Are you a 'good' FPL manager?

 

How can you judge if you are any good at the game of Fantasy Premier League?

Well, unfortunately, your results do not provide any convincing proof of that, since they are determined at least as much by sheer luck as by 'skill'. If you got a good year-end points total, that might have been more through luck than anything else. And even if you earned that good points total through consistently smart decision-making,.... you are likely to have been outscored by numerous other managers, the majority of whom were merely luckier than you; so, your 'Overall Rank' is really no evidence of anything.

So, I say it's unwise to be too results-focused in this game; instead, you should concentrate on the process of the game - on becoming more self-aware about how you make your decisions, and constantly seeking to improve in that.

Here are the elements that I believe you should look at to determine how good you are at playing Fantasy Premier League:

1)  Do you know the rules?  That might seem very obvious - but it is astonishing how many 'casual' players really don't even know the basics, things like what the 'chips' are, and how transfers work. And really, if you're going to be 'good' at the game, you should know the game rules in detail (not just the key rules, but also the subtler underlying ones like how the bonus points allocations are calculated, and what the ranking tiebreakers are), and you should appreciate their implications (such as that the scoring system is heavily biased in favour of midfield players, and against defenders, and hence 3-5-2 should be the preferred default formation).

2)  Do you know something of the history of the game?  And I mean not just the history of FPL, but the broader history of football, particularly of top-flight English football in the Premier League era. It really does help a lot in understanding what's going on now - and what's likely to happen next - if you have some context for how teams and players have changed and developed over time, what the patterns of form and points-returns over different phases of the season tend to be, and how far exceptional players may out-perform statistical averages. One example I especially like is that, although it's a common superstition in FPL that a Double Gameweek is bound to produce an enormous return for the Triple Captain chip, in fact that only happens occasionally (rather less often than with a well-chosen SGW punt), and a 24-year-old Wayne Rooney is the only player in the entire history of the competition to have achieved a double-digit haul in both games of a double-fixture week (well, until last year, when Jean-Philippe Mateta also managed it - but it is very much a 'Black Swan' Event!).

3)  Do you know the schedule (for the entire footballing year)?  Most people seem to be barely aware of the upcoming fixtures on the next match weekend, and few look at anything more than the next few weeks of match-ups (as listed on FPL's Fixture Difficulty Rating list). But the dates for all rounds of the European and domestic cup competitions are set before the start of the season (and until this year, the Club World Cup had been held in December, and sometimes provided another - small but significant - piece of fixture disruption [in fact, that competition still exists, though now rebranded as the Inter-Continental Cup; so, that could still take away one of our top teams in December, when we've won the Champions League at the end of the preceding season]), and if you look at them alongside the League programme, you can see where fixture logjams will occur, when Blank Gameweeks will happen, and when corresponding Double Gameweeks are likely to happen. Moreover, the African and Asian Cups happen in December/January every two years, removing a lot of top players from EPL competition for a month or so in mid-season; that always seems to catch a lot of FPL managers by surprise - but it really shouldn't.

4)  Do you watch a lot of games?  There really is no substitute for that. You cannot play FPL in isolation, purely as a gambling or statistical analysis exercise (well, many people do; but they rarely do very well...); you should always be basing your Fantasy selections on your own understanding of the game, derived from close observation of matches. Broadly speaking, the more football you watch, the better you will become at FPL. (And it's helpful to watch other games outside the Premier League too; the form and confidence and stamina of players and teams can be greatly affected by how they've performed in other competitions - including international appearances.)

5)  Are you a good judge of a player?  This is the core skill that 'Fantasy' games like ours are intended to test. But even this is not a straightforward, single attribute: it involves being able to assess a player's overall skill-set, their strengths and weaknesses, how they may be likely to develop over the coming season or adapt to changes of personnel around them, how they function in their current team and how well that team suits them; and also, how prone they are to injury, or how resilient and swift to recover from knocks they seem to be; and how variable their form is, and what the key indicators of a positive or negative shift in their form are; and then, of course, understanding how their abilities will translate into likely FPL points returns (many great players, particularly defenders and central midfielders, simply don't offer anything in FPL).

6)  Do you understand tactics?  Tactics have a key impact on game outcomes. And they have become increasingly intricate and subtle in recent years, more highly adaptive in-game or from week-to-week, and more quickly and sometimes radically evolving from season to season (or even within the course of one season - especially at Manchester City!). It is no longer possible to properly evaluate a player's attributes and points-potential (my point 5) above) without a shrewd understanding of how well they thrive with their team's current tactics - and how they might be adversely affected by changes in those tactics,... and how well the tactics are likely to work against the tactical set-ups of upcoming opponents. I do strongly recommend studying up on tactics (viewing some of the excellent tactical analysis channels now appearing on Youtube is an easy way to get started), in order to improve your understanding of the game, and hence improve your FPL performance.

7)  Are you highly numerate?  You don't necessarily have to be a maths prodigy to do well at FPL (though it might help!), but you do have to have a very good general 'number sense' - an easy ability to 'see' proportional relationships between figures, to compute simple sums in your head, and so on. There's no getting away from it - so much of the game revolves around mathematical relationships: weighing the highest absolute points returns against the highest points-per-pound returns in apportioning your squad budget, evaluating 'differential advantage' (which has nothing to do with a player's rate of ownership, but is rather a matter of assessing how much of a relative points lift one particular transfer or selection may give you, in comparison to all other possible alternative picks), projecting likely points returns and so assessing the optimum weeks to play your various 'chips' in, judging when it's worth making a transfer - that's all maths. Moreover, most of the statistics you might want to refer to for help (see further point below) cover the entire season (or a series of seasons), and if you're only interested in a shorter run of games, or you need to adjust for the fact that a player you're considering had a long injury absence, you often have to work out per-game averages or recent form figures for yourself. It really is a big, big help in FPL if you can do these sorts of calculations swiftly and accurately in your head - or, sometimes, if you simply have an instinctive (accurate!) awareness of what these figures are, how they relate to one another, and hence what they mean. That's not an ability that many people have. Some specific mathematical knowledge - especially in the areas of statistics and probability (and also in the understanding of odds: the bookmakers aren't a completely accurate and reliable guide to past form or upcoming results, but they are a very useful resource) - is also a significant advantage.

8)  Do you understand statistics, and how to use them?  Sadly, I think almost no-one in the FPL community does - certainly not the majority of online 'gurus' out there. There is a lot to be said about statistics, and how to use them. For now, I'll just caution that statistics - even if used appropriately - are of limited value, because they just don't capture the fine detail of games, the intricacy of real-time interactions between multiple players; the 'eye test' - so long as you're a shrewd, experienced, and careful observer of the game - is always far more valuable. Statistics can be useful - if you know what you're looking for in them,... and always take them with a grain of salt, staying very conscious of their flaws and limitations. It is important to be able to recognise patterns, to have an awareness of which figures might or might not be statistically significant, and in particular to be alert to how far exceptional players are diverging from the mean level of performance. But most of the time, you just see self-styled 'experts' cherry-picking one or two stats in isolation to support a preconceived opinion - you should always be very wary of that. (I think of it as the "Underlying Numbers" Fallacy.)

9)  Are you fully up-to-date with relevant football news?  It really helps to be pretty thoroughly immersed in what's going on with the English Premier League. And that's a big challenge if you're not actually living in England; it is very difficult to stay on top of breaking team news, transfer gossip, injuries, fallings-out between players and managers, scandals and legal problems, etc., etc. if you're in another country (as I am). You have to do your best with the Internet - but that's a time-consuming and often unreliable resource; it's not really any substitute for being readily able to pick up all the latest tidbits of news several times a day through... free newspapers left on the subway, hourly bulletins on the TV or radio, water-cooler conversations at work, bumping into one of the Arsenal physios at Pret-A-Manger...

10)  Do you spend enough time on the game?  If you're going to do well at FPL, you really do have to put in quite a lot of time on it: watching games, checking fixtures, seeking out team news. And it really helps to have disciplined habits about this - to make sure that you're not occasionally skimping on certain key elements of preparation or overlooking key facts,.... or - horror of horrors! - forgetting a Deadline sometimes...! But equally, 'life balance' is important: you should not be spending too much time on the game either - that easily becomes counter-productive, leading to you becoming mired in 'over-thinking' (stop that, Pep!). There is a 'right' amount of time and effort to devote to this game, a happy medium: try to find that sweet spot.

11)  Are you self-aware?  In this early post on the blog, I outlined the main reasons why people tend to be bad at FPL. We all have cognitive biases, personal prejudices, sentimental impulses, non-rational superstitions, etc. which lead us to be unduly indulgent towards some players and teams, but resistant to recognising the merits of others. We can't ever expect to completely eradicate these natural, inevitable human flaws in our thinking and decision-making, but we can at least strive to be aware of them and to fight against their influence over us. One of the greatest of these universal weaknesses is the reluctance to recognise that we've been wrong. If you can become more open to the fact that you are fallible, to recognising and accepting your mistakes, and trying to learn from them - then, you can get better at FPL,... rather than just making the same kinds of mistakes over and over again (which is, alas, what most people do - in FPL, and in Life...).

12)  Are you relentlessly eager to improve?  This is not the same as competitiveness; in fact, it is somewhat antithetical to that. Competitiveness tends to be externally focused, concerned simply with attaining some arbitrary target - whether that is reaching a points goal or defeating a particular individual. A genuine desire for constant improvement has no end-goal, it is focused internally, it looks at the activity or process itself, rather than its interim outcomes. Such a desire to strive towards an unattainable 'perfection' is intrinsic to a certain personality type, and it is very difficult to cultivate if it is not naturally in you; but it is not impossible, and you can make progress with dedicated effort. And this, I believe, is THE MOST IMPORTANT factor in becoming a 'successful' FPL manager. People who just say, "I want to win my mini-league,... and that's enough for me." or "I want to finish in the top 100,000,.... and that's enough for me." or "I want to reach x points for the season,... and that's enough for me." will never become truly great managers in the game because their motivation is too limited, too weak, the fire does not burn strongly enough in them, the will to excellence is not there.

If you can honestly answer YES to all of these self-directed questions,.... then you are a GOOD FPL Manager - regardless of your current points total or rank.

But it's extremely unlikely that anyone can truthfully tick all of these boxes with absolute assurance (I know I sometimes come up short on a few!!). What this LIST is actually seeking to show you is that you're not 'good' yet - but this is what you need to do to become better.

The Eternal Quest

I said a little while back that I would attempt to produce a comprehensive but simple guide to the elements that I think make up a 'Good FPL Manager' [added a couple of days later].

I already wrote something of the sort at the start of the season, but I want to revisit that idea now - and, hopefully, come up with more of a checklist that people can measure themselves against.

I have also previously offered some guidance on what I think various points thresholds tend to indicate about a manager's level of ability (though that's a crude, inexact measure). and suggested some external objectives you might use as a gauge of progress and a source of motivation: tallying a personal head-to-head (even if not formally entered in such a league) against key rivals, or against people you've identified as being consistently impressive managers; seeing how well you can do in a small or mid-sized mini-league that seems to offer a high standard of competition; or forming a mini-league of your own to compete against friends, family members, neighbours, co-workers, etc.

However, that kind of thing is really just for fun, to help boost your motivation and enjoyment. And there is a danger that it can become too much of a distraction from The True Path.

Because The True Path is not about any external goals; it is about focusing on the process - becoming aware of how you make your decisions, and striving to become better at that. You don't need any external benchmarks to achieve this. Obsessing over 'rank' or points totals is a dangerous waste of time and effort; most of the time, it simply leads you into making worse decisions.

My full post on this should appear in a day or two.

 

The ONE GREAT TRUTH

The point of the game is to pick who you think are the best players. And then see how well you did.

Sometimes it goes well; sometimes it goes badly.

Those outcomes are mostly the result of luck - so, you shouldn't fret over poor outcomes (or feel smug over good ones!), But the outcomes can also give you some hints as to how accurate your judgement of the players was. If you can recognise where your judgements were mistaken, and why that happened - you can get better. That is the purpose of the game.

It has NOTHING to do with 'rank'. People who obsess over their 'Overall Rank' position have fallen victim to a sad delusion. How many points you get has little to do with how good you are; how many other people get more points than you has nothing to do with how good you are.

You should focus only on trying to choose the best players, self-analysing your mistakes and weaknesses, seeking a path to become better in your selections. That is all.

As Dogen Zenji said, "The practice is the goal."

Know what you're talking about when you talk of 'risk'

 

"Fortune favours the brave, sometimes; but the foolish, almost never."

GW

It is good to sometimes embrace risk in playing FPL. 

Unforuntately, very few people have any idea how to assess risk. Among the FPL hordes online, I can regularly distinguish two kinds of 'risk': the calculated risk, and the uncalculated risk.

I like to characterise these different types of risk-taking as 'wise gambling'...... and 'foot-shooting'.

Please don't fall victim to the latter!

THIS is why you shouldn't TripleCap in December!

 

As I warned a couple of weeks ago, December is a very bad time to play your Triple Captain chip.

Fixture congestion and miserable weather (and perhaps even the distraction of the looming holidays: footballers too need to plan for family gatherings, and get their Christmas shopping done!) tend to reduce performance levels and increase the risk of unexpected, upset results.

And sure enough, here we are at the start of the GW16 weekend, with players like Salah and Saka the most favoured captaincy picks for the week, playing at home and facing much weaker opposition..... and both players produce not very much, both sides are surprisingly held to a draw. I now rather fear that Palmer will have a rare stinker today, and Chelsea will somehow get turned over by Brentford....

In addition to all the factors I listed in that earlier post which can make results at this time of year more unpredictable, we also have to endure the impact of poor officiating (does this get worse in December too? perhaps referees are also preoccupied with thoughts of their Christmas shopping??). Bukayo Saka (my captain choice this week!) was not only denied a goal and an assist by some excellent work between the sticks from Pickford, but, near the end of the game, was robbed of the chance to convert a penalty by possibly the worst refereeing/VAR decision of the entire season so far. The only small consolation I can cling to is that this injustice would have pained me even more if I'd had my Triple Captain chip riding on him....

This is a Season of Craziness, my friends. Hang on to your bonus chips until the New Year....

Deadline brinksmanship - DON'T try to cut it too close!

I mentioned the other day in my short post on the consequences of the Merseyside derby postponement this weekend that many managers who'd lost more than 1 or 2 players in that fixture scrambled to try to plug the gaps just before the weekly deadline. And it was this flurry of late transfer activity which enabled so many of us to start the Gameweek on a short-lived high, as our rank surged upwards on the number-of-transfers tiebreak rule.

I ddi subsequently see a few complaints on online FPL forums about managers being unable to complete their desired transfers, espcially if they were attempting to do so via Wildcard or Free Hit chiips, because the FPL website seemed to freeze up or crash on them, not letting them confirm or save their changes.

Now, this is not a problem that I've encountered myself for a few years - because I just don't take chances with the deadline any more. In my early years playing the game, though, (and in my first few times playing the sister games for the World Cup or the European Championship) I ran into such bothersome glitches a lot.

And it's not really surprising - with a game of this magnitude (typically well over 10 million user accounts each season nowadays). However good the overal server capacity for the game is, it's bound to get a bit overstretched if a significant proportion of the game's players are all trying to make changes to their accounts at the same time. - and, in extreme cases, that may lead to the user-interface becoming slow, glitchy, unreliable.... or perhaps even to it breaking down altogether. And  I suspect this problem is likely to be exacerbated by any local shortcomings you may be suffering with the Internet architecture; if your connection to the Web is already a little bit slow or unstable, then the chances of your connection to the FPL servers breaking down are going to be even higher during times of peak demand on them.

And of course, the FPL site traffic tends to be highest just before the deadline for team changes each gameweek. So, if you try leaving your team changes until the very last minute.... you are always running the risk of having a 'technical issue' prevent you from completing them. I really don't think it's SAFE to leave your team changes to the last half-hour before the deadline. And I don't usually even try to do them any later than 1 hour before.

And yet many managers persist in this crazy brinksmanship - kidding themselves that there may be late, late 'team leaks' that might give a better clue to a manager's selections for the upcoming game.... perhaps a rumour that this or that player is a late dropout because he woke up with a cold or stubbed his toe in the shower...

Frankly, I can't remember the last time a piece of news like that broke (that was actually reliable or useful). And if it doesn't emerge until the last couple of hours before the first kick-off, there's really not much you can do about it anyway - unless, like FPL's vapid anonymous pundit 'The Scout', you are prepared to use  unlimited transfers to optimise your squad each week, regardless of the cost in points. This is why it's IMPORTANT to always have a proper bench: so that 1 or 2 - or perhaps even 3! - last-minute dropouts from your starting eleven can be readily replaced. 

And if you lose even more than that, because of some strange circumstance.... well, that's just a disaster there's really no way to deal with; you just have to suck it up. As I counselled in regard to this weekend's postponement, if you did lose a lot of Merseyside players, and you had no decent back-up on your bench, it was probably better to just accept your ill fortune for this one gameweek... rather than resorting to a bunch of transfers, possibly at a cost of valuable points, and then face the prospect of wanting to undo most of those transfers the very next week, and have to spend even more points to do so. [Some people apparently thought their Free Hit might be the answer to their troubles on this. But that is a topic for another time, I think. In brief, it was impossible to be missing more than 5 or 6 players as a result of this lost fixture; there will be at least one gameweek later in the season when we will all, almost certainly, lose at least 1.5x to 2x that many players; and that is when you will NEED your Free Hit. Playing it now might have saved you some points this weekend; but it will cost you far more further down the line - when you no longer have it available when a far more needful occasion for it arises.]

Luck-o-Meter (15)

Well, of course, we kicked off our Gameweek 15.... without a kick-off! One of the most extreme examples of 'luck' intervening to mess with our hoped-for FPL outcomes! And believe it or not, at the start of the season, when I was listing the main sources of luck in FPL results, I did mention 'Acts of God':

I was able to celebrate Storm Darragh's wiping out of the opening Merseyside derby, because I only lost Mo Salah from my starting lineup. Many people found themselves without 3, 4, 5, even 6 players - immediate disaster for them. (Some reached in panic for their 'Free Hit' chip! And apparently the last-minute rush of attempted transfer activity crashed the FPL servers, freezing screens before changes could be implemented for some - and many managers were left doubly vexed and frustrated over the turn of events. However, I suspect most of them will ultimately be better off without having made changes. If you were fairly happy with your squad before the postponement, you shouldn't waste transfers on short-term changes. [It quite often happens that a team you're doubled or trebled up on will have an unexpectedly awful game and none of their players return anything... or all your star men are unexpectedly 'rested' on the same weekend... That kind of thing hurts bad; but you just have to suck it up. A last-minute postponement is the same kind of pain. Using a bunch of transfers to try to deal with it is like self-medicating with alcohol: it won't really make things much better now, and it will leave you with a terrible hangover the day after.]

We have to expect a lot of 'rest rotations' at this time of year, but... Ollie Watkins seemed one of the least likely players to be dropped to the bench this weekend; and that will have been a hard blow for the nearly 24% of Fantasy managers who still own him, despite his and Villa's subdued form over the past month (there was a big inrush for him this week, in anticipation of this 'easy' Southampton fixture!). Southampton largely avoided their usual catastrophic defensive errors here - the only major one, from goalkeeper Lumley, they survived by the skin of their teeth - and, in fact, Villa seemed to be making more sloppy passes. And oh, mirabile dictu, no contentious decisions here. (Not much of anything, really: a very drab game.)

The Brentford v Newcastle game was full of surprises - first, and most painful of which for me (because I recently bought him), was that the almost-never-rested Anthony Gordon got rested (and he didn't make much of an impact when he eventually came on as a sub). Newcastle, perhaps emotionally and physically depleted by their defiant heroics against Liverpool in midweek, were incredibly flat; in fact, this was probably their worst performance of the entire season - with Nick Pope having a particularly bad day at the office, and Lewis Hall (another recent purchase of mine!) having an absolute stinker. One should expect some wild swings of form during the crowded holiday fixture schedule, but even so, it is unusual that one team can suddenly be so much worse than expected, while their opponents produce their best game of the season, as Brentford did here! Moreover, there are certain patterns which, although one can't necessarily determine their causative roots, seem so reliable that they come to mould our expectations (not unreasonably). One such is that the Brentford forwards tend to take it in turns with the goals, and rarely does more than one of them score in the same game; but here, Mbeumo (suddenly back from a five-game mini-slump), Wissa, and Schade (who was only on as a substitute) all scored; and a bloody defender, Nathan Collins, too! A big tremor on the Luck-o-Meter in this one, for all sorts of reasons!  (And I have to admit, Mark Flekken is growing on me slightly of late; well, I think he's slowly getting better. And his scrambling recovery to tip the ball off Isak's toe as he set himself to fire the ball into an empty net was really a top piece of goalkeeping. I still don't think he's anywhere near the best goalkeeper in the EPL; but I wouldn't rank him dead last any more...)

At least there weren't any problems with the refereeing in this game... Well, except for that incident where Dan Burn made a heroic last-ditch block to prevent a late fifth goal after Mbeumo dispossessed a hapless Pope 35 yards out (I was more alarmed by the keeper's complete lack of pace to even try and recover, rather than his initial clumsiness on the ball): Burn clearly attempted to steer the ball away from the goal and back towards his approaching keeper - and did so successfully; Pope immediately picked the ball up and looked to bowl it out to another defender. If the Pau Torres touch to Martinez last weekend was deemed a 'back-pass', why was this not? As I observed then, there's just no consistency about how this rule is applied. [Another bugbear of mine is how careless goalkeepers are now allowed to be in handling the ball near the edge of the box, particularly when about to launch a kick forward: there are examples every week of the ball plainly having strayed outside the lines of the penalty area in a keeper's hands, but referees never do anything about it. There was one particularly egregious example a few weeks back - can't remember who it was now; Vicario, maybe? - where a keeper fell on the ball on the edge of the area, and it briefly rolled a good foot outside the box while he still had his hands on it - but the ref turned a blind eye.]

City floundering against a lower-half side is no longer surprising; it will surely continue to happen unless they can find some sort of Rodri fill-in in January (and replacements too for Walker and Gundogan, who clearly no longer have the legs to play in this League). The only big surprise here was that Rico Lewis finally got a goal (although he has threatened a few times this season; and has 'previous' against Palace); and then got himself sent off! The second booking looked incredibly harsh (Chalobah's boot arriving at the point of contact slightly after Lewis's, and scraping the studs over Lewis's instep - if anything, a foul the other way). The major problem here is with the VAR protocols: sendings-off are so important that they clearly should review all instances, not just 'straight red' situations.

Manchester United fans will no doubt protest that their result was unjust, as they managed to dominate the possession (three-to-one!) and 'expected goals' numbers. But, although they managed to move the ball around a little better than Forest, especially in the first half, Forest had a clear edge in competitiveness, and always felt more 'in control' of the game to me. It was a fair old humdinger, though, with a number of near-misses - notably a crisp volley by Murillo just wide of the near post from a corner, and Martinez's athletic volley over the bar in the closing minutes, as well as Bruno's free-kick effort fingertipped on to the face of the crossbar by Sels, and Jota Silva's powerful early header crashing against the woodwork. One might also consider it... unusual that Andre Onana, who should by rights be one of the best 3 or 4 goalkeepers in the Premier League, had one of those days where he looked like he belonged in Division Two. And he should really have been booked for his ridiculous faffing around with the placing of the ball for the free-kick in the dying minutes (WHY was he time-wasting anyway, when it was his team chasing the equaliser??). Apart from that, though, it seemed to be a pretty well-refereed game, with no controversial decisions.

Sunday, alas, was one of the worst days for VAR that I can remember for a while. Well, there have been an awful lot of them this season, but this one was certainly up there. Kulusevski should clearly have been sent off against Chelsea for blatantly throwing his elbow into the side of Lavia's head, a really nasty foul - somehow completely missed by the officials. (Spurs fans will whinge that perhaps Caicedo should have been sent off a little earlier for kicking Sarr on the shin, but that looked to me like an accidental foll0w-through, as he stumbled forwards slightly off balance; there was little force behind the contact. It should certainly have received a yellow card, and didn't; but it was nowhere near a red.)  Yet another goal was ridiculously disallowed for a non-existent foul on a goalkeeper, and yet again VAR shirked its responsibility (an injustice that will cut particularly deep for relegation-strugglers Ipswich). And then there were some utterly unfathomable offside calls in the Fulham v Arsenal game.  [Grinds teeth in frustration]

Fulham have become a bit of a bogey team for Arsenal, and Marco Silva again did a very good tactical job of smothering their threat here. And even Arteta - for once - took a harsh decision against his side with uncomplaining good grace. Fulham indeed had done enough to deserve a point - although Raul converting their only chance of the game so well was a bit unexpected; especially after a six-game spell when he has not merely not scored but never looked likely to! - and I suppose the dubious offside calls cancel each other out, since I felt Saliba was fairly clearly, if narrowly, offside, while Martinelli almost certainly wasn't (but either way, it was one of those that was too close for any decision on it to be sensibly made) - although the second one rankles with me as it denied Saka any points in the game, and I'd given him my captain's armband after Salah disappeared from the roster. 

My gripe about these decisions, though, is with the VAR process. On live coverage, they seem to have started occasionally showing us a camera view inside the VAR room (is this new? I haven't noticed it before); however, this is vexingly unrevealing, since it is without any audio, and the view is facing away from the monitor screens, so we have no idea what they're looking at. It actually adds to our confusion and anxiety, rather than dispelling it!  Both these decisions took an inordinately long time; and in both cases, a decision appeared to have been reached before the 'lines' were superimposed on the still frame to indicate how it was supposed to have been reached (are the pictures shared at the ground and with TV stations the same as those the VAR officials are seeing??  surely, they ought to be; but we just don't know). Even worse, the still frames being shared on TV were not the most appropriate ones: in the first case the action appeared to have been stopped a bit before Havertz headed back across the face of the goal, so Saliba was not at his furthest point forward (and he still looked offside by an inch or so; but when the ball was actually headed, it looked to me more like a foot); for the second, it just wasn't the best angle to make the call, too far ahead of the defensive line (a better view later appeared, to retroactively justify the decision; but even in that one, Martinelli, way over on the far side, looked just onside). There was again a timing issue with that second decision, as Martinelli checked back for a fraction of a second while the nearest defender was still retreating, and just as the ball was being played to him - so a difference of a 10th or a 20th of a second would have made a substantial difference to the players' relative positions, and it was not clear that the action had been frozen at the appropriate moment. In any case, another Arsenal player almost in line was blocking a clear view of where those two players' feet were, so really I don't see how any decision was possible. In fact, it looked very much as if the call may have been made not against Martinelli, but against another Arsenal forward (Trossard, I suppose?), between the Fulham centre-back and right-back, who was clearly a foot or so offside - but also very clearly not interfering with play. These two decisions may not have been 'wrong' (though they both looked it to me); but it was not clear on what basis they had been made - and that lack of clarity in the process is completely unacceptable.

Ipswich really only have themselves to blame: more atrocious defending from them allowing Bournemouth to nick the game at the death. But they will feel hard done-by - rightly so - at being denied a goal for Delap putting a hand on Kepa's arm at a corner. The amount of indulgence being shown towards goalkeepers by referees has reached an utterly ridiculous level. (And once more, VAR appear to have taken a look, and said: "Well, that was a ridiculous call. But we can't call out a colleague as ridiculous, so... let's just pretend we saw nothing wrong with it.")

Brighton dominated most of the game at Leicester, but couldn't make it count - ultimately needing a couple of worldies from Lamptey and Minteh (and a fantastic fingertip save by Hermansen from Estupinan's fierce drive early on), after the more usual outlets of Mitoma, Ferguson, and Joao Pedro had all spurned chances; and then sitting back to defend the two-goal lead for the last 10 minutes.... and not being able to do so??  Bizarre game on the footballing front; but at least there didn't appear to be any refereeing cock-ups in this one.

The Spurs v Chelsea game got off to a weird start, with the hosts being gifted a couple of goals inside the first 10 minutes or so as a result of - the otherwise excellent! - Cucurella twice giving possession away by falling over (his complaint about the studs on his boots probably just a scapegoat excuse??). The endlessly flakey Sanchez looked somewhat at fault in goal on both of them too. For the first, he appeared to be trying to come out for the cross (which was obviously going to be cleared by his defender, if the Spurs forward at the near post didn't reach it first), rather than staying on his line to guard his near post; it was as if he hadn't even seen Solanke running in on the ball. And the second, while a crisp shot through a defender's legs, nestled right inside the near post, didn't have that much power in it, and Sanchez got across to it comfortably enough but somehow didn't get his hand on it. For me, that is a keeper that has got to go (and I'm not alone: the 'Match of the Day' pundits on the BBC seem to have been saying the same every weekend for the past month or more). A thrilling end-to-end game, with a fair few near-misses, a 'Goal of the Month' contender from Sancho, 2 penalties (both completely uncontentious, for once), Jackson's finishing - mostly immaculate so far this season - suddenly letting him down again (and so denying Palmer perhaps 2 or 3 more assists!!), and the rare sight of Son Heung-Min fluffing an easy one-on-one... And Cole Palmer (much as I love him...) was extremely fortunate to be awarded an 'assist' for his pass across the box to Enzo, since it took a huge deflection off a Spurs defender, and most of the time even the smallest intervening touch will rob a player of credit for setting up a goal (I worry that this decision may yet get revised, possibly harming his bonus points tally as well... God, I hope not: he's the only player who returned for me this week!). This match alone was probably worth a couple of points on my Luck-o-Meter scale!

Monday night's West Ham v Wolves clash was really a 'Save Your Manager's Job' match; and I had thought that perhaps Wolves would be a little more motivated on Gary O'Neill's behalf than West Ham would be for the drab and uninspiring Lopategui. But not as it turned out: despite a thumping half-volley equaliser from Matt Doherty (yet another goal from a defender?!), West Ham looked to be absolutely dominant in this one; and if Mohammed Kudus was aware of the offside law, they might easily have scored 4 or 5. And there was another selection 'surprise' here, with O'Neill suddenly switching back to Sam Johnstone in goal, in place of Jose Sa (it didn't do him any good; but it will have pissed off the 2% of managers who still owned Sa). Swapping your keeper is usually a sign of ultimate desperation; isn't that right, Pep?

Alas, it looks as though - yet again - O'Neill can feel rightly aggrieved at the refereeing decisions in this game: the corner from which Soucek headed his opener should have been a goal-kick (although that's no excuse for the awful defending, as four Wolves players formed a gaggle near the edge of the six-yard box to watch the lanky Czech eagerly waiting for his free header to arrive, and doing absolutely nothing to try to prevent it); Emerson ran into the back of Guedes on the edge of the box, but VAR declared, rather dubiously, that the contact had started 'outside the area'; and then in the closing minutes, Mavropanos stamped on Bellegarde's foot - clearly inside the box this time, and clearly a foul, but once more both the referee and the VAR team unaccountably looked the other way. While these accumulating small injustices will rankle with Wolves fans, and probably have had some impact on their standing in the table, it doesn't alter the fact that their performances this season have been abysmal - and O'Neill really needs to go now (probably should have gone a month back). But so does Lopategui: he's doing an even worse job, with a much stronger group of players.

Losing an entire game from the schedule - especially 'at the last minute' (only around 2 hours before the deadline; which, for a Saturday luncthtime kick-off, is still the middle of the night for anyone playing the game in the Americas!) - is probably worth 4 or 5 points on the Luck-o-Meter straight away.

Losing Mo Salah, the most potent player in the game at the moment, to that postponement, and then having so many other leading players either rested (especially Watkins and Gordon, both quite high owned), or dropped (Maddison!) amped up the unpredictability of the weekend even further. There were some moderately surprising performances and results too, with Southampton holding Villa to the narrowest of victories, Leicester, Fulham, and Palace managing draws against the much more fancied Brighton, Arsenal and Manchester City, and Brentford/Newcastle, Man Utd/Forest, and Spurs/Chelsea producing multi-goal ding-dongs!!

And among the 'usual suspects', only Cole Palmer had a big week this time - and that essentially down to the 2 silly penalties Spurs gave him (his first 2 of the season???). The 'Team of the Week' is really a bit of a joke, with almost no-one that any sensible manager would (any longer) own: Emi Martinez and Ezri Konsa are very poor picks for the long-haul, almost never keep clean sheets (but did this week!); Saliba is, of course, a great player - but usually only third choice from the Arsenal defence after Gabriel and Timber (and he looked to me well offside for his goal, though VAR somehow erred in his favour!); Tariq Lamptey and Tim Hughes are irregular starters, Ouattara only just back from injury; Mbeumo, Bowen, Raul, and Vardy were all making surprise returns to form after a scoring drought (5 games without a goal for Mbeumo and Bowen, 6 for Raul, and - before last week - 4 for Vardy); and Morgan Gibbs-White hadn't produced anything since his solitary goal of the season in the second game against hopeless Southampton. So, that right there, that combination of the usually reliable players (Saka, Jackson, Joao Pedro, Isak, Watkins...), as well as many of the recently popular 'Sheep Picks' (Cunha, Ait-Nouri, Iwobi, Porro, Kerkez...) all producing little or nothing... while so many players we should have given up on by now came good again out of nowhere... that on its own is probably worth at least 4 points on the Luck-o-Meter scale.

And then, on top of all the wild swings of fortune in the selections and performances, we had some spectacularly bad decisions marring the gameweek too: Lewis being wrongly sent off, Kulusevski being wrongly allowed to remain on the field, Ipswich being denied a perfectly good goal, Wolves being denied 1 or 2 penalties, and a few offsides so close that the VAR determinations on them were severely unconvincing. Ugh - just a horrible, horrible Gameweek. I only hesitate to give it a maximum score of 10 because I fear there will almost certainly be at least one week this season that manages to be spectactularly worse still, but.... it's definitely a strong 9 out of 10 on the Luck-o-Meter.

Thank you, 'Darragh'!

 

At about 9am this morning, UK time,  the weekend's opening fixture - Everton v. Liverpool - was postponed due to extreme weather warnings issued about the imminent impact of 'Storm Darragh' on the west coast of England, Wales, and Scotland.

I couldn't think of a famous Darragh to help us celebrate this splendid news, and a Google search turned up only about half a dozen or so Gaelic footballers and rugby players with this forename.... and this 20th century American landscape artist, Darragh Park. [His painting above is called 'Untitled' - I may use it again at the end of the year, in a retrospective post on Manchester City's season.]

I find myself in buoyant spirits about this meteorological newsflash.... first, for the unworthy but delicious schadenfreude of being able to scoff at all the FPL managers who happen to be loaded up on Liverpool and/or Everton players (Pickford a semi-popular goalkeeper pick all season; McNeil still in a lot of squads, after a hot start to the year, despite a recent injury and lull in form; Mykolenko newly in demand again after a big haul against Wolves this midweek...). Their Gameweek is wrecked before it starts! In fact, if they rush to make a bunch of paid transfers to try to fix the holes, the rest of us will start with a forest of 'green arrows' indicating a rank rise at their expense - a nice psychological lift for those of us who only have Salah, even if the rest of the Gameweek takes a nosedive from there....

This, by the way, is the main reason why I always advise that people should resist doubling up on too many teams, and try to avoid trebling up on any...  It leaves you way too vulnerable to the occasional 'Act of God' disaster like this (or... just the whole team having a bad day at the office one week!).

Perhaps even more exhilarating, though, is the realisation that this means Mo Salah is going to get an additional Double Gameweek in a few months' time, to catch up this missed fixture. [Only two regular Double Gameweeks are expected this season, both relatively 'small', and right at the back end of the season. And, of course, we don't yet know which teams will be involved: it is quite possible that Super-Mo may not be playing in either of them.... and perhaps not any other of our most fancied Triple Captain picks either.]

Better yet, it looks as if the likeliest gaps in the fixture schedule are in Gameweeks 28 or 33 - when Liverpool are already due to face Southampton and Leicester. The prospect of Mo Salah facing TWO of the weakest teams in the League in quick succession is mouthwatering indeed; it looks very much like a prime opportunity to exploit the Triple Captain chip. [I haven't really looked into this myself yet, but I see the online prognosticators are now identifying GW25 in mid-February as perhaps the most likely - or most desirable, anyway, because earliest - opportunity to make up this fixture. That's possibly even better for a Salah double-fixture, as Liverpool are already facing Wolves at Anfield that week (with Wolves nearing the end of a long run of 'unwinnable' games, and likely to have morale at the bottom of the ocean).]

Of course, we must rein in our excitement. Those Gameweeks are both far off in March. Salah might have lost form or got injured by then (or perhaps even departed for Saudi in the winter transfer window.... heaven forbid!). And who knows, perhaps Leicester or Southampton might have got much better by then. (Well, Leicester might have...)

Still, it is something to look forward to, a little bright spark of HOPE to warm us on a dark, blustery winter's day.  At the very least, it allows us to enjoy a smug giggle back at all the people who giggled smugly at us when they got a decent haul from playing their Triple Captain on Haaland or Salah or Palmer early in the season.

BAD PICKS - Addendum

 

Following on from yesterday's review of my pre-season nominations of some of the most common Bad Picks in FPL this year, I'll offer one more.... that I've noticed in an awful lot of squads so far.

Harry Winks - Now, I like Harry as a player; I think Spurs were mad to let him go. And a few years ago, he was looking like he could be a decent back-up holding midfielder for England. But his career just didn't quite catch fire, and instead took a detour into the second or third-tier of porfessional accomplishment. Still a very decent central defensive midfielder, though: a good scrapper, and sometimes a decent passer of the ball too.

Just.... NOT for Fantasy.. While he is a fairly reliable starter (though he has missed a couple of games already, for some reason), and almost invariably plays the full 90 minutes, that's about it: he offers very little prospect of any other points. So far, a couple of assists (rather surprising: a strike-rate unlikely to be maintained across the season), 0 goals, and 0 bonus points. He is pretty much just giving you the bare minimum appearance points every week (most weeks...).

A lot of people went for Winks at the start of the season as a lazy squad-filler choice: they werre running out of budget, and he was the only likely starting midfielder available at 4.5-million pounds. But his ownership actually went up even further over the next few weeks!! (Perhaps some people hadn't initially noticed that there was a starting player this cheap?) And it still hasn't fallen off very much even now: it's still over 12.5% - which puts him among the Top 10 midfield picks! For someone metronomically returning only 2 points per game, that is just INSANE.

While there might be some excuse - not much, but some - for going for a player like Winks in your initial squad, while you're struggling for budget, there is absolutely NONE for hanging on to him this long. In FPL terms, he is an essentially worthless player; he may only cost 4.5 million; but that is 4.5 million being pissed away on NOTHING.

I think there are FOUR IMPORTANT LESSONS here:

1)  You can't afford to go light on your midfield. You can almost always get more points from a 5th midfielder than from a 3rd forward (or a 4th defender), and so in most weeks you want to be starting all 5 midfielders - and expecting good points from every one of them.  Really, you want to be looking for at least 5 points-per-game on average from all your midfielders (ideally, 6 points or over from at least two or three of them). Someone who can't give you a chance of that isn't worth your time

2)  Therefore, you CANNOT afford to carry midfielders on your bench.

3)  Even Bench players need to be offering a prospect of at least a little more than just appearance points. (I like to maintain an average of 3.5 to 4 points per game from everyone on my bench.)

4)  If you do find yourself with someone like this in your squad, you can't afford to be complacent about it. It is just as important - often even more imporant - to replace a completely inadequate fringe player (YES, even a completely inadequate bench player - but Winks should never have been accepted as just a bench player) than it is to swap out a star attacking player who seems to have hit a bit of a dip in form, etc. Selecting Harry Winks in pre-season I can, just about, forgive; still having him going into GW11 is absurd and self-harming.

What makes a 'sheep pick'?

 

A sudden, irrational stampede to buy a certain player may have a few causes. These are the most common:

1)  Being too reactive, being too influenced by events in the last game.  [You can sometimes draw sound conclusions about trends in form - for an individual or a team - from a single performance, but it's difficult, not generally reliable; and you need to look at more subtle details of the all-around play, the interactions between players, intimations of confidence and eagerness in the body-language, etc.... not just the headline events. In general, you need at least two or three games to be confident that a sustained swing in form is emerging.] 

2)  Allowing yourself to be swayed by 'influencers'.... or by 'what everybody else seems to be doing'.  You should always make sure you have a carefully thought-out reason for any selection. The fact that 'a lot of other people are buying him' or 'someone recommended him' is NOT a good reason; in fact, it's more often a bit of a warning 'red flag'!

3)  Allowing yourself to be swayed by personal sympathies (one of the great FPL vices I warned against in an early post back in August): managers are more likely to become over-optimistic about a player's prospects after one 'good performance' if he's someone they already like, or he plays for the team they support.

4)  Being greedy and desperate. FPL managers often become too easily dissatisfied with the current members of their squad, and cast around hastily for possible replacements. It is these emotional, impulsive transfers that tend to result in 'sheep picks'.

5)  Failing to consider the broader circumstances. Very often a 'sheep pick' will look good for one particular reason - yes, this forward is looking sharp in front of goal; yes, this defender is unexpectedly getting a run of starts in a team who haven't conceded many goals; etc. - but his eager buyers are ignoring other important factors like a poor injury record, or uncertainty about him keeping his start, or the impact of possible shifts in tactical formation, or a tough run of upcoming fixtures. With the ones I've highlighted so far this season, the main thing people seem to be overlooking is that, however promising these players might be, there are simply some even better picks at the same price!

Sheep Picks (1)

 

I quite often snipe at 'The Sheep' element among Fantasy Premier League managers - by which I mean the substantial numbers (possibly, alas, an overall majority) who don't really understand FPL that well, or even follow the EPL that closely, and so make most of their decisions based on an impulsive reaction to last week's results... and/or at the promptings of FPL's own vapid pundit 'The Scout' or the many similarly unimaginative 'influencers' out here on the Internet.... or indeed just following whatever seems to be a popular pick being mentioned a lot in online discussion forums. This often coalesces into a kind of collective hysteria - where the HUGE numbers of managers rushing in to buy a certain player bears no relation to his true worth, his likely points potential over the next handful of games. The player in question might not be at all bad (though often he is); but he is not the irresistible bargain, the must-have asset that so many people seem to think.

And so, I thought I'd create an occasional series of posts highlighting players I think are deangerously over-owned, are the subject of a sudden and misguided enthusiasm.

It seems natural to kick off with Everton defender Michael Keane, whose pre-season ownership was nearly 200,000 - a surprising amount for such a nothing player - and swelled by a further 25,000 after Gameweek 1.

Now, Keane is a decent defender, with a side that kept a lot of clean sheets last year. However, Everton still look very much like a lower-end-of-the-table side, and last season's defensive performance might have been a bit of a freak event which they'll probably struggle to recreate this year. And he's a central defender, and they almost never offer such good returns as attacking full-backs, so you want to be wary of ever picking one... unless they pick up more bonus points than average because they get on the ball a lot and step up into central midfield to spray progressive passes around, or they're monsters in the air who pick up an above-average number of goals or assists by winning headers from corners and free-kicks, or they keep a large number of clean sheets. Keane is not any of those things.

Well, his owners will object, he's just a bench-warmer, because he only costs 4.0 million. Yes, but even from a bench-warmer, you want to be confident that they will be regular starters for the whole season, and they offer you a signifcant chance, at least occasionally, of more than just appearance points (I think you ought to aim for being able to pick up at least 3.5-4 points per game on average from your bench players, because you will need to draw on them from time to time; quite often, indeed, you'll need to have them auto-subbed in because of an unexpected dropout among your first eleven).

The problem with Keane is that his form and favour at Everton have fallen off a cliff since 2022. Over the last two seasons, despite numerous injury crises at the club in defence, he's barely scraped together 20 Premier League appearances, many of those only as a substitute. He has fallen to the status of an emergency back-up player, and will obviously lose his start to the brilliant youngster Jarrad Branthwaite as soon as he's fit again - probably in just a few weeks. [Well, Branthwaite didn't return until GW6, and immediately suffered a re-injury, thereby unexpectedly extending Keane's run in the first team. And then, after already picking up a headed goal early in the season against Bournemouth, he scored a stunning late goal against Ipswich in Gameweek 8. Did that make me feel foolish for dissing his selection here? Absolutely not! That strike against Ipswich was a one-in-a-million occurrence; it might well be 'Goal of the Season', should certainly be in the frame - but Keane has never been known as a frequent goalscorer, and he's unlikely to produce anything like that again in his entire remaining career. It is more noteworthy that in the spell before Branthwaite's fleeting return, he had been part of a defence that let in 14 goals in 5 games, and notched a meagre 9 pts for himself - less than 2 pts per game.]

Even if you did fancy Keane as a short-term prospect until Branthwaite returns (and you really can't afford to assign valuable transfers in advance to something as trivial as replacing a defender - who tend to be fairly low-value members of your squad, even if they're regular starters, let alone bench back-up), he's got Spurs, Bournemouth and Villa up next, which is not at all a promising fixture-run for a defender to be facing.

There are plenty of other back-up defender options available at 4.0 million: the dependable Belgian international Wout Faes at Leicester, or the very attack-minded England Under-21 player Taylor Harwood-Bellis at Southampton, for example. Even with promoted sides who are likely to be often leaky in defence (and probably won't avoid immediate relegation, I'm afraid), they at least offer the prospect of being invariable starters for the whole season - which is the minimum you need from a bench player. Keane does not give you that.

PS: When Branthwaite suffered a recurrence of his muscle injury in his first game back, Keane was immediately restored to the starting line-up... and Everton kept a surprise clean sheet (their first of the season!) against an out-of-sorts Newcastle; and Keane's ownership began to surge again! The following week he scored a worldie of a goal in the dying minutes of the game against Ipswich - and The Sheep went CRAZY for him!!  (They love a defender who scores!!! They don't seem to realise that even 'good goalscorers', by the standards of defenders, almost never manage more than 3 or 4 in a season [or more than 1 in a game, or 2 in successive games...]; they seem to expect the guy to start doing it nearly every week....). Over 500,00 managers piled in for him over the next two weeks, His run in the first team extended to 4 games (though it was pretty obvious that this was because Sean Dyche wanted to ease Branthwaite back in more slowly this time, rather than because Keane had establlished a claim to priority); and people kept buying him - apparently in anticipation of him keeping a clean-sheet (and perhaps scoring another goal?!) against struggling Southampton. The promoted side aren't nearly as bad as people think, and took that game 1-0. The following week Branthwaite was back again, Keane benched - where he's likely to remain for the rest of the season (apart from an occasional game here or there when Branthwaite or Tarkowski pick up a knock or suffer a suspension). But his price has now surged to 4.3 million. That is another major problem with these misguided, over-valued picks; when their FPL managers lose confidence in them - which often happens as suddenly as the initial enthusiasm for them swelled - they can crash in price and bleed away precious squad value.

If you see Keane in someone's squad, it's a pretty strong sign that they don't know what they're doing in this game.

Squad value - why it matters

I am frequently astounded by how many folks on the FPL forums profess to be utterly uninterested in growing their squad value - positively contemptuous of the very idea; and how often they cite as authority the thoughts on the subject of various supposed 'top performing managers'.  If these people really did say things like that, they're being at best disingenuous, if not dishonest or self-deluding. (And they're probably not really as good at the game as their fans believe....)

I can see that some people become disdainful of squad value because there is a small minority of managers in the game who focus only on that, treating FPL like Monopoly, competing to try to build the most expensive squad by season's end; it's fair enough to dismiss that as weird and silly. And I can see that others want to emphasise other factors in their selection decisions - even if squad value is playing a role too. A lot of people, not unnaturally, resent feeling pressured into making a transfer move early because of an imminent price change,... and want to protest that they never let that happen to them: it's an affirmation of their autonomy, a refusal to bow to the force of circumstance. But that's also weird and silly: you need to pay attention to the changing circumstances of the game, and act accordingly.

Squad value is vitally important.  Here's why:

1) As I explained more fully in an early post on here, Pounds EQUAL Points: the more money you have deployed in your starting eleven, the more points you should be capable of earning each week. (That's not infallibly true in all cases, of course: you still have to make the best possible picks, and enjoy a little bit of good luck. But in general, someone with a 105-million-pound-squad should be able to do substantially better than someone with a 99-million-pound squad.)

2)  More money in the bank doesn't just raise your points ceiling in theory: its more direct practical benefit is the amount of flexibility it gives you. At the start of the season, with the 100-million budget cap, it will have been a struggle to afford all the premium price players you might have coveted. But once you've grown your squad value by 3 million or so, you can bring in at least one more of those... or, perhaps, upgrade more modestly in 2 or 3 other positions.

3)  The unfortunate flipside of this 'flexibility' benefit is that you can be hamstrung by a loss of squad value: a shortfall of just 100 k can prevent you from acquiring a player you want.  This is particularly the case early in the season when, because almost all of the price steps are still in even increments of 500 k, a 100 k loss in squad value is effectively the same as a 500k drop: you can no longer afford anyone at a desired price-point, only half a million cheaper. Occasionally, a sudden price-drop can be even more limiting than that: for example, if you bet on Quansah at the start of this season, and were caught out by his price-drop, you can now only replace him with a 4-million-pound player - and there aren't any decent starters at that price-point; so, you might feel obliged to hang on to the Liverpool youngster, desperately hoping that his price won't fall any further. This is why, especially early in the season, you do need to take care to avoid possible loss of squad value. You should always try to buy players just before they go up in price; and you should always look to sell players who are likely to drop in price.

4)  Furthermore, squad value is an excellent indirect indicator of how well you're playing the game. Good players become popular and rise in value; if you get maximum benefit from their price rises, it means you recognised their value early, anticipated their improving trend in form or good run of fixtures, and were one of the first to buy them. Players who lose form, get injured, or otherwise fall out of favour at their club will lose value; you don't want players like that in your squad; you might move them out quickly to have the benefit of another player in their place giving you better points potential, rather than specifically to avoid a possible drop in price - but the consequence is the same. Once again, preserving your squad value is a precise indicator that you are regularly making good decisions to optimise your squad.

[I would argue that consistent growth in squad value is actually the best indicator of your ability in the game. Average points returns fluctuate from year to year, and are very susceptible to wild swings of luck. Ranking is even more variable, since the number of players in the game - and how good they are... and how lucky they are! - can  change massively from one year to the next; and, as I explained on here before in some detail, the upper reaches of the rankings are inevitably going to be dominated by people who are more-lucky-than-good. But a good rise in squad value every year is a really reliable sign that you're doing as many things as possible right.]

This is why squad value matters. And why it's so vital to move quickly for players you fancy (especially early in the season): if you were interested in bringing in Jackson or Wissa or Muniz or Wood or Welbeck or Vardy, or Salah or Jota or DeBruyne or Smith Rowe, or Romero or Faes.... you probably can't afford to do it any more! And if you have an eye on Savinho or Lewis, or Diaz or Son, you'd better move fast.

How to get BETTER at FPL

Yes - a lot of these points are going to be basically the opposite of what I said last week in my post about the most common reasons 'Why people are BAD at FPL'. But I'll try to put a bit of a different spin on some things. And I hope this will still prove useful.

1)  Watch more football

There really is no substitute for it. Watch as many full games as you can (including other competitions, like the European games and domestic Cup rounds); watch good round-up shows with some solid punditry (BBC's Match of the Day is my oxygen....).  Learn what you can from the games themselves - before you start thinking about looking for advice or stats or whatever; all those other possible inputs should only ever be supplements to your own understanding of how the season is unfolding.

2)  Watch some tactical analysis

However shrewd you are at observing the finer details of the game, there are always going to be things you miss because of the limitations of TV coverage (limited view, limited replays,.. often inept, distracting commentary...) - especially if you're only able to watch brief highlights. I think it's incredibly useful to try to gain additional insights from experts in football - rather than 'experts' in FPL (see my third point, below).

There are some excellent tactical analysts on Youtube now. My favourite is Adam Clery of the FourFourTwo channel (only a year old, but it rapidly established itself as essential viewing for me during the past season). I also really like JJ Bull of The Athletic, Football Meta, and Football Made Simple. But Adam is The King - accessible, breezy, funny, but very, very perceptive in his breakdowns of team set-up and performance.

3)  Don't pay any attention to so-called FPL 'experts'

There are so many self-promoted, self-important would-be 'gurus' out there - the best of whom are no more insightful or persuasive than any of the rest of us who've been taking the game fairly seriously for a number of years; the worst of them are just idiots. Anyhow, you should always....

4)  Trust your own judgement

This is not a game you should play in pursuit of glorious prizes (because, with so many millions of players, your chances of ever winning anything are almost zero; and the prizes are SHIT, anyway....); nor for achieving a 'high ranking' (because - shock, horror! - finishing in the top 100,000 requires more luck than skill, and isn't much evidence of anything). 

You should only play to see how well you can do, to test yourself against self-set targets.... and to see how good a judge of a player you really are.

Relying on the recommendations of 'FPL experts', or asking online for help with your team.... is just cheating, really. And it's self-harming. Most of these guys don't know any better than you. And you'll never get any better if you don't make the effort to make your own choices.

5)  Learn how to use stats

Above all, be a bit more careful and thorough about how you use them. I see so many people on the online forums who grasp at one or two metrics to try to justify a pick, and convince themselves that these figures represent an unassailable argument in their favour; and oh so often, these stats are the wrong ones, or their 'positive' indication crumbles to nothing when compared with other, more relevant figures.

If you're not mathematically inclined, stats can just be bewildering and confusing, and it might be better to steer away from them altogether. I don't think they're nearly as helpful as paying close attention to the actual game action each week. But they can be very useful, if you use them appropriately: DON'T assume that they provide any easy or clear-cut answers - they do not.

6)  Be self-critical, and open to change

One of the biggest faults in all FPL managers (because it's a universal and deep-seated human fault) is a need to believe that we are right, and a consequent reluctance to acknowledge when we might have been wrong.

Even before you make a pick, you should take a break - for an hour, or a day - to pause and reflect on it; to try to think of other possible perspectives on the decision, to explore reasons why you might be wrong to want this player.

And every week, you should be asking yourself very carefully what isn't working out in your squad, and why. 

There are some players you get very fond of; some players that you are absolutely convinced are going to turn their form around at any moment and start producing big points in the next game. Those players you feel most confident in.... are probably the ones you need to think hardest about letting go.

That's more than enough for one post.  I daresay some other 'tips' may occur to me in the future; but I think this is a pretty solid starting point.

GOOD LUCK FOR THE NEW SEASON, EVERYONE!!!

[And by the way... I've said this already on the blog, and no doubt I'll say it again - often - but I do not claim to be any sort of FPL 'expert' myself. I am a smart guy with a lot of football knowledge and a lot of experience of FPL; so, I think my observations and insights are probably worth something. But I do not pretend that they are at all 'authoritative' - or necessarily and invariably 'correct'. They are just ideas that I hope people may find it interesting to ponder... even if they then decide that they don't agree with them.

And, while I might sometimes give examples of players I think are worth considering - or avoiding - I won't ever share my whole team, and I'll generally avoid making any specific player recommendations.

My aim with all my commentary on Fantasy Premier League - whether here on the blog, or on various forums where I sometimes contribute - is to try to show people not who to pick, but how to make picks.]