High variance - why this gameweek is likely to make such A BIG DIFFERENCE

 

It's not often a Blank Gameweek hits so hard!

But this season, there are really only two teams that anyone in FPL is likely to be trebled-up on. Arsenal and Manchester City are way out ahead of the field at the top of the table. Almost every other club has lost many key players to injury and/or suffered very up-and-down form; the other would-be title contenders have all had pretty disappointing seasons (though at least Manchester United have rallied strongly since the turn of the year). Arsenal and City are just in a different class to everyone else this year; and they've both reached the League Cup Final.

So, what in many years is merely a minor annoyance, this time is a body-blow. More than half of the top dozen or so most popular players in FPL this season are from Arsenal and City. 

Raya is by far the most popular goalkeeper choice; but Donnarumma is 6th, and Dean Henderson (who also has a Blank, because he would have been facing City in the League this weekend) is 8th; even the absence of Wolves's Jose Sa is going to inconvenience well over 1% of FPL managers. So, probably about 45% of managers in FPL are missing their first-choice keeper this week; and quite a few may have found themselves missing both keepers.

And many managers will be missing 4 or 5 others of their regular starters too. If they have been imprudently holding on to some Palace (and/or Wolves!!) players as well, and/or have suffered some additional injury problems, some might be looking at having to make 8, 9, 10 changes this week. Almost everyone is having to make at least 4 or 5 changes.

Think about the consequences of that. In most gameweeks, it's very rare that anyone makes even as many as 3 or 4 changes; most of the time, we get by with only 1 or 2 transfers in a week; quite often - if we've been lucky with injuries - we'll put out a completely unchanged squad.

But this week,... almost everyone is making multiple changes to their starting eleven.

Moreover, in most gameweeks, there is a high degree of similarity between most people's teams (not as much as many people suppose: there is never a clear-and-obvious 'template' eleven...). There's usually a handful of players who are so much better than everyone else in their position category that almost everyone owns them. And at the moment, those players are Gabriel, Timber, Rice, Semenyo, Haaland and O'Reilly (or Nunes). Outside of the TOP TWO, only Bruno Fernandes, Harry Wilson, and Joao Pedro are currently such compelling and almost universally coveted picks.

This week, we have to change out half or three-quarters of our regular starting eleven - and there aren't any particularly obvious replacements to choose from. Almost no-one else has suddenly come into particularly compelling form (Tavernier, possibly; Cunha or Casemiro...); and no-one has a really good fixture this week (Liverpool, Villa, and Spurs appear to have the most over-matched opponents; but they've all been in horrible form in the league recently....). 

So, this week, there is likely to be an exceptionally high degree of dissimilarity between selections, with everyone making multiple changes, and a pretty much wide open choice of what those changes might be... and uncommonly low predictability (because of rocky form and mostly very closely matched fixtures) as to how any of that is going to play out.

Most weeks, we're just buying one or two lottery tickets; this week, we're all buying a whole fistful of them!

And all of that means that there is sure to be an extremely broad spread of points this week. And that, in turn, means more volatility - more chance that you can have an exceptionally poor week and/or that others around you can have an exceptionally good week. Of course, things could work out in your favour; but they could also go very strongly against you. There is going to be exceptionally high volatility in the rankings this week, with a lot of people seeing big swings in their league positions.

Overall, it's almost certain to be an extremely low-scoring week. Many people have used a 'hit' (or several!), spent points to assemble a starting team, and so start off at an immediate disadvantage.Many more are making do with fielding a team that's at least one or two players short. Even more, who've just about got a full eleven, but have little or no cover left on the bench, are going to find that injuries or rotations leave them with less than eleven scoring players.

And, as I already pointed out above, most of the 'best' players are missing from this gameweek; and most of the fixtures that are going ahead don't look particularly promising.

Anyone, however, who does manage to field a full eleven, and hasn't had to spend any 'hits' to do so (or only 1 or 2 of them...) is in a position to achieve a big points-gain on the majority of managers, even without getting a particularly big points total. If the global average is only 20-30 points, a haul of 50 will give you a huge lift in ranking.

* NB;  The prospect of such a powerful points/rank lift should not have tempted anyone to use a Free Hit or Wildcard this week, because those chips will - absolutely definitely - be worth even more a little bit later in the season. Over 160,000 people are on a Wildcard this week, and over 1.3 million are using the Free Hit (according to Google AI, that is; so, it's probably a completely made-up figure - but it does sound plausible). Those folks should get a useful lift this week. But that advantage will almost certainly be wiped out (perhaps wiped out two or three times over) when they are smashed by the even bigger Blank Gameweek we face in GW34, and/or they find that they can't optimise their squad for the last few weeks of the season, when we should have one or two juicy Double Gameweeks.

There is, in fact, quite a good chance that people who played one of those chips won't even do that well out of them this week - because, as I observed already, there's a dearth of obviously in-form players to choose, or inviting fixtures to bet on. Moreover, I tend to think (in my more pessimistic moments, anyway...) that more of our decisions go badly than well (there's more bad luck in the world than good luck!), so making a large number of changes - especially when you don't really need to (many people playing chips are getting tempted to go a little crazy and change almost everyone) - is generally counter-productive. I suspect that, for the most part. people who made the minimum number of changes they could get away with this week will do better than people who splashed out with a chip.

And then.... well, people who chose to play a chip this week (or left themselve 'no choice' but to do so!) are fundamentally not smart managers. We could foresee the Gameweek 31 hazard months ago, and there is absolutely no reason to have been exposed to more than 5 or 6 blanking players this week (a problem that should have been easy to deal with, using a couple of saved transfers and/or hits). So, people who made dumb choices to get themselves into such a mess are also likely to make dumb choices trying to get themselves out of it, and you wouldn't fancy them to do particularly well in this gameweek (they don't deserve to do well).

[I was prompted to these reflections by encountering on one of the FPL forums the other day one of those arrogant oafs who insists on boasting about how good his rank is currently. I mildly pointed out that there was a good chance his rank would slip this week (he was a proud, naive Free Hitter), and he whined that I couldn't possibly have a 'crystal ball' to know that. Well, I didn't claim to know for certain; I'd said 'probably' - it was merely a significant statistical possibility. People in the top few thousands of the rankings are usually insulated from big single-week drops (or rises) in rank, because things get spread out up there: there aren't many other people within a narrow range of points. But that's in a normal gameweek. In a gameweek like this one, with such an exceptionally high variance in likely points returns, there will be a lot of big swings in rank, and even people at the very top of the rankings wno't be immune to them.

As I pointed out to the noxious oaf: There is a difference between WHAT WE CAN KNOW and WHAT WE CAN ONLY GUESS AT. Unfortunately, it is a difference that almost nobody in FPL-land seems to comprehend. 

We can know that there is going to be unusually high volatility in the rankings this gameweek; it just requires a basic understanding of statistics.]

Free Hit? Just say 'NO'!!

 

Damn, an awful lot of folks seem to be playing their Free Hit for this Gameweek. An awful lot!

I mentioned yesterday, as one of my 'Signs that an FPL manager isn't much good', that doing so was suggestive of simply having not thought ahead. We've known that the League Cup finalists were going to have a Blank Gameweek in the league programme this week since before the start of the season; we've known who those finalists were going to be for just over six weeks now; and we could have made a pretty good guess as to who they were going to be at least a month before that. This blip in the schedule should not be taking anyone by surprise.

What's more, the other two clubs blanking this weekend, their scheduled league opponents, Crystal Palace and Wolves, are not really clubs that anyone should have any FPL players from at the moment. There's not even that much reason to be trebled-up on either Arsenal or City right now. Arsenal's attacking players haven't been scoring enough goals, or even getting regular enough starts, to be in serious contention this season; even the great Bukayo Saka has faded into FPL irrelevance. For most of the season, Gabriel, Timber, and Rice have been incontestably the three Arsenal players to have; but Timber just picked up an injury, and Rice has had a bit of a lull in productivity recently - so, you could easily drop either of them, if you hadn't already. Even from City, there's been no overshwhelming case for a third pick for a while, after Haaland and Semenyo. And Haaland's returns have sputtered since the turn of the year; a lot of managers have already started deserting him. Nico O'Reilly has recently been about the most popular third pick from the club, but he too has just picked up an injury.

So, really, most smart FPL managers should not have found themselves with more than 4 or 5 players blanking this week; and it should be pretty easy to move a couple of them on to the bench for the week, and offload any others - even if it might cost one or two 'hits'.

If you did have exceptionally high exposure to this Blank Gameweek, you should have started offloading a few surplus players a few weeks back - and/or started trying to save up a few extra transfers even further back - to deal with this problem.

Yes, if you are still trebled-up on both Arsenal and City, and you somehow have one or two or three Palace and Wolves players too, and have maybe picked up one or two additional injury worries as well,.... then you could be in Free Hit territory.

But that was a situation you should have been able to anticipate the approach of, and taken earlier action to avoid. And even if that is where you find yourself,.... you might still be better off spending as many 'hits' as you need to in order to fill all the holes in your starting eleven; or compromising a little and accepting that you may just have to field a side one or two men short this week.

Because.... in Gameweek 34, the FA Cup Semi-Finals are going to wipe out four games from the league programme that weekend, not just two. The line-up probably wasn't quite as easy to predict as it was with the League Cup finalists. And the qualifiers were confirmed with only a little more advance warning; in fact, quite a lot less effective warning, very little time to save up any extra free transfers - because there are now no further Premier League gameweeks for the next three weeks. On that weekend at the end of April, we'll be missing City and Arsenal again, but also Chelsea and Liverpool, and West Ham and Leeds. Now, as it happens, probably no-one in FPL owns any West Ham or Leeds players at the moment, and not very many from Chelsea or Liverpool. But still, it's likely to be a significantly worse disruption than this week - and it might have been even worse.

Moreover, so close to the end of the season, and with the likelihood of Double Gameweeks in close proximity - probably, hopefully shortly afterwards - you really don't want to be messing your squad up with a lot of short-term changes at that point. You might be able to avoid the catastrophic impact of so  many missing players in that Gameweek with saved transfers and 'hits', but.... you're probably going to want most or all of those players back in immediately - which is going to cost even more transfers.

However difficult this looming Blank Gameweek may be to survive without the Free Hit, you should try to do so,... because Gameweek 34 is assuredly gong to be way worse, for at least 95% of us.

Signs an FPL manager doesn't know what they're doing

I pointed out last week that it is misguided - morally reprensible, and usually unhelpful anyway! - to copy selection ideas from the teams of FPL managers who appear to be doing well. Even a genuinely smart manager rarely has his squad exactly the way he'd like it. And a squad that's been successful in recent weeks, or even for the whole season thus far,... really has no more chance (or not very much more) of doing well in the upcoming gameweeks than a randomly chosen selection. Things change constantly in FPL; and no-one can foresee the future. So - looking at what other people have done in the past is really of very little help.   Don't do it!

In fact, you can probably derive more benefit from critiquing the teams/squads of recently successful managers (because, as I said in that post last week, just about nobody's squad is ever 'perfect'). You may even find it consoling when you start to recognise that most of the people doing really well (particularly in the global league; but really, in any of the very big leagues, for clubs, countries, broadcasters, etc.) aren't really all that insightful, after all; they've just been very lucky with a lot of their picks;... but they're also usually making an awful lot of basic errors, which might eventually cost them their present eminence in the rankings (though, in a league of hundreds of thousands or of millions, there will inevitably be quite large numbers of people who manage to continue to be unreasonably lucky for most of the season...).

Here, then, are my....

Top Ten 'Red Flags' that show an FPL Manager isn't really much good

1)  Having David Raya in goal

This isn't a criticism of David Raya; he just happens to be the most conspicuous recent example of a more general phenomenon (Raya is, for the second season running, the most popular keeper in FPL - despite not actually being the highest points-scoring one...). People want the 'security' of going for a very consistent keeper with a high-performing club who'll keep a lot of clean sheets. But there are all sorts of reasons why this is almost never a good idea (I went into the David Raya example in much more detail here). It's not just Raya: it's any keeper from a top club - there's no good reason for choosing Alisson or Donnarumma either. Goalkeepers at top clubs tend to be expensive; but there isn't that much of a spread of points returns across keepers, so even the very best of them won't usually give you many more points than the second or third or fourth best - and one of those is likely to be much cheaper. Keepers at the best defensive sides rarely end up being amongst the top-returning FPL keepers anyway, because you earn better returns from saves and bonus points than from clean sheets. [OK, Raya is actually in first place at the moment; but mainly because he's played at least one more game than everyone else. There are a number of others who are running him pretty close ovreall, and have done better than him over runs of games.] Even if a keeper like Raya (or Donnarumma, etc.) does end up being the top returning keeper by some margin, you could almost certainly still have got even more points from a pair of cheaper keepers with good fixture-difficulty rotation. But the most powerful argument of all is that of 'club differential' advantage: in a club with a lot of good players, the keeper isn't likely to give you as much of a points-lift over his near rivals (even if he is the No. 1 overall) as some of his defenders or attacking players will. This season, Gabriel, Timber and Rice have all been much more valuable picks from Arsenal than Raya.

2)  Not having a decent back-up keeper

Even Raya (or Alisson or Donnarumma, etc.) won't be a good bet for a clean sheet against every opponent. And every keeper may pick up a knock for a week or two, or suffer a token rotation once or twice at the latter end of the season. You really need a decent second keeper that you can utilise as necessary. And, as I just explained above, in most years you're much better off going with two decent mid-priced keepers who enjoy convenitent rotation around the most challenging opponents.

3)  Carrying 'dead wood' on the bench

Even at the start of the season, when budget is tight,... it is a dangerous false economy to have non-players on your bench; they'll quickly land you in hot water if you get a few injuries/suspensions, and no longer have any extra men spare to bring in to cover an unexpected rotation. And they tend to deplete your squad value, rather than grow it. Having a full and strong bench becomes even more important as the season goes on - particularly in the bleak midwinter months when we're often hit by multiple last-minute injuries and surprise rotations almost every week, and often need to call on automatic substitutions to fill out our starting eleven. There are occasions when you may wish to - or have to - carry a player on the bench for a week, maybe even a few weeks (a top player, a player who's increased a lot in value since you first acquired him, may simply lose you too much squad value through the dreaded 'transfer tax'; if you sell him, you might not be able to afford to buy him back); but in general, an injured player (or a player who's no longer getting regular starts, or is clearly in very poor form) is a liability - and you need to get them out of your squad straight away. FPL managers who frequently have an injured player (or two, or three!) on their bench, often a player who's been out for a week or two already, and isn't expected back any time soon,.... don't know what they're doing.

4)  Being too 'template'

Now, I dislike the notion of the 'template'; I think that, like many of FPL's irksome buzzwords, it is ill-defined and over-used. People seem to develop the exaggerated notion that there is, at any given time, a single 'best eleven' - that almost everybody owns. In fact, of course, selection decisions are never that clearcut: there's usually a pool of at least 30 or 40 most popular players who form the bulk - but almost never quite all - of most people's squads. And the thing is, popularity does not equate perfectly to quality; with many picks, there's a kind of collective hysteria, a mass stupidity behind them (the 'sheep pick' phenomenon I so often criticise on here). Many of the 'most popular' players are actually quite misguided selections, poor picks. And emerging talents, less well-known players who are just starting to hit useful form, will, at first, generally only be recognised by relatively small numbers of more astute football-watchers. Any FPL manager whose squad consists entirely of the obviously most popular players of the moment... is probably not really all that good.

5)  Having too many long-term holds

The essence of the game is that you have to rotate constantly, to try to find the players in the very best form for a short run of games at a time. Getting a player like Salah last year or Palmer the year before, who'll return high points again and again with remarkable consistency across the entire season,... is a freakishly rare event. There are rarely more than two or three players a year who come anywhere near to justifying long-term inclusion; in many seasons, there will be none. Any team/squad that's had a large number of its players unchanged for a long period.... probably isn't much good.

6)  Having a weak midfield

The midfield is where most of the points come from. Midfielders get more points for a goal than forwards, can more easily earn the new 'defensive points' than either defenders or forwards (although fairly few are actually the right profile of player to do so regularly), get a free extra point for a team 'clean sheet', and tend to be more likely to register assists and pick up bonus points as well. And a good many of them are really 'forwards' generously misclassified by the game as 'midfielders' (Semenyo, Mbeumo, Cunha, Trossard, Saka, Gordon), or at least fairly free-scoring advanced midfielders who might be expected to score nearly as often as a good centre-forward. Even in this untypically low-scoring season, this awful, awful season in which so many of the usual big producers in midfield have disappointed,.... 12 out of the top 24 FPL points-returners are midfielders. There is no excuse for going light in the mdfield, even - especially! - in the 'fifth seat'. The fourth and fifth midfield slots, in fact, are potentially the most valuable in the entire squad, and the ones you should be concentrating on rotating the most often - to get the most points from them.

7)  Having too many (any) safe-and-steady picks

With few attacking midfielders producing really well this year, while many defensive midfielders have had their points returns buoyed by the new 'defensive points' (but also by their scoring rather more goals than usual this season...), there has been a temptation for a lot of FPL managers to go for more seemingly 'dependable' options - like Declan Rice, Elliot Anderson, or James Garner. And indeed, players like these (and Enzo Fernandez and Casemiro and Ryan Gravenberch too) are in the Top 20 midfield points-producers at the moment. But.... only Rice is in the Top 5. And while there is something very reassuring about a player like this who'll give you a fairly steady drip-drip-drip of points, rather than many big gameweek hauls,... you really need to be chasing those big hauls! You really need to be looking to earn a minimum of around 6 points per game from every member of your starting eleven; and since it's almost impossible to get that from your keeper and defenders, even with hyper-efficient rotation, and since (as just mentioned in the previous point in this post) midfield is where most of the points come from, you really ought to be aspiring to more like 7 points per game from all 5 of your midfield slots; almost no single player ever achieves those sorts of numbers over a season - you have to rotate through the most in-form players. Those central defensive midfielders are only yielding 4.0-4.5 points per game; even the oustanding Rice is only producing about 5.5 points per game; that's just not enough to justify having even one of them in the squad as a season-long hold. Yet this year, many managers can be found with two or three of them; they don't know what they're doing. Almost every week you have one of these players in your squad, you're losing 1 or 2 or 3 points to someone who's making better use of rotations in these positions. [It doesn't only happen with more defensive midfielders; they just happen to be the obvious example this season. Last year many people were impressed with Morgan Rogers's excellent debut season with Villa; they bought him at the start of the year, because he was cheap, and held on to him all the way through, because he was mostly delivering decent points with a fair amount of consistency. But he only managed a season total of about 160 points: not anywhere near enough for a season-long hold!!]

8)  Too often starting four or five defenders

Related to the two points above about the paramountcy of optimising points returns from the midfield, a further sign of weakness in this area is the number of FPL managers who are regularly starting four or even five defenders. Yes, defenders have got a very useful little lift to their returns this year from the new 'defensive points'; and midfielders and forwards have, on the whole, been slightly disappointing. But still, we only see 2 defenders (both from Arsenal, of course) in the current Top 10 FPL points producers - and only another 7 in the next 20. And it's actually even worse than this; because defenders tend to start nearly every game (as long as they're fit); and, as I just observed in the previous point about defensive midfielders, they tend to be relatively slow and steady in their returns. They might constitute one-in-three of the best points-returners over the season, but they probably quite rarely manage to be one-in-four or one-in-five of the top points producers over any short run of games. There will certainly be occasions when especially favourable fixtures for your defenders and/or form or injury issues affecting some of your more advanced players may make it a smart choice to start four, or sometimes even five defenders. But such occasions will be fairly rare - the exception rather than the rule. FPL managers who are doing it every week (even this season, when the usual massive differential between defenders and more advanced players has been considerably eroded) are just pissing away points.

9)  Having too many double-ups and treble-ups

Taking too many players from the same club fails to spread risk: it leaves you dangerously over-exposed to negative impacts from an unexpectedly bad performance from that club - or to that club having a blank gameweek. And, frankly, there aren't usually many clubs who are good enough all around to justify taking three players from them. If your squad isn't drawn from at least 7 clubs, ideally 8 or 9 or 10, you're probably storing up trouble for yourself.

10)  Having obviously 'sentimental' picks

Being swayed by one's emotions and personal preferences is one of the greatest dangers in the game of FPL. Whenever you see a manager who has three players from a club who aren't in very good form at the moment (looking at you, Liverpool), you can be fairly confident that this manager is a fan of the club - and is making selections with his heart, not his brain. Such emotional biases can relate to individual players, and/or to previous experience in FPL, as well as to real-world club loyalties. People who have Salah in their squads this year are obviously idolaters who can't get over their admiration and gratitude for all the points he's delivered over the last several years. Sometimes, too, these emotional influences can work in a purely negative way: anyone who doesn't have any Arsenal defenders in their squad, despite their massive dominance this year, is obviously prejudiced against the club - and that prejudice is harming their FPL choices.

And  a couple more quick 'bonus' ones to finish with....  

You usually have to go digging around in a manager's history a bit to discover this (unless they happen to have played a chip in the current week you're looking at), but how they've used their chips can be very instructive. If they've played a Bench Boost in a week when some of their players had quite tough fixtures, and one or two were even doubtful starters, then they're not very good. If they often use their Wildcards quite early in the window, and sometimes to make only three or four changes with them, then they're not very good.

And of course,.... it's A VERY BAD SIGN if you find that a manager obviously hasn't thought ahead about a major hazard in the game. At the moment, for instance, top sides Arsenal and Manchester City have a Blank Gameweek this weekend, because they're playing each other in the League Cup Final (and their scheduled league opponents, Wolves and Crystal Palace, are also missing a fixture). This has been known for some weeks now; but many FPL managers are behaving as though they are completely blindsided by it. There is no very good reason for being trebled-up on either Arsenal or City at the moment (though many, it seems, are trebled-up on both); and even less reason to have any Palace or Wolves players (though a few might still have Dean Henderson, or one of his defenders, from the period earlier in the season when they were returning good points; and perhaps some might still have one or two Wolves players that they brought in for their Double Gameweek a few weeks back). But if you had high exposure to this Blank, you should have been moving out surplus players already, or at leat saving up transfers, so that you could move out as many players as necessary this week (and, hopefully, bring them back, if you want to, as soon as possible thereafter). People who are being panicked into using their Free Hit this week (which will surely be far more needful for most people in the bigger Blank Gameweek caused by the FA Cup Semi-Finals in Gameweek 34), or find themselves having to burn lots of 'hits' in order to put out a full starting eleven,.... just didn't think ahead. And that's BAD FPL management.

All of these points should be pretty clearcut and uncontentious. Yet, somehow, many FPL managers seem to ignore them, or even to be in stubborn denial about them - even the supposedly 'good' managers.

Go on, take a careful look at the teams of any of the online FPL 'gurus' or 'experts'; or at those of any of the top 5,000 or 10,000 or whatever in the current global rankings. I guarantee you that almost every one of them will betray some of these telltales of fundamental incompetence in the game.

How did the Free Hit work out this weekend??

I've seen various figures online suggesting that between 1 and 1.5 million FPL managers might have played their first Triple Captain chip on Erling Haaland in this Gameweek 13 just past (although I don't think FPL has released an official total yet; these are all probably just estimates; I'm rather surprised that the number isn't much higher). But a very significant number of people - probably some hundreds of thousands at the very least - opted to play their Free Hit chip instead.

Did that work out for them??

Well, of course, your mileage will vary....

But on the whole, I'd venture.... NO.

Many GW13 Free Hitters online are just comparing themselves to the disastrous Haaland Triple Captain play. Of course, anything was better than that.

But that's not how these things work. You have to compare like with like (Triple Captain option against Triple captain option, Free Hit against Free Hit): how did the GW13 Haaland Triple Captain play work out compared to other gameweeks in which you might have used (or could still use) the chip on him, or on another high-scoring player; and how well did the Free Hit work out this weekend - in terms of the points-lift it gave you over the team you had anyway - in comparison to other gameweeks in which you might play it?

Quite a few people who did well from their Free Hit this gameweek have posted scores up in the mid-60s and low 70s, which is pretty good for this (very low-scoring) week. But as I scan around my leagues, I don't find the upper reaches of this week's ranking dominated by Free Hitters. A lot of people got scores in the 70s with their regular team. (And a lot of people don't even bother to do this elementary calculation. If their Free Hit team returned a pretty respectable points total, they feel satisfied with that; and they don't go to the trouble of working out what their regular team would have got - much less factoring in the possible impact of one or two regular transfers to improve that regular team for this set of fixtures. If your Free Hit squad didn't actually give you any more points than your unchanged squad might have done, then it was a bust!)

In order to get good returns from the Free Hit (or Bench Boost) chip - at least in general terms, for the majority of people playing it in a particular gameweek, rather than for just a few execeptionally lucky managers - you need plenty of high-scoring players and plenty of good player returns and match results that were fairly readily predictable. 

And, unfortunately, this gameweek just didn't turn out like that: a lot of matches followed an unexpected course. Brentford eventually got an anticipated 'big win' against Burnley, but really had to struggle for it, and all the goals only came very late in the game; City nearly lost to Leeds, Bournemouth did lose to Sunderland, and Spurs and Palace both lost at home to less formidable opponents, while Villa and Liverpool were lucky to beat their bottom-of-the-table opponents at all, and didn't rack up the margin of victory expected. Even Newcastle weren't predicted to get a win away from home, let alone a big win, against the usually defensively strong Everton. And almost no-one managed to keep a clean sheet.

So, most teams didn't get the sort of results that were generally expected, and few players returned particularly good hauls. In fact, of the most fancied players - both among existing selections and among those transferred in on a Free Hit - almost no-one produced a good return this week; most of them blanked. Only a few members of the 'Team of the Week' have any significant ownership, and probably weren't any more popular in Free Hit selections than they are in existing squads (while the best of this week's forwards, Igor Thiago, was in a lot of squads already, without a Free Hit).

So, unfortunately, this turned out not to be a great week for the Free Hit - because it wasn't easy to anticipate who would bring in good points, not very many players did bring in really good points; and there wasn't any major difference in points returns between 'Free Hit players' and 'regular team players' in this frustrating gameweek with such exceedingly low average scores.

That does not mean it was a bad week in which to choose to play the Free Hit. The combination of fixtures did look promising for it. But the eccentric and unexpected game outcomes and the low points returns from most of the more fancied players meant that it ended up being a bad week to have played it in - for most people. (But it might still prove to be better than nothing; it might yet end up having been the least worst option in a bunch of gameweeks that will all disappoint in various ways!)

There were, however, (as there usually are!) a few player choices that worked out pretty well - if you didn't have them already, but brought them in on a Free Hit. It's the managers who lucked into these picks who enjoyed the 70+ points returns on their Free Hit play this week. 

Liverpool, Villa, and Brighton were the only teams to keep clean sheets (rather unexpectedly, and in the case of the first two, really rather luckily), so taking a keeper or defenders from any of those three teams worked out well. Aston Villa seemed to be a particularly popular choice among the Free Hitters; although Rogers and Malen didn't work out for them, while Martinez and Cash did.

Cody Gakpo and Phil Foden were also strangely popular Free Hit choices - despite having shown few indications of likely FPL points-scoring in recent games; Foden, in particular, often now being played in a slightly deeper role, had recorded a long string of blanks and often been fairly anonymous in City's games in the past couple of months. But they both came up with goals - goals their sides scarcely deserved on the balance of play, goals in added-on time. That's LUCK right there! There was no compelling rationale for including either of those two players in a Free Hit selection. Honestly, they looked obviously rather less tempting picks than teammates of theirs in the most impressive form recently - Doku, Cherki, Szoboszlai. Brentford's Dango Ouattara was also up there among the week's most successful Free Hit picks; but there was a stronger rationale for fancying him against a defensively frail team like Burnley, especially given Brentford's strong recent home form - although, again, Schade or Damsgaard might have seemed the more promising midfield options from that club (and many FPL managers will have had one of those three already).

So, people who'd gone for Villa (or Liverpool or Brighton) defensive assets and Foden and/or Gakpo and/or Ouattara with their Free Hit changes did pretty nicely for themselves with the chip in Gameweek 13. But they were a fairly small minority. And even they didn't do conspicuously any better than a large number of good non-Free Hitters.

On balance, a Free Hit play this weekend certainly wasn't the abject disaster that the Haaland Triple Captaincy was, but.... that's damning with faint praise. It really didn't work out at all well either.

A 'mini Free Hit' as well as a 'mini Wildcard'??

 

FPL's unnecessarily generous gift of extra Free Transfers in Gameweek 16 (another pointless innovation this year, supposedly meant to ease the possible impact of departures for the African Cup of Nations - although that has never been a big issue in FPL; and this year, it's a complete non-event, as no-one with any sense currently has any African players other than Bryan Mbeumo) is effectively a mini-Wildcard, enabling us to undertake a modest squad rebuild in mid-December.

However, it must be noted that this is not a gift of a fixed number of transfers (5), but only a top-up - to a maximum number of 5 Free Transfers. Hence, in order to take full advantage of it, you have to use up any existing Free Transfers you have in Gameweek 15 (e.g., if you still have 2 saved transfers going into GW16, you only get 3 new ones, to bring you up to the total of 5 all told).

I quite like the idea of trying to save up some transfers over the next few gameweeks (though that might not be possible, as injuries tend to come thick and fast at this time of year!), so that you can play 2 or 3 together in Gameweek 15 - perhaps even the full quota of 5 FTs in one fell swoop, if you're already carrying forward some saved ones. 

Since you'll have the opportunity for a similar big shake-up in the very next gameweek, with the AFCON Christmas present, this could be a one-week-only revision of your team - in effect, an extra Free Hit! 

But as this would only be a 'virtual' Free Hit, not the actual chip, you would be able to to play another chip that week. And as I said the other week, Gameweek 15 is a moderately promising prospect for a Bench Boost play, with a number of unbalanced fixtures you might want to exploit. (Although it's a bit of a risky bet for that chip, as there may be a high risk of fatigue, injury absences, or sudden rest rotations in what is the third gameweek scheduled within 7 days.)  Even for just the starting eleven, though, it's an unusual group of fixtures where you could benefit from putting out a one-off custom team. And 'optimizing' for this gameweek opportunity with saved transfers would enable you to hang on to your actual Free Hit (well, assuming you've still got it...) as insurance against a possible game-postponement emergency later in the month.  Something to think about.

Free Hit opportunity?

 

I mentioned yesterday that there were some tempting opportunities to play the first Free Hit coming up over the final month-and-a-bit of this first half of the season (although you might want to 'keep your powder dry' and just hang on to it until GW19 in case of a game-postponement emergency caused by bad weather...).

The problem is that gameweeks that look promising for one bonus chip usually look good for the others too (in fact, I already covered why the sets of fixtures in some of the upcoming gameweeks are attractive for either a Bench Boost or Free Hit play).

But probably the most appealing option of the lot for a Free Hit would be the imminent Gameweek 13. There are a number of teams we wouldn't normally fancy who are this week playing what look like much weaker sides: Villa playing Wolves, Brentford playing Burnley, City playing Leeds, Liverpool playing West Ham, and Spurs playing Fulham (although the last two are perhaps rather questionable, given Liverpool's and Spurs's recent form!). Moreover, you might want to avoid having players from the top-of-the-table clash between Chelsea and Arsenal, which might end up being close and cagey, and is certainly quite hard to call. Crystal Palace v Manchester United, Everton v Newcastle, Nottingham Forest v Brighton, and Sunderland v Bournemouth are also quite tough to predict the outcomes of, and so perhaps better avoided if you have the chance to do so. That's what a prime Free Hit set of fixtures typically looks like.

Unfortunately,.... Erling Haaland against Leeds has to be the most attractive prospect in the first-half of the season for playing the Triple Captain chip. And so, that is likely to take priority this week for the majority of FPL managers. 

Nobody but Haaland is scoring points almost every week, and often producing big points - so, there really is no other sensible option for this chip. (Eze isn't likely to repeat this Sunday's performance again this season, if only because no other opponent is likely to play as badly against Arsenal as Spurs did here!) And the only alternative remaining time to play the chip on Haaland is Gameweek 17, when he's turning out against against West Ham at The Etihad. West Ham, though, are starting to show signs of improvement under Nuno, and are now probably a rather stronger opponent than Leeds (they weren't just a few weeks ago, but things change). Also, that's rather a long time to wait: the lanky Viking might have picked up an injury or lost form by then!

So,... if you still have all three of the bonus chips in hand, it looks like Gameweek 13 is the best bet for the Triple Captain; and you may then be left flipping a coin to decide how to split the Free Hit and Bench Boost between Gameweeks 15 and 17 - or maybe GW16 for the BB, when the fixtures are perhaps not quite so attractive, but you will have the advantage of an 'optimum set-up' thanks to the '5 Free Transfers' early Christmas present we're getting for the start of AFCON. [In fact, given that GW15 is the third set of league fixtures inside a week, there's a high risk you might be hit by a slew of injuries, or likely rest rotations, or players whose form is impaired by fatigue. If you know about those problems in advance, and they are numerous, you might be able to dodge around them with the Free Hit. But such issues might ambush you only after the gameweek deadline, which probably makes it rather too risky a week to play the Bench Boost in: the absolute essential for a good return from that chip is 15 fit players all starting for you. So, for me, it's looking like GW16 or 17 would be optimal for the BB;... and Free Hit any time you feel like it,... or feel that you need it!] 

BEST OF LUCK!!!

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 thare 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.

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, wtihout 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 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.]

Upcoming prospects for Bench Boost (and Free Hit!)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dilemmas of the Week - Gameweek 4 (25/26)

  

Gameweek 3 (seems a long time ago now, doesn't it?) saw quite a few irksome new injuries, to add to all the other early-season uncertainties of flakey form, less-than-100% fitness, and erratic team selection that so plague us early in the season. Now, we've got to face the further imponderables of possibly disrupted line-ups and evolving tactics because of the flood of new transfers this year. Many players returning from international duty may be a little fatigued, or carrying slight knocks - yet will still turn out for their club this weekend, despite being far below their best. And, of course, there's the perennial hazard in these fixtures that many of the South American players will be rested simply because they've had such a long flight back only a couple of days before the next fixture. Plus, of course, the usual pattern of regular team training and tactical preparation has been interrupted by the two-week international break, so any form we may have thought we'd seen emerging in the opening weeks is now out of the window - and we're effectively starting the season again from scratch. And yet.... some people (rather a lot, by the look of it!) are still playing their Wildcard this week!!!  (Others, even more daft, are tossing away their Free Hit - in what is probably one of the most flakey, topsy-turvy, unpredictable weekends of the whole season - when we just don't have any confidence in exactly who's going to start, let alone who's going to play well.)

I'm trying to streamline these weekly round-ups a bit from last year, restricting myself for the most part to just the injuries etc. affecting players that are likely to have a major significance in FPL; and also, of course, only to new injuries - I figure everyone should be aware of players who've already been ruled out for some time!  

[For some years, I have found the 'Injuries & Bans' summary on Fantasy Football Scout the most reliable resource for this kind of information; although this site, Premier League Injuries, is a very good alternative (often a little quicker to update, I think - though it did go through a bit of a glitchy period for a while last year).  Go check these out for more comprehensive coverage. 

I see the Fantasy Premier League site has added an improved 'Player Availability' page this year (though hidden under 'The Scout' tab?!). That also seems to be reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date, but god knows how it's supposed to be 'organised' - maybe by 'date of injury'? Obviously, arranging it by club and alphabetical order would be more sensible; but the denizens of FPL Towers seem to have a deep aversion to the sensible.]

So, what are the conundrums we face ahead of Gameweek 4 of the new season?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

William Saliba, who had appeared to pick up a hamstring problem early in the last league game against Liverpool, was apparently just feeling too much discomfort in the ankle he'd sprained slightly in the warm-up (is deliberate misdirection on injuries via play-acting also part of Arteta's policy now?); he has done some training since, and might be straight back in this week. Martin Odegaard should definitely be back, after good performances with Norway this week. Ben White also appears to be fit again; although Jurrien Timber has done so well in his absence that he might not immediately get the start back.

Adam Smith, who'd been looking so good at right-back for Bournemouth so far this season, did pick up a hamstring problem in the last game and will be out for some weeks. That is starting to leave Bournemouth stretched a bit thin at the back, and probably undermines the team's prospects in the next few fixtures.

Liam Delap also pulled a hamstring last time out against Fulham (muscle injuries are especially common early in the season, when players are pushing themselves a bit too hard when not quite fully fit), and is expected to be out for at least 10-12 weeks. Tyrique George or Marc Guiu (hastily recalled from loan at Sunderland) might deputise for him - providing the opportunity of a very cheap starting option for the third forward slot. In brighter news, Cole Palmer rejoined training with Chelsea on Thursday on Friday, and Maresa will make a last-minute decision whether he can be used for the game against Brentford; I'd guess he'll at least get some minutes off the bench.

Adam Wharton (apparently a recurrence of the earlier problem he'd only just recovered from) and Ismaila Sarr also had to withdraw with muscle injuries in the match against Villa - though neither are apparently too serious, and it is hoped they might be back before the end of the month.

Vitaliy Mykolenko, only just back from a lengthy absence, picked up a knock while training with Ukraine and is now a doubt again. So too is talismanic attacker Iliman Ndiaye, who suffered a knock while away with Senegal and will now face a late fitness test.

Leeds's Brazilian goalkeeper, Lucas Perri, has pulled a thigh muscle, and is expected to miss the next two weeks. Karl Darlow will deputise: another 4.0-million starter in that position - although those who've gone for the option of a cheap-but-largely-worthless second keeper are probably more than happy with Martin Dubravka. Forward Joel Piroe is doubtful with a slight calf strain - although it seemed his start might be at risk from Dominic Calvert-Lewin anyway.

Curtis Jones is out for this week, at least, having picked up some sort of knock in the match against Arsenal.

Omar Marmoush injured his knee playing for Egypt this week; it doesn't seem too bad, but no definite word on a recovery timeline yet. John Stones also pulled out of the England squad with a knock - though this might have been just one of those 'avoiding international duty' scams. And Rayan Ait-Nouri has an ankle injury from the Brighton game, is likely to be out for 5 or 6 weeks. With Kovacic and Cherki out fairly long-term, and Gvardiol, Foden, and Savinho only just returning to fitness, City are looking stretched a bit thin: there is even talk of Gundogan getting a start in midfield again - which would, I think, be potentially disastrous, even against such a floundering side as Manchester United.

Matheus Cunha had to come off in the first-half against Burnley with a pulled hamstring that looked quite serious. And Mason Mount withdrew at half-time, apparently with a recurrence of his previous long-term injury - so he might also be out for quite a while. Diogo Dalot pulled a muscle in training with Portugal, so will also be missing for a week or two, Paradoxically, I think the combined effect of these absences might actually be positive. Sesko (who has been a doubt for match-fitness, but just managed two full games for Slovenia, so ought to be OK to at least start) could finally slot into the No. 9 role (which neither Cunha nor Mbeumo like or thrive in), Bruno Fernandes will presumably have to take over the 'joint 10' role from Mount, where he'll be much more effective, Amad Diallo might now get at least a short run of starts at right wing-back, where he can be transformative for the team's attacking options (although the more defensively-minded Mazraoui might be preferred against City), and Ugarte or Mainoo will have to come into central midfield to support the canny but ponderously slow Casemiro - all good. (This is what you get when you make a bunch of glamorous signings who don't really fit your needs: you try to crowbar them in, and unbalance the whole team....)

Yoane Wissa is yet another who picked up an injury while with his national team (I'm surprised he was considered fit for call-up, after keeping himself out of team training this season). Jacob Ramsey, newly signed from Villa, also picked up an injury immediately on arriving at Newcastle. On the plus side, Joelinton might be just about ready to play again, after a few weeks out with a muscle strain; and Eddie Howe has said that their other new forward signing, Nick Woltemade, could be ready to go straight away.

Ola Aina pulled his hamstring playing for Nigeria; unclear yet how serious that is.

Niclas Fullkrug is a doubt for West Ham with a slight calf strain, and Graham Potter has expressed doubts about how many minutes Callum Wilson can handle.

Jorgen Strand Larsen is suffering with a sore Achilles, and could be out for some time.

Do we have any players who are dropped, or not looking likely to get the starts we hoped for?

Oleks Zinchenko is only on loan with Forest, and so ineligible to play against Arsenal this week.

Anthony Gordon is serving the second instalment of a three-match ban.

Several players could be sidelined, or see their minutes considerably reduced, by some of the new transfer window arrivals - most notably Hugo Ekitike and/or Cody Gakpo at Liverpool (and knock-on effects through the rest of the line-up might see increased rotation between Szoboslai, Macallister, and Wirtz too). However, that shouldn't become an issue for a while: Alexander Isak clearly isn't anywhere near match-fit yet, after absenting himself from training all season; and Arne Slot has said that he can't be expected to play 90 minutes for a few weeks yet, at least. I'd be surprised if he even makes the bench this week against Burnley.

Altay Bayindir seems very likely to be replaced in goal at Manchester United by new Belgian signing, Senne Lammens, but perhaps not straight away. (And the much reviled Andre Onana has, of course, left on loan to Trabzonspor in Turkey.) 

With many of the new signings, even where their fitness is not an issue, having arrived close to - or after the start of - the international break, they've had hardly any opportunity yet to train with their new teams, and so probably aren't going to be tactically up-to-speed enough for an immediate start. 

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

Manchester City have looked so flakey thus far (even the 'comfortable' win against Wolves wasn't as comfortable as all that; the game might have swung the other way if Wolves had been able to make some of their breakaways count), and are getting so stretched by injuries that I really wouldn't fancy any of their players at the moment.

And with Crystal Palace, you have to worry how they will adapt to the loss of Ebere Eze - particularly with their two next best creative players, Wharton and Sarr, also missing at the moment. If their attacking threat evaporates, their defence is likely to come under much more pressure too - and maybe it won't hold up.

A lot of FPL managers are also panicking about how the ousting of Nuno Espiritu Santo may unsettle Nottingham Forest; and especially about the possibility that his replacement, Ange Postecoglou, will undermine their previous defensive solidity (he did rather get himself the reputation at Spurs of obstinately chasing 4-3 wins....!). The more immediate worries for me are Nikola Milenkovic, who lacks the pace to cope well with maintaining a very high defensive line, as Ange usually likes, and could either get dropped completely, or find himself often having to commit professional fouls to thwart breakaways, and risk yellow or red cards; and also Chris Wood, who's probably too old and slow to lead the vigorous high press that is also a hallmark of Ange's style. Don't say you weren't warned. However, I thnk it's ridiculously over-hasty to be dropping anyone straight away (particularly with Burnley and Sunderland up next as opponents after this week's visit to The Emirates): and players like Sels, Murillo, Aina, and Ndoye might still prove to be decent long-term holds.

And I'm a bit wary of Arsenal at the moment: they've really been pretty unimpressive so far - and with Saka and Havertz out for a while, Odegaard only just back from a short absence with a shoulder injury, White and Saliba slight doubts at the back, Gyokeres still finding his feet, and newly-arrived Eze presumably set to be replacing Martinelli (probably an overall improvement, but nevertheless disruptive in the short term), and three more tricky fixtures up next.... I wouldn't be in a rush to have any of their players for FPL.

West Ham's rather lucky win against an out-of-sorts Forest last time didn't really suggest any major turnaround in form or self-belief; and they'd still be my favourites among the established Premier League clubs to make room for one of the promoted teams to survive this time - and also favourite for an early change of manager.

Manchester United - although I fancy their prospects a little better with the likely changes of lineup forced on them by injuries this week - have looked an absolute mess so far: they have no functional central midfield, can't decide who they want to use as their wing-backs, and their expensive new forward-line just hasn't been clicking at all. I really think Amorim needs to go as soon as possible, to save them from another season of floundering in lower mid-table. Nuno's available!

And although the three promoted sides have all got off to a fairly lively start, and picked up more points than they could have anticipated, none of them have yet done enough to persuade that they're likely to be able to stay up. So, I would avoid-like-the-plague any players from Sunderland, Burnley, or Leeds.... at least for a while longer.

That really narrows the player pool down A LOT. And with so many likely favourite picks - Saka, Palmer, Cunha - out injured, we have to cast the net wide through the more 'fringe' players we might not usually consider.

In gameweeks like this, there is also aways a grave risk that South American international players will be rested, or get only short minutes, because they've had to endure such a very long flight back across the Atlantic - usually only getting back, stiff and jet-lagged, a couple of days before their next Premier League game.

Moreover, the main phase of the Champions League kicks off this week with games over Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings, and it is likely that teams may seek to protect their most important players with limited minutes or a complete rest ahead of those. That's particularly likely for Liverpool (facing Atletico Madrid), Chelsea (v. Bayern Munich), Manchester City (v. Napoli),... and Newcastle (v. Barcelona!!).

We just don't know who's going to start, who's going to get pulled off early, or who's going to play well this week. We'll all be lucky if we have 11 starting players in our squad. It is an utterly, utterly MAD week to be playing a chip in.

Did anyone play so well, you have to consider bringing them in immediately?

Well, an awful lot of players were banging in the goals for fun in the internationals over this past week or so; but most of those fixtures were so unbalanced that that doesn't really count for much.

And Gameweek 3 is a bit too distant now - especially with hardly any club training happening since - to use as a reliable guide. Everton have been looking very good so far, particularly Ndiaye, Grealish, and Dewsbury-Hall. And Dominik Szoboszlai has been outstanding at right-back for Liverpool (he would have been my pick for 'Player of the Month' - though it actually went to Grealish), but might now perhaps be rested (with the likely return to availability of Conor Bradley and Jeremie Frimpong), or be moved back into central midfield, where he might have a more constrained role.

For the rest, we'll just have to wait and see. The week after an international break is impossible to predict, full of surprises (most of them unpleasant!).

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!