The 2024-25 'Sheep Picks' revisited

During the course of the year, I highlighted a number of unduly popular selections - 'sheep picks' - that I thought were misguided and unpromising, for a variety of reasons. Now that the season is over, I thought I'd quickly review those disrecommendations, to see if I was badly off-the-mark on any of them.

My first nomination, going into Gameweek 2, was Everton defender Michael Keane, who was a popular 'budget-enabler' early in the season - as one of the few 4.0-million-pound players who was actually getting a start. However, you don't want to be having to use transfers to replace such a low-value squad-filler; for that sort of spot, you really need someone you can rely on to be at least a starter all season; and Keane was obviously only ever filling in short-term for the injured Jarrad Branthwaite. Now, Branthwaite's injury kept him out a bit longer than first expected, and then quickly recurred; so, Keane actually played a full match in 9 of the first 10 games. And he did bag 2 excellent - but, for him, extremely untypical! - goals in that spell; so, people who had bet on him got rather lucky! Everton predictably took a battering from Spurs, leaving Keane with a nul-pointer in the first game after I warned against this pick: and they were so ropey at the start of the season that they couldn't beat Villa either,... or even Leicester - giving Keane just a solitary point in two of the next three games, before Branthwaite initially returned. 31 points over the next 9 games - including a 14-point bonanza for his screamer of a late winner against Ipswich - turned out to be a pretty decent return for a cheap defender; but over the 4 or 5 games immediately following, it was much less so. He was not objectively a good pick at that point, even for the price (people like Wout Faes and Taylor Harwood-Bellis were playing better, and were looking much more nailed starters for the season).

The following week, I called out Noni Madueke - a classic case of 'chasing last week's points', as nearly 1 milllion managers rushed in for him after his hattrick and 20-point haul against Wolves. Another goal - for a 10-point week - against Forest in GW7 dragged him up to 22 points over the next 5 games, which would be a barely adequate return, perhaps; but then he blanked in the next 6 games after that, quickly dropping 200,000 in price again. It was always pretty obvious that he was unlikely to become a regular goalscorer.

And in Gameweek 4, I went for the low-hanging fruit of poor Dominic Calvert-Lewin. Over 200,000 managers piled on him after a good game and a double-digit haul against Bournemouth. Now, he did actually score again against Villa in the next game, and perhaps some FPL managers would be satisfied with that. But he followed that up with 9 blanks in a row, and only scored once more all year - just before succumbing to a season-ending injury in January. Everton were in pretty awful shape at that point, and Dominic has never managed to produce sustained goalscoring form - so, it was a clearly daft selection.

For Gameweek 8, I picked on Rayan Ait-Nouri. He'd just notched up a goal and an assist against Brentford, but Wolves's defensive form was so abject at that point that this performance had only earned him 9 points, and barely dragged him above 20 points for the first 7 games of the season. Wolves had City up next; and even though the Champions were just starting to stutter a bit, there was no way Wolves were going to beat them. Ait-Nouri did in fact come up with a goal in the following game against Brighton, and then managed a clean sheet against Southampton two weeks after that - for a so-so return of 14 points from 4 games; but a miserable run after that yielded just 4 net points from the next 6 games.  And even with the sharp upturn in Wolves's results after Vitor Pereira took over in mid-season, Ait-Nouri was still often being used in a more purely deefensive role, and he only produced 1 more goal and 4 assists - and 85 points - in 20 games under the new manager: pretty good, but still not great; and that didn't start getting going until the end of December, nearly three months after this post.. His return of 18 points from the next 10 matches from here was dismal.

In Matchweek 11, I queried the choice of Dominic Solanke. Again, over-excitable FPL managers were responding to an excellent performance against Villa in the previous game, where he picked up 2 goals and an assist,... and to the prospect of facing promoted Ipswich next. Of course, he blanked in that following game, as Spurs were well beaten by the plucky East Anglian side; and he only produced 1 assist in his next three outings. Postecoglou's Spurs were floundering, and Solanke was mostly playing an unselfish facilitator role rather than being a primary goal outlet for them: he only managed 3 more goals and 3 assists, and a fairly modest 42 points, over the 11 games before he picked up an injury in January. I rate Dominic very highly as a player; but in that team, in that moment,... he was clearly not a strong FPL points prospect.

In Matchweek 12, I cast doubt on whether we should get too excited about the prospect of a 'new manager bounce' for Manchester United under Ruben Amorim, and whether his first really good haul of the season could be taken as the beginning of a 'hot streak' for Bruno Fernandes. Just as with Spurs in the previous week, Ipswich proved not to be a pushover, battling to a draw in front of their home fans, as Fernandes blanked. And although he picked up another 2 assists in a good win against still floundering Everton the following week, he would blank 8 more times over the next 12 games - as United failed to find any consistency under their new coach. Maybe some Bruno adopters would have been happy with three 9-pointers from him over the next 5 games (but he did follow that up by getting himself sent off against Wolves in December); but his return from Gameweeks 12 to 25 was a modest 56 points. In recent years, this has tended to be the problem with Bruno: like Son Heumg-Min, he will produce several decent hauls - and probably a few very big ones - every season,... but there will be long runs of blanks in between these, which make him hard to justify as a long-term hold. It would have been great if you could get on him for his run of 46 points from 4 games from Gameweeks 26-29; but for the season as a whole, he was not a good pick this year.

I nominated Bruno again in Gameweek 30, when over 1.25 million had bought him either side of the preceding game against Leicester, when he did indeed produce his season's best haul of 17 points. However, Manchester United's form was in a death-spiral by that point. Bruno had been trying to keep them afloat single-handedly, but he couldn't keep doing that forever. The Leicester match was in fact the end of a 4-game run of big returns; after that, he only managed 22 more points over the last 9 gameweeks.

In Gameweek 13, I turned my scepticism on Matheus Cunha - a great player, and one I have sometimes had in my own squad over the last two seasons. But it seemed crazy that over a million managers were scooping him up after two big hauls back-to-back towards the end of November. Those achievements were only against Southampton and Fulham, so not necessarily strong evidence of better prospects against the majority of forthcoming opponents; and although the immediately upcoming fixture-run looked quite promising, after Christmas they were facing a really brutal succession of opponents - and indeed, despite a strong improvement in performance under new coach Pereira, they only won 2 games in 10 in this sequence, and Cunha only produced a haul 3 times in that run. My main argument against him at the time was, why would you use transfers on a striker who probably only represents a good points-prospect for a short run of games - particularly when he's now become quite expensive, and there are so many cheaper forwards also in good form? Cunha's prospects didn't look strong enough to be worth swapping out whoever you currently had in that position. And in fact, despite facing that series of weak opponents in late November and early December, Wolves lost all 4 of these games, and Cunha only returned in the last of them, against Ipswich. And that was the game in which he got involved in some ugly argey-bargey with an Ipswich steward, and was looking likely to receive a LONG ban (it was amazing, and frankly, unjust, that he did not). Two more good hauls immediately following the Ipswich game - when, by rights, he should not have been playing - fortuitously made this look like a good pick for a while; but again over the longer term, Cunha's returns disappointed: his temperament was a recurring problem, as he caused tension in the dressing-room and with his coach, getting rested or given only short minutes a few times, and picking up another extended ban for fighting Milos Kerkez. He got a fairly healthy 46 points from the next 7 games after I queried the rush to buy him; but only another 67 in the second half of the season. And despite a very decent December for Cunha, there were other forwards who did about as well - and would continue to do so for longer.

Ahead of Gameweek 26, I questioned why over 1 million managers had snapped up Omar Marmoush in just a few days. Of course, it was because he'd just bagged an excellent hattrick against Newcastle. But City's form was still looking flakey, and it looked like Haaland was going to be out for a little while with another injury; and they had Liverpool up next, and a few other potentially tough fixtures approaching too. I was favourably impressed with Marmoush's potential, but I wasn't convinced how regular an impact he would have with this season's struggling City side. And so it proved: he blanked in the next 3 games, and then managed only 4 more goals and a solitary assist over the final 10 games of the season.

In Gameweek 29, I poured my scorn on the nearly 500,000 managers who'd brought in Erling Haaland. Admittedly, that was the big Blank Gameweek of the season, so a lot of them were probably only doing it on their Free Hit, because so many of their usual big-hitters were missing that weekend. But neither his nor City's form had been that great (3 defeats in the previous 6 games, and 3 blanks for Haaland); and they were now facing Brighton, who can be a very problematic opponent. And so it proved: the visitors battled to a 2-2 draw, and really should have won the game. Haaland at least yielded points for converting an early penalty, but didn't do much else in the game. And he went down with an injury the following week, which would rule him out for over a month. I didn't anticipate that, of course; but there had been good reasons for doubting he'd get big points in that particular game. And his record of 70 points in 12 starts over the second half of the season, as City slowly improved again, though extremely respectable - is a long way below peak Haaland.

In Gameweek 30, I called out Palace's Ismaila Sarr for being a daft pick. Now, he's a player I like very much; he's a hard worker for the side, but without ever looking likely become a regular or prolific goalscorer. He'd just bagged 3 goals - and 26 Fantasy points - in the previous 2 games, and he had a pair of Double Gameweeks approaching. But he obviously isn't the kind of player to repeat that kind of scoring feat too often, and the two double-fixtures weren't all that inviting. He provided 3 more assists over the season, and came up with another goal on the final day against Liverpool; but he only returned 7 points and 3 points from his two double-fixtures in GWs 32 and 33, and only 36 points over the last 10 games of the campaign. His teammate Ebere Eze, clearly a much stronger prospect from Palace in this period, produced 17 points from the back-to-back doubles, and 62 points over the last 10 games. This is the most clearcut one of the lot! Why would anyone choose Sarr over Eze??

In Gameweek 35, I warned against Ollie Watkins. Another pretty baffling one. Again, a very good player - but neither he nor Villa were showing any really solid form at that moment (they'd ground out a good sequence of wins over the past couple of months, but without actually playing very well: most of them were narrow and/or rather lucky victories, and mostly against weaker teams). Ollie did in fact manage a goal and an assist in the remaining games, for a respectable but hardly world-shattering 18 points from 4 starts. However, while not a resounding return - surely, far less than his new owners had been hoping for - it was actually pretty good in the context of the other leading forwards: though few might have predicted this, every other forward player faltered to some extent over the last few weeks of the season, and even the best of them - Isak, Wood, Marmoush, Welbeck - only managed around 13, 14, 15 points from the last 4 games, while the likes of Cunha and Mateta finished really poorly. Somewhat surprisingly, Watkins turned out to be not a particularly great pick here, but the least worst.

In Gameweek 36, I wagged my finger at people rushing to buy Josko Gvardiol. Folks were again under-estimating bottom-of-the-table Southampton - who did here rouse themselves to a heroically obstinate defensive effort and hold their illustrious visitors to a goalless draw. (At least Gvardiol picked up yet more clean-sheet points; but I think there had really been a pretty good chance Southampton could have scored in this one - if they'd had the guts to go after the game a bit more.) Their final two opponents after that, Fulham and Bournemouth, weren't at all straightforward, either; although, fortunately for City, both played quite poorly at the close of the season. So, Gvardiol's 2 clean sheets in 3 games here was very much at the upper end of what might have been hoped for from him in these games. However, my main argument at this point was not that he was definitely not worth having, but that it was ridiculously late to be joining the party: many people had owned Gvardiol all season; I'd been wary of him at first, because I doubted he'd be scoring a goal every other week, knew his defensive points weren't likely to be that great with City; and also, he didn't seem likely to be an ever-present, since Pep's defenders almost never are; but he had in fact become one of City's most nailed-on players this year, and he'd grown into a much more persuasive pick as City's defensive performances slowly improved from the turn of the year onwards. In the 7 games prior to this, he'd racked up 5 wins, 2 draws, 4 clean sheets, and 32 Fantasy points - people really should have bought him a month or so before this.

Finally, in Gameweek 37, I raised doubts about going in for Ebere Eze so late in the season. Yes, he'd been looking gee'd up rather than physically and emotionally drained by his team's recent success in the FA Cup Semi-Final, and had managed 3 good hauls back-to-back in the league. But as with Gvardiol above, the argument this time was not so nuch that he wasn't worth having, but that his peak returns were most likely over, and it might not be worth using a transfer on him now. He did in fact get a goal that week in a spirited win over Wolves, despite only coming on for a short spell at the end - in the wake of playing a victorious FA Cup Final at the weekend just a few days earlier. But he was more subdued in the final game, and earned no bonus points for either appearance. 9 points in a pair of games isn't too shabby - but there were almost certainly far better things you could have used your penultimate Free Transfer on.

Sometimes The Sheep wind up happy. Michael Keane got a much longer first-team run than had initially been expected, and came up with two fabulous goals out of nothing during that spell; but Everton's defence was so leaky early in the season that he still didn't produce particularly good points. His owners may claim that he was only ever meant to be a bench-filler (though I saw a lot of people starting him!), but you don't want to have to use transfers to change your bench-fillers; ideally, they'll be set-and-forget for the whole season, or a good long chunk of it. Bruno Fernandes got 3 decent hauls in the next 5 or 6 games after I first warned against him - probably enough to keep his owners happy,... although his season-long returns definitely weren't. Ditto Matheus Cunha, who did manage a few good hauls over the month or so after I voiced my misgivings about picking him. Even Erling Haaland at least came up with a goal in Blank Gameweek 29, which was OK - for people who'd only ever planned to move him in for that one week. Josko Gvardiol, somewhat contrary to expectation, picked up 2 further clean sheets in a tricky run of opponents over the last 3 games of the season; again, not great, but probably good enough to content his recent purchasers. Even Eze scored in a 10-minute cameo off the bench, in the wake of his FA Cup triumph - again, hardly expected; really, rather an undeserved piece of good fortune for FPL managers who'd brought him in only that week. And Ollie Watkins, while not lighting any fires, got a slightly better return over the final few games of the season than any of the other forwards.

Even here, the 'good' outcome was surely far less good than the adopters of these players had been optimistically expecting at that moment in the season. And in most cases, these returns didn't come immediately, in the next game - the one for which their new owners obviously had such high hopes - but just a little bit later. And in each case, I would say, there were a number of interlocking factors at play which combined to produce a highly fortuitous, far-from-expected set of events. Sometimes you get lucky; sometimes, very, very lucky; but that doesn't retrospectively make a rash decision into a wise one.

I'm very happy that so many of these posts of mine this season criticising over-popular picks proved incontestably correct: Madueke, Calvert-Lewin, Ait-Nouri, Solanke, Marmoush, Sarr. But I'm also pleased that some of them proved to be less clearcut: I think those potential 'grey areas' are places where there's scope for more interesting analysis and debate. But ultimately I feel equally vindicated in most of those more challenging instances: even though they performed well above what should have been a good average expectation of them in the coming fixtures,... it still wasn't quite good enough to justify the pick. Moreover, they usually didn't do very well over a longer run of games; and in many cases, they didn't do as well as some cheaper alternate picks.

'Collective action', 'group mentality' is all too often sadly deluded. I wouldn't advise never going for a suddenly popular FPL pick; but I would say - you should always question it very, very carefully; because popularity, on its own, is perhaps more often a bad thing than a good one.

The 'BAD Picks' revisited

 

At the start of the season, I wrote a couple of provocative posts, here and here, criticising some of the most widely popular initial squad picks as being, in my view, non-optimal. I already did a quick review of how these views had panned out, about a third of the way into the season (which was the appropriate frame of refence, since I had been considering these mainly in the context of early-season prospects in the initial squad; although many of their owners had clearly been hoping that they might be not just long-term holds but season-long holds...).  Now, at season's end, I thought I'd revisit those opinions for one last reassessment.

I kicked off my first batch of 'ones to avoid' with a pair of goalkeepers, Matt Turner and Mark Flekken. Turner, of course, was only ever seen as a 'budget enabler', but I maintained he was a bad pick even in that context: he obviously had no hope of ever getting a start this season (wasn't even second choice at his club), and hence brought no value whatsoever to an FPL squad, and indeed, was likely to lose squad value. He bled owners every single week, losing more than half of them by season's end - but the sell-off was so slow and gradual that he didn't drop in price until the middle of the season, and only fell by that solitary 100k step (which was much better than I'd expected). But it was a silly pick. Fabianski, also priced at 4.0, obviously had prospects of getting some starts over Areola at West Ham; and there were other 4.0 keepers, like Dubravka, who were at least first back-up at their club. The only explanation for the pick was that naive managers were noting that Turner - who'd started some games for Forest the previous season - appeared to be the highest-points-earning cheap keeper; though he clearly wasn't going to be again this year.

Flekken was much improved this year (he'd had a sigificant negative delta on his performance between the sticks, an xGC figure well below his actual number of goals conceded the previous year), and, because of Brentford's vulnerability in defence, he was able to rack up a huge number of saves - which compensated for his paltry tally of clean sheets. He'd actually sneaked up into the Top Five keepers by the end of the season. However, 'Top Five' is nothing to get that excited about. Sels had performed far better for the same price; Henderson had performed much about the same, and in general more consistently, for the same price; and Pickford once again emerged as the best FPL keeper, having only cost 0.5 million more at the start of the season. My main misgiving about him, actually, had been the fact that Brentford's opening five fixtures looked really tough; but in fact they pulled off a - very lucky and undeserved! - surprise win in their opener against Palace, and didn't get spanked as hard as might have been expected by Liverpool, City, and Spurs (although they were spanked); and Flekken picked up some nice saves points in all of those games. But that would have been crystal ball stuff; there were no reasonable grounds for expecting that he'd produce decent returns from that run of fixtures. Flekken might have been a decent second-choice keeper for the season, but he never should have been anyone's No. 1 pick: he did a lot less badly than might might have been expected, in that opening run and over the season as a whole; but he didn't really do well.

Ezri Konsa is a decent defender, but was never going to be anywhere near a top pick for FPL; yet over 10% had gone in for him at the start of the season, and his ownership remained strong throughout, having only just dipped to 9.5% at the end of the year. He only barely scrabbled above 100 points, and only just made it into the Top 20 4.5-million-pound defenders for the year - outscored even by Dean Huijsen, who'd only played two-thirds of the season.

Kobbie Mainoo, likewise, is a great player; but not much of a prospect for FPL. The 5% who piled in for him at the start of the season must have been unduly swayed by his eye-catching performances for England in the Euros,... or were perhaps just diehard, delusional Manchester United fans. Of course, his season was cut short by injury; but in the half he played, he barely averaged more than mere 'appearance' points.

I was sceptical about Kai Havertz also. Of course, his season too ended prematurely. The 10% of managers who'd gone for him at the start of the year were feeling pretty smug when he bagged a big haul in the opening game against Wolves. And he continued to look very sharp for a while, producing 3 further goals over the next 6 games. But it was never a devastating rate of return; and it soon began to peter out, even before his injury. My argument had been that people were failing to take enough account of the fact that Havertz was newly reclassified as a 'forward' in the game, which would massively reduce his points return for the same number of goal contributions he'd produced the season before. There were also legitimate concerns about whether Arsenal were about to bring in a specialist forward, and about whether Havertz might not play some games in midfield rather than up-front, even if they didn't. Again, I have nothing against Havertz: I think he's a fine player, and has been very important for Arsenal - but he's just not a great FPL prospect as a forward (as it turned out, particularly this year, when so many of the cheaper forwards performed really well).

I was tempting fate rather more with my second batch of disrecommendations - as I acknowledged that these were all in fact very good players, appealing picks, and might do very well... well enough, indeed, for their owners to feel satisfied,.... and be very reluctant to entertain the thought that their selection might still have been non-ideal. Some of them, in fact, did so well that they might have challenged my initial assessment. (Nearly, but not quite....)

David Raya was by far the season's highest-owned keeper (nearly 20% at the start of the season, up to an incredible 32.6% by the end) - yet he was nowhere near the season's best keeper: that's a sign of something going very wrong in people's decision-making. He ended up as the third best keeper in FPL, but quite a long way adrift of Pickford and Sels, and only very narrowly above Flekken and Henderson, who cost 1 million less. My rejection of him might have looked particularly suspect early on, as Arsenal started a little shakily, and were strangely vulnerable at the back a few times - which allowed Raya to earn 7 saves points from the first 5 matches. His team recovered something of their previous solidity thereafter, but he still recorded nearly twice as many saves as in the previous season - which is not something that anyone had expected. But even with that small but handy unanticipated lift to his points total, Raya was not worth the money: there were at least 4 alternatives who could give you the same points or more at a lower price-tag (and Alisson might well have done better than any of them, if he hadn't suffered a couple of spells out with injury). And my main argument had in fact been that, even if he were to be the season's best goalkeeper (and I conceded that was possible, although I thought top three or four was more likely), he still wouldn't have been a great FPL pick because of the club quota restriction, and the fact that there were so many other players from Arsenal who might be more valuable to you. (Gabriel and Saka were pretty much essential at the start of the season; and you might well have wanted a second Arsenal defender as well,.... and possibly Arteta for the 'Assistant Manager' chip. and from time to time, another of their midfield options, like Trossard, Odegaard, Merino, Martinelli.)

Pedro Porro also threatened to make me look foolish (in the eyes of his adoring owners, at least!) by coming up with a goal in the opening game, and then managing a clean sheet against Everton in the second. However, he produced nothing else until the 4-0 drubbing of floundering City in Gameweek 12. Spurs, of course, had an uncommonly horrible season, plunging into the relegation zone. I won't seek any credit for 'foreseeing' just how bad things would get for them, because I didn't; I didn't anticipate that Porro would come up shy of 100 points for the season and finish outside the Top 30 defenders. My argument had been that he wasn't such a surefire source of attacking contributions as his backers supposed (most of his previous season's impressive haul had come in a handful of games where he was being played more as a wide midfielder than as a full-back; that's not his typical deployment), and that he probably wasn't quite going to be worth his premium fee - when there were alternatives like Munoz, Kerkez, and Robinson to consider.

But, oh dear, it does look like I was 'wrong' about Josko Gvardiol, who made a late run up the defender charts to claim 1st Place at the very end of the season. How can I say someone was a 'bad pick' when he was the Best Player in his position??  Well, I'd still dispute that he was really the Best Defender: Gabriel and Alexander-Arnold would have beaten him, perhaps quite handily, if they hadn't missed a bunch of games with injury; Van Dijk was right on his heels; and so were Milenkovic, Kerkez, and Munoz, all much cheaper. You don't want or need more than one or two premium defensive picks - certainly not in the initial squad, when budget is still uncomfortably tight - and it was probably wise to go for at least one option from both Liverpool and Arsenal as long-term holds, because they both have a much more solid defensive record than City. I admit, I anticipated that Gvardiol's season-haul would be quite a bit lower, and that he was unlikely to be among the top defensive contenders: but my reasons for expecting that were all perfectly sound - Pep usually rotates his defenders a lot, Gvardiol was only an (almost) ever-present this year because there were so many injuries to the rest of the defensive roster; he did eventually get shifted back into central defense, where his goal-threat largely evaporated (I thought this might happen sooner, more often; but it was an obvious, almost inevitable risk to his output); and I thought it was unlikely that he could repeat his level of goalscoring output from that hot streak at the end of the previous season (his owners were briefly getting their hopes up, when he bagged 3 in 5 games, from Gameweeks 6 to 10; but over the season, he only managed one more than he'd netted in a handful of games the year before). 5 goals for the season is excellent for a defender (and he had come close to picking up quite a few more); but 153 points is one of the lowest Best Defender totals in history, and very dubious value for a 6-million-pound spend. If you went for Gvardiol at the start of the season, and stuck with him - you got lucky: he performed right at the very top of - if not a little above - what could reasonably have been relied on from him for the season. But it still wasn't a great pick, season-long; and not objectively a 'wise' pick last August.

I got a lot of hate and scorn for including William Saliba in that list as well. But my argument on that was simply that he wasn't going to be as good a pick from the Arsenal defence as his partner Gabriel - and he wasn't.

I cited Cody Gakpo as well, because, although I rate him very highly, I couldn't see how he was going to fit into the Liverpool side. Although he was integrated more regularly and effectively in the second half of the season. he only started just over half of the year's games - and got very short minutes in a lot of those. His season total of 127 points was actually outstanding for the number of minutes he played. But, unfortunately, in FPL, you just can't take a chance on a player who isn't a guaranteed starter every week.

I also, at other times early in the season, called out the massive adoption of Harry Winks and Morgan Rgoers as 'budget enablers'. There was a decent case for Rogers, of course - a fabulous young talent who'd just graduated to a regular start with a top-half side and was rapidly establishing himself as their most important player... for only 5 million. Winks, though, wasn't even an invariable starter, and offered just about zero attacking potential - and was in a side who were obviously doomed to go straight back down to the Championship. The 5th Midfield spot is probably the most important 'differential' position in the squad, and you simply cannot afford to go light on it.

Rogers I commented on a number of times over the season. While his opening price-point was very tempting, I thought it was inappropriate, self-deluding to compare him only to players costing 5.0 and less; he should really have been considered in the 'cheap' midfielder category of 5.0-6.0 - and in that, there were a lot of strong alternatives. Rogers ended up being - narrowly - the best of the bunch (well, apart from Semenyo, who nipped ahead of him on the final day!) over the season as a whole. But he never managed to produce a run of high-returns together, just a string of solid performances with the odd goal contribution here and there. In any sequence of 5 or 6 games, there was invariably at least one of the other cheap attacking midfielders, often two or three or more, who out-pointed him; therefore, it was self-limiting to treat Rogers as a season-hold purely on value-for-money terms; it was a bad choice, although he's a great player (such paradoxes abound in FPL; the inability of many managers to recognise them is probably the main reason for under-performance).  The 5th Midfield spot is probably the most important 'differential' position in the squad, and you have to constantly rotate the most in-form options into that spot.

Many people, I'm sure, are still going to obstinately 'disagree' with all of these assessments. But I'm happy to stand by them: I think they were all accurate, remarkably prescient. Only Gvardiol surprised me a little; and even then, not enough for me to recant my original verdict.

How did he DO that??

 

The sustained dominance through second half of season of this year's champion

The 2024-25 FPL Global Champion, Croatia's Lovro Budišin, enjoyed a truly exceptional year in the game. It wasn't quite the highest total ever (second best, I think?), but it was the only one above 2,800 points this year (and only 137 others managed to reach 2,700; despite the substantial points lift available from the 'Assistant Manager' novelty chip, it was overall a rather low-scoring year on average - which makes Lovro's performance even more of an outlier), and he finished a fairly comfortable 23 points clear of the runner-up. The really remarkable thing, though, is the degree and duration of his dominance: he spent almost the entire second half of the season in the overall Top Ten, and the final 8 weeks straight at No. 1. I don't think that's ever been done before!

So,...  Congratulations to Lovro Budišin!  But how on earth did he accomplish this - what were the key decisons during the season that anabled him to gain such unprcedented success??

I was surprised to see that he got off to a somewhat rocky start; indeed, he almost plummeted out of the top 3 million after a very poor Gameweek 4. I noted in my 'Review of the Year' a little while back that it really hurt to be without Erling Haaland during that record-breaking early points-spree of his over the first 5 gameweeks: missing out on that 63-point bonanza looked like a near-irrecoverable sertback, likely to prove fatal to most FPL managers' hopes; yet Lovro had staked his colours to the No-Haaland strategy at the start of the season, and bravely stuck to that.

It didn't look a great initial squad in many other ways, either: he'd gone very light on the bench, with three weak and irregular starters (he was one of many who took a punt on Jarrell Quansah getting a run of starts for Liverpool early in the season, only to see Slot grow disenchanted with him after the first 45 minutes against Ipswich...), and a non-playing keeper. He'd also - rather sentimentally? - gone for Son (who only managed 3 decent hauls in the first 8 games, which still didn't add up to a very impressive ppg average) and Bruno Fernandes (who did nothing much for the first 9 gameweeks...) in his midfield, rather than Palmer and Saka - who both started super-hot; and he had Nkunku in his fifth seat! However, one of Lovro's 'secrets' this season was that even his 'bad weeks' weren't usually too bad: despite missing out on the big early points from Saka, he'd got good initial returns in GW1 from Havertz and Wood (who weren't the most obvious forward picks for the initial squad), and from Diogo Jota, putting him only just outside the top 300,000.

The Champ's Initial Squad

He quickly repented of most of his more dubious initial picks, but held off going for an early Wildcard (fair enough, perhaps, when the team was still turning in strong scores for him almost every week - although I would say that he ultimately left it a bit too long): he dumped out Nkunku immediately for Morgan Rogers, than Quansah for Konsa, then (rather more quirkily, since Isak had just scored, while Watkins had also started the season in frail form) Watkins for Isak; then, over the succeeding weeks, he swapped Mbeumo in for Jota, Saka for Bruno Fernandes, Foden for Son, and Solanke for Havertz. Foden, of course, turned out to be a poor choice; and although Solanke produced a nice 16-point haul against Villa in GW10, and another half-decent little run a little later from GW15-17 (by which time Lovro had already abandoned him again) neither was Solanke. He was also very late to get his hands on Mbeumo and Saka, who really had a nearly overwhelming case for inclusion from the start of the season. And he didn't finally acquire Cole Palmer until he played his first Wildcard in Gameweek 12; although he got another 5 double-digit hauls out of the Chelsea youngster, he'd already missed out on his hottest streak of the season - 79 points from the first 9 games. And he didn't let Palmer go again until GW33, which was probably much too late (even worse: he actually blew two transfers in moving Palmer out for his blank fixture in Gameweek 29 and then immediately reinstating him the following week).

He continued to struggle a bit with his forward choices too. Cunha, just starting to show some form when introduced in Gameweek 10, seemed quite a shrewd selection; although it mght perhaps have been done at the expense of someone other than Chris Wood, who continued to play well through a sticky patch of fixtures following. Bringing in Hojlund for Watkins the following week was a real headscratcher, though (and he repented of it immediately, dropping him for Joao Pedro on his Wildcard the following week; Pedro delivered him a nice haul that week, but did nothing subsequently and was himself dumped within 5 weeks.... for Gabriel Jesus??!!). And it didn't show much forethought - or patience - to bring Bruno Fernandes back in on that Wildcard when he was facing a tricky set of upcoming fixtures: Lovro dropped him again, for Jarrod Bowen, just two weeks later (despite him having just picked up a 9-point haul in GW13,.. and being about to repeat the feat in good performances against faltering Forest and City!). Overall, not a great first Wildcard - with Cunha, Saka, and Joao Pedro producing nicely in that first week (and Saka also the following week), but then lapsing into a string of blanks again (Joao Pedro not really doing that much more all season; Cunha subsequently having his impact blighted by the two extended suspensions in fairly quick succession...). With the urgent case for bringing in Palmer, Mbeumo, Saka, and perhaps Bowen, and a few others in other positions too, he probably should have gone for that first rebuild quite a bit earlier.

However, Lovro was one of the beneficiaries of the FA's uncommonly lenient treatment of Cunha over his assaulting a member of the public after a tetchy match against Ipswich in GW16. It had seemed likely (and appropriate!) that Cunha would receive an immediate and lengthy ban for this incident, and it was reasonable to have dumped him out in anticipation - in order to avoid suffering from a major price-drop on him. But, astonishingly, it took the powers-that-be a few weeks to render judgement at all, and then they incredibly let the Brazilian off with the token wrist-slap of a one-game ban from the EPL. He produced rather nicely through that spell as well, massively - but somewhat unjustly - rewarding those who'd taken a huge risk in hanging on to him.

There were a number of times Lovro appeared to have a crystal ball - bringing in players who would produce really well for him a few times, maybe just the once; somehow being able to bring them in at an opportune moment, and then offload them again at just the right time... often without any clear triggers for those decisions in what was happening on the pitch. To give just one example, was a solitary goal against Villa enough to bet on Phil Foden from Gameweek 18, when City had been looking so abject throughout November and December? And although they had a tougher set of fixtures coming in February, was that enough reason to drop him again - after Pep's men had shown signs of a renaissance at the turn of the year, and Foden had been on fire for a spell? Had Lovro somehow foreseen that Foden would abruptly fall out of favour with Pep and get only limited minutes for the rest of the season?? 'Good judgment' of form/fixtures can't justify here how he came to transfer in one of the season's great under-performers for the five games in which he produces 55 points!!

This is how it goes, sometimes; this is the essence of the whole game. There is no single, unversally accepted 'template' (as so many regular FPL managers delusionally choose to believe): for almost every position in the team (not Salah's, obviously; not this year...) there are almost always at least two or three justifiable selections - occasionally, quite a few more than that for the crucial last few spots in the lineup. And your overall success is determined by the number of weeks in which you happen to have THE ONE who produces enormously in a given position that week - or rather, how many of THE ONES you have, since most of us have at least one or two of them nearly every week. And there's not really a lot of skill in that. Most of Lovro's highest-returning picks (most of any of the best picks for any one of us!) were not obviously standouts for that particular week, or were in fact clearly non-ideal over a slightly longer run of games. Happening to have been on them for that game or two (or, in a rare case, three or four games in fairly quick succession) is mostly LUCK.

Remember how rarely you come across a player in your side who notches 15 points or more in a gameweek? By my count, Lovro had 17 - apart from Salah. I haven't been able to turn up the season total stat for that, but he must have been on close to all of them; well an unusually high percentage of them, anyway. And that's an arbitrary cut-off point, of course: I noticed he had an uncommonly large number of players coming in just under that with 14-point returns for the week as well; and a great many 10-pointers...

Lovro was decidedly flawed and fallible in this incredible season of his. He made quite a number of objectively poor choices. He left a few high-scoring players on his bench here and there. He missed out on the most productive spells from Palmer, Mbeumo, Saka, Bowen, Kluivert, Eze. And I think he failed to capitalise on some briefly very high-earning players like Amad Diallo, Alex Iwobi, Dango Ouattara, Enzo Fernandez and Harvey Barnes altogether. Yet somehow, over and over again, he had three, four, five double-digit players in his team. And he only slipped below the global average three times, in Gameweeks 4, 20, and 27. (I would guess - from my own experience! - that 6-8 times per season is more typical, for reasonably good managers.)

He was perhaps even more blessed in his captaincy picks. Of course, the amazing consistency of Mo Salah this year made it quite a bit easier for everyone: he was the FPL 'Player of the Week' a remarkable 11 times in the first 28 games. However, he did blank here and there; and there were other players who hit even hotter form from time to time, albeit in shorter spells - most people would have been tempted to try someone other than Mo Salah on occasion. Lovro only missed out on one of those weeks that Mo was the game's highest scorer! And he didn't suffer too badly in that one, since his preferred alternative, Song Heung-Min, came up with a pretty decent score for him in GW2!! Nor did he suffer from sticking with Salah 'too much', as the Egyptian marvel only blanked for him as captain twice. His success with the captaincy faltered in the later stages of the season, but through into February, he was rarely going astray: 14 times in the first 28 Gameweeks, he correctly handed the armband to his highest-returning player (and a couple of them weren't Salah); and 4 more times his captain pick was a fairly close second-place returner in this period (and twice more again in the closing 10 weeks). That is an utterly freakish rate of success with captaincy selection, and is possibly the biggest single element of his astonishing lead over the field this season. 

Now, sure, there is an element of 'skill' in choosing your captain; but there's a very large component of luck as well in getting returns like that. It's difficult to discern why he would have been confident in Son as captain against Everton in GW2 after Spurs had stumbled to a draw against Leicester in the opening week (it was a non-ideal pick, compared to Salah; but it still did very well for him), or in Palmer in GW13, after Chelsea had only managed an unconvincing win against Leicester the week before, and after struggling to draws against Arsenal and Manchester United in the two previous games - in all three of which, Palmer had blanked. But for most of the first six months or so of the season, he could do no wrong....

However, a lot of this was just down to choosing players who would produce one or two good returns almost immediately; very few of his picks actually worked out well for any more extended period. Consequently, his squad value (which, I think, is one of the most revealing indirect measures of how well you're managing your squad - how well you time your transfers, how early you're spotting emerging form/talent, how promptly you bin players whose returns are drying up, etc.) was very slow to grow, especially early in the season. It took him until GW16 to reach a value of 104 million, and he'd only just dragged himself up to 106 million by the end of the season - which is a pretty respectable final total, but by no means stellar.

And in his chip play - usually considered the prime marker of 'skill' in FPL - Lovro really wasn't so impressive this year. I already mentioned above that his first Wildcard was a bit of a mixed-bag: probably played a bit too late (after realising that he was missing 3 or 4 of the highest-returning midfielders, any Arsenal defenders, or any decent goalkeepers in his initial squad), and the new signings not all being that impressive (he still didn't have a strong keeper pair, and two of his new players were abandoned again within just a few weeks - on form/fixture grounds rather than because of injury). His second in GW30 wasn't much better, with Areola for Henderson being a pointless-looking change (other than for cost-saving, which wasn't really an issue by that stage of the season), as was the reintroduction of Palmer; and the acquisition of Livramento (although, yet again for lucky Lovro, he came up with a BIG haul out of nowhere the following week, before lapsing into anonymity again for the remainder of the season); and he was a little late to the party with Eze and Murphy and Mateta. The week he played that, Gameweek 30, was actually one of his worst of the whole season - only scraping home 1 point above a very low global average. 

He opted to use a 'hit' and put out a 10-man team in the Blank Gameweek 29, rather than use his Free Hit as the great majority did. It's difficult to assess if that actually worked out or not, since he did manage exceptionally good scores both in GW29 and in GW34 when he made use of his saved Free Hit (71 and 86 points, respectively - pretty HUGE!); however, those results were again down to him having uncannily got all the right players in general, rather than the chip strategy per se; I'm not convinced that the lift he got by Free-Hitting in 34 outweighed even the points he sacrificed in 29, let alone the extra points he might have got with an optimum use of the FH in 29. The only 'advantage' he sought tactically was being able to play his Wildcard in GW30 instead of GW34 - but he really didn't make very good use of that.

His 'bonus chips' were an even more clearcut 'fail'. He went with Arne Slot for his 'Assistant Manager' from GW24 (perhaps just to get the damned thing out of the way, since its sprawling three-week duration was the most irksome aspect of the new chip and confounded the use of other chips in the final portion of the season). But Slot, of course, was famously - and not entirely unexpectedly - outpointed by his Merseyside rival David Moyes in that gameweek (the one where Liverpool and Everton both enjoyed an unexpected Double Gameweek as a result of the first Merseyside derby being rescheduled from early December because of gale-force winds); and, more importantly, he passed up the chance to play his Triple Captain on Mo Salah that week, who returned a season-highest 29 points. He switched to Oliver Glasner for a healthy 20-point return in the final week of the chip, after Slot had again disappointed somewhat in GW25. But a 48-point total for this chip, while pretty respectable, was far short of the maximum possible - a lot of people probably made 55-65 points from it. And its value was further undercut by having had to use a transfer on it, and by missing out on the Salah bonanza.

He eventually went with the other two bonus chips in consecutive weeks, the Triple Captain in GW32 and the Bench Boost in GW33. Isak produced a respectable 11 points for the TC - though since that was a Double Gameweek with two quite promising fixtures, it must have been a disappointing return. And it's very rarely worth using the captaincy, let alone the Triple Captain, on a 'forward'; there were other, better double-fixtures to aim for (not just for Mo Salah, although....). And his Bench Boost was a real damp squib, yielding a miserable 14 points.

So, he was 18 points below the optimum (and fairly obvious) Triple Captain pick, perhaps 10 or 15 off a best-possible AssMan score, and maybe 20 or 30 below a top Bench Boost return (and 5 or so below an adequate one). And he still trounced the other 10 million or so of us???

It is rather terrifying to reflect that, phenomenal as Lovro's season was, if he'd made a few better initial picks, done a bit better with his use and timing of the Wildcards, and got a stronger return from his bonus chips,... he might have cracked the 3,000-point ceiling!!!

Well, good on him, anyway!  It just goes to show - you don't have to be PERFECT to win the title, or anywhere near.

But Lovro clearly isn't a super-genius; he's just an ordinary guy who happened to have a season where almost every second pick turned to gold for him. [You can read an interview with him by the Fantasy Football Scout website.]

He appears to be relatively new to the game, this being only the fifth year he's competed (at least on his present account). And he was pretty awful in the first two! But he seems to have 'got the hang of things' unusually quickly, as in 2022-23 and 2023-24 he was remarkably consistent, and got solid points and rank finishes - in the second 500,000 (which, I reckon, is about as good as you can hope to get without substantial slices of good fortune).

We can all take encouragement from this. Most good players in the game are hovering around the 2,350-point mark most years, rarely going up or down by more than about 75 points or so from that mean. I'd guess that's between one and two standard deviations (very hard to gauge, since neither 'luck' nor 'skill' in FPL follow a standard distribution!) To be the champion, you have to get up to about 5 standard deviations. And yes, Lovro suddenly jumped up by 440 points over his previous best this year! If he can do it, we all could. (We won't. But we could....)

Players of the Year

 

Following on from my survey last week of how the 2024-25 season panned out in FPL, here is a rundown of the most valuable player picks in the game this year.

Jordan Pickford was obviously a strong choice between the sticks for the season, given his propensity for pulling off large numbers of saves when his team are getting pummelled, but with his defence being solid enough to help him keep a fair few clean sheets as well; and given the fact that he ended last season well out in front in the FPL goalkeeper rankings. However, with his being priced at 5.0 million, one might have preferred to go for two 4.5 options instead (at least at first, to save a bit of money in the initial squad) - or to have switched to that, when Everton started the season so poorly. Apart from huge hauls against Newcastle (of course!) and West Ham, he only really started hitting form around a third of the way through the season. Matz Sels and Dean Henderson were always the better bets for me (though Henderson and Palace became significantly stronger in the second half of the season); and indeed, Sels was only edged out of top spot by Pickford in the final week, so I would still go for the Nottingham Forest man as the keeper of the season - more consistent in his returns than Pickford, and more keenly priced.

Kepa and Areola and Sanchez also looked promising in spells, but you don't really want to be swapping keepers around too much. Raya never quite convinced for me; he never got higher than 3rd in the goalie rankings, I don't think, and was often outside the Top 5. Brentford's Mark Flekken - somewhat surprisingly! - managed to be in overall contention as well, just creeping into the Top 5 goalkeepers in the latter part of the season; largely down to the huge number of saves his defensively frail side needed him to make, which made up for a rather paltry total of just 7 clean sheets. I'm always wary of taking a keeper from a defensively weak team, though: that saves-for-clean-sheets trade-off is extremely risky! And Flekken is fundamentally not a very good keeper; although significantly improved this year (he doesn't have a massive negative 'delta' on his GC/xGC, a surplus of goals conceded over the 'expected' figure, as he did the previous year; but it's still not a positive number, which is what you're looking for from a good keeper), he's still been at fault, I think, for a lot of the goals Brentford have let in.

Trent Alexander-Arnold missed a spell with injury, and was rotated with Conor Bradley a few times over the closing month or so; both entirely predictable dents in his season total, and factors which had always argued against him being an ironclad season-long hold. Early in the season, it had looked as if he might just about justify his outrageous 7.0-million starting price-tag; but he was only ever just on the cusp of doing so, never absolutely nailing it; Slot just wasn't using him in the advanced overlapping role he'd need to get close to the double-digit assists he'd recorded in a few of his highest-scoring seasons. As it was, he came up just shy of 150 points for the season, which would barely justify a 6.0-million asking price, let alone 7.0 million. As with Haaland, though, Trent fans may have benefitted from a hot start (41 points from the first 7 games); if they'd switched to other premium options after that, they would have had an advantage over the season.

Josko Gvardiol ended up in top spot among the defenders (apparently confounding my eve-of-season view that he was over-hyped). However, he only snuck into 1st place in the final weeks of the season, after claiming 6 clean sheets in his last 9 games - somewhat fortuitously, I felt, since City still looked very shakey at the back in these games, despite facing mostly quite weak opponents. He only managed just over 150 points, which is not a great return for 6.0-million-pound defender (and not very much ahead of a bunch of 4.5 options); and he only edged Trent Alexander-Arnold and Gabriel out of the lead because he was almost ever-present throughout the season (which cannot have been expected at the start of the year, since Pep tends to rotate heavily among his defenders), while his two leading rivals both missed a lot of games. I maintain he was a risky and unpromising pick - at that price-point - at the beginning of the season, but was probably worth getting in from around the mid-point onwards, once City started to rally from their slump a little (he got 89 points in the last 20 games - which is value for the price-tag). 

The much fancied Pedro Porro (nearly 30% ownership at the start of the season, and it soared even higher in the following few weeks after he got off to a flyer by claiming a goal in the opening match against Leicester) ultimately disappointed the most among the initially popular defensive picks. He missed several games with injuries, so a haul of 2 goals and 6 assists was pretty good from a limited number of starts; but his owners had greedily - unrealistically - been expecting a lot more from him. And of course, despite quite a good attacking return from him, Spurs's defensive form completely fell apart, and he came up shy of a ton for the season.

My observation from back in October that we didn't seem likely to see any really big returns from defenders this year proved accurate. The tweak in the BPS, penalising defenders and keepers more heavily for goals conceded, makes it significantly harder for them to win bonus points. Arsenal's defensive form of last season was a bit of a freak; neither they nor anyone else could get anywhere near that number of clean sheets again. And there has been a sharp shift in EPL game tactics away from the type of full-back who pushes far foward all the time, linking up with the wide forward to create overlaps, pushing to the byline to provide crosses or cutbacks; we just don't see that level of attacking contribution from anyone at the moment. And that means that it must be rather questionable whether premium defenders are worth it any more. You really want to get something like 160 points from a 6.0-million-pound defender, at least 170 or 180 from one who costs any more than that - and this season, no-one got close to that. (At least, in recent times, that has been the calculus. We might have to revise our expectations downwards, if this trend persists. At least there was NO BUDGET PRESSURE this season, once the Haaland issue was closed, so we could afford to pay a little over-the-odds for the top-scoring defenders, even though they weren't giving great value-for-money.)

For me, Gabriel was the outstanding defensive pick of the year, until that hamstring injury unfortunately wiped him out for the last 9 games (he was well ahead of Gvardiol at that point). Of course, his Arsenal central defensive partner Wiliam Saliba wasn't too far behind (although he was looking a little less imperious, a little more fallible than in the previous two seasons); but Gabriel enjoyed a clear edge by virtue of being the main aerial target-man at set-pieces, which are such a key source of goals for the club. Ben White and Jurrien Timber might have out-performed either of them, if injuries and rotations hadn't so limited their minutes; next season, they might perhaps be the more tempting choices from the Arsenal defence.

Nottingham Forest's excellent defensive form was the revelation of the season. Their towering Serbian centre-back Nikola Milenkovic, ended up being the most popular FPL selection from them, with ownership up around 20% for a while. As with Gabriel, his aerial threat at set-pieces gave him a slight edge over his colleagues, and he produced 5 goals over the season. However, Murillo and Ola Aina also produced very good points, despite a few short injury absences; and Neco Williams also shows strong potential (although it's hard to be confident who will start at left-back, with Alex Moreno and Harry Toffolo offering some stiff competition for the place).

Daniel Munoz, Milos Kerkez, Antonee Robinson, and Rayan Ait-Nouri are the only full-backs who do still offer good prospects of attacking returns, but the latter two had fairly disappointing seasons: Robinson's output dropped off a cliff from January, while Ait-Nouri's only intermittently began to improve after the mid-season change of manager at Wolves. Hall and Livramento at Newcastle also showed some promise, as did Mykolenko at Everton, and in the latter part of the season, Wan-Bissaka at West Ham. However, none of these began to approach the kind of points totals we've seen in the recent past from Kieran Trippier, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joao Cancelo - or even Ben White last year.

In the absence of much attacking output from defenders this year, the dependable Virgil Van Dijk was once again among the top performers - finishing narrowly ahead of Munoz and Kerkez. However, for most of the season, his partner Ibrahima Konate was offering the same points for less money - so, I don't think Virgil was ever an ideal, much less 'essential' pick.

Bournemouth's Dean Huijsen was the 'pleasant surprise' of the season: one of the oustanding young defensive talents to emerge in recent years. He only attained a regular start when Marcos Senesi got injured at the start of December, but made an immediate impression, and racked up a fairly impressive (for a defender...) average of 4 points per start for the rest of the season, despite Bournemouth's indifferent form in the latter stages. His ownership in FPL eventually climbed above 5% - despite Kerkez (and Zabarnyi and Kepa) claiming most people's attention as a prime defensive pick from his club. It's such a pity that he's been poached by Real Madrid already; but perhaps we'll see him return to the Premier League one day.

Mo Salah, of course, is a no-contest for the 'most valuable player' of the year, in any position; despite his advancing years, and the uncertainties of bedding in a new manager at Liverpool, he smashed his own record for the most FPL points in a season, and pulled out a lead of more than 100 over the next best. Bryan Mbeumo was a gallant runner-up, amply confirming and building upon the promise he'd shown in the previous two seasons. He did suffer one mini-blip from around the start of November, when Brentford dropped 8 points in 5 games, and Mbeumo recorded only 1 assist, and did suddenly look strangely out of sorts (it seemed possible that he was not adapting well to sharing goalscoring duties with just-back-from-injury Yoane Wissa - but, if that was ever the case, they soon developed a good understanding and were both producing alongside each other throughout the second half of the season); I - like many others - was prompted to cut him loose for a while, as he was facing a tricky turn in the fixtures as well; but, of course, he then found his scoring boots again and notched goals against Newcastle, Chelsea, and Arsenal in December. However, these were about the only two midfielders that you could 'set-and-forget' this year.

Jarrod Bowen was arguably the third, producing one of his best and most consistent seasons (apart from a four-game spell he missed with a cracked bone in his foot, he never 'blanked' more than once or twice in a row all season, and ended up with 6 double-digit hauls) - despite the handicap of playing for a relegation-worthy West Ham side. However, all the other most fancied midfield prospects frustrated and disappointed to some extent. 

Cole Palmer, increasingly vilified by the FPL hordes later in the season, had started off the new campaign just as devastatingly as he'd played most of the previous year; he was in fact running the great Mo Salah very close through the early months of the campaign (slightly ahead of him at the end of Gameweek 6!!), and was looking on course for a 300-point season. And if Chelsea had been awarded something like the same number of penalties as last year, rather than fewer than half as many (and they really were shockingly unlucky in this, especially early in the season: in almost every game, they seemed to be having one or two very strong shouts for a spot-kick inexplicaby ignored by both the referee and VAR), he would probably still have equalled his last year's total of 244, despite the dramatic fall-off in the second half of his season. I maintained that he was still playing extremely well, but without the steel of Lavia in the middle, and with no fit forwards to spearhead their attack, Chelsea began to look increasingly clueless from early December onwards. Despite the huge drop-off in his returns from that point on, Palmer was still the 3rd biggest FPL points-scorer of the season. So, he was certainly worth having - indeed, essential, I would have said - from the start of the season; and arguably, perhaps, as a season-long hold, since with players of that rare calibre, there's always a chance they'll come up with a big haul from time to time, however badly their team is playing. Despite Chelsea's faltering form, Palmer recorded goals against Fulham, Palace, and Bournemouth around the turn of the year. With the benefit of hindsight, you can say that it would have been best to jettison him soon after Gameweek 20; but it was difficult - it would indeed have been over-hasty and rash - to make such a call at the time.

As so often, when an exceptional player has his FPL productivity start to dry up, it's very difficult to judge when to let them go. There was an odd combination of circumstances - Palmer occasionally still producing an outstanding individual performance that rekindled hope in faithful owners, Chelsea occasionally showing hints of a general improvement, so many of the likely alternatives to Palmer getting injured (Saka, Amad, Bowen, Son), a promising turn in the club's fixtures just ahead, etc. - that encouraged me to stick with him longer than I probably should have. But as I said, a player like him can come good again at any moment; unless there's a really compelling alternative pick you can swap him out for, you might as well just continue gambling on him. This time, that gamble ultimately didn't pay off; but in another season - perhaps with Palmer, perhaps with another top player - it might.

None of the other top prospects quite came up with the goods this year, not with sufficient consistency, or over any extended period, anyway. Bukayo Saka looked as if he might have an extraordinary season, bringing up his ton in just 14 games (one of which he'd had to sit out with a slight knock); but soon afterwards, he was wiped out for much of the season with a serious hamstring tear. Although he surprised us by getting fit again in time for the last two months of the campaign, he got very rationed minutes in that comeback spell and, apart from a fairytale goal in his return appearance, failed to have any further FPL impact.

Ebere Eze managed to stay fit for most of the year, and almost invariably looked Palace's best player - but didn't have much to show for that for long stretches of the season. That unjustly disallowed goal that he put straight in from a free-kick at the start of the season really set the tone; he seemed to be having near-misses - battering a post, drifting a delicate curler inches wide, pulling a top-drawer save out of the keeper - in very nearly every game: if even one of those had gone in, it might have galvanized him into a 200-point season. I'm sure he's got that in him. This time, though, you probably didn't want to think of bringing him in until the last couple of months of the season.

Kaoru Mitoma is another player who strikes me as particularly 'unlucky' - the kind of player who's always setting up potential assists that his teammates then squander, or who has actual assists denied him because a lunging defender got a toe-end on his deft cutback before it reached the Brighton forward. And of course, it doesn't help that his Brighton team were exhibiting even more yo-yo form than usual this year. However, he still managed 10 goals in all, including the 'Goal of the Season' - so, not too shabby. Unfortunately, he just never managed a consistent enough run of form to make him a really attractive FPL acquisition this year. If you happened to be on him when he managed 4 big hauls in 6 games in January/February, you were very fortunate.

The (mis)fortunes of Luis Diaz also regularly break my heart. I think he's been Liverpool's best player, after Salah, over the past few years; but the cruellest combinations of circumstances always contrive to deny him the FPL points that would fully reflect that. This year, he didn't start 10 games, was often subbed off with 15 or 20 minutes left in those he did start (and once, shy of the hour mark!), and was most often played through the middle rather than in his preferred left-flank role. Yet he still managed 13 goals and 7 assists over the season, and was neck-and-neck with Bowen for the 4th best midfielder slot!! Imagine what he could achieve if Slot started him every week, in his best position.

Diogo Jota is arguably even more ill-starred. He made quite a promising start with Liverpool this time, racking up 34 points in in the first 7 games (effectively only 5 games, as he had to come off early against Forest, and then missed the following match against Bournemouth). However, he then - inevitably - picked up a medium-term injury, and when he came back was mostly used as a sub, or withdrawn quite early when he did start.

Antoine Semenyo is a rather surprising appearance at 7th position in the midfield rankings; but a huge haul for his brace against Leicester on the last day catapulted him several places up the chart. It's also a measure of how disappointing the output from the midfield position was in FPL overall this season: ordinarily, you'd expect perhaps 10 or 12 players to be scoring in the 170-190 kind of range, but this season only 3 did.  I'd fancied Semenyo's prospects before the season kicked off, as he'd looked very lively at the end of the previous campaign, and it did seem he might inherit Solanke's mantle as Bournemouth's main goalscorer. However, it soon became apparent that that role was more likely to fall to Dango Ouattara; and then they brought in a new specialist striker in Evanilson; and then Kluivert had a breakout season, largely stealing everyone else's thunder at the club, at least for a while. Semenyo had a few other nice hauls as well, but they were very spread out over the season, and he rarely looked like posing any really consistent threat. From the beginning of February, he went on an 8-game run that yielded only 2 assists; when I was still seeing him in a lot of people's sides in March, I thought there was something very odd going on.... He was never really the best attacking pick from Bournemouth at any stage of the season; and by then, when Bournemouth's team form was faltering badly in the closing third of the season, none of them were worth having any more.

Bruno Fernandes is, of course, one of the best players in the Premier League; but, unfortunately, he plays for one of the worst teams - which seriously calls into doubt how far you can ever rely on him to be a consistent FPL producer. He did have a few very nice little runs this year: back-to-back double-digits in Gameweeks 10 and 11, closely followed by three 9-pointers in four games across the end of November and the beginning of December; and then another little spurt of 46 points in just 4 games from mid-February. But also.... a lot of barren spells, alas. If you happened to have him during one of those hot streaks, you were lucky; but neither he nor United were producing regularly enough to make him a good bet for an extended hold in your squad (unless there just weren't any other decent midfield prospects available - which might have happened once or twice this year!).

I mentioned in my earlier post on the overall course of the season that many FPL managers had gone for Morgan Rogers in the 5th midfield spot early on (and mainly just because he was cheap, rather than because they knew anything about him), and were sufficiently impressed to hang on to him all season. I feel that was a mistake - an error of complacency or apathy. Not that I have anything against Rogers; in fact, I'm one of his biggest fans in the real world; but in the sphere of FPL, he just wasn't quite a regular enough producer to justify the long-term hold (and that was mostly down to Villa's problems with consistency, rather than any failing on his part). He only managed decent back-to-back hauls once all season. And he suffered a particularly bad lull from January onwards, missing the New Year game against Leicester, and then only managing a solitary assist in his next 8 appearances. Now, it was certainly an outstanding debut season, and (in this year when so many top midfielders have disappointed...) he wound up as FPL's 14th best player (and 8th best midfielder). However, he was edged out of a higher spot by the late lunge from Semenyo, while the likes of Murphy, Kluivert and Iwobi were a negligible distance behind; so, he wasn't even clearly the best of the ultra-low-budget midfield options this year. 

And the fact is, the end-season standings don't always count for that much. Even if you correctly guessed who the top 15 performers for the year were going to be way back last August, and could afford them all in your initial squad, they probably wouldn't have given you anywhere near a league-topping score if you'd stuck by them all year. There are very few players who are consistent enough to rely upon for the whole season. All the other positions. you have to rotate furiously - to try to keep finding the most in-form picks for the moment. That was particularly true in the cheaper midfield slots this year - because these were the players producing the most (very often not just the best points-per-pound return, but the highest absolute points), but also they were the players who were shifting in and out of peak form most rapidly. Although Morgan Rogers might have looked like the best budget midfield pick overall, there were almost always at least 2 or 3 others in the 5-to-6-million price category who were outperforming him over a short run of games: Emile Smith Rowe at the beginning of the year, and then his teammate Alex Iwobi (or, for very brief spells, perhaps even Harry Wilson or Adama Traore!), Dwight McNeil, Justin Kluivert, Georginho Rutter, Enzo Fernandez, Amad Diallo, Julio Enciso, Jacob Murphy, Harvey Barnes, Anthony Elanga, Kevin Schade. Spotting the emerging form of guys like these, and getting on them - and then getting off them again! - quickly was especially crucial this season.

Strange things were happening up-front this year. For a long time now, maybe a decade or so, the forward selection has been very limited. We've usually had just one or two really outstanding performers - Vardy, Kane, Haaland - with few if any of the other contenders getting anywhere near to their eminence. But this year, we have 2 forwards in the Top 5 overall FPL points producers,.... and 6 in the Top 11! That is unheard-of - at least as far back as I can remember. Partly, of course, it's down to the disappointing performances or injury absences of so many top midfielders this year; but also, it's very rare to have that many forwards all doing that well.

Chris Wood, for me, was the pick-of-the-crop this year. Although he slipped behind Isak in the overall points totals, he was often the more consistent points producer through the first two-thirds of the season, his finishing was uncannily efficient (beating his xG by nearly 50%?! WTF???), with him again and again claiming a goal from just two or three half-chances in a game, he was a lot cheaper than Isak, and he was a much more unexpected success story of the season. His form did falter from around mid-February, though, with two or three games missed with a knock he picked up on international duty, and only 2 more goals during that closing phase of the season. Almost no-one - apart from Salah and Mbeumo - was a season-long hold this year!

Alexander Isak confirmed his enormous potential in his second full season, managing to stay clear of major injuries this year, and looking very much like the most complete forward in the league. He started a little sluggishly, perhaps carrying an injury of some sort from the summer - managing only a couple of returns in his first six outings, and then missing a couple of games with a 'broken toe'. After that, he began to settle into a groove, and never went more than two starts without a goal for the rest of the season. I worry that the FPL Gnomes are going to make him stupidly expensive next year. It wouldn't be that unreasonable, as he is pretty much on Haaland's level; but it would spoil our fun to have two of the top attacking talents rendered unaffordable.

Matheus Cunha was the other outstanding forward of the year, posting very decent numbers even with such a weak side as Wolves (deep in the relegation mire for the first half of the year), and often manifesting an other-worldly brilliance in his approach play as well as his finishing. His temperament is the one big problem, of course; if he hadn't got himself a couple of extended suspensions (and he was really fortunate that they weren't longer, especially the one for assaulting the Ipswich steward), he probably would have finished at least 3rd in the forward rankings, and might have challenged Isak for the top spot.

But as it was, Ollie Watkins and Yoane Wissa were the best of the rest this time. Wissa was the breakout star among the forwards this year (well, assuming that we allow that we've known about Chris Wood's potential for the best part of a decade, even if he hasn't often realised it): apart from a few games missed with an injury from the end of September, and a brief goalscoring lull in January/February, he has been remarkably consistent in his output throughout the year. Watkins had a bit more of an up-and-down year: he too looked to be troubled by some sort of fitness issue to begin with, then there were rumours that he was out of favour with Emery (perhaps because he was angling for a move away from the club at the end of the season?), and pundits began to muse that he might - perhaps should - lose his start to the very sharp-looking Jhon Duran, and later to loanee Marcus Rashford. It didn't help that Villa were struggling with the unfamiliar burden of Champions League football, and often weary and woefully inconsistent in the League, especially in the first half of the season. But class will out, and Ollie ended up having another pretty solid season; he looks to be forming a particularly productive rapport with Morgan Rogers, and it's notable that although his goal tally wasn't that great this year, he supported it with an impressive 8 assists.

Erling Haaland, of course, presented the great conundrum for us at the start of the season, when FPL priced him at an outrageous 15.0 million pounds. At that cost, the only sensible decision, really, was to try to go without him in your initial squad. But only about half of the FPL community chose that path, while the other half paupered the rest of their squad to keep Haaland; and they were absurdly well-rewarded for their faith in him when he banged in a remarkable 10 goals in the opening 5 games, for an unprecedented 63-point haul. But City's season began to unravel immediately after that, and he only managed 3 goals and an assist over the next 13 games. Although they began to rally somewhat around the end of the year, their form still looked shakey. Haaland, though, was nearly back to his best and scoring consistently: but was 8 goals and 2 assists in 11 games from Gameweeks 19 to 29 enough to justify that 15-million price-tag (remarkably, the sell-off on him during City's long slump was so slow-and-steady that he never dropped lower than 14.7 million!)? Probably not, when there were so many other strikers in great form, at barely half the price. Just when people were starting to get tempted by the Haaland option again around the start of March, he picked up an ankle injury and was out for two months. Yet he still ended the season on 181 points, the 5th best forward in FPL, and 10th best player. For a forward who only cost 8 or 10 million, that would have been just dandy; but for one who cost 15 million???  His price is bound to come down again next year, after this relatively 'disappointing' season; but I fear it won't drop enough to significantly change the dynamics of the game - he'll still be unaffordable!

There were a number of other forwards who looked like good acquisitions for a limited spell: Danny Welbeck and Raul Jimenez looked very good at the start of the season, Joao Pedro often looked the most enticing super-budget option (although, like Cunha, he has temperament issues which seriously undermine his FPL value), and Evanilson and Strand Larsen could have had much more impact if they hadn't suffered spells of injury. Omar Marmoush had an eye-catching debut half-season. Nicolas Jackson started the year very impressively, but then started to lose his way, as did Chelsea; and then he got sidelined for a month or so with an injury, and couldn't rediscover his scoring touch on his return,... and then got himself suspended for a particularly ugly foul near the end of the season. (With the news that Chelsea are now in the process of signing Liam Delap from Ipswich, I wonder if Jackson might have ended his career at the club with that rash assault on Sven Botman.)  Delap, Beto, and Ndiaye all looked intermittently promising prospects as well. But the much fancied Mateta, Solanke, and Havertz all disappointed (though it might be said that a lot of that was down to injuries sustained, and shakey team form, rather than bad performances from these players when they were fit).

I did own all of these most outstanding players at some point; most of them, in fact, were in my initial squad. And yet I still had a thoroughly appalling season! 'Tis a funny old game, indeed....  Having most of the right players, most of the time - isn't enough. You've got to have all of the right players, at all the right times - to do really well in this game. And get all your captaincy picks right as well....

The STORY of the season... 2024-2025

It has indeed been a funny old season - with rather more unexpected twists and turns than usual.

I noted at the start of the season that THE BIG CONUNDRUM of the year was going to be whether to go without Haaland, after the FPL gnomes priced him at an eye-watering 15 million pounds. That came down to more or less a 50-50 split among FPL managers at the big kick-off. And which way you'd flipped the coin on that..... largely decided your entire season. 

It would have been reasonable to doubt Haaland and City at the beginning of the season. Pep's men have usually been a little slow to find their rhythm in the early games. We'd seen in the previous year how disastrously unsettled they could be by Rodri's absence; and he was going to be missing for a while with a hamstring problem picked up in the Euros Final. Pep had said that other key players - Foden, Bernardo Silva, DeBruyne - were also going to be rested for the first 2 or 3 matches after a late return from the summer tournament. And their early fixture run - away to Chelsea in the opener, and then facing Brentford, Arsenal, and Newcastle from Gameweeks 4 ot 6 - looked quite challenging. Hesitating over whether to bring in Haaland, or boldly deciding to go without him, were entirely reasonable choices - really, the better choices. But the Viking colossus pulled out back-to-back hattricks in Gameweeks 2 and 3, and then a brace in GW4. as well as singles in the first and fifth games - for a phenomenal opening haul of 63 points in 5 games. If you'd missed out on that, your season was pretty much SUNK immediately. (Though.... never say NEVER!  Global champ Lovro Budišin was actually struggling in the early weeks, having gone without not only Haaland, but also Saka, Palmer, and Mbeumo - rashly favouring Fernandes, Son, and Jota in his side instead. I may at some point attempt a deeper examination of how such an apparently 'bad' team ended up doing so phenomenally well...)  And that advantage to Haaland owners was unfair, because that early blitz really came out of nowhere, contrary to all reasonable expectation (even the demolition of promoted Ipswich wasn't entirely predictable, as they had appeared to be the strongest of the three new teams joining the League, and had given Liverpool a very tough fight in their opening game); going-without-Haaland had really seemed the more sensible strategy for the season.

And so, indeed it would prove to be - from Gameweek 6 onwards! After that opening avalanche of points, Haaland's - or rather, City's - form fell off a cliff, and he only managed 3 more goals in the next 13 games. It was a collapse so dramatic that even Haaland's most passionate idolaters - most of them, anyway! - soon accepted that they'd have to give up on him for a while,.... and hence switch to the No-Haaland strategy, which had looked as if it should have been preferable all along.

So, if there was ONE FACTOR which had the most decisive influence on season outcomes in FPL, it would be that: you needed to have been on Haaland for the first 4 or 5 games, but to have dumped him out as soon as possible after that. The nearly half of managers who had opted against him initially - and hadn't been immediately persuaded to reconsider by one good return, against a weak team - were most royally screwed. But they would probably still have been OK, the No-Haaland strategy might still have more than balanced out in their favour over the remainder of the season,.... if City's form hadn't crashed so emphatically that almost everyone was soon forced into joining the No-Haaland camp, Funny how life goes.

The second big game-changer right from the get-go was Bukayo Saka, who notched 12 points in his opening game against Wolves, and racked up 90 more in the first three months of the season (with just 1 game missed with a knock, and 3 blanks over the next 12 fixtures). Once again, there had been many tempting alternatives to Saka before the start of the season; and despite his white-hot start, some of them might have proved better in the long-haul, if he'd suffered one or two dips in productivity (which was already starting to happen, with three blanks in a row from GW13....). But he had to come off in the first half against Palace in GW17 with a hamstring problem that would effectively wipe him out for the season. So, once again, people who'd merely been a bit lucky to make the 'right' pick on Saka for the early phase of the season were forced to ditch him at an opportune moment, rather than possibly sticking with him - out of misplaced loyalty or mere superstition - too long through a barren spell, perhaps even through the whole of the rest of (what might have been) a relatively unproductive season from there on (exactly as subsequently happened for many people with Cole Palmer!).

Even at Arsenal, Saka wasn't an absolutely obvious or inevitable pick. There had been signs last season that Arteta was requiring a more disciplined and controlling contribution from him, often doing more defensive work deeper in midfield, or sticking to the touchline to stretch the opposition defence - rather than being given free rein to drift inside at will and seize on numerous goal-scoring opportunities in the right-half space. Even his impressive points total the previous year had mainly come in two absurdly hot streaks, offset by some lengthy runs of little output. And over the previous two seasons, Odegaard in particular, but also Martinelli and Trossard in spells, had sometimes been higher-producing Arsenal assets in FPL. I myself would have been tempted to go with Odegaard initially - a more central creative force, and, at least when at his best, a more consistent points prospect. But the Norwegian was not at his best this time, in fact, by his elevated standards, it was a very disappointing season: a fairly respectable 8 assists ultimately (though down on last season's 11), and a paltry 3 goals (compared to 8 last year and 15 the year before). Being tempted to punt on Odegaard rather than Saka in the initial squad wasn't a rash or foolish choice, but it would have backfired horribly - with Odegaard picking up just 7 points in the opening 3 games (against Saka's 24!), and then getting wiped out by an ankle injury for two months.

Another big surprise was what I came to think of as the Revenge of the Grandads...  Suddenly, a bunch of aging strikers, who'd rarely in their youthful prime managed a long run of consecutive starts and almost never produced an extended scoring spree, were somehow now staying fit and playing the best football of their lives, able to start every week, and banging in a cracking goal almost every week. There was a case for taking an early punt on Chris Wood, as he'd finished the previous season with Forest very strongly (although his age, and the likelihood of competition for the place from his athletic understudy, Taiwo Awoniyi, appeared to make it quite a risky punt); but the sudden rejuvenation of Danny Welbeck and Raul Jimenez surely blindsided everyone.

The unexpected strength of these fairly cheap forward options early in the season made it much easier to go without Haaland or Isak or Watkins - and to spend more money in midfield or defence. And with Isak avoiding long-term injuries this year, Wissa stepping up a notch, Cunha often looking one of the best players on the planet (when he wasn't suspended...), Mateta eventually starting to come good after a very slow start, Gakpo becoming an FPL prospect once he finally started getting some regular starts in the second half of the season, and newcomers Strand Larsen and Evanilson also showing a lot of promise (and Marmoush too, of course, after his introduction in January) - along with occasional fitful showings from the likes of Munoz, Delap, Ndiaye and Beto - meant that we really were spoiled for choice in the forward positions this year. I wasn't playing FPL in its early years, but I'm sure there have been occasions in the past when there were 3 or more really strong forward choices, and you might often want to start all of them. But in the last several years, that has not been the case. There has rarely been more than 1 forward in the top 5 or 10 overall FPL points producers; and, even if you could afford the best 3 forwards, the 3rd best has almost always been outperformed by not just 5 midfielders, but 8 or 10 or 12 of them! So, for some time now, you haven't really wanted to play 3-4-3, except by necessity, when one of your midfielders is unavailable for the week (or facing a really bad fixture). But this season, with so many strong forward options, and so many of the 'usual suspects' in midfield disappointing or sidelined with injury, 3-4-3 suddenly became common again - perhaps even the default option for many.

Yes, the midfield - usually the main foundry of FPL points - was a constant challenge and vexation this season. Many of the most promising producers - Saka, Amad, Bowen, Maddison, Son, DeBruyne - missed big chunks of the season through injury. Palmer, after another blistering start, had his output collapse in the second half of the season. Kluivert and Semenyo enjoyed brief hot flashes, but much looonger barren spells. Phil Foden - last year's 'Player of the Season' at City - suddenly couldn't get a regular start any more.  Poor unlucky Luis Diaz suffered a lot of rotation and was mostly played out of his best position. Eze and Mitoma were slow to rediscover their FPL scoring knack. Newcastle's Jacob Murphy only really got going in the second half of the season. Merino and Asensio failed to fulfill their early promise as goal-scoring midfielders. Bruno Fernandes and Morgan Rogers did heroic work trying to single-handedly carry very inconsistent teams, but in those trying circumstances were only able to manage sporadic FPL contributions. Yet, note that these players, despite patchy, or in some cases very short, seasons, were all still well up in the top 40 or 50 midfielders, and in most cases in the top 20 or the top 10! Apart from Salah and Mbeumo, all the leading midfield prospects seriously under-performed this year - in season-long terms, as against their undoubted potential in more favourable circumstances.

For that reason, even more than usual, one had to rotate constantly in the midfield selections, to try to optimise returns from those most in-form for the moment. I think this was particularly true in the cheaper spots - because there was a broader choice there, and more constant shifting of form. Many FPL managers had plumped for Morgan Rogers at the start of the year (and in most cases simply because he was very cheap, rather than because they knew his abilities from his Manchester City youth team performances, or because they'd seen how well he might fit in at Villa from his pre-season displays with them), and were content to stay with him for the whole season. His final ranking was certainly very good for such a cheap player, but not outstanding overall (he only just managed to edge back up into the Top 10 midfielders and Top 15 in all positions towards the end of the season, as Villa finished the campaign quite strongly - while so many others fell away). There was invariably at least one other cheap midfield option - sometimes, two or three or four - producing better than him for a run of games: Smith Rowe or Iwobi (or, for very brief spells, Harry Wilson or Adama Traore!), McNeil, Enzo Fernandez, Amad, Kluivert, Barnes, Murphy, Elanga, Schade.

And frankly, there was never much pressure on budget this year - certainly not once Saka had got injured, and Haaland and Fernandes and Son and eventually Palmer had all proved dispensable. (By the end of the season, most managers - most in the top third or so of the rankings, anyway - had boosted their squad value to 106 or 108 milliion; but in the last few weeks of the season weren't even spending 100 million of that - many leaving as much as 8 or 10 millon unutilised. I've never seen that before.) You didn't have to limit yourself to fifth midfielders who were cheap. It was just that - with most of the usually stronger options failing to produce - the cheaper midfielders were giving the best returns most of the time!

There were a lot of unexpected turns in regard to team form as well. We expect the promoted sides, these days, to be poor; but on paper, this year's trio had seemed to have some promise - particularly Leicester and Ipswich. But in fact, they proved to be the worst set of new clubs coming up in history, and were all beyond hope by Christmas - much to the relief of Wolves and West Ham, and Manchester United and Spurs! And yes, we probably expected Spurs and United to have another very disappointing year - but not, surely, to be down in the relegation zone! 

City's collapse was even more dramatic, and - to most - even more unexpected (I'm not saying I saw it coming, but I think we should have done....; the early loss of Rodri for the season was only one part of the problem). They rallied somewhat in the second half of the season, with winter-window signings Marmoush and Gonzalez and Academy-product Nico O'Reilly providing much-needed vigour; but they needed to ride their luck in making the most of a fairly soft closing run of fixtures over the last couple of months to scrabble back up into third spot. During the middle of the season, they'd looked as if they might struggle to qualify for the lesser European competitions. Indeed, 20 points dropped in just 8 games in November and December was looking like relegation form (if relegation had still been an option for any of the established clubs...).

Arsenal had a pretty disappointing season as well - again, hardly surprising, after their frankly disastrous failure to make any major new signings over the summer, while losing almost all of their back-up players. A constant stream of (relatively minor, but still disruptive) injuries meant that they were seldom able to field the same back-four. Having Ben White, outstanding down the right flank the season before, hampered by a long-standing knee problem early in the season, and eventually needing surgery and missing most of the rest of the year, may have been one of the biggest defensive curveballs in FPL this season; if he'd been at his best, choosing other defensive options from Arsenal - Gabriel, Raya, Timber, Saliba? - would have been a lot trickier; and Trent Alexander-Arnold or Josko Gvardiol might not have been such overwhelmingly popular choices for a more attacking premium defender option. However, it's an ill wind that blows no-one any good.... David Raya had been a poor goalkeeping option the season before because Arsenal were so watertight defensively that he hardly ever got to make any saves; the much more rickety team performance this year meant that he was able to claim 13 points for saves (including 6 in the first 4 gameweeks!) to compensate slightly for the 5 fewer clean-sheets his team managed, and keep him up among the top handful of keepers throughout the season.

Chelsea also had a 'season of two halves' - looking impressive, and even perhaps outside challengers for the title, until early December, and then crashing horribly. The dichotomy is most graphically revealed in Cole Palmer's FPL returns: he produced exactly 3 times as many points in the first 21 games as he did in the last 17!! (And I maintain, he wasn't playing badly during that later period; but with the rest of the team in a complete meltdown, there was nothing he could do.)

Liverpool also, perhaps, surprised us somewhat - in being so immediately reinvigorated under Arne Slot. However, they were efficient rather than breathtaking - often doggedly grinding out a result in a game where they hadn't really played very well; and rarely blowing opponents away as they so often had in the Klopp heyday a few years ago. Alas, frequent rotations in the attacking positions meant that Salah was the only pick you could rely on from the Champions (outside of Konate or Van Dijk, as a reliable defender, that is); though we might have liked to make some use of Luis Diaz, or Diogo Jota (when fit...), or Cody Gakpo, or Dominik Szoboszlai, or perhaps even Darwin Nunez on occasions - we just couldn't rely on any of them getting a regular start. Salah, however, oh dear me...! He'd turned 32 over the summer, had suffered a slump in form and seemed to have had a bit of a bust-up with Klopp at the end of last year, and had had contract extension negotations hanging over him all this season, with persistent associated rumours that he'd accepted offers of obscene money to join the Saudi League,,.... and yet he smashed his own FPL record for the most points in a season. How is that possible??  I have no idea; but we are privileged to have witnessed it. (He was so astonishingly consistent this season that - for possibly the first time in FPL history - it actually made sense to regard the same player as your default captain choice almost every single week.)

The BIG SURPRISE of the year, though, was undoubtedly Nottingham Forest - who went from narrowly avoiding relegation in the last two seasons to challenging strongly for a Champions League place throughout this campaign. WTF???  Nuno Espirito Santo really should have won 'Manager of the Year' for achieving that - with such a thin squad. Players like Sels (actually the best FPL keeper for most of the season; only edged into 2nd place by the inevitable Jordan Pickford in the last few weeks), defensive giant Milenkovic (a leading clean-sheet producer, and often a threat in the opposition box as well), and old warhorse Wood (who rarely produced more than 1 goal in a game, but was managing that with uncanny regularity - and often from only 2 or 3 half-chances in each game!) became favourite picks for everyone this year.

Eddie Howe also deserves a shout-out, for turning Newcastle's season around - without the benefit of any new signings. With 5 draws and 4 defeats in their first 14 games, they were floundering in mid-table at the start of December, and questions were being asked about the manager's future. But an astute tactical reshuffle galvanized the team's performances, and they then pulled out a string of 6 wins on the bounce - when so many others were faltering under the strain of the midwinter fixture logjam. And 9 more wins out of the last 16 was - just - enough to drag them back up into Champions League qualification.

Bournemouth and Crystal Palace rallied strongly from poor starts (in which they were both desperately unlucky and abused by fate...), and show the possibility to kick on to a much higher finish next year. Wolves and Everton also enjoyed a much stronger second half to their seasons, after inspired changes of manager.

Villa struggled with the novel demands of Champions League football this year, and were very disappointing in the first half of the season. Some good signings in January (and crashing out of the Champions League in the quarter-finals) re-energised them, and they managed a strong finish to the season. But still, none of their players - not even their two finest, Rogers and Watkins - really managed enough consistency to make them compelling FPL picks.

Brighton were exasperatingly up-and-down in their performances under their bold young manager. And their bloated squad makes them unappealing to Fantasy managers. Adingra and Minteh and Gruda and March are all attractive attacking players down the right, but..... which of them will play? Rutter and Ayari and Joao Pedro and Riley are all impressive creative midfield options, but....?  Aside from Mitoma (when he's in form) and Joao Pedro (when he's not suspended), you don't really want to be going near any other Brighton players very often.

Brentford and Fulham once again punched above their weight impressively; but, with relatively thin squads, they just couldn't find the consistency to haul themselves above mid-table. Bryan Mbeumo, however, emphatically confirmed the promise he's shown as a primary goalscorer over the past couple of seasons, and emerged as the season's strongest FPL performer (after Mo Salah, of course); and his sidekicks Yoane Wissa and Kevin Schade also made a big impression.

As I noted long ago in this post, there were a lot of innovations in FPL this year, which unsettled the usual pattern of the season and the 'traditional' thinking about tactics. The most momentous of these was the ending of the BIG Blank and Double Gameweeks that used to result from fixture reschedulings from the FA Cup Quarter-Finals weekend. But the rule change allowing us to save up to 5 Free Transfers (effectively a 'mini Wildcard' - if we could ever manage to pull that off!) is also a big - though very positive - shake-up in the game.

The introduction of the absurd novelty of the 'Assistant Manager' chip caused 'excitement' for some,... but horror and dismay for most of us long-time FPL managers. It was a game-distorting aberration (probably worth more than the two traditional bonus chips combined; potentially, perhaps, two or three times as much - and hence likely to be the ultimate determinant of ranking outcomes; moreover, it made it impossible to compare this season's performance against previous years) that really SPOILED the season. We must hope that it will be dropped next year.  #DownWithTheNewChip

We had the first Merseyside derby game called off at very short notice at the beginning of December due to concerns about possible high winds (which did not really eventuate, not to the extent feared...) - which at least gave us an additional Double Gameweek in the season, and a golden opportunity to bet our Triple Captain chips on Mo Salah. And we were further reminded of the potential for additional Blanks and Doubles to be created by unexpected events with several other games over the following month or so being threatened by thick fogs (one or two of which really did seem to be compromising visibility too far for the matches to have kicked off) or heavy falls of snow (requiring dozens of volunteers to frantically clear the pitch just hours ahead of a match). Though none of these subsequent 'extreme weather' events actually resulted in any further postponements, they served as a salutary warning: the possibility of such fixture disruption is something we should be constantly alert to, especially over the winter months.

Finally, one of the biggest differences in the EPL this season - though not much talked about anywhere so far, at least not that I've seen - is that there have been massively fewer penalties awarded this year: 23 fewer than last year, and 41 fewer (down by over 30%) from the record high number in the 2020-2021 season. This has affected some clubs far more than others: Chelsea have only been given 5 penalties this year (and Palmer managed to 'miss' one of them; although I feel it was illegally saved by Mads Hermansen, who clearly had both feet off the ground before the ball was kicked), as against 12 last year (that's a big part of Palmer's 'disappointing' return this season right there). The reasons for this are partly a revision of the guidelines on the interpretation of the Handball Law, making it less likely for defenders to be penalised when the ball is struck against their hand or arm (in principle, a good thing; though, in practice, it doesn't so far seem to have given any more clarity or consistency in the decision-making); and partly, VAR now being reluctant to go against the on-pitch referee's initial decisions in most instances - to the extent that penalty calls are now scarcely reviewed at all, and very rarely referred to the pitchside monitor for a second look. (The attempt to move away from excessive VAR interventions has swung much too far the other way this year, so that the VAR oversight now seems often otiose and impotent. This needs to be fixed for next season.)

I've been trying to monitor the impact of 'LUCK' on FPL points returns all season - and I'm afraid I think this has probably been an unusually lucky season. Some of the elements of 'luck' are always to be expected, and we just have to accept them and adapt to them - eccentric managerial decisions, jaw-dropping goals-out-of-nothing, horrendous defensive howlers,... and sudden bad weather, etc. However, the major element this season has certainly been poor refereeing: we have seen some truly dreadful decisions this year - penalties or red cards wrongly awarded or not awarded, goals occasionally bafflingly disallowed, goals ruled offside for ridiculously paper-thin margins... There's hardly been a week without at least one instance of such a significant injustice in the game; often there have been three or four, or more. This is unacceptable, it's got to stop.

I'll attempt a follow-up post with a few more specifics on the Players of the Year in a day or two....