It's neither A SPRINT nor A MARATHON

 

You often find folks on the FPL online forums saying about this Fantasy game of ours: "It's a marathon, not a sprint."

And you can see what they mean: it's supposed to be dismissive of people who gloat unduly over a single week's success (or become too disheartened at a single week's disaster...), reminding them that things can change over a long season, and - most importantly - that you should focus on longer-term goals, longer-term planning than merely optimising for the coming gameweek.

It's just unfortunate that the phrase has become devalued by overuse, reduced to a glib cliché - whose true significance is rarely reflected upon fully.

And the thing is.... it's not a marathon either. 

The FPL season is actually more like a series of middle-distance races.

It breaks down into into roughly 5 or 6 blocks of fixtures (of about 6-8 games each; though, depending on circumstances, they might occasionally be a little longer, or - rarely - ever so slightly shorter). And you should really be planning your transfers around these blocks; trying to optimise your team not just for the next gameweek or two, but for the next six or so.

There are some 'macro' features of the season, the same every year (or most years), which affect this division into blocks: the chaos of the two transfer windows at the beginning and the mid-point of the football year; the insane fixture congestion of December/January, and the brutally cold weather throughout the winter months; the interruptions of the international breaks; the loss of players to the African Cup of Nations or the Asian Cup in mid-season every two or four years; the appearance of Blank and Double Gameweeks at the latter end of the season, and the growing distraction of other competitions for those teams who've reached the later rounds in Europe or the domestic Cups.

Then there are some more 'micro' features that may shift from year to year: some teams have more of a 'wobble' of form in the bleak midwinter than others; some struggle more with the demands of European football, due to unfamiliarity and/or a lack of squad depth and/or being particularly unlucky with injuries; the promoted sides usually take some time to adapt to the top league, and don't start to become even moderately competitive until a third, or a half, or two-thirds of the way through the season (but can throw quite a spanner in the works when they do); some clubs may suffer unwelcome upheaval, and/or get the benefit of a 'new manager bounce' from a change of manager; and so on. Most crucially, each season is shaped by patterns in the fixtures; there are usually a few major 'turns' in fixture-difficulty, where a number of teams shift from having mostly very difficult to mostly much easier fixtures at about the same, and these can be a cue for multiple changes to an FPL squad.

It makes no sense to 'plan' for the FPL season as a whole (except insofar as you should recognise its likely 'shape', based on the factors above, and thus be mentally prepared for the likely key moments of difficulty and opportunity spread throughout it). You need to break it up into more manageable chunks, and plan your squad-building around each of those.

Constantly telling yourself that "it's a marathon" may provide some solace when a gameweek goes badly for you; but it can also be a dangerous distraction. You need to be focusing on what you're going to do to prosper over the next month or so.

[I speak as someone who's been a keen runner their whole life, and who's had some experience at all kinds of distances.

I've always been tall for my age, and when I was in Primary School I was considered quite a devastating sprinter (though, of course, this was largely because we only ever ran about 20m or 30m, and most of my peers still had the coordination of newborn foals). In my teens I discovered that I was much better suited to the middle distances: I never quite had the stamina to push hard for a full mile, but was pretty quick over 800m and 1,000m. However, I was never very serious about competition, I was more concerned with the meditative aspect of running; and so I gradually transitioned into running slower and slower, over longer and longer distances. And as I entered my forties, I became interested in taking on the challenge of running marathons - and even a few ultra-marathons. So, I have a perspective on this topic, I feel I have a deeper understanding of the metaphor than most people.]

What a 'differential' is NOT

I touched on this in the introduction to my fuller post on 'differentials' this morning. But it's so important that I think it merits briefly highlighting in a post of its own here.

Many FPL managers (the vast majority, it would appear - from the online forums, at least) seem to have fallen prey to the self-harming delusion that 'differential' means prioritizing players who are less-owned.

That is UTTERLY BLOODY POINTLESS.

A less-owned player is only valuable to you if he's going to earn you more points than the more highly-owned alternatives. Which is rarely, if ever, the case....

And NOTE, the unfortunate corollary here is that high-owned players are to be distrusted and avoided. But, ahem, there are reasons why they're so high-owned: and those reasons usually include the fact that they've been producing scads of points!

The allure of the 'differential', conceived like this, is illusory. A decent player who's low-owned may have the occasional brilliant week; and, once-in-a-blue-moon, perhaps one of those rare great weeks of his will correspond to a week in which all the more popular picks fail to produce much. In that week, the owners of the 'differential' will feel terribly smug, as they temporarily gain rank because of their 'brilliant' pick; so smug, in fact, that they can overlook the fact that in almost every other gameweek of the season they have done much worse than the managers who went with deservedly more popular picks.

Any rank-gaining benefit you may occasionally reap from a 'differential' of this kind is also inevitably short-lived - because, if such a player really is wrongly overlooked and undervalued, is indeed coming into hot form and about to display huge points potential,.... lots of other FPL managers are quickly going to come onboard for him, and his ownership level will have shot up within two or three weeks.

It is not impossible to find this sort of 'differential' advantage occasionally; but it is very, very rare - and really not something worth making a primary focus of your game. Particularly if that leads you to chase every low-owned second- or third-tier player who looks like he might be such a prospect after one good haul....

The 'Cult of the Differential' usually leads to people desperately chasing points in the most reckless and stupid ways, and perversely ignoring more sensible picks.

Forget about ownership level, and concentrate on points-potential.

The true meaning of 'differential'

I have been meaning for a long time to address the topic of 'differentials'. It is one of the most infuriatingly overused terms, one of the most pervasive - and most destructive - myths in all of FPL-land.

The essential problem with it is that it's become such a jargon term that many people use it completely unreflectively, without even considering what they really mean by it - much less what it really ought to mean.

The most common, and dangerous, misconception that has become attached to it is that there is somehow an automatic advantage in choosing less-owned players.

THERE IS NOT. There is only an advantage in identifying less-owned (and/or cheaper) players who are going to score more points than the more highly-owned (and/or more expensive) alternative picks.

The much-abused term 'differential' is, however, highly relevant, meaningful, and useful in a number of other applications - which rarely or never seem to merit explicit consideration in FPL circles. 'Differential' value is actually crucial to all selection decisions; but it operates in a number of different ways.

Where the 'differential' concept actually MATTERS:

1)  Price differential:  Is the player you're targeting a better points-prospect than all other players available at the same or similar price-point?

2)  Position differential:  Is the player you're targeting a better points-prospect than anyone else you can afford in the same position category?

3)  Club differential:  Is the player you're targeting likely to give you a bigger points lift over the next best alternative than another player at the same club would give you over their next best alternative?  [This is the chief - and almost invariably unappreciated - argument against selecting David Raya; a fantastic goalkeeper, but not that much better than any of his rivals in FPL terms - while a number of his Arsenal teammates are (at least, sometimes) much better than most of their rivals.]

4)  Price-step differential:  Is the player you're targeting likely to give you a bigger points lift over the best alternative one price-step cheaper (usually you're focused on a positional comparison, but occasionally it might also be in the context of a club quota) than the points lift that an alternate pick might give you over their closest cheaper competitor?  At the start of the season, all price-steps are 500k, but later on, an interval of even 100k or 200k can sometimes make a big difference. [Most of the time, you'll just be looking at the possible impact of a one price-step difference between two options. But sometimes - particularly at the start of the season, when choosing the initial squad - you might be weighing up the advantage of spending 1 or 1.5 million more on a particular slot.]

5)  'Value' differential:  Is the player you're considering going to give you a better points-per-pound return than the alternatives? This is particularly relevant when you're choosing your initial squad, as you'll usually be running short of budget for at least the last 3, 4, or 5 spots and you really have to squeeze every possible point out of each of those picks - even if you expect to be able to leave them on the bench most of the time.

6)  Transfer differential:  Is the player you're bringing in likely to give you a bigger points lift over the guy you're replacing than other transfers in your squad might produce?

7) Team differential:  Does your overall team selection (and squad selection - because you will often need to draw on your bench) offer you a substantially better points-potential than the likely global average score this gameweek, and (perhaps even more importantly) than the selections of the key rivals in your mini-leagues?  [I prefer to maintain my team differential advantage by trusting that my opponents will make some bad picks, rather than by avoiding taking their good picks for myself.]

Ownership level has no bearing on any of that! The ONLY THING you should be interested in is whether a player (more properly, in fact, a group of players, in the context of each other) is offering you the best points return for the money you have available. 'Differential advantage' is all about identifying where you can get the most points, assessed within a number of different frames of reference.

'Ownership' will only become relevant for breaking a dead-heat: if you really can't decide between two possible picks, they seem to you to have absolutely equal prospects by all criteria - then you can go for the less-owned one. (But that NEVER happens.)