Your 3rd forward might be the least important member of the squad

That's a 'controversial' assertion for many people. But it really shouldn't be. 

A lot of folks seem to get beguiled by the impression of 'more regular goals' that forwards seem to offer. But they forget that a) there aren't actually many forwards in the EPL these days who do produce 'regular goals', b) many of the strongest 'forward' prospects are actually classified in the game as 'midfielders', and c) midfielders can pick up so many more points than forwards (more points for each goal, the occasional 'free' extra point for a team clean sheet, and usually more likelihood of assists and bonus points too; and now, for some, also the occasional possibility of 'defensive points'): a good goalscoring midfielder will almost always outscore a forward - in FPL points - who has the same number of goals, or even a slightly higher number of goals.

In recent years - particularly over the last couple of seasons, when some of our biggest-returning midfielders have been lost to us (Salah, DeBruyne, Son, Diaz, Jota, Olise, Bowen), and many others were wiped out for long spells by injuries - it's become increasingly common to start 3 forwards on a fairly regular basis. This is almost never a good idea.

If we glance at the current FPL points rankings, we see that only the outstanding Erling Haaland and Joao Pedro are up near the top of the pile (and even they're not currently in first place!). Admittedly Alexander Isak, the third-placed forward, just missed the last game, but at the moment he's languishing behind 9 midfielders, 7 defenders and a goalkeeper; and level with, or only a point or two ahead of a whole raft more. That's not at all unusual: you almost never get more than 2 or 3 forwards in the Top 10 players overall; sometimes you don't even get that many in the Top 20. In fact, things may even be a little worse than that: because the best forwards do tend to maintain quite a good average return across the whole season, some of them may end up looking like they were a 'Top 10' pick - but you find that almost invariably, at any point of the season, there were always 5 or more in-form midfielders comfortably out-pointing them over a short run of games.

The 'best of the rest' at the moment (the rather uninspiring Kostoulas, Emersonn, and Barry??!!) are outside the Top 40... Only Isak had any kind of case for inclusion in a starting eleven. And really, you can't realistically afford all 3 of the most premium-priced forwards - not at the start of the season, anyway, when budget is still rather tight. You'd do better to spend that extra money in midfield or defence.

The 5th midfielder is almost always the most important member of your squad, at least the most influential member. It's the position most often overlooked, most often scrimped on by your rivals; the squad slot that gives you the biggest differential advantage (in the true meaning of the term). You really want to be playing a 5th midfielder as often as possible.

The 4th defender is a close second - or joint second - in importance amongst your 'fringe players', the ones you might leave on your bench (and the 5th midfielder, I would argue, shouldn't really be viewed in that categoary at all, but should be a default starter almost all the time). You'll often want to start 4 defenders (if you have a short-term injury hole somewhere further forward, and/or you have 4 defenders all facing a promising fixture against a side in very poor attacking form); and you'll often need a fill-in for one of your usual starting defenders who's picked up a short-term injury or a suspension, or happens to be facing a particularly tough opponent one week (you really never want to be playing a defender against Haaland!); or you'll have someone who's unexpectedly rotated out, and needs to be auto-subbed.

Because these kinds of problems afflict our defenders so much, the 5th defender slot can also be surprisingly important. While starting all 5 defenders might be a pretty unlikely eventuality, it can happen occasionally. And it is relatively common that your 5th defender will have to stand in as your 4th defender because of an injury issue or somesuch with a priority starter.

However, for me, the back-up goalkeeper is really rather more important than the 5th defender - since I always try to go for a strong rotation pair that I can switch around regularly to try to always get a keeper with an appealing fixture. While I will usually have a preferred starter out of that pair, there's often not much to choose between them; and I'll generally end up using the 'second choice' at least 25%-30% of the time,.... sometimes well above 40%! So, that's a little more important than the 'last seat' defender.

And then there's the 3rd forward. Really, I'm not using my 3rd forward, except in a dire emergency. So, for this squad slot, you want to spend as little money as possible. And their returns really don't matter that much; so long as they have a guaranteed start, and are picking up an attacking contribution every 3 or 4 games, that's enough.

I see so many people online constantly fretting over their 3rd choice forward, impulsively shunting him out for a replacement every time he blanks once or twice. Vanity of vanities. It doesn't matter if your 3rd forward is a goal-machine or not. So long as he's not injured or dropped, you should hang on to him.

The Great FPL Paradox: the 'best player' is not always the 'best pick'

 

This is perhaps the hardest idea for most Fantasy Football managers to wrap their heads around. 

It seems obvious, surely, that the best players are going to produce the most points; and the players who produce the most points are the ones you want - right??

Well, NO - not necessarily.

1)  The objectively 'best' all-around players may not always have their excellence fully reflected in their Fantasy points returns.

This has generally been particularly true of defenders and defensive midfielders; and that under-rewarding in the FPL points system has only been slightly ameliorated by the introduction of new points for 'defensive contributions' (the number of points available is quite small, the threshold for earning them is too high, and the tallying of the eligible contributions is too obscure and unreliable for them to have all that much impact, or to improve the overall 'fairness' of the scoring system in the game). But it's also true of more creative midfielders who may be great playmakers, but don't produce all that many attacking contributions (the only things that get any direct recognition in the game; pre-assists and pre-pre-assists are often far more skillful and more valuable than the final credited 'assist', but gain no merit). There are some very, very good players who just aren't really worth considering for an FPL squad. If you allow yourself to be swayed by your appreciation of football, by your recognition of a player's talents - rather than his points potential - you will make some misguided selections.

2)  The players who got the most FPL points last year will not necessarily produce the same returns this year.

Ah, people may object, but we're not interested in the unregarded midfield dynamos or tough-as-nails central defenders who hold their teams together without often earning many Fantasy points; we just look at last year's points tallies and pick the guys with the biggest numbers. But, unfortunately, that tends to be a flawed approach too. There can be all sorts of reasons - known (change of club, change of manager, change of tactics, change of surrounding personnel, improvements by key rivals, injury, aging...) or unknown (the 'headspace', form suddenly falls off a cliff for no obvious reason...) - why a player's performance in one season can be much better or worse than it was the season before. Last year's data is a very useful guideline - but it's not definitive or infallible.

3)  And this is the kicker: the players who will get the most points this year... are still not invariably the 'best picks' for the game.

Naive FPL managers often imagine that if they had a time-machine that would allow them to view the year-end player points totals at the start of the season, they could just pick that 'perfect squad' of all the highest points-scorers, and they'd win the global title. But they wouldn't; they probably wouldn't even come all that close. To attain the topmost reaches of the global rankings, you really have to milk more points from every slot in your starting eleven than almost any individual player will earn in the season.

Many of the highest points-scorers, alas, are very patchy, very streaky in their returns: they'll have a few spells of super-hot form but long runs of blanks in between. And it's simply not worth hanging on to those players for extended periods, hoping to catch one of their hot spells - when you could have tried out three or four other players in the meantime, none of whom would have done any worse during the blanking period, and at least one or two of whom (if you correctly recognised when they were coming into good form) could have done substantially better.

Season totals don't necessarily matter: you have to try to maximise your returns for each starting slot by frequently rotating through the players in the hottest form. A player who returns very high season totals and is very consistent in their returns across the season may be worth regarding as a long-term hold; but they are very, very rare (in fact, even Salah or Haaland in their best seasons were not usually worth hanging on to for the entire season).

Moreover, you have to make your picks in the context of the overall selection landscape: you have to weigh up each squad choice in terms of its likely differential advantage over an alternate selection - i.e., how much of a points-lift can you get from this player compared to the next best candidate in his position, or another candidate at a similar price-point across all the positions, or to the other players you might choose from his club?

David Raya is now pretty unarguably the best goalkeeper in the Premier League. But he isn't the best pick for FPL, because he probably won't do that much better than the next best, he's too expensive this year, and you can usually wring more points from a good rotation pair than a single goalkeeper pick (and there are other possible picks from Arsenal that will probably give you more of a points-advantage than him).

Similarly with Gabriel: he is an absolutely awesome defender, probably the best in the league. But for FPL... he's again too expensive this year, and not likely to outscore his cheaper Arsenal teammates this time (his attacking returns will probably be much lower this year; and Calafiori, in particular, offers much more attacking threat, and seems to have a more secure start this year; I'd bet that Timber will too, once he's fit again).

And so too with Bruno Fernandes: he's looking in fabulous form again, he is probably the best all-around midfielder in the league at the moment - and he might well again be the highest-scoring FPL midfielder for the season. But when he's priced at 12 million pounds, the 'opportunity cost' of all the other players you have to do without in order to afford him is probably too much.

The same argument can be made about Erling Haaland; but, although his price-tag is enormous, I feel that his unique differential advantage might yet justify it. He does seem likely to massively outscore any other forward, and if things really go well for him, he might be the one current player with the potential for a 300-point season. However, if it appears that Alex Isak or Joao Pedro could run him close for points returns in the forward category, then he too might become expendable.

NB: All of these players I just name-checked are likely to be the highest points-scorers in their position categories in FPL this year; that doesn't matter. What matters is their relative value to your squad in terms of their advantage over their next-best alternatives, and how much benefit you could reap from spending their fees across the rest of your squad instead.

What a 'differential' is NOT

I touched on this in the introduction to my fuller post on 'differentials' this morning. But it's so important that I think it merits briefly highlighting in a post of its own here.

Many FPL managers (the vast majority, it would appear - from the online forums, at least) seem to have fallen prey to the self-harming delusion that 'differential' means prioritizing players who are less-owned.

That is UTTERLY BLOODY POINTLESS.

A less-owned player is only valuable to you if he's going to earn you more points than the more highly-owned alternatives. Which is rarely, if ever, the case....

And NOTE, the unfortunate corollary here is that high-owned players are to be distrusted and avoided. But, ahem, there are reasons why they're so high-owned: and those reasons usually include the fact that they've been producing scads of points!

The allure of the 'differential', conceived like this, is illusory. A decent player who's low-owned may have the occasional brilliant week; and, once-in-a-blue-moon, perhaps one of those rare great weeks of his will correspond to a week in which all the more popular picks fail to produce much. In that week, the owners of the 'differential' will feel terribly smug, as they temporarily gain rank because of their 'brilliant' pick; so smug, in fact, that they can overlook the fact that in almost every other gameweek of the season they have done much worse than the managers who went with deservedly more popular picks.

Any rank-gaining benefit you may occasionally reap from a 'differential' of this kind is also inevitably short-lived - because, if such a player really is wrongly overlooked and undervalued, is indeed coming into hot form and about to display huge points potential,.... lots of other FPL managers are quickly going to come onboard for him, and his ownership level will have shot up within two or three weeks.

It is not impossible to find this sort of 'differential' advantage occasionally; but it is very, very rare - and really not something worth making a primary focus of your game. Particularly if that leads you to chase every low-owned second- or third-tier player who looks like he might be such a prospect after one good haul....

The 'Cult of the Differential' usually leads to people desperately chasing points in the most reckless and stupid ways, and perversely ignoring more sensible picks.

Forget about ownership level, and concentrate on points-potential.

The true meaning of 'differential'

I have been meaning for a long time to address the topic of 'differentials'. It is one of the most infuriatingly overused terms, one of the most pervasive - and most destructive - myths in all of FPL-land.

The essential problem with it is that it's become such a jargon term that many people use it completely unreflectively, without even considering what they really mean by it - much less what it really ought to mean.

The most common, and dangerous, misconception that has become attached to it is that there is somehow an automatic advantage in choosing less-owned players.

THERE IS NOT. There is only an advantage in identifying less-owned (and/or cheaper) players who are going to score more points than the more highly-owned (and/or more expensive) alternative picks.

The much-abused term 'differential' is, however, highly relevant, meaningful, and useful in a number of other applications - which rarely or never seem to merit explicit consideration in FPL circles. 'Differential' value is actually crucial to all selection decisions; but it operates in a number of different ways.

Where the 'differential' concept actually MATTERS:

1)  Price differential:  Is the player you're targeting a better points-prospect than all other players available at the same or similar price-point?

2)  Position differential:  Is the player you're targeting a better points-prospect than anyone else you can afford in the same position category?

3)  Club differential:  Is the player you're targeting likely to give you a bigger points lift over the next best alternative than another player at the same club would give you over their next best alternative?  [This is the chief - and almost invariably unappreciated - argument against selecting David Raya; a fantastic goalkeeper, but not that much better than any of his rivals in FPL terms - while a number of his Arsenal teammates are (at least, sometimes) much better than most of their rivals.]

4)  Price-step differential:  Is the player you're targeting likely to give you a bigger points lift over the best alternative one price-step cheaper (usually you're focused on a positional comparison, but occasionally it might also be in the context of a club quota) than the points lift that an alternate pick might give you over their closest cheaper competitor?  At the start of the season, all price-steps are 500k, but later on, an interval of even 100k or 200k can sometimes make a big difference. [Most of the time, you'll just be looking at the possible impact of a one price-step difference between two options. But sometimes - particularly at the start of the season, when choosing the initial squad - you might be weighing up the advantage of spending 1 or 1.5 million more on a particular slot.]

5)  'Value' differential:  Is the player you're considering going to give you a better points-per-pound return than the alternatives? This is particularly relevant when you're choosing your initial squad, as you'll usually be running short of budget for at least the last 3, 4, or 5 spots and you really have to squeeze every possible point out of each of those picks - even if you expect to be able to leave them on the bench most of the time.

6)  Transfer differential:  Is the player you're bringing in likely to give you a bigger points lift over the guy you're replacing than other transfers in your squad might produce?

7) Team differential:  Does your overall team selection (and squad selection - because you will often need to draw on your bench) offer you a substantially better points-potential than the likely global average score this gameweek, and (perhaps even more importantly) than the selections of the key rivals in your mini-leagues?  [I prefer to maintain my team differential advantage by trusting that my opponents will make some bad picks, rather than by avoiding taking their good picks for myself.]

Ownership level has no bearing on any of that! The ONLY THING you should be interested in is whether a player (more properly, in fact, a group of players, in the context of each other) is offering you the best points return for the money you have available. 'Differential advantage' is all about identifying where you can get the most points, assessed within a number of different frames of reference.

'Ownership' will only become relevant for breaking a dead-heat: if you really can't decide between two possible picks, they seem to you to have absolutely equal prospects by all criteria - then you can go for the less-owned one. (But that NEVER happens.)