The distant laughter of the Fantasy Gods....

 

On Saturday - when half the world had bet their precious Triple Captain chip on him - the great Erling Haaland played like a man who'd been heavily on the lash on Friday night....

But just three days later, he comes up with a goal and 2 assists, for what would have been a very decent return on the TC chip!!!

The pagan gods who preside over the realm of FPL are not just cruel and capricious, but fond of mockery; it is not enough for them to smash our hopes, they must then taunt us in the midst of our despair.

But really, backing Haaland against Leeds was the 'right' choice, Fulham are a way better team than Leeds, and this match was on their home ground: it was not nearly so favourable a prospect for a big haul from the lanky Viking. (But then, neither were the Bournemouth or Everton games; or even Burnley or Wolves.....! It's impossible to predict with any confidence when the big hauls are going to happen.)

Triple unhappiness!

 

Oh dear, the great Triple Captain play on Erling Haaland this weekend (Gameweek 13 of our 25/26 EPL/FPL season) really went BADLY.

But in times of tribulation like this, it is good to try to mainain a sense of perspective.

For one thing, an awful lot of people were in the same boat: the great majortiy of still active managers in the game were probably playing the chip in this gameweek. 

And things could have been so much worse. He might have felt an injury in the warm-up and not even started. He might have got injured, or just been subbed off early by Pep, before the 60-minute mark. (And we should feel especially grateful every time a favourite player escapes a serious injury in a game, not for the impact that might have on our FPL points hopes, but for the man himself - and for the fact that we have not been denied the pleasure of watching him play for the rest of the season, or a big chunk of it.) He might have been given a yellow card, or perhaps even a red one. (Not very likely with Haaland: his disciplinary record is very good. But you never know.... Weird shit happens sometimes!)

It is quite common for captain and Triple Captain picks in FPL to register only 1 point or 0 points in a game - or even, occasionally, negative points.

So, the Haaland TC play this weekend, while very, very disappointing, was not an utter disaster. Those happen too; and this wasn't one of them. Perspective.

It was not even a particularly unlikely - and thus should not have been a completely unexpected - outcome. Captain and Triple Captain picks are going to return a blank somewhere between 1-in-2 and 1-in-3, even at the best.

When Fate shits on you like this, all you can do.... is hope that you're going to get a 1-in-3 unusually good outcome next year!

How did the Free Hit work out this weekend??

I've seen various figures online suggesting that between 1 and 1.5 million FPL managers might have played their first Triple Captain chip on Erling Haaland in this Gameweek 13 just past (although I don't think FPL has released an official total yet; these are all probably just estimates; I'm rather surprised that the number isn't much higher). But a very significant number of people - probably some hundreds of thousands at the very least - opted to play their Free Hit chip instead.

Did that work out for them??

Well, of course, your mileage will vary....

But on the whole, I'd venture.... NO.

Many GW13 Free Hitters online are just comparing themselves to the disastrous Haaland Triple Captain play. Of course, anything was better than that.

But that's not how these things work. You have to compare like with like (Triple Captain option against Triple captain option, Free Hit against Free Hit): how did the GW13 Haaland Triple Captain play work out compared to other gameweeks in which you might have used (or could still use) the chip on him, or on another high-scoring player; and how well did the Free Hit work out this weekend - in terms of the points-lift it gave you over the team you had anyway - in comparison to other gameweeks in which you might play it?

Quite a few people who did well from their Free Hit this gameweek have posted scores up in the mid-60s and low 70s, which is pretty good for this (very low-scoring) week. But as I scan around my leagues, I don't find the upper reaches of this week's ranking dominated by Free Hitters. A lot of people got scores in the 70s with their regular team. (And a lot of people don't even bother to do this elementary calculation. If their Free Hit team returned a pretty respectable points total, they feel satisfied with that; and they don't go to the trouble of working out what their regular team would have got - much less factoring in the possible impact of one or two regular transfers to improve that regular team for this set of fixtures. If your Free Hit squad didn't actually give you any more points than your unchanged squad might have done, then it was a bust!)

In order to get good returns from the Free Hit (or Bench Boost) chip - at least in general terms, for the majority of people playing it in a particular gameweek, rather than for just a few execeptionally lucky managers - you need plenty of high-scoring players and plenty of good player returns and match results that were fairly readily predictable. 

And, unfortunately, this gameweek just didn't turn out like that: a lot of matches followed an unexpected course. Brentford eventually got an anticipated 'big win' against Burnley, but really had to struggle for it, and all the goals only came very late in the game; City nearly lost to Leeds, Bournemouth did lose to Sunderland, and Spurs and Palace both lost at home to less formidable opponents, while Villa and Liverpool were lucky to beat their bottom-of-the-table opponents at all, and didn't rack up the margin of victory expected. Even Newcastle weren't predicted to get a win away from home, let alone a big win, against the usually defensively strong Everton. And almost no-one managed to keep a clean sheet.

So, most teams didn't get the sort of results that were generally expected, and few players returned particularly good hauls. In fact, of the most fancied players - both among existing selections and among those transferred in on a Free Hit - almost no-one produced a good return this week; most of them blanked. Only a few members of the 'Team of the Week' have any significant ownership, and probably weren't any more popular in Free Hit selections than they are in existing squads (while the best of this week's forwards, Igor Thiago, was in a lot of squads already, without a Free Hit).

So, unfortunately, this turned out not to be a great week for the Free Hit - because it wasn't easy to anticipate who would bring in good points, not very many players did bring in really good points; and there wasn't any major difference in points returns between 'Free Hit players' and 'regular team players' in this frustrating gameweek with such exceedingly low average scores.

That does not mean it was a bad week in which to choose to play the Free Hit. The combination of fixtures did look promising for it. But the eccentric and unexpected game outcomes and the low points returns from most of the more fancied players meant that it ended up being a bad week to have played it in - for most people. (But it might still prove to be better than nothing; it might yet end up having been the least worst option in a bunch of gameweeks that will all disappoint in various ways!)

There were, however, (as there usually are!) a few player choices that worked out pretty well - if you didn't have them already, but brought them in on a Free Hit. It's the managers who lucked into these picks who enjoyed the 70+ points returns on their Free Hit play this week. 

Liverpool, Villa, and Brighton were the only teams to keep clean sheets (rather unexpectedly, and in the case of the first two, really rather luckily), so taking a keeper or defenders from any of those three teams worked out well. Aston Villa seemed to be a particularly popular choice among the Free Hitters; although Rogers and Malen didn't work out for them, while Martinez and Cash did.

Cody Gakpo and Phil Foden were also strangely popular Free Hit choices - despite having shown few indications of likely FPL points-scoring in recent games; Foden, in particular, often now being played in a slightly deeper role, had recorded a long string of blanks and often been fairly anonymous in City's games in the past couple of months. But they both came up with goals - goals their sides scarcely deserved on the balance of play, goals in added-on time. That's LUCK right there! There was no compelling rationale for including either of those two players in a Free Hit selection. Honestly, they looked obviously rather less tempting picks than teammates of theirs in the most impressive form recently - Doku, Cherki, Szoboszlai. Brentford's Dango Ouattara was also up there among the week's most successful Free Hit picks; but there was a stronger rationale for fancying him against a defensively frail team like Burnley, especially given Brentford's strong recent home form - although, again, Schade or Damsgaard might have seemed the more promising midfield options from that club (and many FPL managers will have had one of those three already).

So, people who'd gone for Villa (or Liverpool or Brighton) defensive assets and Foden and/or Gakpo and/or Ouattara with their Free Hit changes did pretty nicely for themselves with the chip in Gameweek 13. But they were a fairly small minority. And even they didn't do conspicuously any better than a large number of good non-Free Hitters.

On balance, a Free Hit play this weekend certainly wasn't the abject disaster that the Haaland Triple Captaincy was, but.... that's damning with faint praise. It really didn't work out at all well either.

Free Hit opportunity?

 

I mentioned yesterday that there were some tempting opportunities to play the first Free Hit coming up over the final month-and-a-bit of this first half of the season (although you might want to 'keep your powder dry' and just hang on to it until GW19 in case of a game-postponement emergency caused by bad weather...).

The problem is that gameweeks that look promising for one bonus chip usually look good for the others too (in fact, I already covered why the sets of fixtures in some of the upcoming gameweeks are attractive for either a Bench Boost or Free Hit play).

But probably the most appealing option of the lot for a Free Hit would be the imminent Gameweek 13. There are a number of teams we wouldn't normally fancy who are this week playing what look like much weaker sides: Villa playing Wolves, Brentford playing Burnley, City playing Leeds, Liverpool playing West Ham, and Spurs playing Fulham (although the last two are perhaps rather questionable, given Liverpool's and Spurs's recent form!). Moreover, you might want to avoid having players from the top-of-the-table clash between Chelsea and Arsenal, which might end up being close and cagey, and is certainly quite hard to call. Crystal Palace v Manchester United, Everton v Newcastle, Nottingham Forest v Brighton, and Sunderland v Bournemouth are also quite tough to predict the outcomes of, and so perhaps better avoided if you have the chance to do so. That's what a prime Free Hit set of fixtures typically looks like.

Unfortunately,.... Erling Haaland against Leeds has to be the most attractive prospect in the first-half of the season for playing the Triple Captain chip. And so, that is likely to take priority this week for the majority of FPL managers. 

Nobody but Haaland is scoring points almost every week, and often producing big points - so, there really is no other sensible option for this chip. (Eze isn't likely to repeat this Sunday's performance again this season, if only because no other opponent is likely to play as badly against Arsenal as Spurs did here!) And the only alternative remaining time to play the chip on Haaland is Gameweek 17, when he's turning out against against West Ham at The Etihad. West Ham, though, are starting to show signs of improvement under Nuno, and are now probably a rather stronger opponent than Leeds (they weren't just a few weeks ago, but things change). Also, that's rather a long time to wait: the lanky Viking might have picked up an injury or lost form by then!

So,... if you still have all three of the bonus chips in hand, it looks like Gameweek 13 is the best bet for the Triple Captain; and you may then be left flipping a coin to decide how to split the Free Hit and Bench Boost between Gameweeks 15 and 17 - or maybe GW16 for the BB, when the fixtures are perhaps not quite so attractive, but you will have the advantage of an 'optimum set-up' thanks to the '5 Free Transfers' early Christmas present we're getting for the start of AFCON. [In fact, given that GW15 is the third set of league fixtures inside a week, there's a high risk you might be hit by a slew of injuries, or likely rest rotations, or players whose form is impaired by fatigue. If you know about those problems in advance, and they are numerous, you might be able to dodge around them with the Free Hit. But such issues might ambush you only after the gameweek deadline, which probably makes it rather too risky a week to play the Bench Boost in: the absolute essential for a good return from that chip is 15 fit players all starting for you. So, for me, it's looking like GW16 or 17 would be optimal for the BB;... and Free Hit any time you feel like it,... or feel that you need it!] 

BEST OF LUCK!!!

What is a Triple Captain worth?

 

There are two aspects to that question:  1)  How should you assess the points value of the Triple Captain chip?  and 2)  How many points can you expect to earn from it?

Unfortunately, if your thinking is muddled on the first part of the question (as it often seems to be in FPL-land), that prevents you forming a clear idea of what you ought to be aiming for with the chip.

People very commonly claim that their return from playing the Triple Captain is THREE times the gameweek points-haul for their chosen captain. But this is just empty bragging, or dangerous self-delusion. (People who somehow persuade themselves that the value of the chip is TWUCE their captain's points-haul are even more perversely misguided in their way of looking at this!)  Of course, you should really only be interested in the points lift that the chip gives you over what you would have had without it. And you'd get the basic points haul for that player anyway. In fact, since you surely would have made him your captain anyway, you would have got twice his points-haul for the week if you hadn't played the chip. So, the additional value of the Triple Captain chip is only the basic points-haul total, not some multiple of it.

I have discussed in some detail before the issue of whether the Triple Captain chip invariably pays off better in a Double Gameweek. (Summary; it can - but usually it does not. And it's a very dangerous thing to gamble on, since Double Gameweeks are now few and small, and right at the back end of the season.)

My general advice on both types of Bonus Chip is that you have to be prepared to play them opportunistically. There can be so many swings in player and individual form over a season that you often don't know who the hottest player of the year is going to be until a streak of exceptional returns suddenly emerges,.... and you often don't know what anyone's 'easiest' fixture is going to be until shortly before it happens. You can suss out the likely most promising options some months ahead; but you need to stay flexible, and be prepared for those tentative plans to completely change. (This year, Erling Haaland is still in form, and still the only FPL player regularly producing big points returns. And it has been fairly obvious since the start of the season that his two best fixtures in the first half of the season were likely to be City's home gaines against Leeds and West Ham in Gameweeks 13 and 17. So - for once - the start-of-season provisional plan for most people hasn't changed.... yet. But a lot of people weren't prepared to risk waiting this long, when Haaland was also knocking in braces of goals against better opponents. And now there is a chance that Saka or Mbeumo might be coming into tempting form as possible alternative picks. If Haaland gets injured in the next few weeks, then there'll have to be a late change of plan.... Such things often happen.)

Of course, you hope to successfully target one of your best hauls of the season for a Triple Captain play - but it is not reasonable to expect to land on the best; it's all just too unpredictable. Almost always, in fact, your and everyone else's best haul of the season comes from some complete random that you would never have expected to produce for you - and didn't very often, so wasn't a strong bet for the TC chip. You have to focus on players who can bag very large hauls multiple times a season, and who maintain top form for extended periods. Even if they won't ultimately provide any of your very best scores of the season, they are more reliable bets to provide a good score in a particular gameweek.

You shouldn't use the chip lightly, just throw it away on impulse; you should carefully choose a week in which your best player, when he's in his best form, is facing an opponent against whom he should have an especially high chance of scoring more than one goal.

But even the most exceptional players don't return every week. Usually, in fact, they'll 'blank' at least 1 game in every 3 across the season, probably closer to 1 game in 2. And sometimes even a Mo Salah or an Erling Haaland in their hottest run of form will still manage to 'blank' against a poor side.

You have to steel yourself to accept that a Triple Captain play can return nothing - and very often does. Perhaps 1 time in 3, your Triple Captain will only produce basic 'appearance points', or even less (the annals of FPL abound with horror stories of managers who ventured their TC on a player who got injured inside 10 minutes, or missed a penalty, or received a red card....).  

You have to be grateful for any sort of return at all from the chip; and very, very grateful if your haul from it happens to break into double-digits, even narrowly. It is foolish to expect - or even to hope for - a massive dividend of 15 or 20 or 25 points. That kind of thing happens fairly rarely, and requires a very large dose of LUCK.

[I wrote a follow-up post a day or two later on how to assess the impact of your Bench Boost chip.]

When to use the 'Triple Captain' (2)

FPL Legends 

Yesterday, I found myself writing a long and thorough debunking of the dangerous myth that the Triple Captain chip always works best in a Double Gameweek. (It can do, it does sometimes; but historically, Single Gameweeks far more often produce the season-best returns for the handful of top players you'd consider playing the TC chip on.)

The key general takeaway from that post was that you usually only want to consider one of a few really exceptional players for your Triple Captain pick: someone who quite often scores more than just one goal (especially against weaker opponents!), someone who may reach double-digits multiple times a season, someone who usually reaches high double-digits at least a few times a season. Only Salah and Haaland regularly fall into this category; although Palmer, Foden, and Saka have often shown the potential to start rivalling them; and a few others - Bruno Fernandes, Mbeumo, Cunha (pity they all play for still-dreadful Manchester United; but even there, they may hit a run of form at some point...), or Isak - may occasionally be worth considering, if they're on a hot streak. (Really, no-one is sensibly going to take a bet on something like Madueke profiting from a trio of Palmer assists, or Kluivert converting three penalties in the same game - as we saw for two of the best hauls of last season!)

So, the choices for who you can use the chip on are very limited. Often, there might be only one or two really obvious candidates; in your squad, there might be only one.

At the moment, of course, Haaland is the standout possibility. But his early season form has been exceptionally strong - while just about no-one else's has been. That's bound to change sooner or later.

And as I observed in this post the other week, it is generally better to go for a suitable midfielder in preference to a forward - because they get more points for the same level of game contribution: it's easier for them to reach double-digits, and they have a much stronger possibility of gaining a really high score.

So long as they do in fact have a top game, of course. A forward in great form and with a great fixture can still be a good bet. But a top goalscoring midfielder in great form with a great fixture is even better. (This year, so far, it's looking ominously as if we might not have any midfielders hit that sort of points form. But I remain, for now, optimistic that we will see some emerge eventually.)

Double Gameweeks can still be appealing: they sometimes come up at short notice, and relatively early in the season - as happened with Liverpool and Mo Salah getting their first match against Everton postponed because of high winds last year, giving them a unique additional Double Gameweek at the start of February. If you know your Triple Captain choice is in superb form, and you know what the double-fixture is going to be, and they're both opponents he should be able to score against,... and we're not yet in the end-of-season weeds with big European or domestic cup games cluttering the schedule and unacceptably increasing the risk of fatigue/injury/rotation or just wobbles in form for our top players - then, a Triple Captain play on that Double Gameweek is probably a good move.

But the regular Double Gameweeks - now only two, involving only a small number of teams, and coming at the very back-end of the season, amid a crowded schedule of make-or-break games - are not a good prospect for the Triple Captaincy.

I invited the scorn and derision of the masses by querying whether it was a good idea to play the Triple Captain chip on Haaland this past weekend against Burnley. Big Erling got a huge haul in the game; but it was highly fortuitous (two uncharacteristic 'errors leading to goals' in added-on time at the end of the game gifting him a brace - when he hadn't really done that much in the rest of the game!!).

Although I wasn't lucky in anticipating the outcome there (and I didn't say he wouldn't have a good game; merely that I thought both he and some other players might have better ones later in the season - and they still might), my basic points were still sound.

1) Form (both the team's and the individual's) and fitness are key.

(Haaland appeared a slightly risky pick for this weekend because he'd been complaining of a back problem at the start of the week. And back problems, although often 'trivial' and quick to resolve, can be particularly dangerous because they so inhibit and distort your usual range of movement - making it more likely that you can pick up other injuries if you play or train again before you've fully shaken them off. Moreover, City haven't yet really found their groove, they're still often looking vulnerable, even against quite weak teams like Wolves; and Burnley themselves were well in the game for the first hour or so, nearly took the lead shortly after half-time. In a few more weeks, City as a whole might be looking much more formidable - and might be creating a lot more chances for Erling, rather than relying on the opponents to create them for him.)

2)  As far as possible, you want to target the weakest possible opponent for playing the TC chip.

(Again, I didn't think that was Burnley. They have their weaknesses, sure, and will probably struggle to stay up. But their defence - and their keeper - are actually pretty good. City are facing Leeds and West Ham quite soon; I thought they would probably offer more tempting opportunities for Haaland to enjoy a big day. )

3)  Goalscoring midfielders have a higher points-potential than forwards.

(Yes, even the goal-freak Haaland. He's rarely FPL's 'Player of the Week' even when he does produce a really big haul.)

4)  It's still a bit early to be playing any of the chips, since nobody's form has settled down yet - and we're still gettting a lot unpredictable results.

(If we do live in a multiverse, there's a significant percentage of the other realities where Burnley actually won that game, or at least toughed out a draw. And possibly a majority of them where Haaland blanked, or only nabbed a solitary goal. 

There was an unusually large amount of transfer activity adding to the usual early-season chaos this year. That, combined with a lot of early injury issues to top players, and the interruption of an early international break, meant that the season effectively didn't 'start' until Gameweek 4. And it probably won't be until about GW8 or 9 that we really start to form confident and stable impressions of what's going on in the Premier League this year.)

These simple principles lead to the conclusion that the Triple Captain chip (like the Bench Boost) is best played opportunistically - whenever a prime candidate for the captaincy is fit and in tip-top form, and so are his team, and are facing what looks like a vulnerable opponent.

The form and fitness of teams ebbs and flows through the seeason. Just automaically betting against the promoted sides won't necessarily work: all three of them are looking much tougher propositions this year than any of their recent predecessors. And even the weakest of relegated sides in the last few seasons have usually managed at least a short run of games somewhere where they managed to play quite well. Likewise, even the top sides almost always suffer a bit of a stutter in form somewhere along the line. And, of course, your Triple Captain candidate may pick up an injury, or suffer a dip in form, just as his 'most favourable' fixture approaches. Shit happens.

You can highlight at the start of the season what you think are likely to be the most promising opponents that Haaland or Salah - or Foden or Saka or whoever - may face. But you shouldn't let yourself get too rigidly set on those early ideas. You need to stay flexible: your man's easiest game of the season can quite often crop up as a complete surprise.

And you need to be cautious about succumbing to the impulse to play the Triple Captain chip at the first tempting opportunity that presents itself, because there are almost sure to be other, better ones a bit later on. 

This year, a GW6 punt on Haaland happened to work out very nicely. But most years, it won't. And it might still prove not to have been the optimal Triple Captain play for this half of the season.

When to use the 'Triple Captain'? (1)

 

One of the most trenchantly beloved myths in FPL is that you can only play your Triple Captain bonus chip in a Double Gameweek.

Now that we have been given two of this chip this year, with the first only available for use until the end of December, that factor is immediately removed from consideration for that first chip - because we're (almost certainly) not getting any Double Gameweeks in the first half of the season.

However, even for the second one, which we now must use in the second half of the season, when the Double Gameweeks traditionally occur (though we'll probably only get two of them this year, and rather small ones...), that policy can be dangerously misguided. It certainly involves quite a big risk.

The myth seems to be founded on the logic that a player must inevitably score more points if he's playing twice. But that is obviously not a necessary truth. Furthermore, I suspect that for most people it is founded on the greedy delusion that a top player can - and will, at least with a beguilingly high degree of probability - secure a double-digit haul in both legs of the DGW, thereby securing a haul for the Triple Captain chip of 20+ points!

In fact, for a long time, Wayne Rooney - in his youthful prime, over a decade-and-a-half ago - was the only player ever to have pulled off that trick of securing double-digits in both games of a double-fixture week. Admittedly, Jean-Philippe Mateta also managed it (out-of-the-blue - completely unexpected by just about everybody) a couple of seasons ago. But this feat has, in the long history of FPL, looked like a once-in-a-decade (at most!) aberration. And that was during a period when we had more and bigger double gameweeks than we do now. So, if that's what you're hoping for in waiting to punt your Triple Captain chip on a Double Gameweek - think again.

But perhaps, the myth-worshippers will object, even if a player can't return a big score in two successive games, he might at least be more likely to produce one really big score if he has two chances to do so?

Well, there might be something in that... Not much, but something. If you look at a list of the biggest gameweek hauls in the game's history, that lad Rooney is indeed at the top of it with 32 points for that double double-digit performance. And most of the following handful of top performers also benefitted from Double Gameweeks - but not all of them: in fact only 6 out of the top 10 gameweek hauls were produced with the help of a double-fixture. And that's because it's very, very difficult to get above 20 points in a Single Gameweek, and just about impossible to get above 25 points. But as soon as you get down to 25 or 26-point weekly totals (and a couple of players have done better than that from a Single Gameweek), the Single Gameweek returners immediately become the great majority. We have in recent seasons seen players like Mo Salah and Cole Palmer (and even Noni Madueke last year - with some Palmer assists!) get some very big scores from Single Gameweeks.

Moreover, a lot of those players who did tremendously well from a Double Gameweek were real randoms: defenders, or midfielders who'd been out injured for a while, or forwards at less fashionable clubs - the kind of players that no-one would have been likely to play their prized TC chip on. 

Realistically, most FPL managers - with good reason (I shall have a little more to say on this tomorrow) - are only likely to play the TC chip on an exceptional player like Salah or Haaland (or maybe Son or DeBruyne or Kane, in the past; and in recent years, Palmer and perhaps, at least occasionally, Saka and Foden have also come into the reckoning): players who, when they're really in form, seem capable of getting a double-digit haul quite regularly, and who can be usually be relied on to produce at least a few really big hauls each season.

And if you look at the record of players like these, their best returns of the season (and, very often, their second and third and fourth best too!) have almost always come in Single Gameweeks, not Doubles.

The things that make a haul more likely are form and ease of opposition, not the mere fact that a player has two games in the gameweek. 

All those players who did manage a really big return from a Double Gameweek had at least one, often two really soft opponents in their pair of fixtures. If a Double Gameweek is against two difficult opponents, or even two average opponents (or indeed it's against two really poor opponents, but your favoured Triple Captain bet is out-of-sorts at the moment....), there is no point playing the chip. The double-fixture is not 'magic' in itself: it's the quality of the fixture ('easy opponent'), not the number of games that matters.

Well, there is still the argument from fear, I suppose. Even appearance points from a second game would be a nice lift to your points total; and if your man should somehow pick up something - anything, no matter how slight - from both the games, despite somewhat unpromising fixtures,.... surely that would be a decent return for the Triple Captain chip??

Alas, NO - not really. The lower-end for your points expectation may be very slightly raised; but you should be thinking about the overall points-range, and the likeliest mid-point you could reasonably expect to achieve. That is almost certainly going to be better in a single fixture where you're absolutely confident of your captain's form, and of the poor quality of the opposition.

[You should never let fear - of your own possible misfortune, or of what your rivals might be plotting - guide your decisions in FPL. You should always focus on what you believe are the best ways to optimise your own points returns. And you should be ambitious for the Triple Captain chip; it can be very valuable - you should be looking to maximise your return from it, not simply securing an OK, least-worst outcome on it.]

And there's a further, VERY BIG problem with waiting for a Double Gameweek to play this chip. The Double Gameweeks happen in the latter part of the season: that is a long time to wait. 

Your favoured captaincy pick for the chip might have picked up a knock or suffered a dip in form by that point. (A lot of people were planning to play the chip on Mo Salah a couple of seasons ago; but he had never fully shaken off a hamstring tweak he suffered while playing for Egypt in AFCON, and had a very muted end to that season.)  Heck, he might even have suffered a season-ending injury, or been poached by the Saudis in the January transfer window.... Shit happens.

Also, in that closing phase of the season, the final stages of the FA Cup and the European competitions are getting pretty intense, and clubs still involved in those will quite often rest some of their players, particularly their top players - in matches that follow closely on one another, and/or are against weaker opponents that the back-up players ought to be able to deal with. Hence, you can't be absolutely confident that your Salahs and your Haalands will even play in both fxitures of a Double Gameweek! 

If they do play in both games, they're very likely to get restricted minutes. And they're almost certainly going to be well below their best because of mounting fatigue.  [This is why I think it's increasingly unlikely that we'll see Rooney's and Mateta's achievement replicated again; or not more than once every two or three decades, anyway! With the insane physical demands of the current game - which have escalated enormously over the last 15 years - you just can't expect players to produce peak performances twice within a few days of each other,... especially at the back end of the season, when mental and physical tiredness and persistent injury niggles are accumulating.]

And dammit, because the Double Gameweeks are determined by progress to the last rounds of the domestic cups, you can never be sure that your favoured Triple Captain pick - one of that gilded handful of players, perhaps just one or two, who do seem to offer you a significant chance of a brace of goals or better, if you give them a soft opponent - will even get a Double Gameweek. And it's impossible to predict exactly when the postponed league games from the weekend of the relevant cup tie (these days, it's only the Final of the League Cup and the Semi-Finals of the FA Cup) will be rearranged to; so, even if you're willing to gamble on your chosen Triple Captain's club getting through to those rounds, you don't know which two fixtures are going to be combined into one gameweek for him - and it might sometimes be a couple of really tough ones rather than a pair of gimmes.

Even if you get a reasonably promising Double Gameweek for your chosen Triple Captain at the tail-end of the season, it's actually fairly unlikely that he'll make more points from it than he did from a few of his best single-fixture weeks earlier in the season. And there is no guarantee that he'll get any sort of Double Gameweek at all!

Hence, it's almost never worth hanging on for a Double Gameweek to play the Triple Captain chip. (It never was, even when rearranged games from the FA Quarter-Finals weekend ususually used to give us a really big Double Gameweek slightly further ahead of the end of the season. [These BIG Double Gameweeks of old gave you an enhanced chance that Salah, Haaland, etc. would actually get a Double Gameweek; but that Double Gameweek was almost always a much more tempting opportunity for the Bench Boost chip rather than the Triple Captain!])

Ah, but never say 'never'. Didn't good 'ol Mo get a huge score in a Double Gameweek just last season??  Why, yes, he did. But that was not a regular Double Gameweek; it was a one-off rearrangement of a bad weather postponement. It happened earlier in the season than the usual Double Gameweeks. And the rescheduled date was only confirmed at fairly short notice. We knew that Salah was on fire at that point in the season. And he did indeed have two fairly middling opponents to face; so, of course, this double-fixture became a favourite opportunity to play the chip on him as soon as it was announced. Indeed, back in early December when the Merseyside derby was originally postponed, we knew Salah - who was having the best season in FPL history - would get a double-fixture against Everton + another at some point in late January or early February; and that was worth hanging on for. The utterly uncertain prospect of a Double Gameweek resulting from FA Cup success, to be scheduled in the closing weeks of the seaason, is NOT worth hanging on for.

I shall have a follow-up post soon, focusing more on when it is a good idea to play the Triple Captain chip, rather than when it isn't.

SOMETIMES the Sheep get lucky!!!

Now, I said at the weekend, just ahead of the Gameweek 6 deadline, that I thought all the enthusiasm for risking the Triple Captain chip on Haaland against Burnley was probably misguided....

And look what happened!  Yes, I was very soon proved 'wrong'!!

Except.... I carefully said 'probably'. And I was specifically criticising the reasons given for this pick (exaggeratedly denigrating Burnley's defensive abilities; and that on the basis of a single  - misinterpreted, misrepresented - statistic!), and reviewing some strong counter-arguments for waiting for later, potentially better opportunities to use the chip (on Haaland, or someone else).  In fact, I explicitly acknowledged that this chip play on Haaland might turn out OK!

But still I get pilloried by the online dingbats who insist that I made a foolish, ill-informed and obviously incorrect 'prediction'.  I did not. I just pointed out a few facts they were wilfully overlooking, and they got pissy about it; and when things work out OK for them,.... they then want 'revenge'!!!  Petty people.

Actually, things worked out much better than merely 'OK': a 16-point haul might well prove to be Haaland's best return of the entire season; and there probably won't be too many other scores much better than it. It did, as it happens, turn out to be potentially the best Triple Captain return for the season (or at least for the first half of it, since we now have two of these chips).

But the people who gambled their Triple Captain chip this week didn't know that was going to happen. And most of them are doubly stupid, because they think they did know. Trebly stupid, because they think that a successful outcome proves the 'smartness' of the original decision. It does not: it only proves that they were lucky - very, very lucky.

These people appear to fall prey to the common fallacy that if something happens, it must have had a 100% probability of happening at some point long prior to its happening. That is not so.

No-one ever has quite a 100% probability of even starting a game (because there are so many little last-minute accidents-of-fate that might thwart that - how often have we seen players pull a muscle in the warm-up, for example?). In this case, given that Haaland had missed some training earlier in the week with a back-muscle problem, he can't have been much better than a 95% probability to appear from the beginning, perhaps much less; there was surely a good chance that Pep would prefer to leave him on the bench as a super-sub option, against a team who were not expected to be very difficult to beat.

And the probability of him playing most of the game was perhaps no better than 60% or 70%, given that recent injury concern, and the fact that Pep almost invariably withdraws him as soon as a game looks safely won - especially when there is a European match coming up the following midweek. And the likelihood of him being left on until the final whistle can't have been more than 50%.

While Haaland does produce a fair few assists, it's still a relative rarity: usually only about a 25% chance in any given game. (And last year the assists really dried up for him; so, with this evolving City set-up, we might expect that probability to be even lower at the moment.)

And then, of course, he ended up getiting a brace - right at the end of the game, when he could not reasonably have been expected to be still on the pitch. Even a very poor defensive team (and Burnley are not that....) will rarely make two 'errors leading to goals' in the same game; and the chances of them both occurring in added-on time, and both being converted by the same player are vanishingly small.

Haaland's 16-point return in this game was a completely unpredictable freak event!!

Sure, City were favourites to win, and win fairly comfortably. There was a good chance they might score 2 or 3 goals against them (all of this I acknowledged in my discussions of the prospects for the match). But there was no compelling reason to suppose they would obviously be able to score a lot of goals (and really, Burnley were on top for a lot of this game, nearly took a 2-1 lead early in the second half; they didn't deserve to go down this badly), nor to expect that Haaland would claim more than 1 of any they did score (and he didn't - for nearly 90 full minutes of regulation time, which must have been agony for all those TC punters!!). There is always a range of likely points outcomes for any player in any game; and this result for Haaland was way, way above the median of that range this week.

Those who now smugly proclaim that they predicted "exactly what was going to happen" in this match are lying to themselves and everyone else. 

They made a risky bet, a brave bet - that paid off. Puffing themselves in those terms would be acceptable. But to pretend that it was 'a safe bet' and 'a shrewd decision' and so on is fatuous nonsense. You had no idea how that bet was going to turn out: it could have gone very, very badly instead of very, very well. But it just happened to go very, very, very, very well. Thank your lucky stars - and shut up about it.

And there is still a chance that another TC bet over the next three months will pay out even bigger.....

[And yes, that sheep does appear to have 8 tiny legs!! AI is not ready to take over the world quite yet....]

ONE statistic proves nothing

 

This week, The Sheep's big stampede is towards punting their Triple Captain chip on Erling Haaland.

There are a few reasons why this might not be such a great idea. It's still very early in the season, and - even with this new second Triple Captain chip only available until the end of December, there will be many more, possibly better, opportunities to gamble it on Haaland, or another player. The big lad's been suffering with a back strain and missed a lot of training this week (now expected to start, it seems; but quite likely to get pulled off early, if the game's in the bag [as Pep usually does anyway; but may now go for very early], especially as City have an away trip to Monaco on Wednesday in the Champions League), and he's probably not going to be quite at his best.. And, well, although they're steadily improving, City still haven't yet looked anywhere near their dominant best of a couple of years ago.

Ah, but the primary reason behind this TC choice seems to be that Burnley are supposedly "the worst defence in the league."  And the sole piece of evidence cited for that momentous assertion is that they're currently top of the stats for 'shots conceded'.

A few problems with this:

1)  One statistic in isolation very rarely tells you anything.

2) Statistics this early in the season for anything can't tell you very much, because one 'untypical' game can massively skew the overall figures. And also, nobody's form has really settled down yet, and we've seen some wildly erratic performances and unexpected results so far this year.

3)  The 'shots conceded' number is more a measure of the quality of the opposition you've faced than the quality of your defence in dealing with that threat. And Burnley have had a particularly demanding opening run of fixtures, facing Spurs, Manchester United, Liverpool, and Nottingham Forest so far - all very good attacking teams (damn, yes, even United played quite well against them).

4)  On a range of stats that more accurately reflect 'defensive quality', Burnley actually look quite impressive. One of the most persuasive of all is their xGC 'delta', the gap between their 'expected goals conceded' and the actual number conceded - that's an enormous 2.3 in the right direction. They're keeping more goals out than almost any other team!

So, it's early in the season, and the stats can easily get skewed: Burnley have twice conceded 3 goals in a match, which makes their defensive record look terrible. They've also had 2 penalties awarded against them, which makes their goals conceded total look a bit worse than it really ought to. They looked rocky at the start of the season, when they were easily taken apart by Spurs, but have improved steadily since. Against United, they left themselves open by chasing a game they thought they could win, and were desperately unlucky to concede a late penalty to lose the points. They beat fellow promoted side Sunderland fairly comfortably, and kept a clean sheet. They played well enough to deserve a clean sheet and a point away from home against Liverpool, and were again desperately unlucky to be thwarted by a very late penalty. And they contained Forest very well - after conceding a goal out-of-nowhere barely a minute into the game.

You need to consider a range of relevant statistics, never just one on its own. And you need to put those statistics in context, to consider the story of each individual match that has produced them.

Just saying, "Look how many shots Burnley have faced! They must be rubbish!!" is NONSENSE.

This post isn't really about Burnley. Or Haaland. It's about how people deceive themselves with superficial, lazy readings of statistics.

Burnley are a weak team overall: they can't control the ball enough or create enough threat to stop the stronger teams in the league from dominating them. But their defence is, arguably, in fact one of the best in the league at the moment.

And, realising the hopelessness of their chances against City, they'll probably sit back in a low-block all game and try to tough out a draw. They so nearly made that work against Liverpool - who are, at the moment, a much, much better-looking team than City.

I don't think Burnley will beat City, and even a draw is a very long-shot for them. Heck, I think Haaland can probably pick up a goal, even if he only plays 55 minutes or so.

But Burnley's defence (and keeper!) are actually pretty damn good. They are - thus far, anyway - the most impressive-looking of the promoted sides; and also - so far - way, way better than West Ham,.... or Villa,... or Wolves.

This is not a fixture that looks like a pushover, a guaranteed multi-goal party.

People are only playing that Triple Captain chip now because they're getting impatient. (And impatience in FPL is - usually - a very bad thing.)

I'd rather wait until Haaland has clearly shaken off this injury worry,.... and is facing a genuinely weak defence (he has Villa, Leeds, Sunderland, Fulham, and West Ham coming up between now and Christmas).

Even more, I'd rather wait until one of the goalscoring midfielders (who can give you a better return) like Saka or Salah or Palmer, or maybe Mbeumo or Cunha comes into a hot streak of form. All rushing to drop the Triple Cap on Haaland the first time he plays a promoted side is classic sheep behaviour.

(Now, Erling has been in tremendous form so far this season; and he is really the only player at the moment who regularly looks capable of scoring more than 1 goal per game. And he might pull that off again against Burnley; he might even get a hattrick [very, very unlikely; but he might]. That won't mean that playing the chip on him this week was a smart choice; that would just make it a lucky choice. All the evidence points to there being better opportunities for this chip a bit later on.)

[Ha! As it turns out, Haaland did manage a huge return in this game. Though he had to rely on being gifted 2 goals by bizarre defensive errors at the end of the regulation 90 minutes! As I acknowledge at the end of this piece, there was indeed a reasonable chance that he'd pick up a goal in this game, maybe even two; but there was no very strong reason for supposing that this was much more likely than in many other fixtures he'll face, much less for expecting that he was 'almost certain' to bag a multi-goal haul. The outcome here, while not beyond the bounds of expectation, was very much at the uppermost limit of the range of such expectation - it was very, very LUCKY!]

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....

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.

Tempted AGAIN??

Just last week I warned that hazarding the PRECIOUS Triple Captain chip in a Gameweek straight after an international break was usually unwise, because of all the uncertainties of form and match outcome that follow from fatigue, availability problems, and lack of preparation after such a disruption of the usual club training schedule.

The same concerns apply even more strongly.... to the entire month of December.

The absurd fixture log-jam we land ourselves with over the holiday season - 7 Gameweeks in the next four weeks!! -  combined with the adverse impact of cold, wet weather (and perhaps even the shorter hours of daylight having a negative impact on some players' moods...?) means that:-

1)  Most players will get some 'rest rotation' at some point; but it's pretty much impossible to predict when. (Though we might imagine that older - and historically injury-prone - players like Chris Wood, Danny Welbeck, and Callum Wilson would be most likely to receive heavily rationed minutes.)  So, even if you can count on your favoured star performer - Salah, Palmer, Saka or whoever - starting every game, so long as they remain fit, you can't be at all sure who's going to be playing with them for each game, or how well their team is going to function around them.

2) All players, even the most superhumanly resilient of them, are going to suffer from some fatigue - mental, perhaps, as much as physical - during this onslaught of quickfire games; and it is very unlikely that anyone will maintain anything like their best form throughout the whole month.

3)   A higher rate of injuries is, alas, inevitable amidst this constant stress of over-exertion, reduced recovery time, and often bitterly cold playing conditions.

4)  Cold, wet, blustery weather also makes the game harder to play, and greatly increases the likelihood of mistakes.... which may lead to unexpected, against-the-run-of-play goals, and perhaps some topsy-turvy results.

5)  With the tight turnaround between so many of the games, and the more frequent changes in team selection, it's very difficult for managers to do adequate tactical preparation.

6)  And it's that time of year when things start to get really critical for the clubs struggling down at the bottom end of the table; and some of them may begin fighting that bit harder - and more effectively - to improve their position. Hence, 'upset results' could become a bit more common over the next few weeks than they have been so far.

All of this means that there is huge UNCERTAINTY about results over the coming month, even in games that look like they should be very one-sided match-ups. And moreover, it is very unlikely that any of our beloved star players will often be able to perform anywhere near their best, because of all these adverse circumstances around them. It is, I think, much better to wait until January or February to play the TC chip - no matter how inviting some of the December fixtures may appear.

[Of course, as soon as I've said this, Bukayo Saka goes and has a monster of a game against a predictably flakey West Ham! I can only say in my defence that this game was technically on the 30th November (although December had already started where I was watching the game from...). But the basic principle is still sound: results are much more unpredictable at this time of year. The early months of the New Year will offer bigger - and more reliable - opportunities to take advantage of your Triple Captain.]

TC temptation.....

 

A lot of Fantasy managers are contemplating punting their Triple Captain chip this week.

After all, Salah is playing bottom-of-the-table Southampton, who've conceded nearly 2 goals per game so far. While Palmer is facing Leicester, and Saka has Forest at home (much less of an apparent pushover than the two promoted clubs, but still probably a bit of a gulf in class below Arsenal at their best).  I think you also have to fancy a resurgent-looking Newcastle and the in-form Gordon or Isak (or Barnes, or perhaps even Joelinton) at home against West Ham on Monday night, who have looked pretty terrible defensively of late. And Mbeumo or Wissa might get some chances against still occasionally shaky-at-the-back Everton (although they might still be slightly doubtful for a start this week?).

Some people are getting very excited about the prospects of Fernandes (or Hojlund?) against Ipswich, but I don't think we should expect immediate miracles from Ruben Amorim, and Ipswich - who, for me, have always looked much the best of this year's promoted trio - showed last time against Spurs that it is a mistake to take them for granted. 

There's even a surge of optimism for Haaland again - although Spurs have usually been a bit of a bogey team for Pep, and I would expect Ange to have his boys fired up to give an emphatic response to their humiliating fiasco at home against Ipswich last time out. A more left-field captaincy pick, though, might be DeBruyne - who does  have a bit of a history of absolutely smashing it as soon as he returns from a long absence.

It might be a good week for defences too, as 5 or 6 of the fixtures (it really is impossible to guess which way to call the Ipswich v United game; my love of the underdog would like it to go to Ipswich, but I can see United possibly pulling out a big game from somewhere....) look quite unbalanced: Liverpool, Chelsea, and Newcastle in particular, but also quite possibly Arsenal, Villa, City, and Manchester United might keep clean sheets;; so, it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that a defender or a keeper from one of those clubs might become the 'Player of the Week'. It's certainly feeling like it could be a very high-scoring GameWeek.

If I were a betting man (I am, sometimes...), I'd probably go for Palmer.

But I don't fancy him - or anyone else - enough this week to risk the Triple Captain on them.... because we're following on from an international break, and those bring so much uncertainty in their wake.

We're unsure of selections, because so many players might be fatigued or carrying a knock or late returning to their club after playing for their national squad. Many others, of course, were flagged with injuries after the last EPL gameweek (most of these were probably just phantom injuries, cooked up by their clubs to get them out of international duty - but we just don't know for sure); we've mostly had no updates on any of them until the last day or two, and it's still unclear whether some of them are going to be able to start. Worst of all, the usual schedule of training and tactical preparation within the club has been disrupted, and coaches have generally had, at most, a couple of days to work with their players again to get them ready for this weekend's games. While for those who haven't played any football, the rest might have been physically and mentally refreshing, some inevitable ring-rustiness from having missed the regular preparation routine for nearly two weeks is likely to outweigh that. All of this means that form in the first game back after an international break can be wildly unpredictable; many of the big clubs, in particular, have a tendency to misfire rather.

If this week's set of fixtures occurred at almost any other point in the season, in the midst of a regular run of games, I would probably be all over Salah or Palmer or Saka (or DeBruyne) as a prime Triple Captain opportunity.

But as it is, I think I'll wait: they're all facing bottom-of-the-table clubs again in January and February.

Well, Salah and Saka did indeed both have very bright games, notching 13 points each - which is a score you should be very happy with for the Triple Captain chip (although the foolishly greedy are always hoping for 15, 18, 20....).  Maddison and Cunha produced the two massive performances of the week, though; and I don't think anyone was betting on them as TC prospects!!

The 'curse' of the international break hit everywhere else, with United being predictably mediocre and largely outplayeed by Ipswich in Amorim's coaching debut, City having another shocker against bogeymen Spurs, Mbeumo and Wissa being completely invisible in a sterile goalless draw against Everton, while the gameweek ended with Newcastle producing a bizarrely lifeless display against a suddenly less-terrible West Ham and somehow losing, despite having the vast majority of the possession and goal chances. Funny old game, and all that.

BONUS CHIPS - who needs them?

 

I dislike FPL's 'bonus chips' - for me, they are an unncessary gimmick, just a further randomising element in a game that is already plenty random enough.

And they are a relatively recent innovation, only being introduced into the game for the first time in the 2015-2016 season.

Even the best players won't manage a double-digit haul much more than once every three or four games on average across the season; and they'll probably 'blank' (i.e., produce nothing beyond basic appearance points), or only return a very low score, at least one game in every three. So, you won't get a really good haul from your regular captaincy pick more than one week in three (unless you're very, very lucky). And even when you do, it's unlikely to be your best haul of the week - because, if you have a good squad, there are usually at least 5 or 6 potential candidates for the captaincy (and very often one of your other squad players will surprise you with an outstanding week, while all the 'usual suspects' falter....). So, even getting the captaincy choice 'right' for an individual gameweek is largely a matter of luck, something that only comes good for you perhaps 20% to 30% of the time.

Now, there are certain fixtures where you might reasonably expect your star player to have a particularly high chance of a big score (and a particularly low chance of a poor score); but in practice, it doesn't often work out like that. I don't think the 'soft fixtures' actually produce significantly better outcomes most of the time. The odds in your favour are, hopefully, slightly enhanced if you choose your fixture to play the Triple Captain chip wisely, but you're still probably more likely to be disappointed than pleased with the outcome; and things can go very badly wrong. (Last year, I bet on Haaland against Bournemouth. The Viking was in smokin' form, and Bournemouth had started the season dreadfully, were deep in the relegation zone and conceding goals every week. This week, of course, was the week they suddenly began to turn things around. And our Erling apparently picked up an injury mid-way through the first half, and didn't reappear after the break - although it looked very much as if he might have been carrying some problem from the start, as he was completely off his game. The most in-form player in the league at the time faces one of the weakest defences.... and comes away with 1 point! Shit like this happens in our game all too often....)

And yet, at the other extreme, you might once-in-a-blue-moon (I mean, once every decade... or two....) happen to pick the week in which your favourite captaincy choice produces a monster haul for your TripleCap!! Even more galling, there are some people who seem to play the chip completely randomly on some not particularly fancied player... who produces a blinder out-of-the-blue - like Noni Madueke in Gameweek 2 of this season. Yep, it all too often happens that someone can take a wild punt on a frankly idiotic choice for the chip, and come away with 50, 60 or 70-odd points. There's little skill in it, little justice, just a huge amount of randomness.... and LUCK!

The Bench Boost chip isn't much better. You can identify gameweeks which seem auspicious to play it because of their heavy density of unbalanced fixtures, and perhaps even a good number of double-fixtures ('big' Double Gameweeks can indeed offer a significant lift to your Bench Boost return; but there aren't many of them to aim for - well, only ONE this year! - and it's a risk to wait until the very end of the season for this chance to play the chip); and you might even carefully 'set up' for them, with judicious use of transfers in preceding weeks - or perhaps the deployment of the Wildcard - to try to ensure that you have a stronger bench than usual, and a full bench. But that's the main problem with this chip: you really need to be absolutely sure that all 15 squad members are going to start in order to take advantage of it - and that hardly ever happens. It has been as rarely as 3 or 4  times in the entire season for me (and not on weekends with many 'good' fixtures!). Last year I was geared up to play my Bench Boost 3 or 4 times,.... and every time I found myself undone by one or two last-minute injuries, unable to go ahead with using the chip on a bunch of good fixtures because I suddenly had huge gaps on the bench.

Even on a Double Gameweek, it is quite possible for all of your bench players to disappoint in both games and leave you with a single-digit return for the chip. If you have to use it on a Single Gameweek, you can easily end up with next-to-nothing. And a haul of 15-20 points is really about the best you can reasonably hope for; most of the time, you'll probably come out with a bit less than that. But, again, some people can get absurdly lucky with the chip, racking up 30 or 40 points or more on it.

It's just a roll of the dice!  Why do we need this extra gambling element in the game??  We DON'T. 

But gambling, alas, is addictive. Too many FPL managers enjoy this additional thrill of uncertainty, and would be loath to give it up.

At least these chips are still tied to the regular points-scoring structure of the game, still rewarding shrewd choices of players for the current fixtures. This season the game's controllers are threatening us with a further novelty, an as yet undefined 'Mystery Chip'. There has been much speculation online about what this new chip will turn out to be. There are a number of possibilities that aren't too wacky, such as additional points for one week for defenders or for forwards (encouraging you to switch to a different formation for that week). And I'm quite fond of the Super-Captain chip they have in Fantasy World Cup, which retroactively assigns your double-points captain bonus to your highest-returning player in the Gameweek (a rare example of a de-randomising chip; I like that!). Even the 'Limitless' chip they usually have in the international competitions (a Free Hit with the additional benefit of an unlimited budget) is harmless fun.

But I have a foreboding that the FPL overlords may be plotting something far more extreme for this new chip - something far more randomising, and far more remote from the normal structure of the game. I do hope I'm wrong; but I get a sinking feeling in my stomach every time I think about it. They're supposed to be announcing it just before it becomes available for use in the second half of the season, so we'll find out in a month or so. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

It is obviously too much to hope for that FPL would scrap the Triple Captain and Bench Boost chips. But we really don't need ANY MORE 'bonus chips' like this added to the game.