A helpful trick for picking your Captain

A further, playful follow-up to this morning's post about the dreaded Captaincy conundrum...

As I noted there, you should usually have at least 5 or 6 decent Captaincy candidates to choose from (if your squad's any good!), and - Fate and Luck being what they are - you'll probably quite rarely land on the best one. And you can wear a lot of years off your life fretting about a choice that is essentially impossible.

So, I quite often say to people online that if you're really finding it hard to choose, you should try writing the names of your candidates on Post-It notes, sticking them on a dartboard, and then throwing darts with your eyes closed until you hit one of them. It works as well as anything else.

Now, true, I usually say this somewhat flippantly. But there is a certain magic in this technique. And it is this: it puts you in touch with your intuition, it reveals to you a decision, a preference that had already formed in your subconscious mind, but which you hadn't been aware of (or were fearful to acknowledge).

Much as with a coin-flip, where if the coin lands on the choice you don't really want, you suddenly find yourself saying, "Well, I should do best-of-three on this....!", so too with this expanded 'random decision-making process', you'll immediately recognise if you don't fancy the selection your wayward dart has made for you.... and that will lead you towards recognising the choice that your 'gut' wants you to make.

And for things like this, the 'intuition' is usually much better at evaluating the mutliple variables and making a shrewd selection than the conscious mind is - at least if your intuition is well trained by a lifetime of close watching of football. (See Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Blink' for some interesting case studies on the power of 'spontaneous decision-making'.)

But one final WARNING:  If you ever think your Captaincy Conundrum is down to a binary choice (as many, many folks on the forums often seem to do) - you're almost certainly wrong. (Or you have a very, very poor team!)

Can ANYONE be Captain?

 

Well, in theory, yes.... But in practice, usually NOT.

A little postscript to my post this morning on the trials of selecting your weekly Captain in Fantasy Premier League....

Now, in general, FPL doesn't give regular rewards for anything other than goals. And forwards, of course, tend to score most of the goals. So, you're likely to be better off choosing a forward to be your Captain, right?

Well, yes,..... except that many of the best forwards are in fact classified by the game as 'midfielders'. And many players, even if you might properly consider them as 'midfielders' rather than 'forwards', nevertheless, at least when they're in hot form, may score nearly as often, or even slightly more often, than the best forwards. And midfielders are privileged in the game's scoring system - getting more points than a forward for a goal, often picking up a free additional point for a team clean sheet, and generally being a bit more likely to pick up asssists and bonus points too (and also the newly introduced 'defensive points').

So, most of the time, it makes the most sense to give the Captain's armband to a goalscoring 'midfielder'.

Of course, some 'forwards' (especially the freakish Erling Haaland), when they're in form, do offer a particularly strong prospect of a goal almost every week; and may have a significantly elevated chance of registering a brace or even a hattrick against a favourable opponent. So, they can often be worth considering for the armband, ahead of your best midfielder. (However, it's a bit of a risk. Even Haaland doesn't score in every game; and he sometimes fails to score in games where he's expected to enjoy a landslide. And a midfielder who registers a goal and an assist will usually out-point a forward who notches a brace of goals, so.... midfielders are generally the better way to go. Even when Haaland does score a brace, he's very rarely the 'Player of the Week'!!)

And it also sometimes happens that none of your attacking players, 'midfielders' or 'forwards', have a particularly inviting fixture in a given gameweek, while a few of your defenders are facing teams who are really struggling to score any goals; so, you might occasionally take a chance on a defender getting a clean sheet. Although,... clean sheets are a very precarious thing to trust in for points, they can evaporate so easily (one tired mistake late in the game, one wondergoal out of nowhere, one dubious penalty award....). So, this is only really something you want to gamble on in that rare circumstance where none of your forwards or midfielders looks like a strong prospect for the gameweek. 

Strangely, there seems to be a common superstition against ever giving the armband to a goalkeeper. But in fact, in one of these weeks where the prospects look better for you in defence than attack, a keeper facing a weak opponent is usually a better prospect than a defender, because they can earn additional points for saves as well as the clean-sheet bonus. (In the past, some FPL managers might have been tempted to chase the higher 'points ceiling' from a defender, who might also pick up an attacking return of some sort; but attacking returns for defenders are vanishingly rare, and have been becoming more so in recent years with shifts in the tactics of the game against using full-backs as advanced wide players. Defenders might theoretically be able to earn more points in a match their team is likely to win comfortably; but in practice, the keeper usually does. However, this season the new 'defensive points' will probably even the balance up, giving defenders a much stronger chance of earning 2 extra points in a game; although that doesn't decisively rule keepers out of consideration, because they can often earn 2 or more points for their 'saves' in a game - and, if they make a lot of saves, they tend to be more likely to claim the maximum bonus points as well.)

You have to weigh up a nexus of factors - the regular points potential of your candidate players, their current individual and team form, and the likely difficulty of their fixture - to try to determine the best points prospect for the week. [And use your own judgement on this; don't try to rely on one of those ludicrously bad 'points predictor' apps.]

And YES, it can be anyone, from any position - even (though rarely) the goalkeeper. But 3 or 4 times out of every 5, it should usually be a midfielder.

Don't worry about points left on the Bench!

 

People on the FPL forums are often found fretting extravagantly about the number of points they've had unused on the Bench in this past gameweek. And many - even among the supposedly more experienced and shrewder managers in the game - often seem to fetishise the idea of minimizing your Bench points (as if it's somehow wasteful of resources, and an indicator of bad play).

Now, OK, it is bad play if you are frequently leaving a player on the Bench who returns a very good haul - in preference to a player you started whose prospects clearly weren't quite as good in that week's fixtures. 

A really good haul on the Bench is, of course, frustrating. But that's going to happen to everyone occasionally: it's a game of luck, and you can't reliably predict who's going to come up with the big points in any given week; occasionally you'll be taken by surprise. But if you find you're quite regularly having one of your best returns from a player on the Bench, then you might be having a few problems with your decision-making.

However, the Bench is also part of your team - and you will occasionally (quite often!) have to draw on your Bench through auto-substitutions to fill out your starting lineup. So, consistently getting pretty decent points out of your Bench collectively, and out of each of its individual members, is actually a very good thing - a sign of a well-balanced squad.

Moreover, you should look to have a pretty competent back-up goalkeeper, and at least one strong back-up defender - to enable you to rotate those positions around difficult fixtures. And so, sometimes, you're actually going to have a first-choice keeper or defender on your bench - who might surprise you with a good return, despite having been in a very unpromising fixture.

There are also going to be occasions when you might choose to omit one of your top players, in any position, either because of a tough fixture, or because they're a doubtful starter due to a yellow-flagged injury problem or a likely rest before or after a big European game, or on returning from international duty (South American players are typically omitted in the first weekend after an international break because they've had to fly such a long way only a couple of days before the game). And then those players may play anyway, and have a big game. 

You shouldn't blame yourself for occasional misfortunes like that - only if you made a choice purely on form and/or fixtures to leave one player on the bench in favour of starting others, and you were wrong, and that is happening a lot.  Learn to distinguish cases where you made a sensible and justifiable decision to omit someone and got unlucky with it, from cases where you just badly misjudged your players' relative points prospects based on form and fixture-difficulty.

You should generally be hoping for an average of 5-6 points per game from all of your starters; but your average return from your Bench back-up players shouldn't be too far short of that, certainly not much below 4.5 points per game.

If you're often getting 16-20 points on your Bench, that's not a bad thing at all; it's a sign of good squad strength. (If you're regularly getting a lot less than that [when everyone is starting], you have a problem - and you're going to pay for it sooner or later.)

Players' season totals really DON'T MATTER

I already touched on this point quite extensively a couple of weeks back in this post on the price steps that are applicable for categorising FPL player options in different positions. However, it's such an important topic, I felt I should say a little more on it.

The problem here is that many FPL managers fall in thrall to the silly, dangerous delusion that ALL YOU HAVE TO DO in the game is identify the players who are going to get the highest totals for the season. (With the usual corollary that the players likeliest to do this are those who got the highest totals last season - which is a reasonable but not infallible guide to form.)

It seems paradoxical, unfathomable to many - but this is just NOT TRUE (not generally so, anyway; there will always be some exceptions, which I'll outline below).

The thing is, you really need to be pulling in around 200 points or so from every starting slot in your squad over the season, if you are to have a chance of finishing near the top of the rankings. In fact, since you're bound to come up short of that - perhaps well short - for many of the slots (defenders and goalkeepers just don't produce points at anything like the levels of the best midifelders and forwards), you really need to be aiming for more like 250+ points from at least a few of your highest-returning slots.

[It's very difficult, in practice, to get anything like 'optimal' returns from your captaincy picks throughout a season. But, even if we grant that you can match or slightly better the return from your top squad slot with your armband choices (Note: this might not be - probably won't be - a single player, held in the team all season.), and even if you could get a fairly good lift from all of your 'chips' (although we have double the usual number of chips this season, it's pretty unlikely they'll be collectively worth a lift of anything like an extra 100 points over the season), and even if you can get, say, 4 squad slots returning something close to 250 (whereas 2 or 3 hitting that level would be remarkable...), and even if you could hit that ideal of a 200-point average across the whole of the rest of your starting eleven (which would entail you having a very strong bench as well, since you're going to have to be drawing on those guys fairly often to fill out the main line-up),..... you'd still probably come up 50-100 points short of last year's global champion. That's how big of an ASK it is!!  But that's what we all have to aim for.....]

And 250 points is an enormous season-total for an individual player. Usually, there are only 1 or 2 players who manage that in a season; but quite often, there are none. There are only ever a handful who manage to get over 200 points each year - and usually only a little over that threshold; and again, it's possible that sometimes no-one will even crack that seemingly more modest milestone.

So, you can't usually rely on any player - even your Mo Salah, Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney, Erling Haaland types - to deliver you the kind of points you need from your best positions in the eleven. Even the very best players don't always reach that level; occasionally, they might come up a long way short.

Even when the top players have a really outstanding season, they are very, very rarely the highest-returning player across every shorter run of games within the season. There was almost always a player who, across 4 or 5 or 6 games, was delivering more points than them once or twice over the season. That was even true of Salah in his record-breaking season last year; his returns tailed off in the latter part of the year, and there were spells when it would have been profitable to drop him for someone else. [Of course, it can seem like an unacceptable risk to swap out one of these top-performing players. As I discussed in this post, their ability to deliver some exceptionally high gameweek hauls, and their overall consistency - with few if any long runs of 'blanks' - often makes them worth holding on to for an extended period of time, and occasionally, perhaps, even the whole season. Furthermore, the fact that they're usually very high-priced players makes it much more difficult to swap them in and out of a squad at will; so, once you have them, you may feel somewhat stuck - obliged to persist with them, come what may. But that will often be a mistake: even the best players almost always hit runs of less impressive form,... while a cheaper rival is suddenly banging in goals every week. You must not let yourself become bewitched by the glamorous reputation of a top performer; if they're not the top performer right now, you need to be ready to let them go.]

You can't expect to be able to hang on to any player for the whole season. You need to be trying to wring more points out of every slot in your line-up than any single player can produce. In order to achieve that, you have to seek to constantly rotate in the best current players over a short run of games.

As I explained in the post I mentioned at the top here, previous season totals are a useful guide to likely performance in the current season. But what you're really interested in is not the actual season total, but the projection of a theoretical season total from recent form - when the player you're looking at has been getting a regular run of starts and has been playing well. You will often find that that number is well over 250 points (if he's been averaging around 7 points per game in his last 3 or 4 starts) Their actual season-total won't be anywhere near that, 99 times out of a hundred; they'll get injured, get dropped, or just suffer a bit of a drought at some point - their run of high returns will come to an end sooner or later. But you need to try to have them in your side when their pro rata returns are up in that golden zone. 

If you become fixated on your Haalands and your Salahs, you risk missing out on a lot of players who could actually give you more points than them - at least for a part of the season.

In addition to this problem that even an exceptional player like Haaland or Salah will rarely guarantee you a big enough points total to make them an attractive season-long hold, there is also the - again, often perversely unacknowledged or stubbornly denied - fact that.... the game is about getting the best returns collectively from your starting eleven (backed up, on occasion, by your bench), not just from a handful of top-performing players.

Even if Haaland and Salah do outscore the next best option in their positions by a massive 50 or 80 points over the season,.... you can almost certainly more than make up that margin by being able to afford substantial upgrades in almost every other starting position with the money you save by not having them.

Players like these can be worth having, at least for certain spells of certain seasons; but they are almost never - only in the most exceptional of circumstances - worth having for the entire season.

If you think you MUST have players like these just because they seem likely to be the season's top-returning picks - you are committing a grave error. There will be certainly be other (cheaper!) players who outscore them in short spells during the season. And there will certainly be a massive opportunity cost in going without so many other top players in order to afford them.  (I may have a little more to say about this in a few days....)

Don't take a chance on uncertain starters (or new arrivals)

 

As I noted last week, I have often been guilty of taking a few too many risks in my own initial squad, and this has no doubt played its part in the fact that I have generally suffered a rather poor start to the FPL season.

With me, it's a rather specific foible of getting tempted to gamble on a fringe pick, a promising up-and-comer who isn't yet quite established as a regular starter at his club, or not at any rate as a significant force in FPL. Last year, for instance, I fancied that Jarrell Quansah was likely to get a few starts, because of a minor injury problem with Konate, and that he might prove good enough in that spell to earn a regular place; instead, Slot grew disillusioned with him very quickly, and took the almost unheard-of step of yanking him off at half-time in the very first game - wrecking the youngster's confidence, and effectively ending his Liverpool career. (Though I can understand why he did it in terms of the tactical situation on the pitch, I still feel that was a mistake on the Dutchman's part: possibly gaining a marginal advantage in the immediate game-state does not outweigh the damage done by potentially ruining a young player's career and thereby depleting the club's back-up resources in central defence.)  A year or so before that, I'd been bullish about Rico Lewis's prospects with City: and indeed, he was a regular starter, and playing very well, early in the season - but, of course, Pep being Pep, that didn't last very long. Going back a bit further, I was a huge fan of the talent of Norwich's elegant No. 10, Todd Cantwell, and was convinced he could become one of the best budget midfield picks for the season - but he too fell out of favour with his manager, and his career mysteriously tanked from that moment. (Yes, I could begin to worry that I am some kind of jinx....)

A bit later in the season, you can get away with taking one or two chances like this; bringing in a player who's not yet a proven points-provider, perhaps not even an absolutely certain starter; buying them early to get them at a low price, and carrying them on the bench for a few weeks until they start to confirm the promise you saw in them.

But in the opening weeks,... there are so many other uncertainties: players who might be displaced by new arrivals at the club, players who might be dropped because of an imminent transfer away, players who might not start or might only get short minutes because they're still short of full match-fitness, players who might go down with a last-minute injury....  Yep, at this time of year, you're quite likely to suffer at least one unexpected drop-out - perhaps even two or three, if you're a bit unlucky - from your squad every week, even among the players that you'd normally expect to be certain starters. (This is one of the key reasons why it's INSANE to consider playing a Bench Boost this early in the season.)

So, you really can't afford to load the odds against yourself by including any picks who are obviously in one of those most 'at risk' categories. We knew Isak was going to be mired in a transfer wrangle - and unable to play for anyone - for weeks. We knew Eze was likely to move this week - surely too late to have any chance of turning out for his new club this weekend. We knew Sesko and Gyokeres were relatively late arrivals, and hadn't trained much over the summer, and were thus likely to get quite limited minutes over the first two or three weeks. We knew that with Marmoush, Foden, Cherki, Reijnders, Silva, Gonzalez, Kovacic and Gundogan all competing for a small number of places in the City midfield, we couldn't count on any of them being invariable starters.

It was really not smart to pick ANY of these players in the initial squad this year.

Even if new arrivals at a club do appear to be more-or-less fully fit, and have had just about enough time to start bedding in with their new teammates, they remain unknown quantities: it is likely that they may take quite a while to fully settle in to a new style of play, and it might be weeks or months before they start producing their best; some, perhaps, if they're arriving from a lower tier in England or from an overseas league, may never successfully make the step up to this most physically intense and competitive of leagues. How soon - if ever - will Eze become a starter at Arsenal, what kind of role will he play there, and can he ever have the kind of impact for them that he had for Palace?? We just don't know. Will Cunha and Mbeumo gel together at United, or are their styles and personalities too different - will they end up in fractious competition with each other rather than synergistic cooperation?? And will one of them assume the penalty-taking duties?? We just don't know. How long will it take Gyokeres, or Sesko, or Wirtz to start producing their best form in the Premier League?? We just don't know.

Players like these are watch-and-wait options. They'll probably come good at some point, maybe soon;... but they're just not good bets at the very start of the season.

A scale of points

 

Following on from last week's observations on the significance of 'price steps' in FPL, here are a few thoughts on the similar tiering of points performance.

Of course, you don't know what points totals players are actually going to reach until the end of the season. And many of them will come up short of these thresholds because they've missed a significant number of games while injured or out-of-favour. 

Before the start of the season, you have to make your best guess as to what each player's final level is likely to be.  And then during the campaign, you have to try to calculate for yourself what end-season total a player is tracking for, if he's producing reasonably consistently while he has a regular start. 

You're looking for what a full-season total would be, on the basis of recent form.

Also, obviously, the 'levels' below aren't absolutely rigid: their boundaries are blurry - the top-end of one bracket is usually interchangeable with the bottom of the one above. However.....

I like to think of FPL player points-potential in the following steps or levels:

Level 0:  Less than 120 points for the season

Not worth considering. AVOID like the plague. Unless they happen to come into a really hot streak for a brief spell! That can happen to almost anyone....

Level 1:  120-139 pts

You really only want to consider going this low for your 4th and 5th defender spots, who are primarily for back-up only, and who you hope you might rarely or never call on. However, you assuredly will have to use both of them sooner or later (and not only for a possible Bench Boost!), so you should only consider going this low on points potential in your initial squad. Even these marginal positions need to be upgraded to Level 2 as soon as is convenient.

Level 2:  140-159 points

You want both goalkeepers and all your defenders (even the two back-ups!) to be solidly in this category - and, ideally, towards the upper end of it.

Level 3:  160-179 points

You'd like your top keeper choice, and at least one or two of your defenders to make it into this category - but that's a very big ask; it might not be possible every year. (Although there's much uncertainty at the moment arising from the abrupt introduction of the new 'defensive points'. It is possible that rather more defenders, and even a few defensive midfielders might just about get up to this level, thanks to the extra points now available to them.) But at the very least, you'd expect those players to be around the Level 2/Level 3 cusp.

It is very likely that your 2nd and 3rd forwards and your 4th and 5th midfielders will only be at this level for the season (perhaps even a little lower!); but these are the slots you need to be most often rotating, to try to keep catching players who are coming into hot runs of points-scoring form. That can elevate your effective returns for these squad slots to Level 4, or even perhaps Level 5.

Level 4:  180-199 points

You hope that your three best midfielders, one or two of your best forwards, and perhaps occasionally - if you're lucky - one exceptionally high-performing defender might get up to this level. If they do, they're probably players that you can hang on to for an extended spell; sometimes - though rarely - a full season-long hold.

Level 5:  200-219 points

This is starting to get into the realms of 'wishful thinking'. Only a handful of players ever get up to this kind of level for the season; and it is possible that, in certain years, no-one will. However, you have to watch out for the season-projection on emerging form, and recognise that some players will produce at this level for only a short run of games at a time. Try to be on them when they do!

Level 6:  220-239 points

This is now a very rarefied level. Only a few of the very best players are capable of getting this high. And you probably can't afford all of them. The big challenge at the start of the season is trying to identify the players likeliest to have a chance of reaching this exceptional level of long-term performance, then figuring out which of them look most likely to start the season strong,.... and frantically juggling your budget to see how many of them you can fit in.

Level 7:  240+   (God-like)

Now, of course, a top player who has a really outstanding season can get well beyond this, sometimes even edging up close to 300 points. And Mo Salah last season managed over 100 points more than this (but that was a once-in-a-generation freak, shattering even his own previous best by a huge margin!!). But, in general, this is an absolutely outstanding level, which not may players will attain even once in their careers. Only an elite few - Salah, Haaland, Palmer, the only members of the 'club' at the moment - have the potential to do so regularly. But a few others might be able to join them at these dizzying heights: Foden (if he can find his way again), Saka (if he can stay fit all season, and is unchained from the right touchline a bit more often), Wirtz (though probably in a year or two, rather than in his debut season), and maybe Eze (if he can stay fit and in-form, and enjoy slightly better luck; he really deserved at least a 200-point season last year...).

Who's likely to perform at these various levels this season?  Well, I'll try to give that some thought over the next few days. 

It's still really a bit too early to be thinking about choosing the initial squad!

But.... GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE FOR THE COMING SEASON!!!

What a 'differential' is NOT

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

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

That is UTTERLY BLOODY POINTLESS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The true meaning of 'differential'

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

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

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

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

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

Where the 'differential' concept actually MATTERS:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ownership level has no bearing on any of that! The ONLY THING you should be interested in is whether a player (more properly, in fact, a group of players, in the context of each other) is offering you the best points return for the money you have available.

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

NO-ONE is a 'set-and-forget'

 

It is common in FPL for managers to suppose that their best players can be relied on for the entire season.  Indeed, many of the more naive FPL managers seem to expect that almost their entire squad should be able to be relied upon for the entire season!  Newsflash: it ain't so.

Now, if we go for a super-premium player like Salah or Haaland or Palmer, then, yes, we hope they're going to stay fit and in-form all season.

As I outlined the other day, in order to even approach justifying their enormous price-tags, players like these have to satisfy some extraordinarily demanding criteria - and, really, almost none ever do; not over the season as a whole.

Last year, Mo Salah enjoyed a freakishly good season, even by his freakisly high standards, and shattered the record for total FPL points in a season. But that was a real outlier of a performance, an order-of-magnitude better than even he has managed previously. That might be the only occasion in FPL history when a player has unequivocally been worth owning - and starting - in every single game. (And even then, he had a bit of a tailing-off in the latter part of the season that, really, made him no longer essential....)

In most seasons, Salah has suffered the odd little injury niggle, or a few fallow spells here and there; and every other year, he goes missing mid-season to take part in the African Cup of Nations. Last year, Haaland suffered a long run of poor returns as City's form began to crumble, and then had a couple of injury absences. At the very beginning of the season he was outstanding, and he started to do quite well again in the closing months; but for a long run in the middle, it was sheer madness to have hung on to him. Likewise, Palmer started the year very hot, but... his points returns tanked after Christmas, and it proved unwise to have retained him too far into the New Year.

Those are somewhat extreme examples. admittedly. But the general point holds: even the very best players rarely escape injuries or major dips in form in some phase of the season.

And even if they maintain modestly consistent performances and points returns, the competitive landscape around them constantly shifts: there may be other players who come into such hot form for a while that they're worth bringing in at the expense of your 'best' current players - even, perhaps, a Salah or a Haaland.

It is unwise to allow yourself to get wedded to the idea of set-and-forget players, picks from your initial squad that can be left in place all season. You never know who's going to suffer an injury or a loss of form, fleeting or long-term.  Some players may end up staying fit and being consistent enough to be worth keeping all season; but you can't predict that before the season starts - it's just a pleasant surprise, not something you should expect to rely on.

Although FPL managers tend to most often dream about their key attacking players having a dream season where they could be a set-and-forget, in fact it's usually only defenders or goalkeepers who wind up sticking in your squad for all 38 gameweeks.

This is partly because they tend to get injured rather less often than attacking players who have to run around a lot more. But it's more down to the fact that there isn't really a lot to choose between them: the differential points spread between the 'best' and 'second best' defenders (and keepers) is usually relatively small. And the best returners will usually be fairly consistent across the season; so, you can't often obtain much benefit by rotating in fresh players who've hit better form (as you most definitely can in the 'midfield' and 'forward' positions!).

But even here, injuries - and suspensions (far more common for defenders) - are a factor; and, even more so, shifts in fixture difficulty, since the attacking strength of opponents is a main determinant of defensive returns. Often you'll be able to hang on to one of your keepers and one or two defenders for the whole season; but rather more often, you won't.

It is a very RARE - and very, very lucky - circumstance if you manage to hang on to any of your initial squad for the whole season (other than Salah, in one of his most god-like years....).

And in fact, if you do end the season with a number of ever-presents, it's more likely a sign not of exceptional good fortune, but of laziness and stubbornness - of having obstinately (or inadvertently?!) hung on to players that, at some point, you really should have ditched.

Filling the bargain slots

 

At the start of the season, budget is usually very tight. And in order to make it stretch so that you can accommodate some of those more expensive - premium or super-premium - players that you covet, you're inevitably going to have to go for a few super-cheap choices to balance up your spending, so-called budget-enablers.

In general, I recommend going for TWO 4.5-million-pound goalkeepers, rather than anyone more expensive. Though, if you can find find any good starters at only 4.0 million  (rare, but it can happen), it's probably worth taking at least one of them.

Since even the best defenders don't offer very high overall points, you rarely want to be starting more than THREE of them. Hence, you can save money in the initial squad by going for a very cheap 5th defender,... and perhaps even a very cheap 4th as well (though you should always make sure that both are at least guaranteed starters). Your 4th defender will be needed as emergency back-up (if one of your starting three is an unexpected omission) and for occasional rotation (if someone is out with a suspension or a short-term injury, or is just facing a really daunting fixture). But, with luck, you will never need to call on your 5th defender (you should be prepared for the worst; but it may not happen...)

A good 5th midfielder almost always produces more than all but a few of the very best (and hence unaffordably expensive!) 'forwards', so you can also afford to go light on your 3rd forward spot; but never on your 5th midfield spot!

There are always good value options to be found amongst both 'forwards' and 'midfielders', and you can certainly save some money in the last two slots in both positions - but not at the lowest possible price-point: those players will almost certainly be very weak options, if not reserve players who will rarely or never get a start. Players like that are just dead-weight - who will probably leach value out of your squad. Cheap players should still be good players.

Beware of double-ups and treble-ups

 

With a few very high-performing clubs, who boast strong attacks and strong defences,... and several big players - well, it gets mighty tempting to gobble up as many of them as you can for your FPL team. Often we hear people online griping about how the club quota limit is unfair, unduly restrictive; how 4 or 5 players per club ought to be allowed.

We really ought to be grateful that that isn't the rule!

Reasons why we should be very wary about taking our full quota of players from any one club:

1)  If you're maxed out on a club, you're restricting your flexibility to bring in anyone new from that club (unless the player you want who's newly returned from injury or suddenly hit a hot vein of form is the same position and similar price to the same-club player you're willing to sacrifice for him - that change is going to require additional transfers).

2)  You haven't spread risk very well: if you have 3 players from one club, you're very exposed to the danger of having a terrible gameweek if that club has a bad day at the office. (Yes, we have often seen occasions where, for example, Van Dijk gets set off early in the match, and Liverpool go down to a team they ought to have beaten easily.... Shit happens!).

3)  Doubling up from the same club in the same position is usually redundant, and particularly risky. In the attacking positions, at least, players essentially share a finite pool of potential attacking points, and it usually ends up being a zero-sum outcome: a better return for one player means a poor or nil return for the other. There is almost never a team that creates such a huge pool of potential points and has such an equitable distribution of those points that two of their attacking players will both do really well in the same match (and you want all 6 or 7 of your attacking players to do well in the same gameweek, or at least to have a really good chance of that). And with two defenders, the upside is limited - while the downside from an unexpectedly disastrous result can be very, very dangerous to your FPL returns: clean sheets are such an uncertain outcome to chase, even with the best defensive teams, that the chance of picking up the occasional double clean sheet from your defensive three rarely outweighs the certainty of very poor defensive returns whenever the club you've taken two of those defenders from has a poor game.

4)  You create more work for yourself if the club is affected by a Blank Gameweek. This is particularly the case where the 'blank' is unexpected - perhaps the result of a last-minute postponement due to 'severe weather' issues like high winds, thick fog, or heavy snows. Remember, it happened last year, with the first Merseyside derby called off just hours before the FPL deadline because of concerns about Storm Darragh, leaving many FPL managers panicking and burning through transfers to rebuild their squads (because some, unaccountably, had not only been carrying 3 Liverpool players, but also 2 or 3 Everton players?!).

So, in principle, trebling-up on one club is best avoided. I wouldn't say NEVER do it; but I would advise being very, very cautious about doing it. And I would try to avoid doing it with more than ONE club (and certainly not with more than TWO!!).

You have to be careful with doubling-up as well: you don't want to add too much to the risk that a couple of cancelled fixtures could wipe out 5-8 members of your squad,... or that an uncharacteristically poor performance from just a couple of the teams you have representation from could completely sink your FPL Gameweek.

The super-premiums aren't usually worth it

 

I just pointed out that, in the defender category, the value of players priced at 6.0 or 6.5 million, or even at 5.5 million, is often very dubious - when there are usually several options at 5.0 or 4.5 who may do very nearly as well, or perhaps even sometimes a little bit better.

The same is true - even more so - for goalkeepers.

In the 'midfield' and 'forward' position categories, though, the most expensive players have usually been priced that way for a good reason, and do usually offer a much higher points-prospect than any of the cheaper alternatives: there is a tempting potential differential points-gap over the competition.

And yet.... when you get up towards the extreme end of the pricing scale, it's no longer just about direct comparison with a single best alternative; it becomes about the broader opportunity cost of having to go short throughout much of the rest of the squad in order to afford such an expensive player.

These super-premium players are just about never 'worth it' in pure value-for-money terms. Even Mo Salah, in his record-smashing season last year, was well outside the Top 20 on 'points-per-pound'; Haaland's ranking on that metric, in his two huge seasons preceding, was absolutely abysmal. But as I pointed out this time last year (in this comprehensive post on how to choose an initial squad), some players are so good that they can become 'above budget'.

However, for a player to merit this kind of special consideration, he needs to fulfill the following criteria: 

1)  Be an ever-present. Must be 100% 'nailed', not at any risk of rotation. Must also have supreme fitness levels and near-superhuman immunity to injury, and exceptional resilience to be able to recover from slight knocks very quickly. If you're paying 10 million or more - and especially if you're paying 12 million or more! -  for a player, you don't ever want to have any anxieties about whether or not they might start the next game; you want to be really confident that they will play almost every single game of the season.

2)  Must offer the prospect of at least a few really huge gameweek returns, and several double-digit returns over the season.

3) Must be incredibly consistent: rarely going more than a couple of gameweeks without some sort of additional points return, and never producing a run of more than, say, 4 or 5 'blanks' in a row.

4)  Must offer a strong prospect of a season total at least up around 250 points, with a reasonable chance of approaching or exceeding 300 points.

5)  And, most importantly, they should be likely to outscore their best rival high-priced players (at similar or lower price-point) by at least 30-50 points, and the best of the more modestly priced alternatives by at least 80-100 points.

[Now, they might not play the whole season. And you might well not want to keep them for the whole season, even if they do. But they should at least track for those kinds  of numbers - hence demonstrating a clear, consistent, and massive advantage over just about any other player, while they are starting regularly.]

Salah just about met those criteria last season. But only just. And his main rivals, Haaland, Palmer, and Saka, in contrast, all had very 'disappointing' seasons. And he only cost 12.5 million last season! This year, he's up to 14.5 million...  Last year was a freak; he can't possibly get up to that kind of enormous total again (especially as he's likely to be missing a month or so mid-season for the African Cup of Nations; and remember, in the last one of those, he picked up an injury,... took quite a while to fully shake it off,... suffered a bit of a crash in form as a result,.... and eventually started getting dropped occasionally, which led to very public friction with Jurgen Klopp... Even Super-Mo has his off spells!). And there might be several other players challenging his position at the top of the points chart this season.

I think Salah last year might have been the only player in FPL history - certainly one of only a very, very few - to categorically justify a price tag of over 12 million pounds. In other seasons, great as he's been, he's often not been massively ahead of his closest rivals; and he's often had little - or not-so-little - spells of injury or dips in form where it became reasonable to stop thinking of him as a must-have, a season-long hold.

I think - I hope - Salah will have another outstanding season this year. Haaland too. I expect them to be almost certainly the top points-scorers in the 'midfield' and 'forward' categories again.

But just having the top points-scorers is not enough. (FPL managers with a very naive view of the game, and a very limited grasp of mathematics, never seem to get beyond this....)  If their differential advantage over the next best picks in their positions is not that much, and if the differential advantage of being able to upgrade several other spots in your squad if you do without them could be absolutely HUGE,.... then they're just NOT WORTH IT.

Highly - very, very, very highly - as I rate both of them, I feel that, at the astronomical pricings of 14.5 and 14.0 million, Salah and Haaland are priced out of contention in FPL this year.

And indeed, all such super-premium priced players are usually worth avoiding. However massive the points hauls they can offer you, they're unlikely to be worth the cost of beggaring the rest of your squad.

[But.... there are no hard-and-fast rules in this game. Given how both Haaland and Salah have tended to 'start hot' in recent seasons, and rack up some enormous points in the opening few games, it is probably worth having a punt on one of them from the start of the season. If they enjoy such an early points bonanza again, and there's a wave of new owners rushing to buy them as a result, you might be able to take a quick transfer-trading profit by dumping them out after a month or so. It is always a lot easier to offload a very expensive player than it is to bring one in (which usually requires multiple additional transfers to juggle your budget).

At this price level, though, I'd say you definitely can't afford both of them. And it is an entirely legitimate choice - probably the sensible, optimal choice - to go without either,... for the majority of the season, anyway.]

Defensive premiums aren't usually worth it

There is a certain special glamour, a mystical 'aura' of invincibility attaching to a few giants of the game in the defender category: Van Dijk, Gabriel and Saliba, and, last season, Milenkovic and Murillo. Plus, of course, in most seasons, there have usually been at least a few progressive full-backs who seemed to offer the prospect of significant attacking returns: Trippier, White, Alexander-Arnold, Munoz, Gvardiol, Porro, Ait-Nouri.

Very nice to have for your club in real-world football; but this can be of tenuous benefit, if any, for FPL.

Attacking returns from defenders have been on the decline over the last several years, and particularly so in the last two or three (arguably Pep's influence, again), as it's become more common for progressive full-backs to tuck into central midfield, rather than pushing all the way down the flanks to overlap the wide attackers and try to supply balls directly into the box. Even the best of them haven't really lit any big fires in the past couple of seasons. If a player of this type has a really good season, they're still likely to be out at the front of the defender rankings - but probably not by the kind of big margins we've sometimes seen in the past; they might only be posting 10-15 points more than the best centre-backs.

And the best centre-backs, the Van Dijks and Gabriels.... will sometimes get outstripped not only by a couple of outstanding full-backs but by a few fellow centre-backs who are less well-known, less fancied (like Milenkovic last year).  Even when they do stay head-and-shoulders above the field,.... well, that head-and-shoulders gap over the best of the rest might not actually be that large. And the differential advantage might not be worth it, when some positional rivals who cost 1.0 or 1.5 million less are posting returns very nearly as good. That extra money spent in midfield will probably buy you more additional points.

It's also worth remembering that most defensive points are earned collectively; so, the weakest and/or cheapest member of a back-line will get almost exactly the same points as its strongest link. If Ibrahima Konate is cheaper than Virgil Van Dijk, you're probably better off going with him; if Micky van de Ven is cheaper than Pedro Porro, you're probably better off going with him; if Jake O'Brien is cheaper than James Tarkowski, you're probably better off going with him.

A few teams do have such a massively greater prospect of clean sheets than the rest of the league that it may be worth paying 6.0 million for one of their defenders: Arsenal and Liverpool this year are very tempting again, of course, and probably also Chelsea and Nottingham Forest,... maybe Newcastle. I'd usually consider getting 1 or 2 defenders around the 6.0 million mark - but not more than that. And if you can find decent alternatives at 5.5 or 5.0, go for them instead.

[Things are complicated this year by a slight upward shift in overall defender prices. I haven't had time to attempt a full breakdown of this, but it looks like there are considerably more players than usual priced at 5.5 and 5.0, rather than 4.5 this year - presumably to reflect the slightly enhanced points prospects created by the introduction of additional 'defensive points' this season.]

Attacking returns will still (usually) beat 'defensive points'

 

FPL has thrown a major spanner-in-the-works this season - by introducing (for the first-time ever) a significant adjustment of the game's basic points system.

As I already complained at some length, this revision - like nearly all the changes the FPL hierarchy has foisted on us in recent seasons - is ill thought-out, clumsily implemented, and utterly unnecessary.

The reason it's so discombulating at the start of this new season is that FPL has given us almost no information on which to assess just what sort of an impact it's going to have (nothing, in fact, beyond a few token illustrations of the additional points that would have been earned by a handful of top defenders and defensive midfielders last season - as in the table above).

However, the indications from this scant information - and from our own observations of the game - are that this rule change won't have too substantial an impact.

These new points are hard to earn (you need to reach quite a high threshold of varied 'defensive actions' in order to qualify), they are capped at a single award per game (so, you only get 2 extra points, no matter how many of these 'defensive actions' you complete), and are most likely to be earned in games where the player's team is having a hard time of it (and hence the player is unlikely to earn clean sheet points - or any other points - in the same match).

The change will make a difference for very active defensive players who regularly register significantly more tackles, interceptions, etc. than their peers. But all that is going to do is elevate some defenders to the upper ranks for that position, who might not normally be at the forefront like that. If these players are at lower price-points, and seem likely to do rather better out of the new 'defensive points' than certain of their more premium-priced peers, then they should take priority in the selection of your defensive roster. But that's a pretty big 'IF'; most of the players who are most likely to benefit from these points are already the most popular - and most expensive - defenders. (And the few who might not have been, like Tarkowski and Lacroix, have had their prices bumped up a bit this year!)

And the sample statistics grudgingly released by FPL seem to suggest that only a handful of the very best defensive players will earn these extra points as often as once every two games; most, presumably, will do no better than once every three to four games.

And 4 of these points over 5 games, for instance, wouldn't be worth more than - or, probably as much as - a single assist (which is likely to reap more bonus points as well). Plus, of course, more attack-minded defenders like Kerkez and Cucurella are quite likely to be picking up 'defensive points' as well from time to time (if not quite so often as the monsters like Milenkovic and Caicedo).

And it doesn't seem likely that these new points for defenders will raise anyone over 150 or 160 points for the season - which is nowhere near what the best midfielders and forwards produce. So, contemplating a formation shift to start more defenders - which some poor fools have been floating in the online forums - is just RIDICULOUS. Even optimum rotation of defender picks for form and fixtures can't get you up to more than 170 or 180 points for each starting slot; whereas you can realistically hope for more like 200 points, or even a little more from good rotation in the other outfield position categories. [Admittedly, that hasn't really been the case in the first half of the 2025/26 season; but that's because there have, for various reasons, been freakishly low returns from midfield players so far, not because defenders are doing that much better this year.]

There is a chance that a few really high-performing defensive midfielders might get up into contention for the budget 5th midfield slot as a result of these new extra points; but I think that's only likely to happen with a player who also gets a decent number of goals (and/or assists) - which, at present, means.... probably only Declan Rice (maybe Palhinha,.... if he's on penalties?!). But as I pointed out yesterday, that 5th midfield seat is so important that you're probably still going to be better off concentrating on more attacking players who have hit a hot goalscoring streak (and rotating often, to keep bringing in the most in-form options).

The new 'defensive points' will significantly enhance the prospects of a few defenders and defensive midfielders - but probably not to the point of making them priority starting choices. Thus, the impact of the rule change on squad and team selection is likely to be pretty minimal, I think.

[But I could be wrong. It's hard to envision just what's going to happen with any confidence before the season's under way.]

A scale of prices

 

It is helpful to think of FPL player pricings in general categories. We must also keep in mind, of course, that the range of prices - and the average price level - varies for different positions. Value/price corresponds (or should correspond...) to points-potential; so, the different price strata across the different player positions are indicative of where most of the FPL points are expected to come from.

Also, it's really useful to keep in mind who seem to be the best options within each price category (and position) at any given point of the season, because it should be relatively easy to use your transfers to swap similarly priced players for each other, when one seems to be coming into better form than your present incumbent.

For defenders and goalkeepers, 4.5-4.9 million is mid-price, 5.0-5.4 is upper mid-price, 5.5-6.5 is premium (although I don't think I've ever seen a keeper priced higher than 6.0, and ir's pretty rare for defenders too); anything over 6.5 is super-premium. (there are rarely more than 1 oe 2 defenders who get priced at this highest level each season; this year, there are none). Under 4.5 million is cheap.

For midfielders and forwards, 6.1-7.0 is mid-price, 7.1-8.5 is upper mid-price, 8.6-9.9 is premium, 10.0 and over is super-premium; while 6.0 and under is cheap. (You can occasionally find some vaguely tempting prospects in these positions at only 5.0, or even 4.5 - but they're not usually worth it, except as short-term placeholders at the very start of the season, when budget can be super-tight; if you go for such a pick at first, to stretch the budget, you have to plan to move them out for an upgrade as soon as you reasonably can.)

With midfielders and forwards, there is usually a slight skewing towards higher prices for the forwards, with not only the few top-returning strikers being priced very, very high, but also most of the mid-price and upper mid-price options being a little higher than their equivalents in the midfield category. However, this is rather less pronounced this year, as fewer players than normal in either category have been assigned prices in the premium or high upper mid-price range.

You can't really afford to indulge in more than 5 or 6 premium or super-premium priced players; and no more than 2 or 3 of those can be super-premiums (arguably, none of them should be.... at least in certain years).  And you'll almost certainly have to 'pay for' those more expensive picks by getting a good budget option from the cheap price bracket (or the bottom end of 'medium price') to balance each one of them.

Often, at the start of the season, you glance through the roster of players, and think, "Oh, I'd like a, and b, and c, and x, and y, and z,... and j and k and...."  Guess what? You can't afford all of them! Budget is a beast! You have to make some hard choices at the start of the season: some players you really, really, really want... are going to have to be left out.

The fifth midfield slot is where the value lies

 

As I outlined yesterday, FPL's scoring system is so stacked in favour of midfielders - and so many of the game's 'midfielders' are in fact outright forwards, or at least frequent goalscorers - that it makes no sense to play fewer than 5 of them (except in rare cases).

Moreover, there is such a plethora of midfield choices at the lower end of the price scale that you can usually find very good points prospects for only 6 million (and often even better options at 6.5 million; although 6.0 is usually all you can afford in the initial squad), and sometimes at 5.5 or 5.0 (though just about never at 4.5!!).

However, among these 'less formidable' players (there's usually a good reason for their price being so low...), even more so than with more premium options, you are very unlikely to find someone who scores consistently well for a long period - much less across the season as a whole. In this price-bracket, you tend to find players like (last season) Alex Iwobi, Justin Kluivert, Anthony Elanga, Antoine Semenyo, and Jacob Murphy - who blow really hot for 4 or 5 or 6 games (maybe 8 or 10, if you're really lucky),.... and then lapse back into comparative anonymity again for a while.

More expensive players in the other midfield positions tend to be more consistent: they get really high weekly scores more often, contribute at least some additional points very frequently, and rarely or never suffer an extended string of 'blanks'. Because of this, they are worth sticking with, even if they do blank a few times (unless there are stronger indications than just the FPL returns that they and/or their team have suffered a serious crash in form). Also, you tend to be a bit locked-in to your more expensive players, because it is cumbersome to transfer very expensive players in and out (you generally have to burn through additional transfers and/or leave a significant amount of money unused in the bank for a week or three...; both of which are highly undesirable); and, if you want to buy them back again later, you may suffer a heavy hit from 'transfer tax'.

None of this is true for the cheaper midfield selections. It is easy to move them in and out of your squad at will. And you will want to, because it is highly unlikely that any of them will sustain a long run of good returns.

You should be constantly rotating your 5th midfield slot (and perhaps your 4th as well!), every month or two, to bring in whoever in that price category is hitting a hot run of form.

[Last year, a lot of people went for Morgan Rogers early in the season, and were sufficiently satisfied to hang on to him for the whole season. This was a HUGE mistake. Although he produced consistently enough to amass a very respectable points total for the season, his big returns were quite intermittent: he never put together a run of big-points weeks in succession, while numerous of his position rivals in the 'cheap' midfielder category did. Rogers was rarely even the best midfield performer overall in that price bracket (he was, narrowly, for the last couple of months of the season; but then got overtaken on the last day by Semenyo!); and he was never the best - not usually in the top 3 or 4! - over any short run of games. His season return of 161 points was barely more than the best defenders, and pitiful alongisde the best midfielders. You really want closer to 200 points for every starting position in your squad - even more for midfielders, since that is where most of your points come from! - if you are to have any hope of attaining the upper strata of the global rankings. You could achieve that if you succesfully rotated through all the best budget midfield options when they were in their best form; you can't get anywhere near it by sticking with a player like Rogers for the whole season. (Which is not to say anything against Rogers. He's very, very, very good as a real-world player. He's just not a season-hold for FPL. That's an important difference.)]