Am I actually any good at FPL??

Dear Reader, I consider it impertinent of you to ask!

I don't like to brag. So, if I do well in this game, I'm generally going to keep it to myself. (Similarly, if I do badly, I prefer to crawl into a hole in the ground and sob. Quite a lot of that last season...)

However, I do have a long and varied experience in games of this sort now; and I've always done pretty well.

I played a few of the UK newspapers' games back in the mid-90s, before Fantasy Football had migrated online, and once finished in the top 1,000 in The Daily Telegraph's version (although the entry was much smaller then, so that might only be equivalent to cracking the top 50,000 or so in FPL today - still, not too shabby).

I became a little bit addicted to management sims in the late '90s and early '00s, and, of course, crushed them. My finest achievement was probably taking over Liverpool in the summer of 1998, and after two or three years of painstakingly establishing the squad and the tactics I wanted, going on to claim three successive Champions League titles with them. After that, I took on the national team job, and ended the "years of hurt" by leading England to a convincing victory in the 2006 World Cup. [I beat Germany in the semi-final and Italy in the Final - which was oddly prescient of the game, considering that it had been programmed around 8 years priot to tthat tournament! The thing I remember most from that bizarre triumph is that Steven Gerrard got himself suspended for a second booking in the semi, and I had to bring Nicky Butt off the bench to be my holding midfielder in the Final - but he played an absolute blinder. Funny old game, indeed....]

And I dove into the modern FPL game for the first time in the 2018-2019 season. So.... I've 'paid my dues', I think....

My personal goal has always been to crack 2,500 points for the season - and I haven't quite managed it yet. However, I have got fairly close a couple of times. And I've usually been well on track for it over most of the season, but been thrown off course by one unfortunate fallow spell (a couple of times a really disastrous start, and a few times an Arsenal-like dip in February-March!).  

Last season, I admit, was my worst ever: just about everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, including an eye-watering 55 non-trivial injuries (just think what that means in paid transfers, apart from anything else...). But I still managed well over 2,200. The other five seasons, I think my average has been around 2,375 - with a variance of a little less than 100.

I've made quite a study of other players' records in the game, particularly those that I have discovered to be conspicuously good - and there is a pretty common pattern.  Almost everyone takes at least 2 or 3 years to get the hang of the game, typically getting scores below, or only a very little above 2,000 pts at first. They then usually have a period of mature growth, slower but steadier, where they may continue to improve by tiny increments for another 2-3 years, perhaps as long as 5-8 years. But after that they hit a plateau, they 'find their level'; and, as with me, their scores rarely swing more than 100 pts or so one side or the other of their median. 

Occasionally, they can have a very bad year, where they may be 200 or 300 points lower than usual. Perhaps personal issues were distracting them from the game, or they got locked out of their account... Or perhaps they just got very unlucky with their picks that year (it happens!). But this was clearly an untypical aberration.  

Equally, they may have one or two years where they score significantly above what they've ever done before (and this can happen even in the early years of struggle, when they don't yet appear to be very good at the game): sometimes 200 or 300 points more - or even 400, 500, 600 pts more.

I think I'll have more - maybe a lot more - to say on the implications of this in future posts. (But SPOILER: it basically means that the game is NOT a meritocracy; the outcomes are affected by sheer luck far more than anything else.)  But... it leads me to believe that I largely skipped the initial 'learning phase' (probably because I'd got so much experience of similar games 15 or 20-odd years earlier) and jumped straight to the plateau of fairly stable competence. And I would venture, in all humility, that this level of competence is approaching fairly near the maximum possible.

Regularly getting scores of 2,300, 2,400+ over a run of years is quite an achievement. 

I just haven't had any really good luck yet. In fact, my luck has been mostly terrible: and I've still managed some very respectable scores! If I ever get one of those upward-blip years where everything goes right for me and I get 200 or 300 points more than I normally would, I could be in contention at the top of the global rankings. But it may never happen. And I don't really care if it does or not; since achievement above the top 200,000 or so depends very largely - and in some cases, almost entirely - on luck, it holds no interest for me.

I said in the previous post that I don't hold myself out to be any sort of 'EXPERT' in Fantasy Football. And I have no aspirations to finish in the top 1,000, or 10,000, or 50,000 (although I've been not too far off that last bracket a couple of times...)

I measure my performance against my assessment of my own capability, and against realistic but challenging ideals - not against other players. That is where the 'Zen' comes in....   (But compared to most other players, I am prety, pretty good!!)

What do I know about FPL?

First off, I would like to address the problem that an awful lot of FPL enthusiasts seem to fixate on the mechanics of the game itself, and largely (or entirely?) divorce it in their minds from the actual game it is derived from - the 'beautiful game', our beloved Association Football, as practised in the English Premier League. If you're going to be any good at FPL, the main thing you need is a deep understanding of football.

I don't think there's really that much to 'know' about Fantasy Premier League - the rules are pretty simple and obvious. (But that won't stop me writing about their subtleties and implications, at length, over the coming months....)

But I do know quite a lot about football. I have been passionate about the game, besotted with it, since I was a little kid. (And I'm in my late middle age now; so, we're talking about five decades or so of being a football obsessive.)  I watch as much of it as I can - ideally full games, live (bit of a practical problem for me now, since I live in East Asia, where the timezone is against me, and local TV and Internet service isn't great). I have, for example, watched very nearly every game of every World Cup since 1974.

I've had the experience of playing, refereeing and coaching the game. (Not much, and only at the very lowest level - but even so, that gives you a breadth of insight that not many people can claim.)

I've also been privileged to see some great players up close - not from the stands, but from the touchline. That is a truly eye-opening, life-changing experience. [When I was in my teens, I had the good fortune to see a practice game between a University side and a Spurs 'Reserves' eleven. This was in the great Keith Burkinshaw era of the early '80s. And it just so happened that half the usual first team had been sidelined with injury niggles for a few weeks, and needed a soft game like this to start getting 'match-fit' again. And a few others were brought along as well - just as a public relations exercise? - so in fact, it was pretty much the Spurs first team: Chris Hughton, Graham Roberts, Steve Perryman, Justin Edinburgh, Mark Falco, Steve Archibald, and..... Glenn Hoddle. Honestly, Hoddle in his early or mid-twenties was a thing of beauty; he'd just ping these 40-, 50, 60--yard chipped passes all over the field, with stunning accuracy... and often over-his-shoulder, without even looking at the intended recipient. Jaw-dropping talent.

Just over a decade later, I happened to be in Chicago during the '94 World Cup, and my host took me along to see the German team training one morning (public fields, just about no security; the American public evidently had zero interest in Die Mannschaft!). Seeing the likes of Jurgen Klinsmann at close range was utterly exhilarating for me.]

Also, I'm pretty good - very good - with numbers. I'm far from being a maths prodigy, but... I do have a very strong innate numerical aptitude, a good 'number sense'. And I've taken the trouble to master the basics, at least, in useful fields such as statistics and probability. When I look at a page of EPL/FPL stats, I can usually see instantly what they actually mean. (And also what they don't tell you - which is often even more important.)

I take a deep interest in the tactics of the game. I think it's important to understand the dynamics of a team as a whole, just as much as being able to assess the talent and form of individual players.

And YES, I have a lot of experience with Fantasy Football too. I started playing some of the early newspaper versions of the game 30 years ago; and, for a while, got very into management sims on console and desktop as well.  And this will be my seventh season playing the modern FPL online game.

Above all, I would say that I am obsessively curious, and uncommonly self-aware and self-analystical. In fact, I perhaps play this game more for insight than actual success; I am constantly exploring what most determines points outcomes, and it is the fascination of this enquiry that gives me most of my satisfaction in the game. (Again, I suspect that's not something that many people can say about their interaction with FPL.)

NB:  I make no claims to being an FPL 'expert'. (Most of those self-appointed gurus, I'm afraid, appear to me to be empty-headed charlatans who don't know any more than the majority of us regular players of the game; in fact, often - usually - far less.)  But I am a smart guy. And I really KNOW my football.

So, I think you, dear reader, might just possibly find some useful observations and insights on this blog - to help you get more out your own FPL experience. That is my modest hope....