Nice, while it lasted

 

It's not long ago that I was boosting DAZN's streaming service for the Club World Cup games, complimenting how fast, sharp, and trouble-free I'd been finding it.

Of course, all good things must come to an end. For the past week, their stream has been unusably crappy for the live games, and I've been having to make do with short highlight reels only. Bah!

There are three likely reasons for this: 1) DAZN's capacity is getting stretched by increasing demand, as the tournament starts to attract more attention and excitement; 2) DAZN is deliberately degrading its free streams to try to goad people into paying for a subscription; or 3) It's just that the Internet in general can sometimes be a bit useless in my country of residence - to which I have just returned after a long 'working holiday'.

I suspect it's a combination of all of these. 

Then again, it might just be that the Internet service at the two guesthouses I've been staying in has been particularly poor... (Although I appear to be the only guest at the place I'm in at the moment. And I don't think the manager - heavy though his TikTok addiction is - can be maxing out the bandwidth on his own!)  I must hope that things may improve again when I finally return to my own home this afternoon.

[Well, thank heavens, things are again tickety-boo in the old homestead. Turns out the small but very touristy town I was staying in a few days ago has a notoriously ropey Internet service.

However, DAZN have been getting a bit grumpy about people enjoying their 'free stuff' too much. The annoying pop-ups goading you to subscribe have become a bit more frequent - as has the exasperating tactic of hiding the free content in amongst a whole bunch of paid options that appear identical. Moreover, I found a couple of times when I was being lazy, getting up even after the start of the 'late' game, and long after the 'early' one should have finished, and launching both streams to try to make sure I didn't lose either of them,.... well, they really didn't like that at all. The niggardly bastards started interrupting my feed every couple of minutes - or, even worse, resetting it to the end, forcing me to have to try to scroll all the way back to he point where I'd left off - and occasionally putting up dire warning messages that if I was suffering a terrible streaming experience, it was probably my own fault.... for doing something verboten, like using a VPN, or trying to keep open an expired stream, or using too many streams at once. 

Oh well: what do you want for nothing - rubber biscuit??]

The FOLLY of always looking over your shoulder...

 

Or of fretting needlessly about someone looking over yours....

The FPL forums over this past week have been utterly overrun with people seeking advice on how to clinch a mini-league victory.

My bitterer impulses are to tell them that if they can't make their own unaided selection decisions, they don't deserve to be anywhere near the top of even the shittiest mini-league. But I can sympathise with the anxiety. Very early in the life of this blog, I recognised that mini-leagues are - rightly - the main focus of most FPL managers' aspirations; I think that's useful for maintaining focus and motivation. [As I said back then: Playing against people you know rather than just anonymous netizens puts far more fire in your belly!]

But is there really anything specific you can do to improve your chances against one or two particular opponents?  NO.

The attempt to do so is misguided; more often than not, self-harming.

If 'chasing' - seeking to overtake a rival a short way ahead of you - the tactic of desperation (that's all it is; it does nothing to actually improve your chances of achieving the result you crave) is to focus on choosing as many different players to your opponent's selection as possible; and, usually, such left-field choices that there is little chance your adversary (or many other people at all.....) would think of choosing them!

If defending a fragile lead, people attempt to 'block' by doing the exact opposite, trying to load up on as many of the same players as your opponent as possible - to reduce the scope for 'luck' to operate in the opponent's favour.

Now, there is an argument to be made for either of these approaches - but it is not the one most of their adopters seem to want to believe. 

The first tactic, in particular, may be justified as a last desperate throw-of-the-dice - hut that's all it is. By taking so many wild gambles, so many long shots, you are giving yourself a very small chance of achieving a big return that most others will miss out on; but that comes at the cost of vastly increasing the likelihood of a below-average return for the week. Your chances of a big success with a play like this are infinitesimally small: in every thousand or so of the possible alternate universes, there may be a few where you're a very happy camper; but in the vast majority of all possible universes - including, almost certainly, this one -  you have a miserable week, and drop places rather than gain them.

When 'blocking' a pursuer, the argument in favour only really works if..... a) you have a fairly substantial lead, and b) you can limit the differences in your starting eleven to just 2 or 3 players.

Even then, it's not a terribly convincing ploy, because.... you don't know exactly what you're going to be up against until after the gameweek deadline. Even the most 'similar' teams almost always have at least 2 or 3 different players, usually slightly more. And your opponent has at least one Free Transfer to use. He might surprise you by spending points on one or two additional ones, and making that work for him. He might also make some surprising selections from his bench, or get very lucky with his captaincy pick.

Even if you have restricted him to just 2 or 3 'differentials' in comparison to your starting team, that might still be enough for him to overhaul your lead, if the Fates smile on him. And there is always a chance that he's boosted that 'differential' number to 4 or 5 - or more - with his last week's transfers.

By focusing only on trying to thwart one particular opponent, you will often fail even in that; and you'll almost certainly diminish your squad's overall performance - perhaps even to the point where you might get caught and overtaken by one or two other players who were a long way behind you.

A truly 'optimized' selection is optimized against EVERYONE, not just one other manager.

One forum panicker I saw just now was worried that his antagonist's captaincy pick might prove to be better than his! Yes, indeed it might. And, if there's a small gap between you, that will probably prove decisive. But if you trust your captaincy pick, stick with it. There is no point second-guessing yourself,... or endlessly trying to anticipate what your nemesis might do....

This is a harsh and unfair game: it depends very largely on pure LUCK. There is no point losng sleep about the potential for bad outcomes. You just have to accept that they are possible,... likely; laugh them off when they happen, be duly grateful and relieved when they don't.

The essence of the game is to pick what you think is the best team for the week. You do that in isolation, in a vacuum - relying on your own knowledge and judgement of the EPL teams and players - without reference to what any other FPL managers are doing. You follow that same principle every week, including the final week of the season. And you see what happens.  If a lot of your picks work out, you have a good week. If you have a lot of good weeks, it becomes a good season. But if not,... then you don't. C'est la vie.

You play THE GAME; you don't play individual opponents.

Endgame

 

Gosh, there are only just over 200 hours left before the 2024-25 Premier League season is all wrapped up! The Fat Lady is doing her warm-ups....

Overwhelmed as we've often felt by fatigue and frustration (and a frequent raging sense of injustice....) during the course of this season, we'll miss it when it's finally over....

We see a lot of people on the FPL forums at the moment frantically worrying what they can do to 'improve' their ranking over the last two gameweeks, clinch a mini-league or cup victory....  The answer, alas, is NOTHING. Just keep playing your game, and hope for the best!  People who go desperately 'chasing' points by taking wild gambles usually just shoot themselves in the foot.

If you're already in an impressive rank position - top 100,000, or top 50,000 or top 10,000, or whatever; or near the top of some of your leagues - that's about as good as you can ever hope to get (realistically, it's probably far better than you ever expected at the start of the season; and, very probably, rather better than you've deserved...); so you should be happy with that.... and not still feverishly chasing rainbows.

People who get hung up on hoping for further improvement, when they're already at Icarus altitudes, are probably just setting themselves up for huge disappointment. The upper end of the rankings tend to get pretty strung out; and there probably aren't going to be too many people who achieve significant further rises in rank in those strata over Gameweeks 37 and 38; a good number, in fact probably the majority, will slip back slightly; a good 10% or 20% (mostly the ones who were chasing too hard...) may fall back disastrously, allowing a few late entries into the upper ranks.

Croatia's Lovro Budišin and his team 'Aina Krafth Bree' (is that a pun that only works in Croatian??) are a staggering 43 points clear at the top of the global rankings, so it's pretty unlikely that anyone is now going to displace him as this year's Champion. (He's already been in the No. 1 spot for 6 weeks,... and in the Top Ten for 16 weeks!! That is a freakishly good run of form, even for the Global Champ...)

Top of the leader board -  after GW36

But only 6 other managers are within 20 points of second-place Max Littleproud, so.... there might not be too much movement at the top of the table at all over the coming week.

Only 53 managers have reached 2,600 points for the season so far; another 544 have a score from 2,550 to 2,599. And nearly 4,700 more have reached 2,500 points (an improbably large number, in fact, are currently on exactly 2,500,... and 2,499....).

98,248 managers have already reached 2,400 points - which would, in fact, be an extremely good total for season's end. And this in a season where we've had a lot of unusually low-scoring gameweeks, and a lot of surprises and upsets (City being shit for most of the season, Arsenal being much weaker than last season, Liverpool winning the title at a canter, despite being much less convincing than they were in the Klopp heyday a few years ago...); by rights, you'd expect this to be a below-average scoring season, yet all these folks have still managed to amass absolutely ridiculous points. (There's no accounting for LUCK....)

526,229 managers have reached 2,300 points or better - which I would regard as a very good total with two games left; if on 2,300 now, you should be able to reach 2,400 by the end of the season; and if you still have a bonus chip to play, or can somehow otherwise manage at least one very good gameweek from the last two (and actually, GW38 looks like it could be pretty good for everyone, with a very kind cluster of final fixtures!), you could maybe still get above 2,450. 

2,400+ points - that's pretty AWESOME: that is, in fact, about the best you can achieve on merit alone - anything more than that requires an awful lot of LUCK as well. And there is no point in hoping to be LUCKY.

The LOTTERY

I've joked a few times recently in my weekly roundups that, because of cumulative fatigue, nerves, or complacency, form tends to get more ragged for just about every team in the last few weeks of the season, and game outcomes thus wildly unpredictable. Hence, trying to predict FPL points returns becomes even more of a lottery than usual.

Apparent fixture-difficulty is no longer much of a reliable guide to likely points returns. (We just saw Manchester City held to a goalless draw by [second] worst Premier League team ever, Southampton!) And, basically, any attacking player might produce something between 0 and 3 attacking contributions across a couple of fixtures - regardless of how 'hard' or 'easy' they ought to be. Few, if any, will get any more than that; quite a few of the most fancied options, the biggest names.... will probably blank twice.

With only 2 games left to play - within the space of 7 days (less than 5 days for Palace, City, Wolves, and Bournemouth!), it really is impossible to guess how most of the remaining fixtures are going to pan out. Hence, elective transfers - choosing to swap out a starting player for someone else - at this stage of the season are a huge gamble, particularly if they're to be made at the cost of a 'hit' (although there can be indirect costs even with a Free Transfer, if you then don't have that available to sort out a last-minute injury problem and have to use a 'hit' there instead). It's always very difficult to be confident of recouping that 4-point spend in just one gameweek; but you can sometimes justify it if you foresee likely additional value in the new player over the next 2 or 3 fixtures as well; at the fag-end of the season, that consolation is no longer available to you. You are simply betting that the player you're dropping wouldn't have scored anything, and that the player you're bringing in is bound to score something,.... and should produce more than 4 points more than the guy you're replacing. And that is a VERY BIG BET at any time, but especially amid this end-season climate of increased uncertainty.

The one small kindness the Fantasy Gods have shown us this year is that the final Saturday is full of very unevenly-matched fixtures, so there should be rather more predictability about results than usual then - and the prospect of some good points returns from several leading players. (It's actually looking rather a promising Gameweek to drop the Bench Boost or Triple Captain chips,.... if you've somehow forgotten to play them until now. Even without a chip for that last week, it's probably worth saving up transfers until then.) But even that apparently tempting prospect may turn out to be illusory, just a taunting mirage.

And making elective transfers this week??  GOOD LUCK with that!!

Are you a 'good' FPL manager?

 

How can you judge if you are any good at the game of Fantasy Premier League?

Well, unfortunately, your results do not provide any convincing proof of that, since they are determined at least as much by sheer luck as by 'skill'. If you got a good year-end points total, that might have been more through luck than anything else. And even if you earned that good points total through consistently smart decision-making,.... you are likely to have been outscored by numerous other managers, the majority of whom were merely luckier than you; so, your 'Overall Rank' is really no evidence of anything.

So, I say it's unwise to be too results-focused in this game; instead, you should concentrate on the process of the game - on becoming more self-aware about how you make your decisions, and constantly seeking to improve in that.

Here are the elements that I believe you should look at to determine how good you are at playing Fantasy Premier League:

1)  Do you know the rules?  That might seem very obvious - but it is astonishing how many 'casual' players really don't even know the basics, things like what the 'chips' are, and how transfers work. And really, if you're going to be 'good' at the game, you should know the game rules in detail (not just the key rules, but also the subtler underlying ones like how the bonus points allocations are calculated, and what the ranking tiebreakers are), and you should appreciate their implications (such as that the scoring system is heavily biased in favour of midfield players, and against defenders, and hence 3-5-2 should be the preferred default formation).

2)  Do you know something of the history of the game?  And I mean not just the history of FPL, but the broader history of football, particularly of top-flight English football in the Premier League era. It really does help a lot in understanding what's going on now - and what's likely to happen next - if you have some context for how teams and players have changed and developed over time, what the patterns of form and points-returns over different phases of the season tend to be, and how far exceptional players may out-perform statistical averages. One example I especially like is that, although it's a common superstition in FPL that a Double Gameweek is bound to produce an enormous return for the Triple Captain chip, in fact that only happens occasionally (rather less often than with a well-chosen SGW punt), and a 24-year-old Wayne Rooney is the only player in the entire history of the competition to have achieved a double-digit haul in both games of a double-fixture week (well, until last year, when Jean-Philippe Mateta also managed it - but it is very much a 'Black Swan' Event!).

3)  Do you know the schedule (for the entire footballing year)?  Most people seem to be barely aware of the upcoming fixtures on the next match weekend, and few look at anything more than the next few weeks of match-ups (as listed on FPL's Fixture Difficulty Rating list). But the dates for all rounds of the European and domestic cup competitions are set before the start of the season (and until this year, the Club World Cup had been held in December, and sometimes provided another - small but significant - piece of fixture disruption [in fact, that competition still exists, though now rebranded as the Inter-Continental Cup; so, that could still take away one of our top teams in December, when we've won the Champions League at the end of the preceding season]), and if you look at them alongside the League programme, you can see where fixture logjams will occur, when Blank Gameweeks will happen, and when corresponding Double Gameweeks are likely to happen. Moreover, the African and Asian Cups happen in December/January every two years, removing a lot of top players from EPL competition for a month or so in mid-season; that always seems to catch a lot of FPL managers by surprise - but it really shouldn't.

4)  Do you watch a lot of games?  There really is no substitute for that. You cannot play FPL in isolation, purely as a gambling or statistical analysis exercise (well, many people do; but they rarely do very well...); you should always be basing your Fantasy selections on your own understanding of the game, derived from close observation of matches. Broadly speaking, the more football you watch, the better you will become at FPL. (And it's helpful to watch other games outside the Premier League too; the form and confidence and stamina of players and teams can be greatly affected by how they've performed in other competitions - including international appearances.)

5)  Are you a good judge of a player?  This is the core skill that 'Fantasy' games like ours are intended to test. But even this is not a straightforward, single attribute: it involves being able to assess a player's overall skill-set, their strengths and weaknesses, how they may be likely to develop over the coming season or adapt to changes of personnel around them, how they function in their current team and how well that team suits them; and also, how prone they are to injury, or how resilient and swift to recover from knocks they seem to be; and how variable their form is, and what the key indicators of a positive or negative shift in their form are; and then, of course, understanding how their abilities will translate into likely FPL points returns (many great players, particularly defenders and central midfielders, simply don't offer anything in FPL).

6)  Do you understand tactics?  Tactics have a key impact on game outcomes. And they have become increasingly intricate and subtle in recent years, more highly adaptive in-game or from week-to-week, and more quickly and sometimes radically evolving from season to season (or even within the course of one season - especially at Manchester City!). It is no longer possible to properly evaluate a player's attributes and points-potential (my point 5) above) without a shrewd understanding of how well they thrive with their team's current tactics - and how they might be adversely affected by changes in those tactics,... and how well the tactics are likely to work against the tactical set-ups of upcoming opponents. I do strongly recommend studying up on tactics (viewing some of the excellent tactical analysis channels now appearing on Youtube is an easy way to get started), in order to improve your understanding of the game, and hence improve your FPL performance.

7)  Are you highly numerate?  You don't necessarily have to be a maths prodigy to do well at FPL (though it might help!), but you do have to have a very good general 'number sense' - an easy ability to 'see' proportional relationships between figures, to compute simple sums in your head, and so on. There's no getting away from it - so much of the game revolves around mathematical relationships: weighing the highest absolute points returns against the highest points-per-pound returns in apportioning your squad budget, evaluating 'differential advantage' (which has nothing to do with a player's rate of ownership, but is rather a matter of assessing how much of a relative points lift one particular transfer or selection may give you, in comparison to all other possible alternative picks), projecting likely points returns and so assessing the optimum weeks to play your various 'chips' in, judging when it's worth making a transfer - that's all maths. Moreover, most of the statistics you might want to refer to for help (see further point below) cover the entire season (or a series of seasons), and if you're only interested in a shorter run of games, or you need to adjust for the fact that a player you're considering had a long injury absence, you often have to work out per-game averages or recent form figures for yourself. It really is a big, big help in FPL if you can do these sorts of calculations swiftly and accurately in your head - or, sometimes, if you simply have an instinctive (accurate!) awareness of what these figures are, how they relate to one another, and hence what they mean. That's not an ability that many people have. Some specific mathematical knowledge - especially in the areas of statistics and probability (and also in the understanding of odds: the bookmakers aren't a completely accurate and reliable guide to past form or upcoming results, but they are a very useful resource) - is also a significant advantage.

8)  Do you understand statistics, and how to use them?  Sadly, I think almost no-one in the FPL community does - certainly not the majority of online 'gurus' out there. There is a lot to be said about statistics, and how to use them. For now, I'll just caution that statistics - even if used appropriately - are of limited value, because they just don't capture the fine detail of games, the intricacy of real-time interactions between multiple players; the 'eye test' - so long as you're a shrewd, experienced, and careful observer of the game - is always far more valuable. Statistics can be useful - if you know what you're looking for in them,... and always take them with a grain of salt, staying very conscious of their flaws and limitations. It is important to be able to recognise patterns, to have an awareness of which figures might or might not be statistically significant, and in particular to be alert to how far exceptional players are diverging from the mean level of performance. But most of the time, you just see self-styled 'experts' cherry-picking one or two stats in isolation to support a preconceived opinion - you should always be very wary of that. (I think of it as the "Underlying Numbers" Fallacy.)

9)  Are you fully up-to-date with relevant football news?  It really helps to be pretty thoroughly immersed in what's going on with the English Premier League. And that's a big challenge if you're not actually living in England; it is very difficult to stay on top of breaking team news, transfer gossip, injuries, fallings-out between players and managers, scandals and legal problems, etc., etc. if you're in another country (as I am). You have to do your best with the Internet - but that's a time-consuming and often unreliable resource; it's not really any substitute for being readily able to pick up all the latest tidbits of news several times a day through... free newspapers left on the subway, hourly bulletins on the TV or radio, water-cooler conversations at work, bumping into one of the Arsenal physios at Pret-A-Manger...

10)  Do you spend enough time on the game?  If you're going to do well at FPL, you really do have to put in quite a lot of time on it: watching games, checking fixtures, seeking out team news. And it really helps to have disciplined habits about this - to make sure that you're not occasionally skimping on certain key elements of preparation or overlooking key facts,.... or - horror of horrors! - forgetting a Deadline sometimes...! But equally, 'life balance' is important: you should not be spending too much time on the game either - that easily becomes counter-productive, leading to you becoming mired in 'over-thinking' (stop that, Pep!). There is a 'right' amount of time and effort to devote to this game, a happy medium: try to find that sweet spot.

11)  Are you self-aware?  In this early post on the blog, I outlined the main reasons why people tend to be bad at FPL. We all have cognitive biases, personal prejudices, sentimental impulses, non-rational superstitions, etc. which lead us to be unduly indulgent towards some players and teams, but resistant to recognising the merits of others. We can't ever expect to completely eradicate these natural, inevitable human flaws in our thinking and decision-making, but we can at least strive to be aware of them and to fight against their influence over us. One of the greatest of these universal weaknesses is the reluctance to recognise that we've been wrong. If you can become more open to the fact that you are fallible, to recognising and accepting your mistakes, and trying to learn from them - then, you can get better at FPL,... rather than just making the same kinds of mistakes over and over again (which is, alas, what most people do - in FPL, and in Life...).

12)  Are you relentlessly eager to improve?  This is not the same as competitiveness; in fact, it is somewhat antithetical to that. Competitiveness tends to be externally focused, concerned simply with attaining some arbitrary target - whether that is reaching a points goal or defeating a particular individual. A genuine desire for constant improvement has no end-goal, it is focused internally, it looks at the activity or process itself, rather than its interim outcomes. Such a desire to strive towards an unattainable 'perfection' is intrinsic to a certain personality type, and it is very difficult to cultivate if it is not naturally in you; but it is not impossible, and you can make progress with dedicated effort. And this, I believe, is THE MOST IMPORTANT factor in becoming a 'successful' FPL manager. People who just say, "I want to win my mini-league,... and that's enough for me." or "I want to finish in the top 100,000,.... and that's enough for me." or "I want to reach x points for the season,... and that's enough for me." will never become truly great managers in the game because their motivation is too limited, too weak, the fire does not burn strongly enough in them, the will to excellence is not there.

If you can honestly answer YES to all of these self-directed questions,.... then you are a GOOD FPL Manager - regardless of your current points total or rank.

But it's extremely unlikely that anyone can truthfully tick all of these boxes with absolute assurance (I know I sometimes come up short on a few!!). What this LIST is actually seeking to show you is that you're not 'good' yet - but this is what you need to do to become better.

The Eternal Quest

I said a little while back that I would attempt to produce a comprehensive but simple guide to the elements that I think make up a 'Good FPL Manager' [added a couple of days later].

I already wrote something of the sort at the start of the season, but I want to revisit that idea now - and, hopefully, come up with more of a checklist that people can measure themselves against.

I have also previously offered some guidance on what I think various points thresholds tend to indicate about a manager's level of ability (though that's a crude, inexact measure). and suggested some external objectives you might use as a gauge of progress and a source of motivation: tallying a personal head-to-head (even if not formally entered in such a league) against key rivals, or against people you've identified as being consistently impressive managers; seeing how well you can do in a small or mid-sized mini-league that seems to offer a high standard of competition; or forming a mini-league of your own to compete against friends, family members, neighbours, co-workers, etc.

However, that kind of thing is really just for fun, to help boost your motivation and enjoyment. And there is a danger that it can become too much of a distraction from The True Path.

Because The True Path is not about any external goals; it is about focusing on the process - becoming aware of how you make your decisions, and striving to become better at that. You don't need any external benchmarks to achieve this. Obsessing over 'rank' or points totals is a dangerous waste of time and effort; most of the time, it simply leads you into making worse decisions.

My full post on this should appear in a day or two.

 

The ONE GREAT TRUTH

The point of the game is to pick who you think are the best players. And then see how well you did.

Sometimes it goes well; sometimes it goes badly.

Those outcomes are mostly the result of luck - so, you shouldn't fret over poor outcomes (or feel smug over good ones!), But the outcomes can also give you some hints as to how accurate your judgement of the players was. If you can recognise where your judgements were mistaken, and why that happened - you can get better. That is the purpose of the game.

It has NOTHING to do with 'rank'. People who obsess over their 'Overall Rank' position have fallen victim to a sad delusion. How many points you get has little to do with how good you are; how many other people get more points than you has nothing to do with how good you are.

You should focus only on trying to choose the best players, self-analysing your mistakes and weaknesses, seeking a path to become better in your selections. That is all.

As Dogen Zenji said, "The practice is the goal."

A final WRINKLE??

 

Just when you thought you might have been almost out of the woods for FPL confusion & calamity,..... it appears there may yet be a further Blank/Double speedbump lurking in our future.

Because the FA Cup has been scheduled before the end of the regular season this year (on Saturday of Gameweek 37 - WHY, WHY???), the Palace v Wolves and City v Bournemouth games in the League will have to be moved from that weekend.

Now, they won't be - can't be! - moved very far: they'll just have to be shunted a few days forwards or backwards into the middle of the adjacent week. And forwards - into the gap between Gameweeks 36 and 37 - seems way more likely, since the League surely wouldn't want to clutter up the final week of the season; and it would be a bit unfair on those four teams to have a substantially shorter recovery time before their final league games (there being no scope to play their weekend games on the Sunday or Monday, as the final matches of the season are now always played simultaneously).

So, yes, that's definitely going to happen. But it's not clear when the rescheduling will be confirmed (maybe not before the upcoming GW35 deadline!), or which of the adjacent Gameweeks the League will choose to include the new dates in.

And just for a further sprinkling of mayhem, Spurs have now cheekily asked if they might be allowed to move their Gameweek 37 fixture (away to Villa) forward slightly, to allow them more time to prepare for a possible Europa League Final (also, weirdly, to be played in the middle of the last week of our domestic season). If they were to be granted that wish, I suppose Manchester United would demand the same privilege. But I don't think the League would like the idea of four matches being moved out of their scheduled weekend starting slots (it would cause all sorts of havoc with the TV arrangements!). And since we won't even know if they 'need' that indulgence until just before the Gameweek 36 deadline, it could be a massive pain-in-the-backside for FPL managers too!

However, I don't think Spurs have much of a leg to stand on with this application; they're just trying it on - with almost zero chance of success. Fixture logjams like this, and additional squad pressure from big midweek games, are part-and-parcel of playing in the European competitions; they've been having to cope with it all season - they should be able to manage the burden just one more time. (And, thankfully, their opponents, Villa, seem to be unwilling to countenance the change, so that probably puts the kibosh on the proposal.)

The FA Cup Final reschedulings, alas, still hang over us, like the proverbial 'Sword of Damocles'. If the League did mischievously decide to declare GW37 a 'blank' week for those teams and GW36 (most probably) a 'double', it would be a HUGE hassle to have to deal with. Even though it's only 4 teams involved, they are 4 teams that most FPL managers have significant representation from; and probably no-one has the Free Hit or Wildcard left any more to skirt around the disruption,... or many (any?) saved Free Transfers either. So, for most of us, it would probably be that painful conundrum of whether to take 'hits' for multiple transfers or put out a short team.

Now, I can't see any earthly reason - other than sheer malice - why the League would choose to declare that moving these matches just a few days moved them into another Gameweek. But they might, they can....  And the not-knowing is agony.

[Fortunately, the League announced the following afternoon that these two games would be moved (surprisingly, back rather than forwards; presumably that was a request from the clubs in the Cup, feeling that they'd rather have a bit of extra prep time for the Wembley Final than for the last day of the League; actually, the last two days of the League!!) to the evening of Tuesday 20th May - but would stay part of Gameweek 37, as I'd anticipated/hoped. Phew!]

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!)

Weeks that seem like MONTHS....

 

It is a cruel and unusual punishment to suspend the League programme for the FA Cup quarters immediately following an internatioal break...

Two-and-a-half weeks without any EPL football!  Cabin Fever sets in....

Patience, my friends. Soon, soon....

A cruel, CRUEL game indeed

This is not me (I've quit playing, in protest at the obnoxious and pointless 'Assistant Manager' chip); it is a rival in one of my mini-leagues over the past few years, who generally seems pretty shrewd in his choices - and usually runs me pretty close!

I just noticed that he had a particularly horrific Gameweek 29, with what looks in fact like a perfectly decent squad. OK, giving the armband to Rayan Ait-Nouri was a risky punt - but not completely crazy, given how many attacking returns he picks up in games where his side dominates, and how near-certain of at least a clean sheet Wolves appeared to be in facing hopeless Southampton. Being caught out by Palmer's unexpected injury absence (in a week where the Blank Gameweek had left him without bench cover) was a misfortune shared by many. As was the failure to anticipate that Elanga and Fernandes would be the big haulers of the week (Fernandes was a stronger bet for such success; but even so, it was reasonable to conclude, with United's dreadful recent form and daunting run of fixtures ahead, that it was not worth taking a hit to bring him in for probably one week only....). Ange deciding not to start Brennan Johnson was a harsh blow on top of that. Only Arsenal coming away with a clean sheet?! Milenkovic rather than Aina picking up the attacking return for the week amongst Forest's defenders was further salting of the wounds! And having Wood, Joao Pedro, Mitoma, and Kluivert ALL fail to contribute anything - in matches their sides absolutely dominated - was, well, downright WEIRD, positively freakish. And bookings for Pedro, Mitoma, and Gabriel too??  The Fantasy Gods were having a laugh with this one....

It just goes to show: this game of ours is overwhelmingly dominated by LUCK. And the weekly twists and turns of fortune can be strange, unexpected, cruel, UNJUST. You can often swing from a wildly successful haul to a wildly unsuccessful one in consecutive weeks, with exactly the same squad. There is no accounting for it, no way to predict what's going to work out for the best.

You just have to roll with the punches, suck up this sort of punishment, and hope for something better a little further down the line. This looks like a pretty good squad to me: fairly close to what mine would have been at this point, if I'd hadn't quit playing six weeks ago. Maybe his luck will even itself out a bit over the next few weeks. (But very often... it doesn't....)

Normal 'service' will be resumed.... LATER

I am of Irish heritage, and hence struggle to resist the temptation to a once-yearly indulgence on this day in what an old college friend of mine once termed 'the Celtic melancholy' - drinking too much, listening to emotional music, and getting all weepily maudlin and nostalgic... for hours on end. 

For several years in my youth, I was quite interested in horse-racing, and lived fairly near Cheltenham; so, that was sometimes a happy pretext for even further alcohol-related revelries. (The Cheltenham Festival, a four-day steeplechase and hurdles meeting in mid-March, more-or-less coincides with St Patrick's Day every year, and traditionally draws huge numbers of Irish racing fans to the small West Country town for the week. The event thus becomes as much about the peripheral craic to be enjoyed in the evenings as about the races in the afternoons...)

Also, my mum's birthday was the day following, so for much of my younger life I was dutifully travelling long distances by train or bus the next day to see her - generally looking very much as if I'd slept in my clothes, if at all, the night before. I believe she was duly impressed by this reliable display of filial devotion, even if she might also have fretted that I might be "going to the bad...."

All of which is simply to say.... that posting might be a bit light for the next day or two, while I indulge... and then (hopefully) recover.

Of course, the Australian-Scots folk singer Eric Bogle (a splendid chap, who I once had the great pleasure of meeting, and seeing perform - in an intimate setting in Toronto) said it best....

The main PROBLEM with FPL

People want to measure their success in the game of Fantasy Premier League. But there is no reliable gauge of your success. 

Your points total is primarily a measure of how lucky you've been.

Your rank is primarily a measure of how lucky everyone else has been, in relation to you.

The aim of the game should be to exercise and develop your skill in making the best squad selections (and 'chip strategy' decisions, etc.). But your points returns are not an accurate reflection of your skill and good judgement: they depend very largely on pure luck. (And, as I pointed out the other day, with the help of Youtube science educator Derek Muller, the effect of even small amounts of luck on final outcomes can be HUGE...) Very bad FPL managers can sometimes do extraordinarily well. Very good FPL managers can often fare very badly.... It is a cruel and unjust game.

We need to find other ways of gauging our progress in the game of FPL, other ways of taking satisfaction in it.

Perhaps a useful place to start is..... focusing less on how good you think you are, and concentrating instead on pursuing constant improvement.

Go again, sir?

Yes, good grief - they're foisting another midweek Gameweek on us this week, and we're having to reset our squads barely 48 hours after Gameweek 26 wrapped up. The FPL schedule does get quite exhausting at times....

The OTHER football...

 

I confess to a lifelong weakness for the US interpretation of 'football'. It lacks the artistic grace of the true game, but there is a certain brutal logic to its gameplay which I do find quite compelling. (And it is undeniably tailor-made for watching at home on TV, with its short, intensive bursts of action regularly punctuated by long breaks to allow you to visit the fridge... or the toilet... and even to put together a snack from time to time...)

I became hooked as a youngster back in the late '70s and early '80s; and it soon became an annual ritual of mine to stay up until the wee small hours of Monday morning enjoying the season's climax in the Super Bowl (ah, those were the days when I could still function, sort of, on only 3 or 4 hours' sleep!). Since I moved out to East Asia nearly a quarter of a century ago, I have found the timezone much more congenial for watching the season finale (though finding television coverage, often much more of a challenge!), and my ritual has evolved into embracing the pretext for a once-a-year-indulgence in getting drunk at breakfast time. (I have been mostly a freelancer, so can set my own working schedule. And even in those infrequent spells when I have had some kind of straight job, the Bowl usually conveniently coincides with the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations - so I've had days off anyway. Oh joy!)

Young Patrick Mahomes has already established himself alongside some of the historic greats like Joe Montana and Peyton Manning, and looks like he might one day start putting the ridiculous records of Tom Brady under pressure. Seeing if he can record another win is worth getting up at 6 in the morning for!!  And my fridge is well-stocked with beer...

The final countdown.....

I had been about to try to fake up some excitement about this year's mid-season transfer window by observing that we now have less than 72 hours before it closes...

But, what do you know?  I'd been expecting it to close at midnight on Friday, because.... you know, tradition. And the calendar.

But I've just discovered that this year the deadline is not at midnight on the 31st, but at 11pm (UK time) on Monday, 3rd February.

So, we have a whole 5 more days..... of waiting for nothing to happen. Oh, joy!

So far, the moves of Kinsky to Spurs, Malen to Villa, Marmoush to City, and Philogene and Enciso to Ipswich have been the only events of even mild interest to unfold. Well, apart from the amusing spectacle of Arsenal repeatedly leaking details of forwards they've supposedly made lavish bids for, only to discover that no-one wants to go and play for them....

But Arsenal and Manchester United and Manchester City and Newcastle and Villa and Spurs and a few others are really quite desperate to bolster their squad depth, if not to acquire one or two major new assets in key areas, so things might yet get a bit more interesting.

And everyone seems to thrive on the insane brinksmanship of trying to tie up the details of a deal in the last hours and minutes before the window closes. So, there's quite likely to be a late flurry of activity next Monday evening.

To keep up with developments (if any should ever occur...), I've mainly been looking to the very simple transfer updates page being maintained by the Fantasy Football Scout website... although this is a very similar resource, with slightly more commentary, on Football Transfers, if you crave an alternative (or just want some additional confirmation, to soothe your cynicism; I usually do).

A Commitment (and a Confession)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join The Boycott:

#QuitFPLinGW23         #DownWithTheNewChip

So long, farewell.....

 

I'm DONE for this season.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A-glitching we will go!

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#QuitFPLinGW23         #DownWithTheNewChip

A corner turned?

Manchester City fans - and FPL managers who own any of their players - seem to be taking much encouragement from their emphatic 6-0 win this weekend.

But is this one success really a sign that their troubles are over? Are they really that much better?

Well, here are some of the potential positives:

Kyle Walker's gone now; that can only be a good thing. His pace and stamina have looked to be waning rapidly of late, and he's really begun to look as if he's past it at Premier League level. His last few performances, certainly, have been quite dreadful (perhaps he's also been distracted by his turbulent private life, or greedy thoughts of getting ready to take the Saudi money in the twilight of his career?), and he had become a liability to the team.

But Ruben Dias is back - that's HUGE, immediately makes them look so much more solid and well-organised and confident in defence.

Ederson's back too. Though Ortega is a a more than competent replacement (probably, in fact, as good as Ederson in most aspects of the goalkeeping craft; an excellent shot-stopper), Ederson is the man the rest of the team have been used to playing with most of the time, so his return to the side will also probably inject some comfortable - and confidence-building - familiarity to the rear of the lineup, a feeling which has been lacking of late. And his stellar distribution adds another dimension to City's game - allowing them the ready option to abandon the slow build-up from the back occasionally and try more direct medium-length or even long balls up the park... with sufficient accuracy to produce a high chance that they will reach, and be retained by a City player. (It does make you wonder why he was out of the side for so long in the first place, though. There may have been some small injury issues behind some of it, but it did look also as if Pep had some kind of a 'problem' with him for a while - a matter of not liking his 'attitude' about something, perhaps?)

Matheus Nunes is still struggling to adapt to the full-back role, but he's an intelligent and versatile player who should be able to master it eventually. And anything is an improvement on Walker....

Dropping Rico Lewis is also probably going to make the team stronger. I am a big fan - as Pep evidently is - of his enthusiasm and workrate, his game intelligence, the incisive contribution he can make in advanced midfield areas. But he's still very young and inexperienced, and he just doesn't have the physicality to be able to dominate in individual duels; playing him as a makeshift full-back, particularly when out-of-touch Walker was on the other flank, or alongside on the right of the defence, was asking for trouble. He had, unfortunately, become - yet another - obvious defensive weakness that opponents can ruthlessly target.

Gundogan and Kovacic playing together as a double-pivot, and trying to sit a little deeper, does appear to provide the potential for a little more solidity in central midfield.

Kevin DeBruyne is starting to look something like his best again now. It has taken a while for him to get his 'match-fitness' back, and his contributions in his first few games back from injury had been rather intermittent. But in this one, he was a constant threat and supplied three assists.

And damn, yes, Erling Haaland is looking as though he has definitively rediscovered his scoring touch. (Although I've always tended to think that there was never much wrong with his form or confidence. He'd just been starved of service while the rest of the team was floundering so badly over the previous couple of months.)

And perhaps best of all, Phil Foden has not just got his scoring boots back, but seems to have rekindled his joie de vivre as well. This is the first time in a long while we've seen him looking so happy and confident, showing such exuberant joy on the pitch.

And a lot of people are also saying that the arrival of the pacey Egyptian forward Omar Marmoush could have a transformative effect for City in the near future. Adam Monk of FourFourTwo rates his prospects with the club very highly. He does appear to have a skills profile and versatility somewhat similar to the departed Julian Alvarez - perhaps enabling him to sometimes play alongside Haaland as a strike partner, as well as to fulfill a number of different attacking midfield roles through the middle or on either flank (rather than being merely an emergency replacement for Haaland).

Yes, there's a lot to take comfort from there. But I believe there are many, rather stronger counter-points:

Well, that victory was only against Ipswich; and Ipswich were really, really poor in that game - just gave up the ghost after the first couple of goals. Proving that you're not one of the four worst teams in the League isn't really evidence of any seismic shift in performance.

Dias still doesn't look quite 100% - and you worry if Pep might be rushing him back into the fray just a little bit, perhaps putting him at risk of a recurrence of his injury. (So, indeed, it would appear! The poor bloke broke down during the PSG game just a few days later, and had to be withdrawn at half-time. Ooops!)  Also, excellent though he is, he can't hold things together at the back entirely on his own; he needs Stones and Ake to be back in action too.

Matheus Nunes is not a natural full-back, and is struggling to adapt to the position at the moment (it's probably not helping when Pep switches him from one side to the other), and he has been making a lot of mistakes thus far. Also, it just seems to be a bit of a waste of his talents; it is quite baffling that Pep doesn't seem to fancy playing him in his best position in central midfield - especially since that is the area of the pitch where his worst problems are manifesting themselves. [JJ Bull of The Athletic recently suggested that he'd do better to reunite with Ruben Amorim at Manchester United and play in a double-pivot with Manuel Ugarte there.]

While Rico Lewis has occasionally looked a bit of a liability defensively, he's nevertheless been one of City's best players this season, and it is therefore, I think, unfortunate to abandon him completely. There ought to be a way to make use of him in a more advanced role.

Gundogan, unfortunately, now looks hopelessly out-of-his-depth at the top level, just does not have any legs any more. Pep seems to be guilty of a misplaced loyalty here, or an exaggerated gratitude for his past contributions, or is perhaps overrating the value of experience. Playing Gundogan as a defensive midfielder now has much the same effect as Casemiro has whenever Amorim is forced to field him at United: it's just an open invitation to the opponents to come marauding through the central areas at will.

And Mateo Kovacic, bless him, is a fantastic progressive No. 6, great passer of the ball, dangerous when pushing forward himself - but doesn't have a defensive bone in his body; he completely lacks the all-around awareness, the instinct to spot danger that is required for a stopper role. Persisting with him as a Rodri replacement is the main root of City's current problems. And those problems are NOT going to go away unless they can acquire a top-class defensive midfielder in this transfer window. (And I think they might have to settle for a loan deal on that - because who's going to transfer into a club to be a perpetual understudy to someone like Rodri for the next five years?)

DeBruyne still doesn't look 100% fit (not sure if this is so, but I read somewhere that he might have a small hernia - much like the problem that so impeded Son Heung-min last season; not a major disability, but a constant, niggling inhibitor of performance). And he's starting to show his age. It is probably not reasonable to expect him to ever quite regain the pinnacle of performance he was demonstrating a few years ago.

Haaland, of course, could still deliver some big goalscoring returns. But he's not the kind of player who - like Salah or Palmer or Mbeumo.... - creates chances for himself out of nothing; he needs good regular service. And I fear he's still likely to be often lacking that from this City side. Moreover, game states can have a big impact on patterns of play and on a striker's mentality: there's a lot of extra pressure on the main goalscorer when you're chasing the game - and City look like they might still quite often be chasing games.

I am a huge fan of Phil Foden, and I - more than anyone! - really hope that he has turned a corner this season, that he has ironed something out in his relationship with Pep that has restored his confidence, and that he is going to continue now to play with the effervescence he showed last Sunday. But that hope is still fragile. Phil thrived on the security of being an almost invariable starter for most of last season, in DeBruyne's absence, and on being given the responsibility of being the club's primary playmaker. And he thrives on being able to play in central areas as a highly mobile No. 10. If Pep is going to constantly swap his starting position around, and mostly ask him to play out wide on one of the flanks, I fear this new flowering of goalscoring form may soon wither again.

And I think it may be unreasonable to expect Omar Marmoush to be The Messiah to redeem City. He has not been an especially prolific scorer (apart from one very hot streak for Frankfurt earlier this season); in fact, until he moved to Frankfurt just under 18 months ago, he was almost entirely unacquainted with the goal. And, you know, the Bundesliga isn't exactly the same level of competition as the Premier League: even its top clubs would probably struggle against most of our leading teams; the majority of teams in that league would struggle in the Championship.

And, ahem, City now have one of the toughest runs of fixtures coming up that any side - certainly any top side - has to face in the second half of the season (along with two crunch games to try to avoid the ignominy of Champions League elimination at the group stage... and the dear old FA Cup). They might have a real struggle for points from now until some time in March: Chelsea, Arsenal, Newcastle, Liverpool, Spurs (terrible at the moment; but a bogey team for City in recent years), and Nottingham Forest is an horrendous sequencc. Brighton, Manchester United and Crystal Palace - and a fighting-for-their-lives Leicester - might not be a pushover after that either. The way City were playing up until a few weeks ago, it would not have been outrageous to suggest they might lose all of them. And I'm afraid I still think it's very likely they'll lose at least half of them.

So - NO, sorry; I am not at all convinced we've yet seen any clear sign of a City renaissance.

[And sure enough, the very next night they got absolutely torn apart by Paris St Germain. Despite rather fortuitously opening up a two-goal lead in the first half, they were outplayed for almost the whole game and ended up getting spanked 4-2.... and it might have been much worse.  City's problems are deep-seated and persistent. They might be capable of significant improvement.... but they're not about to get GOOD again any time soon.]

A week further on, they have scraped through into the knockout stage of the Champions League - but only by the skin of their teeth! Again, City can't take much comfort from a fairly dismal performance against Club Brugge: they were regularly cut open by the Belgian side on the counter-attack, conceded the first goal... and very nearly went behind again when Greek forward Christos Tzolis cracked a low 20-yard shot inches wide of the post - with Ederson rooted to the spot. If that one had gone in, I doubt if City could have found a way back into the game. 

And their ultimately fairly comfortable win over Chelsea at the weekend was a bit of a head-scratcher - really more down to Chelsea being surprisingly lacklustre rather than City being at all brilliant. They are still looking... well, not just a pale shadow of the team that dominated every competition in the the last few years, but a completely different team; a much, much worse team, a really rather shambolic team, who look like they could not just get beaten but properly spanked by just about any half-decent side. In his post-match interview on Sunday, Pep was again extremely downbeat; positively careworn and depressed-looking. And he came out with one of the most self-damning remarks I think I've ever heard from a Premier League manager, when he said, "Without the ball, we are one of the worst teams. We need the ball to survive."  No, even Pep doesn't think City are any good again yet. They're hanging on by their fingernails, only occasionally giving themselves a chance in games by trying even harder than usual never to give the ball away. But no team manages never to give the ball away; and, at the moment, every time City give the ball away, they look like they might concede a goal.