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!)

So long, farewell.....

 

I'm DONE for this season.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A flying start! HOW did that happen?

 

As this weekend started with the postponement of the first scheduled game, Everton v Liverpool, some of us found ourselves comforted by the sight of a forest of 'green arrows' next to our league positions... before a ball had even been kicked.

How could this be??

Well, it's a curious quirk of the FPL rules. The principal tie-breaker for rank order where managers have the same points is the number of transfers they've made (regular transfers only; not those made with a Wildcard or Free Hit, or in pre-season). And while points deductions are not made for any 'hits' they've chosen to take (i.e. spending 4 points for an additional transfer, over and above any Free Transfers they have available) until the end of the Gameweek, the transfers themselves are recorded immediately.

Thus, every time you make a transfer, your rank goes down. But, on the upside, every time those tied with you on points make more transfers than you, your rank goes up! Nice.

And since so many people lost multiple players in that cancelled Merseyside derby and were scrambling to fill gaps just before the Gameweek deadline, those of us who were able to sit tight with the squad we had... enjoyed a sudden surge in rank.

This was the only small consolation for me in an otherwise utterly horrible week....

What's DIFFERENT this year...?

 

Well, it often feels like.... EVERYTHING.

This year is certainly very different to previous years in FPL in several important ways:

1)  The tweaks to the BPS scoring.  Quite a subtle thing, and something most FPL managers are likely to miss, or simply ignore. But it is likely to have quite a significant impact: something like 15-20% of your points come from bonuses - i.e., equivalent to ALL of the points-spread you'll typically see across a good quality mini-league! While it's difficult to project exactly how much effect the various little modifications to the scoring scale that decide bonus point allocation will have, it seems likely that the most important change will be the significantly bigger penalty now applied to defenders or keepers conceding a goal. The BPS is already somewhat stacked against defences, and this further disadvantage imposed on them is likely to mean that it's going to be very difficult for a keeper or a defender now to score any bonus points in a match in which they haven't kept a clean sheet. That will reduce returns from defenders quite a bit. (At least keepers can still pick up points, and BPS credit, for 'saves' - and that's usually what earns them bonus points. They'll probably earn slightly fewer bonus points this year too, because of the new change; but they won't be as hard hit as defenders.)

2)  Lower returns for defenders in general.  There are two factors here: the demise of the attacking full-back (mainly Pep's fault??), and generally lower prospects of clean sheets this year. Arsenal's defensive performance last year was a real freak: what was it, 18 clean sheets? They are very unlikely to get anywhere near that this time. Nor, by the look of the opening two months, is anyone else. Arne Slot has quickly made Liverpool a bit less gung-ho in attack and a bit less leaky in the middle of the park, so they're looking favourites to take the clean-sheet crown this year - but I doubt they'll get far into double-figures (they've been flattered so far by a bit of good luck with the refereeing decisions, and a very soft opening run of fixtures); and I'm not sure anyone else, apart from Arsenal, will get anywhere close to them. City have looked leaky; and could be in big trouble now that they've lost Rodri for the season. I think Forest, Bournemouth, and Palace show some promise, though they've not had the best of luck so far. Really, you can't fancy many teams to reach 10 clean sheets for the season this year.

And in the past we've almost always had a few points-monsters in defence: usually a progressive full-back who'd bombard the box with crosses, occasionally threaten a goal of their own, and perhaps provide additional points potential through taking corners, free-kicks, or even long-throws. Where are the Ashley Cole, Rory Delap, Leighton Baines, Aaron Cresswell de nos jours? Well, Cresswell, of course, is still around; though he's been phased out of the first team over the last two or three years. Trent provided a lot of assists in the past, but his numbers fell off a cliff last season, and aren't looking likely to rebound that strongly this year (yes, he was very unlucky to have that goal disallowed early in the season; but Slot's playing him much deeper, and he's not looking likely to play balls into the box any more - being on corners should be a plus, but Liverpool aren't nearly so focused on them as a main source of goals as Arsenal are; I fear his only likely assists will come this year from long balls over the top to Salah - useful to have, but perhaps not reaching more than 5 or 6 over the season). And there was that one magnificent season from Joao Cancelo a few years back, before he fell out with Pep. And Ben White did pretty well last year, linking with Saka down the Arsenal right. But the old-style attacking full-back who regularly pushed forward to make overlapping runs beyond the wide attacker, and was playing balls into the box all the time - we don't really have that any more. Porro is an occasional goal-threat, but is now tending to invert into deep midfield rather than pushing down the flank, so won't offer that many assists; Gvardiol is a hell of a finisher, but not a crosser, and doesn't seem likely to keep many clean sheets with City this year; White looks a bit out-of-sorts, is said to be carrying an injury. I would have said Henry and Hickey at Brentford looked our best prospects for this sort of defender; but they're still injured; and - if they ever come back - they might find that Thomas Frank has permanently changed the team's style of play to omit the use of advanced wing-backs any more. I like Robinson (and Tete), Aina (and Moreno), Kerkez, Dalot, and Munoz and Mitchell; but I'm not sure any of these will produce the really regular attacking returns we used to enjoy from top full-backs in the good old days.

3)  Fewer penalties.  A modification of the interpretation guidelines for the Handball Law seems likely to greatly reduce the number of penalties awarded for the ball hitting a defender's arm; and that's surely a good thing. Alas, the revisions have been drafted in an inept way which renders them ridiculously over-complex - and hence their application is going to be even more subjective and riddled with controversy than it has been in the past. But at least the overall number of penalty awards will be down. A modification in the VAR protocols also seems likely to have a HUGE impact: there now seems to be such a hesitancy to embarrass the on-pitch referee by suggesting he's been in error that VAR is constantly hiding behind the 'clear and obvious error' threshold for intervention, and is sitting on its hands - even when the referee has committed an obvious goof. We've seen good penalty shouts unaccountably waved away in every single gameweek so far. (And it's hitting some teams far more than others. City seem to be magically immune to conceding penalties this year; while poor Chelsea are just not being  awarded any.) And of course, players who derived an especially large number of their overall points return from converting penalties - like Cole Palmer and Bruno Fernandes - could take a pretty serious hit from this.

4)  Being able to save Free Transfers.  This is the most massive (and surprisingly positive) change in the rules of the FPL game that has ever been made. In the past, with it only being possible to save a measly 2 Free Transfers at a time, you were constantly under pressure to 'use it or lose it' - to make a transfer even when there was no particularly urgent need, just because you would miss out on receiving an extra transfer from the following gameweek if you didn't. That was an irritation - and could lead to some rash, unnecessary, self-damaging squad changes. Ah, but now - with the option introduced this year to store up to 5 FTs at one time, the tactical landscape of the game is dramatically changed: we have far more flexibility to negotiate fixture speed-bumps like blank and double gameweeks, or one-week batches of awkward fixtures. Of course, it remains to be seen how easy it will be to store up transfers; in the last two seasons, injuries seemed to come so thick-and-fast that I was only able to consider rolling a transfer half a dozen times during the year. While we can hope that this year won't see quite such an avalanche of injuries... I think it's likely to be near-impossible to store up the full quota of 5 transfers, and it will probably be misguided - self-damaging - to try (just for the bragging rights!!). But it might be possible to stock up 3 or 4 occasionally; and there will be a strong incentive to try to do so. Being able to use 4 transfers at once is effectively an extra mini-Wildcard, and could make it possible to completely revise traditional chip strategy (which is focused on using Wildcard and/or Free Hit to get around the late-season blank and double gameweeks). Moreover, for any challenging gameweek where you may need to make multiple changes - or, for instance, when offloading Asian and African players just ahead of their regional nations cup competitions, which take place in December/January every other year - in the past you'd have to do that over a number of weeks; now you can save up the necessary transfers and use them all at once, only at the moment they actually become necessary (when you'll know which of the replacement players you're contemplating are fit and in good form; if you make a choice a week or three earlier than you really need to, you can often be caught out - find yourself with a wasted pick that needs to be replaced with another transfer); that too can be a massive help to us this season.

5)  No more 'early' Double Gameweek. For the last several years, we often had one of our top sides getting an extra double-fixture, rather earlier than any of the others, in February or March... as a result of the club having had to miss a gameweek in mid-December to participate in the Club World Cup. This could be - depending on the fixtures, of course - a very tempting option for the Triple Captain chip, with top players like Haaland or Salah enjoying a unique DGW.... in mid-season, before they get knackered. But with the expansion of the Club World Cup format this year, and the tournament being moved to the summer, that nice little Spring Treat is now denied us. [Oh, I hadn't realised the winter tournament is continuing after all, in a very slightly revised format; it's now rebranded as The Intercontinental Cup. So, we might still sometimes see that additional small Double Gameweek in the Spring. But not this year... because Real Madrid won the Champions League again.]

6)  No more 'big' Blank/Double Gameweeks. As I just mentioned above, chip strategy traditionally revolved around negotiating the blank and double gameweeks that pepper the last two months of the season. But the biggest of these, by far, was the Blank Gameweek caused by the FA Cup Quarter-Final weekend (usually around GW29 or 30), and the huge Double Gameweek that followed it, usually with most or all of the rescheduled fixtures being made up at the same time. Now, it was perilous to hang on that long, waiting so late in the season for a Double Gameweek to drop a bonus chip; but it was undoubtedly a very tempting option for the Bench Boost - because with so many teams playing twice in the same week, it was usually quite easy to find 15 players with two good fixtures (or at least one good fixture! [It's really not worth loading up on players who have two tough fixtures - particularly defenders - but many people do!])  This year.... (drum roll)..... it has been decided to suspend the League programme on Quarter-Final weekend - so there will be no Blank Gameweek then, and no following BIG Double. This will give us a lot more flexibility in how to use our Free Hit and 2nd Wildcard. (Indeed, with the new facility to bank up to 5 Free Transfers at a time, these chips may sometimes be somewhat superfluous! Certainly, they're not going to be so life-savingly essential as they have been in the past.)  The focus of chip strategy will shift to the blank FA Semis weekend (this year, Gameweek 34) and the double (or doubles; the rearranged fixtures might be split over different gameweeks, further diluting their value for FPL) ensuing from that; but that is much less of a big deal. Such small double-fixture weeks are not that compelling as a Bench Boost opportunity; and even the Blank Gameweek might be possible to address adequately with saved transfers. Oh, brave new world!

7)  A plethora of decent forwwards.  Also, damn - for the first time in quite a few seasons we have a good number of forward options to choose between. For a few years now, we've had so many forwards injured for most of the season, or chronically out of form, or just nowhere near the level of the obvious top one or two picks, that.... well, you didn't usually start more than two of them... and quite often only one! And there was very little FPL differentiation going on in the forward area. But this year, we have Chris Wood and Danny Welbeck having the best season of their careers, and appearing newly immune to injury worries! Raul Jimenez, too, finally seems to be recapturing the early promise he showed with Wolves, before that horrific head injury. Haaland started incredibly hot, but has faded a little; while Isak and Watkins look to be potential challengers for the top forward honours this year. A lot of people are optimistic for Solanke's prospects now at Spurs too; and indeed Havertz's at Arsenal (he's started really well; but I'm still not convinced he's always going to play at No. 9, or be their primary goal outlet). And there are tempting options for third seat in the ultra-budget category too - such as Liam Delap at Ipswich. Not only do we suddenly have a lot of decent attacking options to choose from, but - with a lot of the usual high-scoring midfielders misfiring so far, or suffering injuries - it's actually becoming legitimate to prefer the 3-4-3 formation, sometimes, at least... and that's something I've very rarely used in the past.

And then.... there's the new 'Mystery Chip' FPL is springing on us this year. For me, this is just a further irritation, an unwelcome additional uncertainty in a season which has already got too much going on! If they'd tell us what the damn chip is a bit earlier in the season, launch it a bit earlier in the season, it wouldn't be so bad. But making us wait until January to even find out what it is; and leaving us to figure out how to accommodate it in the closing months of the season, which is when most people play all of their other chips as well,.... that's just going to get very complicated, the schedule is going to be too crowded with chip options to evaluate.

And it wouldn't be so bad if it were just a simple bonus chip - perhaps just a second Bench Boost or Triple Captain, as has been mooted by some; or a Double Bench Boost, perhaps, where you get twice the points earned by your subs for a week; but I rather fear it is going to be something much more arcane and convoluted - something that may really throw a spanner in the works. [And, oh boy, was I proved right in my misgivings about that damned new chip - and then some!!]

There are quite enough 'new challenges' in this season already. We don't want or need a stupid new Novelty Chip thrown into the mix as well!