Fantasy World Cup - a lightning guide

 

The rapid onset of the World Cup this year (so soon after the conclusion of the domestic European season...) has caught me rather on the hop.

But here are a few - hopefully useful - pointers on the official FIFA Fantasy game for the tournament (not well promoted: only a few hundred thousand sign-ups so far!), which you can enter here.

As usual, the best free resources seem to be on Fantasy Football Scout, which has both a concise summary of the rules (much clearer and more accessible than those on the actual FIFA site, which you really have to dig around for!), and also line-up predictions (though, take these with a grain of salt - I suspect they're going to be well off the mark with some of them; but it's always impossible to know what selections a coach will make for the opening game). And this is the best injury update resource I've found so far, on Rotowire.

The scoring system is similar to, but crucially a little different from what we're used to with the Fantasy Premier League game. Most notably, all positions get an additional point for a goal, one more than FPL gives us.. There are also additional points for midfielders for every 3 tackles made (successfully, I assume - although the wording of the rule omits to specify this: this is yet another area where there's going to be a lot of obscurity around how Opta is choosing to interpret certain 'game actions') and every 2 chances created (again, no specificity on whether this only applies to 'potential assists' or can include earlier contributions to a move than culminates in an attempt on goal) - so, 'busy' midfielders could well rack up more points than we usually see in FPL; but it will often be something of a mystery how they earned them! Forwards get an extra point for every 2 shots on target - which should be a bit more obvious and straightforward to keep track of. It might be worth keeping an eye out for eager strikers who have a pop every time they get anywhere near the goal, even if their conversion rate isn't great. But there are no points here for 'defensive contributions' - the unwelcome innovation we've had to wrap our heads around in FPL this year. So, it's probably going to make sense to prioritise attacking players, midfielders especially, rather than defenders.

Oh, also, we're spared the vexing randomness of FPL's 'bonus points': none of that nonsense in the FIFA game.

There's also an additional point for a goal scored from a direct free-kick. This is a nice bonus, but probably not something that makes it worth targeting set-piece specialists - unless they're already worth having for their all-around game contributions. It just won't happen often enough to have any significant impact.

I have a similar feeling about the so-called 'scouting bonus': the possibility of 2 extra points if a player of yours scores >4 points in a match while he is owned by less than 5% of managers in the game. This was an intriguing new idea trialled in last summer's Club World Cup fantasy game. And it worked better in that, because although there were fewer teams, there was a generally higher level of quality - so, even some of the low-owned players were still pretty good. In this tournament, I doubt if any of the sub-5% players will be worth much, and it's almost certainly going to be more valuable to concentrate on players who give you a high chance of a big return - rather than players who give you only the modest chance of a fortuitous bonus. Also, of course, it's just so bloody obscure; it's very difficult to check up on a player's current level of ownership, and even more difficult to anticipate how that might change before the next Matchday deadline. If you obsess over trying to find these 'scouting bonus' opportunities, I suspect you're often going to be frustrated in bringing in a player at 4.5% ownership and finding that he's apparently nudged above 5% in the last hour before the deadline. [I think that happened to me with THREE of my 1st Round selections! I wasn't even targeting players at this level of ownership particularly; it was just fortuitous that I was looking for some slightly outside the box prospects, and happened to pick a few that had been ignored by the masses.... I'm pretty sure they were all down between 4.5% and 5% ownership when I picked them, but by early in the MatchDay had all risen to 5.1% or 5.2%; I don't know if that rendered them 'ineligible' for the bonus - because they didn't score enough points to qualify for it anyway!]

And, of course, we again have what has become a standard feature in FIFA and EUFA Fantasy games, 'active substitutions' - and a switchable captaincy. You can manually swap out a player who's given you a disappointing return - or transfer the captain's armband to another player - after each batch of games in the 'MatchDay' (a 'MatchDay' being all the games in one Round of the competition), so long as the new player you select hasn't yet played his game in that 'MatchDay'. (Actually, in this tournament, it appears that you can make such changes continuously, at any time, not just between the end of one day's games and the beginning of the next's; in past FIFA Fantasy games, such changes were 'locked out' while each batch of daily games was in progress.)  [And you'd think that this attitude should extend to allowing you to transfer in and out players who haven't yet played during the course of the MatchDay; but alas NO, there is a deadline of the first MatchDay kickoff for finalising your squad for the entire Matchday. Boo!]

I'm always saying that, even in FPL, you can't afford to go light on your Bench; but in international tournaments like this, with these 'active substitutions' as part of the gameplay, the Bench is part of your playing squad every time, and ideally your Bench players should be just as strong - or even stronger than - your original 'starting eleven'. You are going to have make use of at least 1 or 2 of those Bench players in every MatchDay, and usually - quite often, anyway - you'll need all of them.

The great dilemma with this 'active substitutions' rule, of course, occurs when you have a player who's made a decent score - 4, or 5, or 6, say - and you have to decide whether to 'stick or twist', whether to take the chance on dropping him for a substitute who could do better, but might well do worse. What makes this conundrum all the more challenging, especially in the first round or two, when we're still figuring out how the slightly unfamiliar scoring system is going to skew things from what we're more used to in FPL, and we don't know which teams and which players are most in form, and we don't know if it's shaping up to be a high-scoring tournament or not,... is that we have little idea what we should be satisfied with, what a decent 'above average' score for a player in each position is likely to be; even assessing that is a bit of a shot in the dark, at first. 

The key impact of this unusual rule in international tournament fantasy games is that: a) you have to try to spread your squad out over as many of the days in each MatchDay as possible; and b) you have to remember to arrange the starting eleven not in terms of what you imagine the strength of their points prospects is (as you would in Fantasy Premier League) but simply according to the date of their next game (you can select this as the key feature of your squad players to display under their names when reviewing your MatchDay seleections): the players playing last should be on the Bench, so that you'll be free to bring them in for any of the starting eleven who gave a disappointing return; and it's nice to have all four bench players having games later than any of the original starters, so you can wait to see which of them did worst for you.

A final - cruel, unnecessary - quirk of this rule is that regular automatic substitutions do in theory exist; but in practice, they don't, because the facility is suspended if you make any of these 'active' changes during a MatchDay. This is particularly galling if you forget to - or are unable to - swap out a captain who unexpectedly didn't play; if you made any active substitutions, your vice-captain pick won't automatically take his place, and you will be left without any double points from the captaincy for that round. Don't get caught out by this!

In many ways, a tournament fantasy game like this is even more of a lottery than one based on a full domestic league season; especially in this biggest of all football tournaments. There are just far more outstanding players to choose from - and any of them might have a stunning tournament,.... or an absolute stinker. And, of course, over a long season, we have plenty of opportunity to evaluate everyone's form and gradually improve our squads. Over this much shorter run of games, it's going to be difficult to recover from some 'bad' early choices and disappointing early returns.

In the group stages, I think it's likely to be better to concentrate on teams that enjoy the most mismatched fixtures, rather than on the biggest teams and the star players. With all due respect to Iran, Iraq, Haiti, Cape Verde, Curacao, Panama, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan (they at least have quite a decent defence; but I doubt if that can save them from a last-place finish),.... they ought to be pushovers for most of their opponents; and it is worth targeting players drawn against them in the group stage, rather than just focusing on the big-name players. [OK, I take that back - well, partly. Qatar and Haiti actually look more than half-decent. And that is the magic of the World Cup, that some of the small teams will prove capable of the occasional surprise performance or result. You can't expect that sort of resilience from all of them, though: I doubt if Panama, Jordan, Curacao and Cape Verde will have much in their locker.]

Once we get to the knockout stages, the bigger names may start to shine; and we should have a little more idea about how well they and their teams are performing. While some teams come hot out of the blocks at a tournament (especially if they've got an easy first opponent!), most take at least one game to start finding their feet, and some only start to build momentum as they progress into the knockout stages. (For this reason, I'd be very wary of playing any of the bonus chips on Matchday 1.) But also, after the group stage, the level of competition takes a massive step up, and the results of games become far more unpredictable. (I was just playing around with the bracket, and found that even in the 'Round of 16', almost every match-up I expected to eventuate was looking like a bit of a toss-up! And quite a few of the 'Round of 32' games were looking like they might not be entirely straightforward, either.)  Although the number of transfers increases significantly for each later round, you do have to be very careful to 'hedge your bets' - to avoid taking too many players from a small number of teams; you have to try to ensure that even if you bet wrong on the outcome of every game in a knockout round, you won't need to take 'hits' to rebuild a full squad for the next round. (You do that by taking players from both sides in as many games as possible, especially the games whose results are looking harder to call.)

And of course, just as with FPL and any Fantasy game of this kind, you must avoid getting sentimental about your favourite players, or your home country. Haaland might be the best striker in the world, but Norway are not a very good team all around and might struggle to get the ball to him enough for him to be very productive. England and Portugal don't look - to me - to have quite enough strength in depth to be serious contenders; and they have quite tough opening groups - so, I wouldn't be taking any of their players just yet.

For the chips, as I just said above, I would avoid risking any of them in Matchday 1, as there is just too much uncertainty about who's going to be playing, and how well. I'd say the final round is also probably best avoided, and perhaps also the semi-final round, as these tend to be quite closely matched and cagey affairs, often quite low-scoring. There is a strong case for playing the powerful 'bonus chips' - Maximum Captain (which gives you the captain's double points for whoever is your highest scoring player) and 12th man (an additional player added to your squad for one Matchday, without any of the usual restrictions on budget or country quota) for one of the group games, in which we're likely to see the biggest scorelines - and you might want to hazard one of them in Matchday 1. I think the 'Round of 32' could also work; as indeed could Matchday 3, at the end of the group stage, where the Maximum Captain might be particularly useful, given the unfortunate uncertainties about how motivated teams will be, and how many of their top players will even get minutes if qualification is already assured.

If all the top nations are safely qualified after two games, and thus likely to field their 'B teams' for the final match, that could be a prime occasion to resort to the Wildcard chip. But, of course, it can also be useful to hang on to that for dealing with a possible emergency later in the tournament - if you suddenly get a lot of injuries or suspensions, as well as having wrongly predicted which teams were going to survive into the subsequent round. This could be a further reason for avoiding the big-name players in the early rounds; if you focus on players from more mid-level nations, those nations are quite likely to have qualification still in doubt going into MatchDay 3, and thus will still probably field a full-strength team in the last game - while Kane, Mbappe, Ronaldo etc. are likely to get the day off.

The Qualification Bonus chip (2 additional points for every player who plays in a winning knockout game - even if only for 1 minute!) is probably best used in the Round of 32, because the outcomes at that point should be mostly more predictable, and you'll have been able to optimise your team for the fixtures with unlimited transfers after the group stage, and you can hedge to some extent by spreading your selections across more teams (even if you suffer one or two nasty surprises in the results, it won't make too much of a dent in your overall return from the chip).

The unfortunate complication FIFA is foisting on us is that there is also going to be a 'Mystery Booster' - an additional bonus chip which will only become available for the knockout rounds; and they're not telling us what it is yet. Having 5 chips to cram into 8 Matchdays - in effect, only 5 or 6, as the beginning and end of the tournament are much less promising for them - is already bothersomely cluttered, without the additional aggravation of not even knowing what one of those chips is. Many managers in the game, I'm sure, are going to feel overwhelmed by too much choice, and will end up playing most of these chips more or less randomly. But careful planning in how to deploy these chips could afford a significant advantage; so, don't let irritation at FIFA's muddled game design lead you into rash choices with this.

As for the tournament itself....

Switzerland (who have been blessed with by far the easiest-looking group), the USA (who are a pretty decent team, and should get something of a lift from playing on home soil), Turkiye, Morocco, Japan and Senegal are my 'dark horse' picks - not prospects to win the tournament, but capable of going a lot deeper into it than most people have imagined.

I am anticipating a win for Spain, although it could be a very close-run battle with France - and I fear we might have a 'premature final' if they meet in the same half of the draw. Brazil, Argentina, and Germany can never be discounted, but I feel they don't look quite strong enough this year, and will need a few breaks to go their way. Belgium and the Netherlands (and perhaps England and Portugal too), I expect to crash out quite early this year.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!!!!

Even if the FIFA Fantasy game is a bit of a mess in some ways, we should be in for a feast of football. Enjoy!!!

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.]

How to use the Free Hit (and what it could be worth!)

 

The Free Hit is a 'novelty' that has stuck with us, first introduced into FPL in the 2017-18 season and a regular feature since. It is a 'disposable' rebuild chip, allowing you unlimited transfers in the gameweek you play it in, but with your squad automatically reverting back to its pre-Free Hit state for the following gameweek: you are 'rebuilding' for one gameweek only. (Also, note that the 'unlimited changes' are still subject to the usual constraints of overall budget and club quota. In Fantasy games for the international tournaments, there is sometimes a 'Limtless' chip that gives you a completely free rein to construct your 'perfect' squad; the Free Hit is not that. Alhough you might choose to take the risk of having a very weak bench for one week, and thus rustle up just a little bit more money than usual to spend on the starting eleven when using the chip.)

There are two main ways in which this chip can be used in FPL:

1)  As a 'rebuild' chip - in emergencies, to get around the challenge of a Blank Gameweek.

If a few teams you have high representation from are missing a match in the coming gameweek, that can leave a gaping hole in your squad. Sometimes, even a single missing match can have a big impact: last year, when the first Merseyside derby was called off at short notice because of the threat of extreme weather, many FPL managers found themselves without 4, 5, 6 Liverpool and Everton players! In circumstances like this, you might want to use the Free Hit in order to put out a strong team - where otherwise you might be having to spend 'hits' on extra transfers and/or to field a short team. And, of course, there's always a possibility - particularly in the grim midwinter months - of suddenly finding yourself with a raft of short-term injury doubts (and/or suspensions), and needing to use the Free Hit to get around that transient catastrophe.

2)  As a 'bonus' chip - to try to take advantage of an unusual set of fixtures.

If a lot of clubs that you don't usually want many - or any - players from all have 'easy'-looking fixtures in the coming gameweek, and/or many of your existing top players face unusually tough fixtures and/or are drawn against each other*, you might fancy completely revising your squad for that one week to take maximum advantage of the untypical points opportunities from this set of match-ups. 

In the past, when we only had ONE of this chip, it was always sensible to hang on to it until the latter part of the season, when we knew that we would face 2 or 3 Blank Gameweeks (at least one of them a pretty big one) because of league games being postponed to accommodate ties in the later rounds of the domestic cup competitions. 

Now that we have TWO Free Hits to use, one in each half of the season, there is more freedom in how to make use of the first one. 

As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, opportunities for a 'bonus' use of the Free Hit largely overlap with the tempting Bench Boost gameweeks: sets of fixtures where there a lot of unbalanced match-ups, promising big wins and/or clean sheets, give you the best chance of getting good points from all 15 players in your squad. But it is rare to have a gameweek of fixtures where even your starting 11 are all facing such good fixtures, so using a Free Hit to fully optimize your line-up for such an inviting gameweek is also potentially very beneficial. In any unusually 'good' set of gameweek fixtures, Free Hit and Bench Boost are often interchangeably appealing options.

There is, however, still a strong case for hanging on to it, in case of possible emergencies. The winter weather in the UK seems to get fouler year by year. Last season, we saw one game get called off becaue of high winds; and several others came very close to postponement because of thick fogs or heavy snowfalls. Even though pitches are much better protected against extreme weather these days, we have seen instances where dozens of volunteers were scrambling to clear a pitch of snow only hours before a scheduled kick-off. And there is also a possibility, particularly with extremely cold, icy conditions, that simply getting to the ground - or even going out of doors, at least for more elderly people - might be thought so hazardous that a game will be called off (that seemed to be the issue with the threatened gale-force winds around Anfield last year: not the playability of the game, but general concerns about public safety). There is a very serious danger of unexpected Blank Gameweeks occurring during the coming month or two, because of extreme weather. 

And there are, of course, other types of event that might disrupt the league schedule: public transport strikes, terrorist threats, the death of the monarch. You need to feel that the possible benefits of playing the Free Hit for pure 'bonus' value are looking very strong before you sacrifice that safety net.

So, what can the Free Hit be worth? 

After the event, you can identify a fairly specific points-lift value that it gave you, though it is a bit laborious to calculate: you have to compare your Free Hit team's haul with what your regular team would have produced (bearing in mind that, without the Free Hit, you might have had to spend points on transfers in order to put out a full team, or a nearer-to-full team). 

Bear in mind, though, that this might not always capture the full 'value' of the Free Hit, since the ability to use it may have ongoing benefits beyond that particular gameweek, if you're using it as an emergency one-match rebuild. If you'd opted to get by without the chip, you might have used up transfers you didn't really want to - transfers that might have been more valuable to you later for other changes. And you might have brought in some players who didn't have much value beyond that particular gameweek when you were caught short, and thus you might have committed yourself to using further transfers to get rid of them again as soon as possible; and if you had to carry them in the team for a bit longer than you wanted to, they might have been non-optimal points-returners for you. This kind of thing also has an effective points cost which may add to the apparent points-lift you got from the chip in the gameweek in which you played it. 

I find that the Free Hit typically yields a lift of about 15-20 points (though it can be a lot more, if a Blank Gameweek has wiped out most of your starting eleven!!) - which actually makes it the most valuable of all the FPL chips.

However, since we almost never have an 'ideal' team that's fully optimized for the current set of fixtures, the Free Hit can potentially bring a substantial points-lift in almost any gameweek; the additional benefit of playing it in a gameweek with a particularly freakish set of fixtures might be little or nothing. Therefore, there's probably no harm in hanging on to the chip 'for safety's sake' until the last possible moment. At the end of the season, it can make a great 'smart bomb' to help you win one of your mini-league cups!!  But even for this first-half-of-the-season one, you could just have a bit of fun with it in Gameweek 19....

Having said that.... there are in fact some pretty tempting openings to use it as a tactical 'bonus' opportunity in the next month. I shall have a little more to say about that soon.

[* NB: Having players in your FPL team drawn against each other sometimes is unavoidable; and it's not neccesarily a terrible thing. Attacking players may still be able to pick up attacking contributions even in a game they lose. And two good defensive teams may play out a goalless draw - or at least both avoid conceding too many, and perhaps still have their defenders and keepers pick up some additional points for saves, 'defensive contributions', and bonus points. It's only where you have attackers drawn against defenders in a fixture that there's a problem, because that's a zero-sum situation: an attacker and a defender playing against each other can't both have a good game, they're taking FPL points off each other.]

[Apologies to any early visitors to this post who spotted a sentence or two of absolute nonsense in the middle of this piece. I have been sleeping badly this week, and sometimes get a little brainfogged! Hence, I had somehow interpolated a couple of observations about Wildcard rather than Free Hit use...  Now EDITED out. Sorry about that.]

Premature Chip-ulation!

 

Gameweek 10's 'Global Average' score of 65 points was the highest we've yet seen this season. (The weekly average for the 9 previous gameweeks was less than 52; it has been an extraordinarily low-scoring season so far - probably one of the worst on record, certainly the worst I can remember in the last several years.) It's still not at all a great weekly score; but it is much the best we've had so far.

One reason for that is that a few well-fancied - and recently heavily purchased - players such as Gabriel, Mateta, Guehi, Rice, and Minteh all came up with returns; as well as the inevitable Erling Haaland, of course.

But also, a surprisingly large number of people were playing a Bonus Chip this week. And those who went with a Triple Captain play on Haaland did fairly well out of it: a 13-point haul is a very reasonable return on the chip.  (Although, of course, it's some way short of an optimal outcome, since he's quite likely to complete a hatttrick at some point; and both he and a number of other players have already recorded better hauls in other games.) For most of those hazarding their Bench Boost, the chip play probably went much worse.

But really, neither of them deserved to prosper.

There just wasn't any compelling rationale for playing either of the Bonus Chips this weekend. (The Wildcard, yes, because this gameweek marked the one really major 'turn' in fixture difficulty for leading teams in this first half of the season.)  Haaland is still looking like the only player we can look to for a likelihood of fairly regular big hauls; but Bournemouth are a very tough opponent, one of the best defensive teams in the league at the moment. City's next home game is against Liverpool, who haven't been looking very solid at the back this season; and the next three after that are against two of the promoted sides and early relegation favourites West Ham; and they also have an away game against struggling Fulham in there. How can Leeds or West Ham, at home, within the next month or so, not be preferable Triple Captain 'targets' for Haaland?? 

And this Gameweek just didn't offer a good set of fixtures for a Bench Boost play. To get a good return on that chip, you need: a) a strong Bench; b) all 15 players looking certain to start; and c) almost all 15 of your squad facing an attractive fixture. This week, most of the fixtures were too close to call. Only Arsenal and Newcastle were facing obviously weaker opponents; and Newcastle managed to lose anyway. We ended up with a pretty modest total of only 27 goals and 6 clean sheets - not at all a weekend to expect bumper scores.

I understand the nervousness, the impatience, the impulse in many FPL managers to simply get the first Bonus Chips out of the way.. It is a bit discombobulating this season to be faced with an extra set of chips - for which there really is no especially useful purpose in the first half of the season. And there is a risk in waiting too long to play them. This first set of chips has to be used before the mid-point of the season at the end of December; and the crazy fixture density over the holiday season leads to more injuries and rotations, more erratic and unpredictable results - that's not a great time to be playing Bonus Chips either. But really, in the next 5 or 6 weeks, before we get into the worst of that end-of-year mayhem,... Haaland faces 3 or 4 very inviting opponents, who should all surely be better options for a Triple Captain play than Bournemouth (they might not be, in practice; but they really look like they ought to be). And Gameweeks 12, 13, 15, 16, and 17 all look like tempting opportunities for the Bench Boost.

You really ought to have A GOOD REASON for choosing to play chips when you do - something more than just "It was burning a hole in my pocket..." or "My dog told me to do it."

A little bit of Zen (60)

 

"Sometimes, impatience is also a virtue."

GW

I usually stress the importance of patience in dealing with the challenges of FPL, but.... sometimes there is a case for moving swiftly to take advantage of an opportunity - being bold, decisive, trusting your gut.... (Thinking mainly about transfers here, though; and maybe even occasionally taking a 'hit' for one; not about chip play!!)

Dear FPL - how about a little 'demo'?

As I mentioned in my round-up of the week's action the other day, the perennial doubt and confusion over how bonus points get allocated has been added to this year by the similar lack of transparency regarding the new 'defensive points'.

So.....

Dear FPL,

Could you possibly put together some highlights reels for a few top players each week - demonstrating just HOW these 'defensive contributions' are being counted?

There are already a lot of weird things going on,... like Ait-Nouri getting a massive 'defensive contributions' tally despite not having an obviously super-busy game, and half the Bournemouth side also racking up big numbers on this new metric, while other players, like the excellent - and very industrious - Elliot Anderson, somehow just missed out on qualifying for the extra points. 

At the moment, we don't know exactly how all the eligible actions are defined, or quite what they look like in practice,... or why some incidents might be counted as one rather than another, or not counted at all. 

Really, the release of this kind of demonstration video should have happened LAST SEASON, to properly explain the idea before it was introduced. 

But it definitely needs to happen now.

Please, Dear FPL - pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top, please give us some more clarity on what's going on with this new rule.

Fantasy football tactics for a short knockout tournament (in a nutshell)

I've already touched slightly on the Fantasy tactics for knockout tournaments, in relation to the inaugural FIFA Club World Cup currently going on, notably in this post last week, But I thought I'd take a moment to sketch out the basics in a little more detail now.

The main points to watch out for are:

1) Not quite the game you're used to

Be aware of the rule differences (particularly in points allocations!) from Fantasy Premier League, or any other Fantasy football games you play more regularly. Small differences in the points weightings for different positions can have quite a big impact on the players you choose for certain positions, or the optimum formation you might go with for different sets of fixtures.

2)  The group phase lottery

In the group stage, be aware of the wide variation in fixture difficulty from one batch of matches to the next, and of the likelihood of heavy rotation in squads. It is very, very difficult to plan effectively for the short group stage of tournaments like this - usually only three matches - because: a) You're largely playing blind on MatchDay 1, having very little idea of the likely form, fitness, or selections even at the teams you're most familiar with; and it's inevitable in a bigger tournament that there will be at least a few teams about whom you know next-to-nothing,... some of whom might turn out to be better than you expect.  b) There are probably a few very weak teams who offer the prospect of big points for almost any opponent; but you might not be quite sure who they are until after MatchDay 1; and, in any event, you don't have enough Free Transfers to keep optimising your team against these weaker competitors from one MatchDay to the next. Moreover, stronger teams may be tempted to rest some of their best players against opponents like this, even if qualification is not yet completely settled. c) There will usually be some 'dead rubbers' on MatchDay 3, where teams have little or nothing to play for (other than pride!), and may field a weakened lineup or be lacking in motivation. d) It is quite common for top players recovering from an injury to be brought to a tournament in the hope that they will be able to participate in the later stages. Even if they are 'fully fit', concerns about fatigue after the domestic season may lead to them getting rested in the earlier games. Just because a big name is included in the squad, it doesn't guarantee he's going to appear - much, or sometimes at all - in the group games.

3)  'Second chances'!!

Make the most of the 'manual substitutions' feature! Being able to swap out disappointing players for ones who have yet to play (and in some games, like the current Club World Cup Fantasy, also to have a second chance at picking the recipient of your captain's bonus) can be enormously valuable. So, you should always have not just a full bench, but a strong one; and you need to make sure that the players you initially leave on the bench are playing as late as possible in the MatchDay, so that you will have the maximum opportunity to to review the performance of your players playing on earlier days and consider switching them out. (Remember, there's a lot of flexibility as to formations; so, you're not restricted to swapping a forward for a forward, etc.; you can usually sub out a player from any position [except goalkeeper, of course] for one of any other position.)

4)  Emptying the bench cautiously, later on

However, in later rounds, you might consider gradually emptying your bench. As the games in each round become fewer (and less far apart; and, often, much more closely contested - meaning there might be low points for all attacking players, and perhaps scarcely any for keepers and defenders), the value of the manual substitutions is gradually diminished. In the Final, manual substitutions are no longer posssible, and the remaining value of your bench in being able to replace any unexpected non-starters by automatic substitutions (as in the regular Fantasy Premier League game) might be fairly minimal; so, you can consider having at least one or two gaps on the bench for that last game, perhaps even leaving it completely empty. For the 'Round of 16' - and sometimes, perhaps, for the Quarter-Finals too - with multiple games spread across multiple days, it is still worth trying to keep a full and strong bench; but after that, you can hang on to one or two eliminated players - ideally a cheap goalkeeper or defender - as a 'budget enabler' to help you spend a bit more on the rest of your squad. However, leaving gaps in the squad puts you more at risk of needing to use large numbers of extra transfers to rebuild the squad if some of your players are unexpectedly eliminated from the competition (see next point).

5)  Elimination roulette

In the knockout phase, you need to take care to spread risk by never taking too many players from one club. You can't afford to leave yourself short for the subsequent round by landing yourself with a lot of eliminated players. (The game tempts you toward self-destruction by usually allowing you to take far more players from one team than you should sensibly want. And the larger number of transfers than we're used to in extended league format competitions encourages the dangerous hope that we might get away with it, that one wrong guess about a result won't leave us having to take 'hits' for additional transfers. But, oh yes, it can; it very often does.)  As a general rule of thumb, I'd say - try to take no more than 2 players per team in the 'Round of 16', 3 players per team in the Quarter-Finals, and 4 players per team in the Semi-Finals. (Of course, this may vary, depending on whether there are any fixtures in the round that you feel you can trust as absolute gimmes [always a bit of a gamble!], whether you're making do with any empty spaces on your bench, and how many Free Transfers you're allowed for the next round. Also, of course, in the nations' World Cup, there's a Third Place Play-Off game, so you don't necessarily lose anyone from the semi-finals [although you'd rather have as many players in the Final as possible, because it will be a more competitive match, and isn't likely to omit any of the teams' top players].)  And you need to be mindful that, if you max out your number of Free Transfers replacing eliminated players, you may be further screwed by injuries or suspensions; and you have absolutely no wiggle-room for additional elective transfers to swap out players who've shown disappointing form. [I added a footnote to this point a little later.]

6)  Heightened risk-awareness

Remember that this additional hazard of potentially losing players to elimination after each knockout round means that you also have to be extremely careful with other players who present any risk of not playing - those who are an injury doubt, or are threatened with possible rotation, or could be likely to pick up a suspension. In the knockout rounds, you want to try to pick not only players who will do well in this round, but are also virtually certain to play in the next round as well (and, ideally, in the one after that too!).

7)  Chip strategy

The types of 'chips' available vary from tournament to tournament, so you need to be careful to assess what each one may be worth.

There's almost invariably a Wildcard - an 'unlimited transfers' rebuild option, just like we have in FPL. Since you're always allowed a full rebuild anyway after the group phase, the choice on this one is a simple binary: use it to optimise your team for MatchDay 2 (when there are usually a lot of unbalanced match-ups that could produce high points scores, and you should have a better idea of everyone's form and fitness after the first batch of games,.... and you may have found that a lot f your inital picks are not looking too good, not just for MD2 but in general), OR save it for the quarters or semis, as insurance against getting hit hard by eliminations (and injuries and suspensions) in one of those key rounds.

There's sometimes an additional rebuild chip. If it's a Free Hit style of rebuild, reverting to your previous squad after one MatchDay, it's better used in MD2 - as it's very dangerous to use a chip like that in the knockout rounds, unless you're very, very confident in how well you've done in the last round,... that all of your players are going to get through the next round as well (but if you think that, why would use a Free Hit to replace a bunch of them??). Such a chip often boasts the additional advantage of an unlimited budget, but I generally find that to be of little or no practical use as FIFA and UEFA games rarely put any serious pressure on your budget. If it's a simple Wildcard type of chip, it's better to save it for the later rounds, where you might have been badly hit by eliminations in the previous round.

Because of the 'manual substitutions' facility usually available in these games, there's no Bench Boost option. 'Bonus Chips' are typically a 'Maximum Captain', where your captaincy bonus points are automatically ascribed to your highest-returning player (I actually rather prefer this to FPL's Triple Captain), and/or an 'Extra Man', where you can get points from an additional player (outside of your squad, and your budget limit - the purest Fantasy indulgence: "If I could have the points of one player I couldn't afford to fit in my squad, who would it be.... and which Round would that be in??").

'Bonus chips' are almost always of most value in the 'Round of 16' and the 'Quarter-Finals', because there are more games being played, and at least one or two of them should usually have a fairly obvious winner and the prospect of some good points for leading players. There may be a case, depending on form and fixtures, for trying one in the group phase occasionally; but, for me, there is usually too much uncertainty early in the competition. It's probably more valuable to optimise your entire squad for favourable fixtures in MD2 (which will probably require a Wildcard, and thus preclude you from playing a bonus chip); while in MD3 there's too much risk of top players being rested, even if qualifcation is not yet fully assured. And in the later rounds of the competition, games become increasingly cagey, and often the outcomes are impossible to predict with any confidence; we tend to get fewer goals, but also few or no clean sheets - so, no-one earns that many Fantasy points any more (at least, not in any kind of predictable way!).

The inaugural Club World Cup fantasy game also has a novel bonus chip called the 'Qualification Booster' (which, again, I rather like - and hope to see reappear in World Cup Fantasy next summer...): in a knockout round, we get 2 extra points for every player who progresses to the next match - a reward for being able to guess team results correctly. That's almost certain to be best used in the 'Round of 16', because matches become closer and outcomes more unforeseen the further we go into a tournament: even if the matches in the first knockout round seem hard to call, it's bound to become harder still in the subsequent rounds.

Sorry, this ended up being rather longer than I'd intended. But I think it is just about everything you could possibly need to know about Fantasy games for knockout tournaments. I hope some folks will find it useful. (Now a bit late for the 2025 Club World Cup, of course, but there will be other tournaments of similar format soon enough....)

'Mystery Chips' - a BAD idea!

 

I mentioned yesterday that I really dislike the idea of 'Mystery Chips'. I may have been prejudiced somewhat by the truly godawful one they visited upon us in FPL this year, but.... I really think they're a bad idea in general.

Here's why:

1)  Fantasy games like this are essentially about planning. So, it is absolutely counter-productive, destructive of the purpose of the game, to introduce elements which prevent players from planning ahead. Introduce new chip ideas occasionally, if you must (I'd really much rather not, though, thank you!) - but at least tell us what they are, before the start of the competition.

2)  This idea of concealing the nature of the new chip for a while necessarily entails that it will have a shortened period of availability, only being launched part-way through the competition. And this causes intolerable congestion, possibly confounding the rest of one's chip strategy. This was ultimately my biggest gripe against FPL's novelty 'Assistant Manager' Chip last season. That only became active in Gameweek 24, so there wasn't that much time left in which to play it; and most Fantasy managers would have kept their 2nd Wildcard and their Free Hit and both the bonus chips for use in that latter part of the season as well. (In fact, the FPL case was even worse, because the new chip had a bloated three-week duration. And, moreover, an expected Double Gameweek for Liverpool was yet to have its date confirmed, and since this was likely to be a prime opportunity to use the Triple Captain chip on Mo Salah [which did indeed pay off handsomely!], nobody could play the new extended chip until they knew for sure which gameweek they had to keep free for that possible TC play.) In effect, many people found they had barely a third of the season in which to try to use up six or seven weeks of chip options. There's a similar problem here in Fantasy Club World Cup: most players will have kept all their chips (except perhaps the Wildcard, which can be worth punting on early, in the group stage), and now have to juggle using a chip in every round.

3) All chips - well, 'bonus' chips, anyway - are unnecessary gimmicks, superfluous to the basic gameplay. They merely introduce the thrill of additional uncertainty - appealing to the gambling addicts out there, but frustrating the majority of serious Fantasy managers who are only seeking a test of their judgement of teams and players. Shifting the stakes of selection decisions with chips like these creates an uneven playing field in individual Gameweeks/MatchDays: you can't really compare your score against other people's when some are playing highly valuable bonus chips and some are not. And having such rare and one-off additions to the game increases the chances that a few players will get absurdly lucky with the chips, and obtain a massive but scarcely deserved advantage from them. Double-points for the captain selection is fine, because that happens every week, and freak instances of luck, good or bad, should generally balance out over the season as a whole. Allowing people to get even more from their captain just once in the year..... is simply betting on a die-roll.

Having said all that, I don't in fact hate the new chip they've introduced in this Fantasy Club World Cup game: the 'Qualifcation Bonus' for players who make it through to the next round. If you're being smart, you should be choosing your squad based on who you think is most likely to qualify for the next round (and the one after that!), and this is - to an extent, anyway - reasonably predictable.

What I don't like about this chip is that, together with the others in the game, it makes the latter stages of the tournament overcrowded with chip options. They should have introduced the 'Qualification Bonus' to replace one of the other two bonus chips.

And 'keeping it a secret' until half-way through - WTF is the point of that?? It's just childish.

The Great FREE HIT Controversy

Every year, we get a few folks who take it into their heads to argue very vociferously for a weird - obviously wrong-headed! - position on some aspect of FPL strategy. 

The most common focus of contention is the optimal chip strategy for navigating the various blank and double gameweeks in the latter part of the season. (Though that perennial challenge has become hugely easier this year, now that we're no longer losing the FA Cup Quarter-Final weekend from the Premier League programme. Moreover, from this season we're enjoying the new luxury of being able to save up to 5 Free Transfers. If we are ever able to do so [a big ask!], that effectively becomes an additional 'rebuild chip', giving us greater flexibility on where to use our Wildcards and Free Hit. In all past years, when we generally only had 1 FT to work with each week - and never more than 2 - and multiple Blanks/Doubles to worry about, chip strategy was a lot more stressful,... although also somewhat easier, since the most essential options for playing the 'rebuild chips' were always pretty obvious and unarguable.)

There has always been a quirky minority of FPL managers who like to think that the Free Hit chip is better used in a big Double Gameweek, so that you can maximise your number of doubling players for it.

While I never like to rule any idea out of consideration completely, there are a number of very obvious flaws in this proposal:

1)  If it's such a big and good Double Gameweek that you want to go fully loaded on doubling players, then.... you probably want to play your Bench Boost on it! And that probably necessitates using your Wildcard to bring in the best doublers for it the week before.

2) The teams with the doubles are mostly the teams who've progressed well in the Cup,.... who are mostly the teams who are doing better in the League as well; and hence they are likely to be teams you'll already have players from (though you'll almost certainly want to bring in more for a Double Gameweek), and players you'll want to keep thereafter.

3)  Conversely, the (usually preceding) Blank Gameweek is generally one with mostly weaker teams left taking part, teams from whom you don't usually want many - or any - players.

Hence, while it might possibly - in exceptional circumstances - be conceivable that the 2nd Wildcard would work better than the Free Hit in the big Blank Gameweek for certain managers, it is pretty unlikely. 9 times out of 10, the players missing in the Blank Gameweek are players you want to keep; and thus you only want replacements for them for that one week. And similarly, most of the players you want for an optimum big Double Gameweek are players that you already have.... and/or that you'll want to keep for at least a few subsequent gameweeks as well. The Free Hit naturally works better with a big Blank Gameweek, and a Wildcard better with a big Double.

Yet last year, there was a particularly heated debate on this very topic on many of the FPL online forums. Many, many people - close, it seemed, to being the majority?? - had somehow convinced themselves that the Double Gameweek was such a rich fixture opportunity that year that one simply had to play the Free Hit on it. In most cases, this was compounded by a decision to try to navigate the big Blank without using a chip at all; these poor fellows clung obstinately to the notion that they were somehow being exceptionally clever in thus being able to keep their 2nd Wildcard to help them get around the smaller Blank/Double resulting from the FA Semi-Finals in April.

There was, of course, absolutely NO LOGIC behind that contention. They were  strangely in denial about the very basic points I outlined above, that you rarely want to replace your blanking players for more than that one week, and that you rarely need to bring in a lot of extra players for a Double Gameweek because you'll have plenty of players from the best teams already. They were also overlooking the fact that you can usually anticipate which teams are mostly likely to progress to the FA Cup Semi-Finals, and thus 'set up' for the later - much smaller - Blank/Double challenge when you play your Wildcard.

Furthermore, these folks had failed to consider the additional 'hidden costs' of their strategic choice. Most of them were condemning themselves to putting out a seriously short team in the Blank Gameweek. But they were also mostly having to use multiple transfers - and often a few 'hits' - to minimise the number of gaps in their lineup. Thus.... a) They were bringing in players that they really only wanted for the Blank Gameweek a week - or two, or three - earlier than they really wanted, at the expense of better players. b) They were also usually having to quickly offload some of these players in the weeks following the Blank, again at the cost of missing out on having a superior player available for a week or two - that all potentially costs you points! c) They were burning through transfers to do this (and even 'Free Transfers' have an effecive points cost...), which hampered their ability to make other changes they might have wanted or needed to carry out during those weeks. d) They were running the risk of going into the Blank Gameweek with an entirely empty bench, which again would have cost further points if they suffered any unexpected dropouts from their starting team. e) And in most cases, even after inflicting all this pain on themselves, they were stil mostly only fielding 9 or 10 players for that Gameweek - some only putting out a pitiful 6 or 7.  It was horrible to watch: UTTER INSANITY.

Now, as it turned out, that big Blank Gameweek turned out to be one of those rare shockers where all of the games wound up being low-scoring, and what goals there were came from unexpected sources; just about none of the big players produced anything. It was, in fact, one of the lowest-scoring gameweeks in FPL history!!  (Though this was also partly due to the fact that so many people had fielded short teams, the number of points available was exceptionally low.)  This, of course, massively ameliorated the negative impact of the rash 'No Free Hit' strategy: people who'd used their Free Hit - or otherwise managed to put out a decent eleven without needing multiple transfers - might have expected to get at least 15 or 20 more points than the folks who ended up with short teams, but most of them wound up with an advantage barely half that. However,.... 5 or 10 points is a huge lift. And, as I just outlined above, most of the 'No Free-Hitters' had also spent points on 'hits' and compromised their squad for a week - or two or three - either side of the troublesome Blank Gameweek; so, their actual deficit was usually somewhat intangible, but surely far greater than just the points-gap in that gameweek.

But you know how people who've just done something stupid love to cling to any excuse to persuade themselves that they haven't been stupid after all...?  The 'No Free-Hitters' suddenly started crowing about how they'd somehow anticipated what a terrible gameweek it was going to be, and of course they'd been right, and this was a complete vindication of their strategy. 

No, they'd been very lucky to only lose maybe 20 or 30 or 40 points on their more sensible rivals; but that wasn't any sort of vindication.

Oh, but then the following Double Gameweek proved to be a real humdinger, with oodles of points flowing in from every game. It was - bizarrely - one of the highest-scoring Gameweeks in FPL history!! Now, of course, those darned 'No Free-Hitters' went apeshit about what far-sighted geniuses they had been: not only had they done far less badly than might have been expected in their weak Blank Gameweek, but they'd done exceptionally well in the Double Gameweek! Their brave but shrewd gamble had sensationally paid off!

A few things:  1) They'd done not-so-badly, not well.  2) They'd been absurdly lucky to get away that lightly; no-one could have predicted two such extreme sets of points returns in the critical gameweeks.  3)  They still did bloody awfully in the Blank Gameweek (just not quite as badly as they might have done, relatively speaking...).  4)  Almost everyone did well in that exceptional Double Gameweek; many who had not followed the perverse 'No Free Hit' path did far better in that week than those who had. (I myself pulled in very tidy returns for both Gameweeks; and I'd been able to set up for the Double with regular transfers only - no need to use a chip or any hits. Hence, I still had my Wildcard to deal with the later Blank/Double problem.)

This whole bizarre story is a fascinating case-study in the kind of mass hysteria - and self-harming delusion - that so often grips the FPL hordes.  [I never searched into the possible origins of this curious 'No Free Hit' cult, but I imagine it must have been started by one of the online FPL 'gurus'....]

The AssMan cometh....!

 (Sorry. I just couldn't help myself; I've been waiting to use that line for months...)

Now, while I absolutely detest the gimmicky novelty and incongruousness of this new bonus chip that the FPL Gnomes, in their unwisdom, have foisted on us this year, and advocate strongly for everyone to BOYCOTT using it (or indeed, to quit the game altogether - as I myself have done), I understand that the majority of FPL managers are willing to accept it (at least as a one-off experiment....), can't resist the curious challenges it poses. Hence, since I endeavour to be generally helpful to other players of the game in these posts, I have been willing to set aside my antipathy to the chip and offer some observations on when and how to use it in my weekly rundowns of selection issues, and also in this comprehensive guide to the so-called 'Assistant Manager' (though it's actually got bugger-all to do with managers and is simply a 'Team Results' chip).

And so, I will now proffer some additional thoughts on this new chip - as ITS HOUR appears to be nigh.

As I mentioned at the weekend, traditional 'Chip Strategy' has been thrown into turmoil by removing the usual clash between the FA Cup quarter-finals and the regular Premier League programme this year. However,... most people are still alarmed about the semi-big Blank Gameweek for the FA Semis in GW34 and - wisely - fear that they will need their Free Hit (or their 2nd Wildcard, if they've somehow used their Free Hit already...) to get through that. The likely Double Gameweek following on from that in GW36 or 37 could still be a strong option to punt the Bench Boost chip, if you've still got that; and even if you don't go for that ploy, it's probably the best time to use the 2nd Wildcard, to set yourself up as well as possible for the final few gameweeks of the season (which often get a bit eccentric, with some teams getting overcome by their nerves in struggling to achieve their season goals, while many others.... just have nothing left to play for) and to 'optimise' the first eleven as far as possible for that final double.

Hence, since you can only play one 'chip' at a time, for most people it's simply not going to be possible to play the Assistant Manager chip after Gameweek 33. (And FPL hasn't actually specified if you'd be allowed to choose to play it for less than 3 gameweeks at the end of the season - because you forgot about it, or felt too constrained by your plans for the other chips to play it any earlier; it's quite possible that it will cease to be available in GW37, if you haven't already activated it.)

But, fortuitously enough, it is looking as though the next few gameweeks could be the most appealing window to try to make use of the chip anyway.

Manchester United now have a run of 3 successive table-bonus opportunities - and those are HUGE for this chip: a draw with the table-bonus is worth as much as a win without one; a win with a table-bonus is enormous. Now, with United's form under Amorim, that still looks like a massive - and perhaps unnattractive - gamble; but it is worth considering as an option. If they can't pull off a good performance against Forest this week, you could switch to another manager/team for Gameweek 32. Brentford, always dangerous going forward, even though their defence occasionally falls apart, could have a good chance of getting something from their trip to Newcastle - also a table-bonus. And Everton could well manage another upset against their cross-town rivals Liverpool, at least to the extent of holding them to a draw perhaps - again, a table-bonus. And Marco Silva's already pulled off some table-bonus surprises: the chance of Fulham getting something from their London derby match-up with Arsenal shouldn't be written off. Spurs, even away from home, should be fancied to pick up a few goals against floundering Chelsea; and while they're probably not anywhere near favourites for a win, it's not too remote a prospect. And - although I admit it seems ridiculously unlikely - I would piss myself laughing if Leicester managed to get anything off City!! All in all, this is a very interesting week for the Assistant Manager.

However, things may get even better next week(end); and I think most FPL managers have planned all along that GWs 31-33 would probably be the best slot to try to use for this new chip.

Brighton might still be 5 places above Palace going into that week (though that's a bit touch-and-go); and then the following week, of course, Palace will have a table-bonus double bill against City and Newcastle (both away; quite likely to lose both - a double gameweek isn't always infallible magic, but... it's still somewhat tempting, three table-bonus fixtures in two gameweeks is the kind of mother-lode you look for with this chip). West Ham at home against Bournemouth in GW31 might perhaps be a more tempting option, quite a strong possibility of a table-bonus draw (and if they get some form going, perhaps they could even discomfit Liverpool at Anfield the following week?? Nah....!). Brentford away to Chelsea, or Villa playing Forest and Everton playing Arsenal at home could also be handy table-bonus prospects in GW31. Wolves at home to Spurs (maybe, if the gap widens), or Brentford away at Arsenal, and Everton away at Forest could also be tempting table-bonus punts for GW32.

And then in GW33, of course, there's always the possibility that there could be another Double Gameweek (probably for City and Villa [unless they both lose; I'm writing this on Sunday, so don't know yet]: not very attractive teams at the moment, and not with very good fixtures in that week - but if they can get some scoring form going between now and then, perhaps they could make the AM punt worthwhile with goals alone. There aren't too many obvious table-bonus opportunities that week - Everton hosting City and Spurs hosting Forest, perhaps. However, it's too far away for us to have much idea of how the table gaps might have evolved by then; maybe some of the mid-table battlers will have pulled apart, giving a few more options.

Even more than with most aspects of FPL, this is sheer bloody ROULETTE: because the chip's life is extended over three weeks, there are just too many imponderables to try to assess, it's a complete shot in the dark.

However, it does now seem incontestable that you HAVE to activate the 'Assistant Manager' chip in Gameweek 30 or 31.

The final fuck-you from FATE and the FPL Gnomes (possible band name??) is that the decisive factor in choosing between these two possibilities ought to be the possible double-fixture(s) in Gameweek 33; but we almost certainly won't have those confirmed before the Gameweek 30 deadline on Tuesday evening, so..... just got to flip a coin, and keep your fingers crossed. (I think I'd probably go for the GW30 deployment, just because I like the already-known fixture options over the three gameweeks a little more. Also, if Gameweek 33 turns out to be the bigger - or only - additional Double Gameweek, you might want to use your Bench Boost in that.)

It's ANNOYING, yes. The better path would be to refuse to use the damn chip.

#DownWithTheNewChip

Do we MISS IT, now that it's gone...?

 

It's easy to 'forget', amid everything else that's going on in the world of football - and the wider world! - but.... this weekend is a momentous landmark for the game of Fantasy Premier League,

In the past, the FA Cup Quarter-Finals always clashed with the regular League programme; this is the first year in which Premier League games have been suspended on this weekend to accommodate the Cup.

For the last many years, we always had a HUGE Blank Gameweek around this time of year, usually in GW29 or GW30. Potentially, it could involve 16 EPL teams missing a fixture in the Gameweek because of their involvement in the FA Cup round. Usually, one or two lower-division sides would still be in the Cup at this stage; and occasionally some of the EPL teams in the quarters might have been drawn against each other in the League for that week, minimising the fixture disruption just slightly. But we'd always be missing 10 or 12 teams; sometimes 14 or 16!

It was pretty much impossible to navigate such a COLOSSAL HOLE in the fixtures without using the Free Hit chip. But the upside of this disruption was that a few weeks later, the missed games would be caught up in midweek - creating a HUGE Double Gameweek for all of those teams. Typically, you'd want to get a stacked squad with all 15 players having good double-fixtures for that week - so that you could Bench Boost. And to achieve that, you'd almost certainly have to use your 2nd Wildcard the week before. (But you might decide to forego that maximal Bench Boost possibility because you were likely to need the WC even more for the sometimes only slightly less calamitous Blank Gameweek on the FA Semis weekend a month or so later....)

Hence, FA Cup Quarter-Final weekend was the dominant factor in dictating chip strategy  for the season. [I flagged this as being one of the BIG changes to look out for this season five or six months ago.]

And a lot of FPL managers clearly can't shake these old habits of thought. They still seem to be convinced that you have to save your Bench Boost for the BIG Double Gameweek at the end of the season. Nope, there are no 'big' Double Gameweeks any more!

Of course, the focus for planning how to use our chips has now switched to the Semi-Finals weekend (GW34 this year), which can still be a major upheaval; but it's not nearly as big a hazard - as big a blank - as the Quarter-Final weekend was in the past; and it doesn't offer nearly such a big upside in its resultant double-fixtures (especially if, as is suggested, they may be split over two gameweeks this year).

I really did rather enjoy the annual challenge of the Big Blank and the Big Double. The game is a bit less exciting, a bit less demanding without it. (And there's arguably no real need to have a 2nd Wildcard chip at all any more: it's reduced to being a luxury makeover facility, rather than an essential life-saver!)

To Free Hit, or not to....?

 

A lot of people seem to be pondering resorting to their Free Hit chip this week. Is that a good idea?

NO.

1)  You keep your Free Hit (and the second WildCard) in reserve for as long as possible, in case you might need it to deal with an unexpected emergency like a sudden multiple injury/suspension crisis (can happen at any time, but becomes more likely as the season wears on) or a last-minute postponement (of more than one game - because there are other ways of dealing with a loss of only 4, 5, 6 players...).

2)  If you're lucky enough to escape any such unexpected crises, the best use for the Free Hit - which most people plan for - is to deal with the expected crisis of a 'big' Blank Gameweek. (However, this year there is no longer a really big blank, since the FA Cup Quarter-Finals - which could potentially wipe out up to 8 EPL fixtures - no longer clash with the EPL schedule. And the newly introduced facility to store up to 5 Free Transfers also gives you much more flexibility in addressing occasional fixture speed-bumps. Hence, for many people, it might be possible to get around even Gameweek 34 - the FA Semi-Final weekend, when 3 or 4 EPL matches could be missing, and hence the occasion when most FPL managers have provisionally planned to use their FH chip - without needing the Free Hit.)

3)  If you find you don't need the Free Hit for a Blank Gameweek, or any less expected emergency, there can also be a case for using it to 'optimise' a squad for a Double Gameweek. (Indeed, many managers in the past have asserted that this is a preferable approach to using it on a Blank Gameweek; but that is a perverse delusion.)  However, as with the Blank Gameweeks, there are no longer any really 'big' Double Gameweeks in the calendar; and any Double that is 'big' enough to be worth optimising the entire squad with doubling players is more worth playing the Bench Boost on - so, the better strategy is to optimise the week before with the 2nd WildCard (if you can't do it adequately just with regular free and paid transfers). But NOTE that a Double Gameweek is really only valuable for good players/teams with good fixtures; there's no point loading up the squad with weaker players who are likely to lose twice (just because they'll get double 'appearance points'....?!).

4)  If you don't hit any unexpected crises and are able to negotiate the only two Blank Gameweeks left in the regular schedule simply with transfers... it can be quite useful to hang on to the Free Hit (and the 2nd Wildcard) to 'optimise' a team for one of the last few weeks of the season (particularly if that might help you progress in one or more of your Cup competitions).

Thus, the Free Hit is almost certainly likely to be more needful and useful in the much larger Blank Gameweek of GW34.... or the Double Gameweek(s) that spin off of that, GWs 36 and/or 33. Even those might very well be able to be navigated without needing to use a chip; in which case, it's still useful to hang on to the Free Hit for a possible emergency that may come up in the last 9 gameweeks of the season... or simply to have some fun with as a late-season 'smart bomb'.  There is NO WAY anybody should be considering using the Free Hit this early in the season, for a Blank Gameweek that involves only 4 teams.

 

Moreover, these aren't even 4 very good teams for FPL. Even Liverpool, with too much rotation in midfield, too many injuries in attack, and an overpriced defence, don't have any obvious picks apart from Mo Salah; few people have had more than two of their players at a time, and most were struggling to think of a third to bring in for their recent successive Double Gameweeks (most went for Cody Gakpo, who'd suddenly hit form; but he got injured again, so could have been relinquished before this blank weekend). Newcastle have had alarmingly yo-yo form all season, and again Isak is looking like their only must-have at the moment; Gordon's returns have been slightly disappointing this season, especially over the last few months (when he's been struggling with a few knocks, and has often looked rather tired; and now he's picked up an extended suspension....); Hall has done surprisingly well at full-back, and became a popular FPL pick... but got a season-ending injury a couple of weeks ahead of the Blank Gameweek. Palace have only recently started to come good, and still don't look strong enough to be trebled up on. And Aston Villa have struggled in the league this season, look a pretty unconvincing mid-table side (doing much better in the Champions League!): there are really none of their players that have been worth having - even for that recent Double Gameweek!

So, there was really no excuse to have ever had more than 6 or 7 players from the affected clubs; and a number of the likeliest picks have already been eliminated by injury or suspension in the last weeks before the Blank. You can carry 2 or 3 players (even 4, if one of them's a keeper) on the bench for a week (well, assuming you haven't got a terrible bench: this is why you need to keep a good bench, to give you the easy option to switch out players who are going to miss a week or two - or just face one tough fixture - without needing to burn through transfers, and possibly lose a lot of squad value on 'transfer tax' with short-term sell-and-buy-backs): and of course you'd like to hang on to players like Salah and Isak, because you'd probably lose A LOT of money on them if you sold them and immediately bought them back. Any remaining essential changes, you should be able to comfortably deal with using saved Free Transfers. 

If poor forward planning leaves you in a situation where you still have more blanking players (and other absentees through injury/suspension) than you can carry on the bench or replace with stored Free Transfers, then you have to bite the bullet and take 'hits' - pay points for extra transfers - to get around the problem. You might compromise, and consider putting out a team of only 9 or 10 players, to keep your transfer points-spend down, (It can be difficult for defenders to earn you more than 4 points.... unless you're really, really confident in their clean-sheet prospects - and that's a very precarious hope to bank on. In all other positions. however, good picks should be capable of earning you at least 4 points, hopefully 5 or 6 or more - so, taking a 'hit' to replace a non-playing first-team member, except perhaps in defence, should always be worth it.)

If, somehow, you find yourself in a really deep hole this week, you might consider instead using the 2nd Wildcard to get out of it. This chip is a bit of a luxury, something that can be held on to for emergencies, but doesn't have any compelling 'tactical' use in the way that the Free Hit does. So, although it would be preferable to be able to save it longer, there's not as much risk with using it early as there is with the Free Hit.