. And that..... is a HUGE pain-in-the-arse.

This 'Assistant Manager' Chip is just a HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE idea - ill thought-out, clunkily implemented, unclear in its details, maddeningly over-complex, utterly divorced from the usual format of the game we so love. It actually threatens to ruin the game this year.

And I would strongly recommend people to boycott using this silly chip.... or to give up the game altogether, before it starts being spoiled by people using the chip - in Gameweek 23.  

#QuitFPLinGW23         #DownWithTheNewChip