What's up with Erling?

 

I like The Athletic's print content, but their video output on Youtube has often been a bit all-over-the-place. Their flagship 'The Week in Football' programme has degenerated this season into a self-indulgently podcasty ramble around half a dozen or more different topics that takes far too long,... and often says little of any real insight. Their best shows were always the more in-depth analyses from JJ Bull and Jon MacKenzie, especially when hosted by the amusing Joe Devine (who now seems to be fully occupied in doing the voiceover for their Tifo sub-channel, the one reliably entertaining bit of their output at the moment), but those seem to have become more and more rare.

However, at the start of the long break in Premier League football we've just suffered, the weekly ramble did return to something like its previous, more focused format, with a single topic - the alarming decline in Erling Haaland's goal output since December - and close analysis from Mackenzie and Alex Barker.

While the discussion does highlight how dramatic the fall-off in The Viking's effectiveness has been in the last few months, I think overall there is much to take comfort from. Haaland doesn't actually seem to have any serious underlying injury issue, or to have some problem of 'confidence' or attitude; he's still working hard for the team, getting into lots of good positions, looking monstrously hungry for goals. The problem has chiefly been that City's current style of play hasn't been suiting him so well. And that shift has largely been necessitated by a number of key injuries, particularly to the wingers. Now that Doku appears to be back to his best, and Savinho may soon be back too, and Semenyo and even Cherki have recently demonstrated that they can also be dangerous in a wider attacking role down the right side, I think we could see the service to Haaland start to pick up again.

In the FPL context, with so few premium players this year, and so few regular big producers in midfield at any price, there's really no pressure on budget at the moment. So, there's really no motive to drop Haaland to try to 'upgrade' in multiple other positions (most people already have pretty much exactly the squad they want, as well as Haaland - without having had to make any great economies). So, the only reason to drop Haaland would be because you think there are at least three other forwards with better points-prospects than him over the run-in. And, frankly, nobody else has been in consistently impressive form lately: in fact, the only forward scraping into the Top 20 points producers over the last handful of games is Beto!!! And I don't see anyone dropping Haaland for Beto....

So,.... scary and potentially disappointing as it is, I think we probably have to stick with Haaland,... and hope that he's going to assume a central role in a brave City charge for the title over this next six weeks. 

The essence of FPL is assessing the potential of players. Haaland's potential is always far higher than just about anyone else's - he is a 'generational talent', one of the greatest goalscorers the game's ever seen; and he plays for one of of the highest-performing, most consistently creative and dangerous sides in world football. His potential is enormous; but, unfortunately, for multiple, complex reasons,... he doesn't always fulfill his potential.

I still think he's worth having a bet on for the last 7 gameweeks.

Sometimes.... BRAVERY pays off

LBJ's Brass Balls

I had always thought that this Gameweek 17 fixture, at home, against West Ham, would be Erling's Haaland's best prospect for a big haul in the first half of the season - and thus the prime opportunity for betting the Triple Captain chip on him.

But it would have been a very, very risky play to hang on this long, to ignore all the tempting rival options for the chip in earlier fixtures...

West Ham looked the worst team in the league at the start of the season; but they might have improved. And they have: quickly getting rid of the anodyne Graham Potter was a positive step, and there have been some promising signs for them under Nuno Espiritu Santo's stewardship since - although they're still often a bit ropey in defence, especially on set-pieces.

City might not have been able to maintain a strong title challenge this year - especially after they lost Rodri again so early on. But in fact, they have steadily got better and better, after a rather shakey start.

The big Viking might have picked up an injury by now, or suffered a bit of a dip in form; but in fact, he's having his best season yet, maintaining an astonishing level of consistency in output all the way through to the middle of the football year.

So - waiting till now to use the Triple Captain on him.... has paid off very nicely! But damn, you needed cojones to hang on for this long!! 

And it probably wasn't the smart move for this chip. Waiting this long was too big a risk; and if the plan had gone awry at the last minute, because of a late injury to Haaland, you'd have few other remaining options for using the chip, with just two more gameweeks in its validity period after this one.

If you enjoy a big success on the Triple Captain chip - or any of the bonus chips - you should maintain a due sense of humility. 

A one-off punt like this always has a bigger chance of going horribly wrong than it does of succeeding. And if you wait until the very tail-end of their availability window to play one of the bonus chips, the chance of that play going very, very wrong is greatly increased. 

A big return from a chip - however 'likely' it seemed - is always to a large extent LUCKY.

[The picture at the top is of a giant 'Brass Balls' sculpture, supposedly those of US President Lyndon Johnson (who famously complained of his trousers always being too tight in the crotch!), recently commissioned as a joke by John Oliver (standing next to the huge hanging scrotum here), the presenter of award-winning Sunday night political comedy show 'Last Week Tonight'.]

The distant laughter of the Fantasy Gods....

 

On Saturday - when half the world had bet their precious Triple Captain chip on him - the great Erling Haaland played like a man who'd been heavily on the lash on Friday night....

But just three days later, he comes up with a goal and 2 assists, for what would have been a very decent return on the TC chip!!!

The pagan gods who preside over the realm of FPL are not just cruel and capricious, but fond of mockery; it is not enough for them to smash our hopes, they must then taunt us in the midst of our despair.

But really, backing Haaland against Leeds was the 'right' choice, Fulham are a way better team than Leeds, and this match was on their home ground: it was not nearly so favourable a prospect for a big haul from the lanky Viking. (But then, neither were the Bournemouth or Everton games; or even Burnley or Wolves.....! It's impossible to predict with any confidence when the big hauls are going to happen.)

Triple unhappiness!

 

Oh dear, the great Triple Captain play on Erling Haaland this weekend (Gameweek 13 of our 25/26 EPL/FPL season) really went BADLY.

But in times of tribulation like this, it is good to try to mainain a sense of perspective.

For one thing, an awful lot of people were in the same boat: the great majortiy of still active managers in the game were probably playing the chip in this gameweek. 

And things could have been so much worse. He might have felt an injury in the warm-up and not even started. He might have got injured, or just been subbed off early by Pep, before the 60-minute mark. (And we should feel especially grateful every time a favourite player escapes a serious injury in a game, not for the impact that might have on our FPL points hopes, but for the man himself - and for the fact that we have not been denied the pleasure of watching him play for the rest of the season, or a big chunk of it.) He might have been given a yellow card, or perhaps even a red one. (Not very likely with Haaland: his disciplinary record is very good. But you never know.... Weird shit happens sometimes!)

It is quite common for captain and Triple Captain picks in FPL to register only 1 point or 0 points in a game - or even, occasionally, negative points.

So, the Haaland TC play this weekend, while very, very disappointing, was not an utter disaster. Those happen too; and this wasn't one of them. Perspective.

It was not even a particularly unlikely - and thus should not have been a completely unexpected - outcome. Captain and Triple Captain picks are going to return a blank somewhere between 1-in-2 and 1-in-3, even at the best.

When Fate shits on you like this, all you can do.... is hope that you're going to get a 1-in-3 unusually good outcome next year!

What is a Triple Captain worth?

 

There are two aspects to that question:  1)  How should you assess the points value of the Triple Captain chip?  and 2)  How many points can you expect to earn from it?

Unfortunately, if your thinking is muddled on the first part of the question (as it often seems to be in FPL-land), that prevents you forming a clear idea of what you ought to be aiming for with the chip.

People very commonly claim that their return from playing the Triple Captain is THREE times the gameweek points-haul for their chosen captain. But this is just empty bragging, or dangerous self-delusion. (People who somehow persuade themselves that the value of the chip is TWUCE their captain's points-haul are even more perversely misguided in their way of looking at this!)  Of course, you should really only be interested in the points lift that the chip gives you over what you would have had without it. And you'd get the basic points haul for that player anyway. In fact, since you surely would have made him your captain anyway, you would have got twice his points-haul for the week if you hadn't played the chip. So, the additional value of the Triple Captain chip is only the basic points-haul total, not some multiple of it.

I have discussed in some detail before the issue of whether the Triple Captain chip invariably pays off better in a Double Gameweek. (Summary; it can - but usually it does not. And it's a very dangerous thing to gamble on, since Double Gameweeks are now few and small, and right at the back end of the season.)

My general advice on both types of Bonus Chip is that you have to be prepared to play them opportunistically. There can be so many swings in player and individual form over a season that you often don't know who the hottest player of the year is going to be until a streak of exceptional returns suddenly emerges,.... and you often don't know what anyone's 'easiest' fixture is going to be until shortly before it happens. You can suss out the likely most promising options some months ahead; but you need to stay flexible, and be prepared for those tentative plans to completely change. (This year, Erling Haaland is still in form, and still the only FPL player regularly producing big points returns. And it has been fairly obvious since the start of the season that his two best fixtures in the first half of the season were likely to be City's home gaines against Leeds and West Ham in Gameweeks 13 and 17. So - for once - the start-of-season provisional plan for most people hasn't changed.... yet. But a lot of people weren't prepared to risk waiting this long, when Haaland was also knocking in braces of goals against better opponents. And now there is a chance that Saka or Mbeumo might be coming into tempting form as possible alternative picks. If Haaland gets injured in the next few weeks, then there'll have to be a late change of plan.... Such things often happen.)

Of course, you hope to successfully target one of your best hauls of the season for a Triple Captain play - but it is not reasonable to expect to land on the best; it's all just too unpredictable. Almost always, in fact, your and everyone else's best haul of the season comes from some complete random that you would never have expected to produce for you - and didn't very often, so wasn't a strong bet for the TC chip. You have to focus on players who can bag very large hauls multiple times a season, and who maintain top form for extended periods. Even if they won't ultimately provide any of your very best scores of the season, they are more reliable bets to provide a good score in a particular gameweek.

You shouldn't use the chip lightly, just throw it away on impulse; you should carefully choose a week in which your best player, when he's in his best form, is facing an opponent against whom he should have an especially high chance of scoring more than one goal.

But even the most exceptional players don't return every week. Usually, in fact, they'll 'blank' at least 1 game in every 3 across the season, probably closer to 1 game in 2. And sometimes even a Mo Salah or an Erling Haaland in their hottest run of form will still manage to 'blank' against a poor side.

You have to steel yourself to accept that a Triple Captain play can return nothing - and very often does. Perhaps 1 time in 3, your Triple Captain will only produce basic 'appearance points', or even less (the annals of FPL abound with horror stories of managers who ventured their TC on a player who got injured inside 10 minutes, or missed a penalty, or received a red card....).  

You have to be grateful for any sort of return at all from the chip; and very, very grateful if your haul from it happens to break into double-digits, even narrowly. It is foolish to expect - or even to hope for - a massive dividend of 15 or 20 or 25 points. That kind of thing happens fairly rarely, and requires a very large dose of LUCK.

[I wrote a follow-up post a day or two later on how to assess the impact of your Bench Boost chip.]

Premature Chip-ulation!

 

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

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

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

But really, neither of them deserved to prosper.

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

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

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

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

Viking plunder!!

 

Well, damn - the Lanky Viking has gone and done it again. Erling Haaland has notched his fourth brace - and his fourth double-digit FPL points haul - of the season that is still only two months old,... even against one of the league's better defences,.... even when his team are really still not playing all that well.

I don't like to say that any player is absolutely a must-have. There are almost always alternative stategies you can pursue by redistributing your budget spend around other players, and the highest points-producers are not usually 'essential' merely because of that.

But right now, in this sort of form, yes, Haaland is a must-have.

And it's not just because of his impressive numbers, his impressive consistency. It's also because of the complete lack of any competition, among the forwards or in any other position.

Even with the additional points now available for cumulative 'defensive contributions', it has been an astonishingly low-scoring FPL season so far. 

Ordinarily, we'd hope to see almost all of our starters breaking 50 points by this stage, and at least 2 or 3 of our biggest performers having racked up 60 or 70 or more. Last year, Salah, Palmer, Saka, and Mbeumo as well as Haaland posted enormous numbers in the opening months of the season. This year, Haaland is the only forward to have registered more than 50 points (his current total of 83 points is in fact more than twice as good as his closest rivals); Semenyo is the only midfielder to have done so (his 70 point total is well behind Haaland, but again almost twice as good as all but a dozen or so of his midfield rivals, and 24 points clear of the second-best), and the only other players to have just squeaked over that threshold are a trio of defenders (who've happened to pick up untypical goals early on).

There was a busier and more turbulent transfer window than usual at the start of this season, and many of the new players have disrupted the tactics of their new clubs and/or not yet found their feet in the new setting. We've also seen rather a lot of early-season injury problems, with the absences of Palmer and Saka - expected to be two of the top FPL performers - particularly unfortunate. The early international breaks have perhaps been a bit more disruptive than usual too. And, what with one thing and another, nobody's form has settled down yet, no team has been consistently or convincingly good so far - and we've seen a lot of unexpected results.

And almost none of the most fancied FPL assets have produced very much at all so far. In fact, NO-ONE  - apart from Haaland and Semenyo - has posted really good FPL numbers yet.

While this continues to be the case, and particularly while the other expensive players - Salah, Palmer, Isak, Saka, Gyokeres - are out of action or not producing, there is absolutely no pressure on the FPL budget: there is no problem about affording Haaland, even at his enormous 14-million-plus valuation. I said at the start of the season that it was difficult to envisage either Haaland or Salah 'justifying' their very high price-tags this year; but I noted there that because of a lack of budget pressure early in the season - with fewer high-priced players than usual, and most of them not fit - it was possible to afford one of them (but not both); and Haaland has obviously been the one to go for.

While Haaland is thus eminently 'affordable', is producing 2 or 3 times as many points as any of his rivals, and no-one else in the game is producing big points at all at the moment - YES, he is a must-have.

But this is a freak circumstance. I can't recall seeing anything quite like it before. And I don't think this situation will last very long. Haaland's points production will surely slow down at some stage. And, even if it doesn't, when the likes of Palmer, Saka, and Isak finally hit form (yes, sorry - I have rather given up on Mo Salah's prospects for this season), there may still be questions to be answered about whether Haaland continues to be a 'must-have'.

Enjoy this remarkable run while you can, Haaland idolaters - he's unlikely to remain an indispensable pick for the whole season.

When to use the 'Triple Captain' (2)

FPL Legends 

Yesterday, I found myself writing a long and thorough debunking of the dangerous myth that the Triple Captain chip always works best in a Double Gameweek. (It can do, it does sometimes; but historically, Single Gameweeks far more often produce the season-best returns for the handful of top players you'd consider playing the TC chip on.)

The key general takeaway from that post was that you usually only want to consider one of a few really exceptional players for your Triple Captain pick: someone who quite often scores more than just one goal (especially against weaker opponents!), someone who may reach double-digits multiple times a season, someone who usually reaches high double-digits at least a few times a season. Only Salah and Haaland regularly fall into this category; although Palmer, Foden, and Saka have often shown the potential to start rivalling them; and a few others - Bruno Fernandes, Mbeumo, Cunha (pity they all play for still-dreadful Manchester United; but even there, they may hit a run of form at some point...), or Isak - may occasionally be worth considering, if they're on a hot streak. (Really, no-one is sensibly going to take a bet on something like Madueke profiting from a trio of Palmer assists, or Kluivert converting three penalties in the same game - as we saw for two of the best hauls of last season!)

So, the choices for who you can use the chip on are very limited. Often, there might be only one or two really obvious candidates; in your squad, there might be only one.

At the moment, of course, Haaland is the standout possibility. But his early season form has been exceptionally strong - while just about no-one else's has been. That's bound to change sooner or later.

And as I observed in this post the other week, it is generally better to go for a suitable midfielder in preference to a forward - because they get more points for the same level of game contribution: it's easier for them to reach double-digits, and they have a much stronger possibility of gaining a really high score.

So long as they do in fact have a top game, of course. A forward in great form and with a great fixture can still be a good bet. But a top goalscoring midfielder in great form with a great fixture is even better. (This year, so far, it's looking ominously as if we might not have any midfielders hit that sort of points form. But I remain, for now, optimistic that we will see some emerge eventually.)

Double Gameweeks can still be appealing: they sometimes come up at short notice, and relatively early in the season - as happened with Liverpool and Mo Salah getting their first match against Everton postponed because of high winds last year, giving them a unique additional Double Gameweek at the start of February. If you know your Triple Captain choice is in superb form, and you know what the double-fixture is going to be, and they're both opponents he should be able to score against,... and we're not yet in the end-of-season weeds with big European or domestic cup games cluttering the schedule and unacceptably increasing the risk of fatigue/injury/rotation or just wobbles in form for our top players - then, a Triple Captain play on that Double Gameweek is probably a good move.

But the regular Double Gameweeks - now only two, involving only a small number of teams, and coming at the very back-end of the season, amid a crowded schedule of make-or-break games - are not a good prospect for the Triple Captaincy.

I invited the scorn and derision of the masses by querying whether it was a good idea to play the Triple Captain chip on Haaland this past weekend against Burnley. Big Erling got a huge haul in the game; but it was highly fortuitous (two uncharacteristic 'errors leading to goals' in added-on time at the end of the game gifting him a brace - when he hadn't really done that much in the rest of the game!!).

Although I wasn't lucky in anticipating the outcome there (and I didn't say he wouldn't have a good game; merely that I thought both he and some other players might have better ones later in the season - and they still might), my basic points were still sound.

1) Form (both the team's and the individual's) and fitness are key.

(Haaland appeared a slightly risky pick for this weekend because he'd been complaining of a back problem at the start of the week. And back problems, although often 'trivial' and quick to resolve, can be particularly dangerous because they so inhibit and distort your usual range of movement - making it more likely that you can pick up other injuries if you play or train again before you've fully shaken them off. Moreover, City haven't yet really found their groove, they're still often looking vulnerable, even against quite weak teams like Wolves; and Burnley themselves were well in the game for the first hour or so, nearly took the lead shortly after half-time. In a few more weeks, City as a whole might be looking much more formidable - and might be creating a lot more chances for Erling, rather than relying on the opponents to create them for him.)

2)  As far as possible, you want to target the weakest possible opponent for playing the TC chip.

(Again, I didn't think that was Burnley. They have their weaknesses, sure, and will probably struggle to stay up. But their defence - and their keeper - are actually pretty good. City are facing Leeds and West Ham quite soon; I thought they would probably offer more tempting opportunities for Haaland to enjoy a big day. )

3)  Goalscoring midfielders have a higher points-potential than forwards.

(Yes, even the goal-freak Haaland. He's rarely FPL's 'Player of the Week' even when he does produce a really big haul.)

4)  It's still a bit early to be playing any of the chips, since nobody's form has settled down yet - and we're still gettting a lot unpredictable results.

(If we do live in a multiverse, there's a significant percentage of the other realities where Burnley actually won that game, or at least toughed out a draw. And possibly a majority of them where Haaland blanked, or only nabbed a solitary goal. 

There was an unusually large amount of transfer activity adding to the usual early-season chaos this year. That, combined with a lot of early injury issues to top players, and the interruption of an early international break, meant that the season effectively didn't 'start' until Gameweek 4. And it probably won't be until about GW8 or 9 that we really start to form confident and stable impressions of what's going on in the Premier League this year.)

These simple principles lead to the conclusion that the Triple Captain chip (like the Bench Boost) is best played opportunistically - whenever a prime candidate for the captaincy is fit and in tip-top form, and so are his team, and are facing what looks like a vulnerable opponent.

The form and fitness of teams ebbs and flows through the seeason. Just automaically betting against the promoted sides won't necessarily work: all three of them are looking much tougher propositions this year than any of their recent predecessors. And even the weakest of relegated sides in the last few seasons have usually managed at least a short run of games somewhere where they managed to play quite well. Likewise, even the top sides almost always suffer a bit of a stutter in form somewhere along the line. And, of course, your Triple Captain candidate may pick up an injury, or suffer a dip in form, just as his 'most favourable' fixture approaches. Shit happens.

You can highlight at the start of the season what you think are likely to be the most promising opponents that Haaland or Salah - or Foden or Saka or whoever - may face. But you shouldn't let yourself get too rigidly set on those early ideas. You need to stay flexible: your man's easiest game of the season can quite often crop up as a complete surprise.

And you need to be cautious about succumbing to the impulse to play the Triple Captain chip at the first tempting opportunity that presents itself, because there are almost sure to be other, better ones a bit later on. 

This year, a GW6 punt on Haaland happened to work out very nicely. But most years, it won't. And it might still prove not to have been the optimal Triple Captain play for this half of the season.

SOMETIMES the Sheep get lucky!!!

Now, I said at the weekend, just ahead of the Gameweek 6 deadline, that I thought all the enthusiasm for risking the Triple Captain chip on Haaland against Burnley was probably misguided....

And look what happened!  Yes, I was very soon proved 'wrong'!!

Except.... I carefully said 'probably'. And I was specifically criticising the reasons given for this pick (exaggeratedly denigrating Burnley's defensive abilities; and that on the basis of a single  - misinterpreted, misrepresented - statistic!), and reviewing some strong counter-arguments for waiting for later, potentially better opportunities to use the chip (on Haaland, or someone else).  In fact, I explicitly acknowledged that this chip play on Haaland might turn out OK!

But still I get pilloried by the online dingbats who insist that I made a foolish, ill-informed and obviously incorrect 'prediction'.  I did not. I just pointed out a few facts they were wilfully overlooking, and they got pissy about it; and when things work out OK for them,.... they then want 'revenge'!!!  Petty people.

Actually, things worked out much better than merely 'OK': a 16-point haul might well prove to be Haaland's best return of the entire season; and there probably won't be too many other scores much better than it. It did, as it happens, turn out to be potentially the best Triple Captain return for the season (or at least for the first half of it, since we now have two of these chips).

But the people who gambled their Triple Captain chip this week didn't know that was going to happen. And most of them are doubly stupid, because they think they did know. Trebly stupid, because they think that a successful outcome proves the 'smartness' of the original decision. It does not: it only proves that they were lucky - very, very lucky.

These people appear to fall prey to the common fallacy that if something happens, it must have had a 100% probability of happening at some point long prior to its happening. That is not so.

No-one ever has quite a 100% probability of even starting a game (because there are so many little last-minute accidents-of-fate that might thwart that - how often have we seen players pull a muscle in the warm-up, for example?). In this case, given that Haaland had missed some training earlier in the week with a back-muscle problem, he can't have been much better than a 95% probability to appear from the beginning, perhaps much less; there was surely a good chance that Pep would prefer to leave him on the bench as a super-sub option, against a team who were not expected to be very difficult to beat.

And the probability of him playing most of the game was perhaps no better than 60% or 70%, given that recent injury concern, and the fact that Pep almost invariably withdraws him as soon as a game looks safely won - especially when there is a European match coming up the following midweek. And the likelihood of him being left on until the final whistle can't have been more than 50%.

While Haaland does produce a fair few assists, it's still a relative rarity: usually only about a 25% chance in any given game. (And last year the assists really dried up for him; so, with this evolving City set-up, we might expect that probability to be even lower at the moment.)

And then, of course, he ended up getiting a brace - right at the end of the game, when he could not reasonably have been expected to be still on the pitch. Even a very poor defensive team (and Burnley are not that....) will rarely make two 'errors leading to goals' in the same game; and the chances of them both occurring in added-on time, and both being converted by the same player are vanishingly small.

Haaland's 16-point return in this game was a completely unpredictable freak event!!

Sure, City were favourites to win, and win fairly comfortably. There was a good chance they might score 2 or 3 goals against them (all of this I acknowledged in my discussions of the prospects for the match). But there was no compelling reason to suppose they would obviously be able to score a lot of goals (and really, Burnley were on top for a lot of this game, nearly took a 2-1 lead early in the second half; they didn't deserve to go down this badly), nor to expect that Haaland would claim more than 1 of any they did score (and he didn't - for nearly 90 full minutes of regulation time, which must have been agony for all those TC punters!!). There is always a range of likely points outcomes for any player in any game; and this result for Haaland was way, way above the median of that range this week.

Those who now smugly proclaim that they predicted "exactly what was going to happen" in this match are lying to themselves and everyone else. 

They made a risky bet, a brave bet - that paid off. Puffing themselves in those terms would be acceptable. But to pretend that it was 'a safe bet' and 'a shrewd decision' and so on is fatuous nonsense. You had no idea how that bet was going to turn out: it could have gone very, very badly instead of very, very well. But it just happened to go very, very, very, very well. Thank your lucky stars - and shut up about it.

And there is still a chance that another TC bet over the next three months will pay out even bigger.....

[And yes, that sheep does appear to have 8 tiny legs!! AI is not ready to take over the world quite yet....]

ONE statistic proves nothing

 

This week, The Sheep's big stampede is towards punting their Triple Captain chip on Erling Haaland.

There are a few reasons why this might not be such a great idea. It's still very early in the season, and - even with this new second Triple Captain chip only available until the end of December, there will be many more, possibly better, opportunities to gamble it on Haaland, or another player. The big lad's been suffering with a back strain and missed a lot of training this week (now expected to start, it seems; but quite likely to get pulled off early, if the game's in the bag [as Pep usually does anyway; but may now go for very early], especially as City have an away trip to Monaco on Wednesday in the Champions League), and he's probably not going to be quite at his best.. And, well, although they're steadily improving, City still haven't yet looked anywhere near their dominant best of a couple of years ago.

Ah, but the primary reason behind this TC choice seems to be that Burnley are supposedly "the worst defence in the league."  And the sole piece of evidence cited for that momentous assertion is that they're currently top of the stats for 'shots conceded'.

A few problems with this:

1)  One statistic in isolation very rarely tells you anything.

2) Statistics this early in the season for anything can't tell you very much, because one 'untypical' game can massively skew the overall figures. And also, nobody's form has really settled down yet, and we've seen some wildly erratic performances and unexpected results so far this year.

3)  The 'shots conceded' number is more a measure of the quality of the opposition you've faced than the quality of your defence in dealing with that threat. And Burnley have had a particularly demanding opening run of fixtures, facing Spurs, Manchester United, Liverpool, and Nottingham Forest so far - all very good attacking teams (damn, yes, even United played quite well against them).

4)  On a range of stats that more accurately reflect 'defensive quality', Burnley actually look quite impressive. One of the most persuasive of all is their xGC 'delta', the gap between their 'expected goals conceded' and the actual number conceded - that's an enormous 2.3 in the right direction. They're keeping more goals out than almost any other team!

So, it's early in the season, and the stats can easily get skewed: Burnley have twice conceded 3 goals in a match, which makes their defensive record look terrible. They've also had 2 penalties awarded against them, which makes their goals conceded total look a bit worse than it really ought to. They looked rocky at the start of the season, when they were easily taken apart by Spurs, but have improved steadily since. Against United, they left themselves open by chasing a game they thought they could win, and were desperately unlucky to concede a late penalty to lose the points. They beat fellow promoted side Sunderland fairly comfortably, and kept a clean sheet. They played well enough to deserve a clean sheet and a point away from home against Liverpool, and were again desperately unlucky to be thwarted by a very late penalty. And they contained Forest very well - after conceding a goal out-of-nowhere barely a minute into the game.

You need to consider a range of relevant statistics, never just one on its own. And you need to put those statistics in context, to consider the story of each individual match that has produced them.

Just saying, "Look how many shots Burnley have faced! They must be rubbish!!" is NONSENSE.

This post isn't really about Burnley. Or Haaland. It's about how people deceive themselves with superficial, lazy readings of statistics.

Burnley are a weak team overall: they can't control the ball enough or create enough threat to stop the stronger teams in the league from dominating them. But their defence is, arguably, in fact one of the best in the league at the moment.

And, realising the hopelessness of their chances against City, they'll probably sit back in a low-block all game and try to tough out a draw. They so nearly made that work against Liverpool - who are, at the moment, a much, much better-looking team than City.

I don't think Burnley will beat City, and even a draw is a very long-shot for them. Heck, I think Haaland can probably pick up a goal, even if he only plays 55 minutes or so.

But Burnley's defence (and keeper!) are actually pretty damn good. They are - thus far, anyway - the most impressive-looking of the promoted sides; and also - so far - way, way better than West Ham,.... or Villa,... or Wolves.

This is not a fixture that looks like a pushover, a guaranteed multi-goal party.

People are only playing that Triple Captain chip now because they're getting impatient. (And impatience in FPL is - usually - a very bad thing.)

I'd rather wait until Haaland has clearly shaken off this injury worry,.... and is facing a genuinely weak defence (he has Villa, Leeds, Sunderland, Fulham, and West Ham coming up between now and Christmas).

Even more, I'd rather wait until one of the goalscoring midfielders (who can give you a better return) like Saka or Salah or Palmer, or maybe Mbeumo or Cunha comes into a hot streak of form. All rushing to drop the Triple Cap on Haaland the first time he plays a promoted side is classic sheep behaviour.

(Now, Erling has been in tremendous form so far this season; and he is really the only player at the moment who regularly looks capable of scoring more than 1 goal per game. And he might pull that off again against Burnley; he might even get a hattrick [very, very unlikely; but he might]. That won't mean that playing the chip on him this week was a smart choice; that would just make it a lucky choice. All the evidence points to there being better opportunities for this chip a bit later on.)

[Ha! As it turns out, Haaland did manage a huge return in this game. Though he had to rely on being gifted 2 goals by bizarre defensive errors at the end of the regulation 90 minutes! As I acknowledge at the end of this piece, there was indeed a reasonable chance that he'd pick up a goal in this game, maybe even two; but there was no very strong reason for supposing that this was much more likely than in many other fixtures he'll face, much less for expecting that he was 'almost certain' to bag a multi-goal haul. The outcome here, while not beyond the bounds of expectation, was very much at the uppermost limit of the range of such expectation - it was very, very LUCKY!]

Can ANYONE be Captain?

 

Well, in theory, yes.... But in practice, usually NOT.

A little postscript to my post this morning on the trials of selecting your weekly Captain in Fantasy Premier League....

Now, in general, FPL doesn't give regular rewards for anything other than goals. And forwards, of course, tend to score most of the goals. So, you're likely to be better off choosing a forward to be your Captain, right?

Well, yes,..... except that many of the best forwards are in fact classified by the game as 'midfielders'. And many players, even if you might properly consider them as 'midfielders' rather than 'forwards', nevertheless, at least when they're in hot form, may score nearly as often, or even slightly more often, than the best forwards. And midfielders are privileged in the game's scoring system - getting more points than a forward for a goal, often picking up a free additional point for a team clean sheet, and generally being a bit more likely to pick up asssists and bonus points too (and also the newly introduced 'defensive points').

So, most of the time, it makes the most sense to give the Captain's armband to a goalscoring 'midfielder'.

Of course, some 'forwards' (especially the freakish Erling Haaland), when they're in form, do offer a particularly strong prospect of a goal almost every week; and may have a significantly elevated chance of registering a brace or even a hattrick against a favourable opponent. So, they can often be worth considering for the armband, ahead of your best midfielder. (However, it's a bit of a risk. Even Haaland doesn't score in every game; and he sometimes fails to score in games where he's expected to enjoy a landslide. And a midfielder who registers a goal and an assist will usually out-point a forward who notches a brace of goals, so.... midfielders are generally the better way to go. Even when Haaland does score a brace, he's very rarely the 'Player of the Week'!!)

And it also sometimes happens that none of your attacking players, 'midfielders' or 'forwards', have a particularly inviting fixture in a given gameweek, while a few of your defenders are facing teams who are really struggling to score any goals; so, you might occasionally take a chance on a defender getting a clean sheet. Although,... clean sheets are a very precarious thing to trust in for points, they can evaporate so easily (one tired mistake late in the game, one wondergoal out of nowhere, one dubious penalty award....). So, this is only really something you want to gamble on in that rare circumstance where none of your forwards or midfielders looks like a strong prospect for the gameweek. 

Strangely, there seems to be a common superstition against ever giving the armband to a goalkeeper. But in fact, in one of these weeks where the prospects look better for you in defence than attack, a keeper facing a weak opponent is usually a better prospect than a defender, because they can earn additional points for saves as well as the clean-sheet bonus. (In the past, some FPL managers might have been tempted to chase the higher 'points ceiling' from a defender, who might also pick up an attacking return of some sort; but attacking returns for defenders are vanishingly rare, and have been becoming more so in recent years with shifts in the tactics of the game against using full-backs as advanced wide players. Defenders might theoretically be able to earn more points in a match their team is likely to win comfortably; but in practice, the keeper usually does. However, this season the new 'defensive points' will probably even the balance up, giving defenders a much stronger chance of earning 2 extra points in a game; although that doesn't decisively rule keepers out of consideration, because they can often earn 2 or more points for their 'saves' in a game - and, if they make a lot of saves, they tend to be more likely to claim the maximum bonus points as well.)

You have to weigh up a nexus of factors - the regular points potential of your candidate players, their current individual and team form, and the likely difficulty of their fixture - to try to determine the best points prospect for the week. [And use your own judgement on this; don't try to rely on one of those ludicrously bad 'points predictor' apps.]

And YES, it can be anyone, from any position - even (though rarely) the goalkeeper. But 3 or 4 times out of every 5, it should usually be a midfielder.

That SAME OLD QUESTION again....

"Are Haaland and Salah worth it this year?"

Short answer: NO.  (But....)

'Super-premium' players are almost never 'worth it': the opportunity cost of going without so many other better players in almost every position in your squad will massively outweigh any points-advantage they might offer (4 times out of 5, anyway). 

There are certain guideline criteria I suggest in that earlier post on this issue which might justify their inclusion. But I don't think these criteria (the crucial last two of them, at any rate) are clearly going to be met with either of the BIG TWO this season.

Will they rack up an absolutely massive season total??  Probably not - not anywhere near the level of their previous best years, anyway. Liverpool and City are both in a 'rebuilding' phase, which makes their overall team performance much more suspect (City, in fact, were really poor for most of last season - and haven't yet shown any sign of turning that around). Their star men are having to adapt to a lot of new personnel around them, with probably a very radically different playing style arising from that as well; and, more particularly, they will probably face more competition in sharing the club's pool of potential goals than in many previous years, with new players like Ekitike and Wirtz and Frimpong (and maybe Isak...?) very likely to cut into Salah's total, and Marmoush and Cherki probably claiming at least a few chances that might previously have fallen to Haaland. I think both of these superstars will still have very decent seasons - probably breaking 200 points, and maybe even getting up towards 250. But is that enough to justify a price tag of 14.0 or 14.5 million? Probably not!  [And that, I think, is at the optimistic rather than the pessimistic end of the range for projections of their performance this season. Salah, of course, is likely to lose a month or so mid-season due to his participation in the African Cup of Nations, and we should adjust our expectations of his season-total accordingly (although we should always be concerned rather with current form, rather than year-long achievement). And both Liverpool and City are giving signs that they're likely to struggle a little this season, at least against better opposition - and returns from all of their players will probably be slightly restricted by this. There is a good chance that Haaland and Salah - even without a major upset like a significant injury or a prolonged dip in output - will only return something like 170-190 points this season.]

Will they be the top-returner in their position category, by a big margin??  Again, probably not. They might again be the top points-returners, but, as I pointed out a few days ago, that, on its own, doesn't matter; it's the runs of returns over short stretches of the season, and the overall returns from the full starting eleven rather than the best individuals that decide your outcomes in FPL. Palmer, Saka, and Gakpo could run Salah pretty close, maybe even do a little better; and Cunha, Mbeumo, Ndiaye, Kudus, Wirtz, Ndoye, Hudson-Odoi, Elanga, Grealish, Ismaila Sarr, Enzo Fernandez and a few others also look like they could have very big seasons. Haaland has been given stiff competition by Isak and Watkins in the last couple of seasons, and they might prove even better prospects this year (especially if they move to stronger teams?); Joao Pedro and Richarlison have started the season very strongly, with suddenly rejuvenated teams who now look likely to be able to challenge at the top of the table; Wissa and Wood will be hoping to build on their outstanding form of last season; and the new arrivals in the league, Ekitike and Sesko and Gyokeres, look to have a lot of potential too. I'm not saying any of these will beat Haaland; but I don't think he'll open up much of a gap over the best of them.

Despite - probably - failing these key 'rule-of-thumb' tests, Haaland and Salah might still be justifiable picks as long as they're getting somewhere close (they might; though I'm not super-confident in them this time...),... IF the overall budget dynamics this year make them still affordable.

The key factors that determine this 'affordability' are how many other premium players there are (that you might covet as well as, or instead of the BIG TWO), and how much really good value there is to be found at the lower-end of the price spectrum.

On the first point, the situation looks rather promising: there are almost no other premium-priced players this season - the smallest number there has been for many years, I think. With the departures of Son and Luis Diaz in pre-season, we're left with only Palmer and Saka priced above 10 million in midfield, only Bruno Fernandes at 9.0 (who really should not be in contention at all this year, at any price), only Marmoush and Wirtz at 8.5, and only Cunha, Mbeumo, Foden, and Odegaard at 8.0. Among the forwards, only Isak is priced above 10 million (and not by much: I'd expected he'd start this season at least at 11.0 or 11.5!!), and only Watkins and Gyokeres are at 9.0.

But the cheap squad-filler end of the equation isn't nearly so favourable: among the forwards, only Strand Larsen and Thiago look like reasonably viable picks at the bottom end of the price spectrum (if Strand Larsen's rumoured move to Newcastle comes off this week, he could suddenly become one of the most popular picks in FPL!), and only perhaps Beto, Muniz, and Osula possible ultra-cheap bench-fillers (though they'd be low-value, very risky picks, as they don't currently look like being regular starters). Amongst the cheaper midfielders, only Reijnders, Ndoye, and Tavernier have so far stood out - and those might have been flash-in-the-pan performances. So far, we haven't seen many really compelling possibilities even at 6.5 (Rice and Enzo, Ndiaye and Grealish?), let alone much cheaper. Finding a player like Palmer two years ago, someone who might become the top points-producer of the season from a starting price of only 5 or 6 million, is a real 'Black Swan' event.....

Moreover, quite a few of the better budget midfielders, and most of the strongest defenders seem to have been priced 0.5 million higher this year, presumably to reflect their greater overall points-potential because of the newly-introduced 'defensive points'. This has a surprisingly big impact on the overall budget dynamics, and really puts a squeeze on our ability to afford the most expensive players (effectively, it means an extra 1.5-2.5 million of our budget is being spent 'invisibly').

If Haaland or Salah hit a run of form where they seem to be averaging 7 or 8 points a game for a while, they will be worth considering. But actually, for players of their price, even that isn't particularly outstanding - maybe still not quite enough to justify their selection, most of the time. Last year, Salah managed to average 9 points-per-game over the entire season; and both of them have often enjoyed spells of averaging 10 points or more per game. This year, I just don't think they'll do that again. While lots of other players will also probably hit that desirable threshold of bringing in 7 or 8 ppg, at least for a short spell.

But, of course, the dynamics of squad selection are always very fluid, dependent on multiple interacting factors. Salah and Haaland, despite not playing conspicuously well, have both produced pretty good points across the opening two games. While most of their more expensive rivals are currently out of contention: Isak is unavailable for selection while transfer discussions drag on, Watkins may be distracted by thoughts of a move and has looked out-of-sorts, Palmer and Saka and Odegaard just got injured, Eze just moved clubs and might not get an immediate start, Cunha and Mbeumo and Wirtz haven't found their form at their new clubs yet....

As it happens, you probably can afford Salah or Haaland at the moment. But I don't think you should splash the cash for both of them!  And neither of them should be regarded as a long-term hold this season.

For many FPL managers, alas, this question is treated as above rational discussion. These two players have developed a cult-like following of fanatics - who insist that they must always be a must-have pick, regardless of any considerations of form or overall budget. This, of course, is a very damaging delusion.

Players' season totals really DON'T MATTER

I already touched on this point quite extensively a couple of weeks back in this post on the price steps that are applicable for categorising FPL player options in different positions. However, it's such an important topic, I felt I should say a little more on it.

The problem here is that many FPL managers fall in thrall to the silly, dangerous delusion that ALL YOU HAVE TO DO in the game is identify the players who are going to get the highest totals for the season. (With the usual corollary that the players likeliest to do this are those who got the highest totals last season - which is a reasonable but not infallible guide to form.)

It seems paradoxical, unfathomable to many - but this is just NOT TRUE (not generally so, anyway; there will always be some exceptions, which I'll outline below).

The thing is, you really need to be pulling in around 200 points or so from every starting slot in your squad over the season, if you are to have a chance of finishing near the top of the rankings. In fact, since you're bound to come up short of that - perhaps well short - for many of the slots (defenders and goalkeepers just don't produce points at anything like the levels of the best midifelders and forwards), you really need to be aiming for more like 250+ points from at least a few of your highest-returning slots.

[It's very difficult, in practice, to get anything like 'optimal' returns from your captaincy picks throughout a season. But, even if we grant that you can match or slightly better the return from your top squad slot with your armband choices (Note: this might not be - probably won't be - a single player, held in the team all season.), and even if you could get a fairly good lift from all of your 'chips' (although we have double the usual number of chips this season, it's pretty unlikely they'll be collectively worth a lift of anything like an extra 100 points over the season), and even if you can get, say, 4 squad slots returning something close to 250 (whereas 2 or 3 hitting that level would be remarkable...), and even if you could hit that ideal of a 200-point average across the whole of the rest of your starting eleven (which would entail you having a very strong bench as well, since you're going to have to be drawing on those guys fairly often to fill out the main line-up),..... you'd still probably come up 50-100 points short of last year's global champion. That's how big of an ASK it is!!  But that's what we all have to aim for.....]

And 250 points is an enormous season-total for an individual player. Usually, there are only 1 or 2 players who manage that in a season; but quite often, there are none. There are only ever a handful who manage to get over 200 points each year - and usually only a little over that threshold; and again, it's possible that sometimes no-one will even crack that seemingly more modest milestone.

So, you can't usually rely on any player - even your Mo Salah, Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney, Erling Haaland types - to deliver you the kind of points you need from your best positions in the eleven. Even the very best players don't always reach that level; occasionally, they might come up a long way short.

Even when the top players have a really outstanding season, they are very, very rarely the highest-returning player across every shorter run of games within the season. There was almost always a player who, across 4 or 5 or 6 games, was delivering more points than them once or twice over the season. That was even true of Salah in his record-breaking season last year; his returns tailed off in the latter part of the year, and there were spells when it would have been profitable to drop him for someone else. [Of course, it can seem like an unacceptable risk to swap out one of these top-performing players. As I discussed in this post, their ability to deliver some exceptionally high gameweek hauls, and their overall consistency - with few if any long runs of 'blanks' - often makes them worth holding on to for an extended period of time, and occasionally, perhaps, even the whole season. Furthermore, the fact that they're usually very high-priced players makes it much more difficult to swap them in and out of a squad at will; so, once you have them, you may feel somewhat stuck - obliged to persist with them, come what may. But that will often be a mistake: even the best players almost always hit runs of less impressive form,... while a cheaper rival is suddenly banging in goals every week. You must not let yourself become bewitched by the glamorous reputation of a top performer; if they're not the top performer right now, you need to be ready to let them go.]

You can't expect to be able to hang on to any player for the whole season. You need to be trying to wring more points out of every slot in your line-up than any single player can produce. In order to achieve that, you have to seek to constantly rotate in the best current players over a short run of games.

As I explained in the post I mentioned at the top here, previous season totals are a useful guide to likely performance in the current season. But what you're really interested in is not the actual season total, but the projection of a theoretical season total from recent form - when the player you're looking at has been getting a regular run of starts and has been playing well. You will often find that that number is well over 250 points (if he's been averaging around 7 points per game in his last 3 or 4 starts) Their actual season-total won't be anywhere near that, 99 times out of a hundred; they'll get injured, get dropped, or just suffer a bit of a drought at some point - their run of high returns will come to an end sooner or later. But you need to try to have them in your side when their pro rata returns are up in that golden zone. 

If you become fixated on your Haalands and your Salahs, you risk missing out on a lot of players who could actually give you more points than them - at least for a part of the season.

In addition to this problem that even an exceptional player like Haaland or Salah will rarely guarantee you a big enough points total to make them an attractive season-long hold, there is also the - again, often perversely unacknowledged or stubbornly denied - fact that.... the game is about getting the best returns collectively from your starting eleven (backed up, on occasion, by your bench), not just from a handful of top-performing players.

Even if Haaland and Salah do outscore the next best option in their positions by a massive 50 or 80 points over the season,.... you can almost certainly more than make up that margin by being able to afford substantial upgrades in almost every other starting position with the money you save by not having them.

Players like these can be worth having, at least for certain spells of certain seasons; but they are almost never - only in the most exceptional of circumstances - worth having for the entire season.

If you think you MUST have players like these just because they seem likely to be the season's top-returning picks - you are committing a grave error. There will be certainly be other (cheaper!) players who outscore them in short spells during the season. And there will certainly be a massive opportunity cost in going without so many other top players in order to afford them.  (I may have a little more to say about this in a few days....)

The super-premiums aren't usually worth it

 

I just pointed out that, in the defender category, the value of players priced at 6.0 or 6.5 million, or even at 5.5 million, is often very dubious - when there are usually several options at 5.0 or 4.5 who may do very nearly as well, or perhaps even sometimes a little bit better.

The same is true - even more so - for goalkeepers.

In the 'midfield' and 'forward' position categories, though, the most expensive players have usually been priced that way for a good reason, and do usually offer a much higher points-prospect than any of the cheaper alternatives: there is a tempting potential differential points-gap over the competition.

And yet.... when you get up towards the extreme end of the pricing scale, it's no longer just about direct comparison with a single best alternative; it becomes about the broader opportunity cost of having to go short throughout much of the rest of the squad in order to afford such an expensive player.

These super-premium players are just about never 'worth it' in pure value-for-money terms. Even Mo Salah, in his record-smashing season last year, was well outside the Top 20 on 'points-per-pound'; Haaland's ranking on that metric, in his two huge seasons preceding, was absolutely abysmal. But as I pointed out this time last year (in this comprehensive post on how to choose an initial squad), some players are so good that they can become 'above budget'.

However, for a player to merit this kind of special consideration, he needs to fulfill the following criteria: 

1)  Be an ever-present. Must be 100% 'nailed', not at any risk of rotation. Must also have supreme fitness levels and near-superhuman immunity to injury, and exceptional resilience to be able to recover from slight knocks very quickly. If you're paying 10 million or more - and especially if you're paying 12 million or more! -  for a player, you don't ever want to have any anxieties about whether or not they might start the next game; you want to be really confident that they will play almost every single game of the season.

2)  Must offer the prospect of at least a few really huge gameweek returns, and several double-digit returns over the season.

3) Must be incredibly consistent: rarely going more than a couple of gameweeks without some sort of additional points return, and never producing a run of more than, say, 4 or 5 'blanks' in a row.

4)  Must offer a strong prospect of a season total at least up around 250 points, with a reasonable chance of approaching or exceeding 300 points.

5)  And, most importantly, they should be likely to outscore their best rival high-priced players (at similar or lower price-point) by at least 30-50 points, and the best of the more modestly priced alternatives by at least 80-100 points.

[Now, they might not play the whole season. And you might well not want to keep them for the whole season, even if they do. But they should at least track for those kinds  of numbers - hence demonstrating a clear, consistent, and massive advantage over just about any other player, while they are starting regularly.]

Salah just about met those criteria last season. But only just. And his main rivals, Haaland, Palmer, and Saka, in contrast, all had very 'disappointing' seasons. And he only cost 12.5 million last season! This year, he's up to 14.5 million...  Last year was a freak; he can't possibly get up to that kind of enormous total again (especially as he's likely to be missing a month or so mid-season for the African Cup of Nations; and remember, in the last one of those, he picked up an injury,... took quite a while to fully shake it off,... suffered a bit of a crash in form as a result,.... and eventually started getting dropped occasionally, which led to very public friction with Jurgen Klopp... Even Super-Mo has his off spells!). And there might be several other players challenging his position at the top of the points chart this season.

I think Salah last year might have been the only player in FPL history - certainly one of only a very, very few - to categorically justify a price tag of over 12 million pounds. In other seasons, great as he's been, he's often not been massively ahead of his closest rivals; and he's often had little - or not-so-little - spells of injury or dips in form where it became reasonable to stop thinking of him as a must-have, a season-long hold.

I think - I hope - Salah will have another outstanding season this year. Haaland too. I expect them to be almost certainly the top points-scorers in the 'midfield' and 'forward' categories again.

But just having the top points-scorers is not enough. (FPL managers with a very naive view of the game, and a very limited grasp of mathematics, never seem to get beyond this....)  If their differential advantage over the next best picks in their positions is not that much, and if the differential advantage of being able to upgrade several other spots in your squad if you do without them could be absolutely HUGE,.... then they're just NOT WORTH IT.

Highly - very, very, very highly - as I rate both of them, I feel that, at the astronomical pricings of 14.5 and 14.0 million, Salah and Haaland are priced out of contention in FPL this year.

And indeed, all such super-premium priced players are usually worth avoiding. However massive the points hauls they can offer you, they're unlikely to be worth the cost of beggaring the rest of your squad.

[But.... there are no hard-and-fast rules in this game. Given how both Haaland and Salah have tended to 'start hot' in recent seasons, and rack up some enormous points in the opening few games, it is probably worth having a punt on one of them from the start of the season. If they enjoy such an early points bonanza again, and there's a wave of new owners rushing to buy them as a result, you might be able to take a quick transfer-trading profit by dumping them out after a month or so. It is always a lot easier to offload a very expensive player than it is to bring one in (which usually requires multiple additional transfers to juggle your budget).

At this price level, though, I'd say you definitely can't afford both of them. And it is an entirely legitimate choice - probably the sensible, optimal choice - to go without either,... for the majority of the season, anyway.]