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.

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.]