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!]

'Buying success' is the end of football...

The phenomenon in the modern game that saddens me most is the increasing tendency from just about all managers nowadays to seek to solve problems and improve their team's performances simply by buying new players, to 'spend their way out of trouble'.

Partly, of course, this has been happening because, since the advent of pay-per-view television, the game has become awash with more money than it knows what to do with. And also, in the past couple of decades, statistical analysis has been given more and more weight, so that managers now get tempted to think that the 'numbers' reveal very slight and subtle benefits that might be derived from one player rather than another. And hence, for example, if you're worried that you're conceding a few too many goals because your left full-back occasionally gets done by a pacey winger, you could 'fix' that flaw by dropping 50 million euros on a quicker full-back, or one who's a bit better against someone taking him on one-to-one.

But of course, there are other things you could do. You could give your vulnerable full-back some specific coaching on dealing better with these dangerous one-on-ones; or you could remember to hold him in a deeper position when he's up against a quick opponent, and/or assign another player to give him back-up on that marking assignment. There is an immediate tactical or coaching 'solution' to the issue, and it might work out better than buying an expensive new player for the role.

When the supposed 'statistical advantage' is so slight, and based on such a flimsy sample size - perhaps just a handful of incidents in a handful of games, each of which may have been in some way untypical, anyway - it may easily prove to be illusory. Trying to deal wtih the problem now, with your available resources, surely makes more sense than taking a punt on trying to fit a completely new peg into this awkwardly shaped tactical hole. Your new boy might indeed be a speed-demon and adept at nicking the ball off a crafty dribbler - but what about his crossing, his tackling, his positional sense, his workrate, his professionalism, his mental toughness, his competitive mentality? Some of the things that are going to make the biggest difference to your team dynamic are essentially 'intangibles' - matters of personality and character rather than just skill and athleticism - and the stats aren't going to be of any help to you there. Also, of course, it's going to take a while for anyone new to get up to speed on your tactical approach and to bond with his new teammates. Even if he is - in theory - much, much better than the player he's displacing,... in all probability, he won't be for at least a couple of months.

But, for me, the risk of overestimating a new player, being misled by statistics as to his overall abilities or just not anticipating how he would fit into your team - or fail to - for other reasons beyond his core 'skill profile', is less important than the cost of constantly discarding players for some supposed minor shortcoming, even after they've made some outstanding contributions to your club, perhaps over a number of years. When you suddenly ditch players who've played well for you - to replace them with someone supposedly slightly better - you risk damaging the spirit in the dressing-room and the whole ethos of the club. All players start to feel less secure in their tenure - and hence less loyal to the manager and the club, and perhaps they might thus also become a little less sharp in their competitiveness. Fans, too, are often shocked and disappointed to see a popular player suddenly depart. And that adds unwelcome extra pressure on his successor to prove himself to a sceptical fanbase. 

For younger players, this kind of snub can be especially dispiriting - and perhaps a fatal setback to their career development. And it may be particularly short-sighted of the clubs to mistreat their rising stars like this, because if they continue to give these players regular minutes, big game experience, show trust in them by giving them key responsibilities on the pitch, and perhaps by sticking with them through a spell of shakey form - they can become hugely better players, and so command a much higher transfer fee in a year or two's time. And if they've come up through your Academy system, or were purchased at a young age for a fairly low price, that's almost all pure profit; one or two nice deals like that can put your PSR worries to bed for a good long while. (Perhaps I have an unduly romantic notion of how much showing trust in a player can boost their confidence and ability? It is possible, I suppose, that I am a little too much influenced by a management sim I played a lot in the early Noughties, in which this was the big secret of the game: if you gave players a run of regular starts, in games where they'd mostly win, and including some high-profile fixtures,.... their self-belief apparently soared; and with that, their overall consistency and dependability as well as their ratings on key playing attributes would soar very quickly as well. Reserves or youth team players could grow into formidable assets within a couple of months, and become potential international stars within a year or two. The effect may not be quite so dramatic in real life - but I'm sure it exists.)

If a player has chosen to leave, or is obviously not adequate to his role at the top level, then fair enough: we accept the necessity of the change, and we're all eager to see how the new man will do. But most of the time these days, this does not seem to be the case; a player who was at least perfectly adequate, if not pretty good in his role, suddenly gets canned for a new signing - who is often not an obvious improvement. And a key thing that this hard-nosed approach to trying to buy marginal advantages (which sometimes fail to materialize anyway!) overlooks is that a football club is not just about football; it's about continuity and community, it's about the bond that develops between players, staff, and fans - over an extended period of time (even expanding over generations into the distant past; it'a about history). People want to see players grow and change over time, they want to see promising youngsters stay at their club and develop a mature career there. They don't really want to see a revolving door of 'big names' trotting through their club for a year - or two or three - before looking for a bigger move.

This might seem a quaintly 'old-fashioned' view now, I fear. Yes, I did grow up in the era of Brian Clough and Peter Taylor. And their distinctive genius lay in being able to take a bunch of apparent 'journeymen' players and find a balance in the team that tapped into unsuspected synergies. Individually, very few of their players looked like world-beaters, especially in the earlier days at Derby and Forest; but collectively their teams always managed to be far stronger than the sum of their component parts would suggest was possible. I worry that this knack - one of the great arts of football management - has now been largely lost. Most modern managers, rather than thinking, "How can I get the best out of these players?" seem to ask instead, "Which of these players can I change for someone else?" (Of course, Brian and Peter weren't spoiled by that 'luxury': in their day money was tight, and most clubs rarely made more than two or three transfers per year.)

Now, every season, we seem to see multiple examples of this change for change's sake, changes just because we can afford it. I am a huge fan of Cody Gakpo (he's been a mainstay of my international Fantasy teams in the last few tournaments); but was he really a necessary purchase for Liverpool? Is he really better than Luis Diaz? Well, it's invidious and futile to make direct comparisons between great players; they each have unique attributes, different strengths. But I think Diaz's tireless enthusiasm, his workrate in the press, and his willingness to hold the width when needed, rather than always look to drift into his preferred inside-forward space, meant that he was absolutely tailor-made for Klopp's Liverpool; and Slot's Liverpool have not so far been all that different in their style of attack. But they let Diaz go? I was very sad to see that. And now there's a danger that Gakpo himself might get forced back to the sidelines by the arrival of Ekitike and Isak...

I am a huge fan of Bryan Mbeumo and Mateus Cunha as well. But Manchester United really didn't need them. Amad Diallo and Bruno Fernandes are tailor-made for Ruben Amorim's 'joint 10s' roles, and had started to look very impressive in them last season. Admittedly, Mbeumo and Cunha could also play as a central forward - although neither of them really likes that, they both prefer to start out wide and drift into the inside-forward area (which is not really what the Amorim system is looking for....). Again, this seemed to be a case of just blindly throwing money at a 'problem', hoping that bringing in new super-talented players, glamorous big-name signings would be a magic cure-all for a broken tactical system.

Is Jeremie Frimpong a better right-back than Conor Bradley? NO - don't make me laugh. He's presumably been bought primarily for his attacking potential as a wing-back; but damn, Bradley isn't bad in the final third either. There might be some doubts about the young Irishman's experience or injury-proneness, but he looks plenty good enough to hold down the 'No. 1' spot in that position, and they could have looked for a back-up to him,... rather than relegating him to occasional-rotation limbo for however many more years.

Is Riccardo Calafiori better than Myles Lewis-Skelly? Well, maybe; but not by much. And surely the homegrown youngster deserves the chance to develop further, after making such an impressive debut last season? Admittedly, Calafiori was probably bought before Lewis-Skelly's potential was recognised, and when all their other left-backs seemed to be perpetually injured. But most Arsenal fans I know feel the start ought to be Myles's to lose, after last season, and that the Italian should be the back-up. Jakub Kiwior was quite hard done-by too; no, he's not a great player, but he had done a perfectly decent job of filling in whenever needed in both central defence and at left-back - he might not be stellar, but he was plenty good enough.

Is Rayan Ait-Nouri a better left-back than Nico O'Reilly? Well, yes - probably. But is he better enough to make a big difference? That I'm not so sure about. And like Lewis-Skelly, surely O'Reilly did well enough last season to deserve further opportunities in the role this year? I know a lot of City fans feel that way.

Is Gianluigi Donnarumma better than Stefan Ortega or Jamie Trafford? Well, yes, I suppose so - he's widely regarded as the best goalkeeper in the world. But is he so far their superior that he's bound to make a substantial difference to City's prospects in the Premier League? I don't think so. And it's the treatment of Stefan Ortega that really bothers me. The guy has waited patiently for his chance to be promoted to first choice for the last three years, and has been superb whenever he has been called upon. Now, when Ederson wants to leave, he suddenly suffers in rapid succession the double insult of first being replaced by a kid who still has a lot of rough edges on his game, and then by a 'big name' from the continent - who maybe isn't that much better than him. Loyalty matters. Loyalty matters ethically; but it also pays practical dividends. Fans want and expect to see loyalty to their club being recognised and rewarded. Players expect that too; and they respond very powerfully to it. If Ortega had been elevated to the starting place he deserved this season, he would have been the most emotionally engaged keeper in the league - super-passionate, super-revved-up for every single game. That additional level of motivation is worth far more than any slight marginal advantage in a few areas of the game that statistics may purport to reveal. And I wouldn't want to support a club or a manager who treated its players so direspectfully.

These days, it seems, everybody's playing 'Fantasy Football' - just splashing cash on the most eye-catching transfer options, the most glamorous names. But this 'Galacticos' approach rarely works out in practice. You don't need all the 'best' players to create a successful football team; you need the players who will work best together. And the stats still can't show you that.

Maths!!

Joe Devine narrates this interesting short - posted the other day on The Athletic magazine's Tifo sub-channel on Youtube - about why football is intrinsically much harder to analyse than almost all other sports.

The killer quote in the middle of it comes from Christofer Clemens, the Head Analyst of Die Mannschaft when they won the 2014 World Cup, who once noted ruefully: "We are increasingly convinced that there's a lack of data that provides real information about the things that make you successful in football..."  Even the World Cup winners didn't know how they'd done it!

The main point of the video is that a continuous sport like football is much harder to analyse effectively than one which is more broken up, divided into a series of discrete, short passages of play. In cricket or baseball, for example, there are only so many types of delivery that the bowler/pitcher can produce, and only so many ways that the batsman/batter can respond; and once the fielding side have dealt with whatever happens, the ball quickly becomes 'dead' - the game is paused while the fielding side reset and the bowler/pitcher prepares to deliver the next ball. In football, the ball becomes dead far less regularly, less often; and while some teams will try to eat time off the clock by putting the ball into touch as often as possible, it is common for sequences of uninterrupted play in a field game like football to go on for a minute or two.... and occasionally even for several minutes at a time. The possible patterns of play are thus almost infinitely complex. 

The video points out that there are a few games that are arguably even more continuous in their play: ice hockey, for example, allows for substitutions to be made without pausing the game. What it doesn't go into, however, is that these games tend to have fewer players and/or shorter playing periods - again making the challenge of analysis just that bit more manageable. Most field games have settled on 11 as the number of players; a few, such as rugby, have more - but again, they usually have rules which restrict the variety of play. In rugby, because the ball can only be passed by throwing, there is a fairly narrow practical limit on how far and how fast the ball can be moved with each pass; also, the ball cannot be passed forwards in that game. In football, almost any part of the body is able to be used for controlling and moving the ball, and passes in all directions are allowed, and it is possible to move the ball when struck with the foot a huge variety of different distances and at different speeds - and even to shape the trajectory of the ball by deliberately applying spin to it. This almost limitless range of potential movement for the ball also means that in football almost every player on the pitch can potentially receive the ball next, whereas in most similar sports there are generally only a very small number of likely receivers. (Stick-and-ball games like hockey have similar fluidity of off-the-ball movement, but are much more heavily biased towards passing the ball in a particular arc of the field.) Thus, even a relatively short passage of play, just 4 or 5 passes, can move the ball enormous distances and involve almost the entire team. There are few other games - probably NONE - which have anything like this level of variety and complexity in their potential patterns of play.

The video notes that as statistical analysis has become more thorough in recent years, it has started to prove useful in some areas - particularly in identifying the 'skills profile' of individual players, and deciding if they might be a good match for a given squad and style of play (Brighton's business model is founded on this, and they've become very, very good at it). Where it still falls down, and probably always will, is in assessing the effectiveness of tactical approaches, and determining how far they contribute to a team's overall success.

I would suggest that this is not just because it requires one to look at an entire game (or a whole series of them) rather than just individual game actions, and at the team as a whole rather than just an individual player - although obviously that is a massive (and insuperable) part of the problem. Surely, it's also that it's impossible to define with any precision or consistency what team tactice are. They change from minute-to-minute, as players seek to adapt to shifting circumstances on the field; they change as the manager makes in-game tweaks, or galvanises his team to greater efforts with a rousing half-time pep talk; they change with shifting game-states. They change from game to game, as a manager seeks to adapt to a particular opponent. They change from season to season, and even within the course of a season, as managers seek to stay fresh - and surprising to the opposition. And however clear and consistent the tactics may be in the manager's vision, how cohesively and consistently and effectively they are realised on pitch by the players can vary drastically from game to game.... and within a game, sometimes even from minute to minute. Plus, of course, the effectiveness of the chosen tactics always depends not only on how accurately the team impements them, but on the response of the opposition. 

In a fluid game, like football, with an almost unlimited range of possible movement, and long uninterrupted sequences of play.... any attempt to statisticallly analyse success or failure in terms of the overall team tactics is usually going to be doomed to failure. 

Caveat: Unless the tactics are really, really bad! If a team has a really obvious flaw, like Ten Hag's United having such a huge gap between their midfield and defence, because they don't have the pace in defence to mount a high defensive line, even though their high-pressing style really requires that - then, yes, you can see why a team is losing all the time, and the statistical data will expose that flaw too. But when you have two very good teams going up against each other, it's far more daunting to try to disentangle the impact of the tactics from the importance of individual moments of skill by the players. [Maybe Pep's tactics have never been that good, and he's just been saved over and over again by the brilliance of his teams...??]

I'd go further and say that I think you can usually determine the tactical basis of a result in indvidual games via the 'eye test' - watching closely, and analysing multiple different interacting factors at once. It's much harder, usually almost impossible, to reliably draw such conclusions from data alone. And disentangling the impact of 'tactics' - amid the web of other elements: form, fitness, confidence, refereeing decisions, the 'luck of the bounce', the quality of the opposition - in overall results over a run of games.... that, I think, is a very elusive - probably illusory - Grail to be chasing with statistical analysis.

Food for thought.

Why people are BAD at FPL....

Forgive me if I may sometimes use the second person - you - in the following remarks. I don't want readers to feel that my tone is accusatory, that they are perhaps being individually exposed to censure. I think what I'm about to say applies to all of us. It is only human nature to be prone to these foibles. All of us are vulnerable to them, all of us have fallen prey to these errors at some point... and most of us continue to do so from time to time. Even the most successful FPL managers are not immune to the occasional lapse. There is a need for constant self-vigilance in order to steer clear of these faults.

1)  Personal loyalties (and enmities) towards particular clubs

You have to check your emotions at the door when you play FPL. If you start favouring picks from clubs you like, and avoiding clubs you dislike (such as the main traditional rivals of the team you support), you're shooting yourself in the foot.

I have a friend who is such a rabid Spurs fan that he automatically picks the maximum three players from them, regardless of merit. And that's not enough for him; frustrated by the club limit of three picks, he also usually goes for as many ex-Spurs players as he can find (Walker, Trippier, Walker-Peters... Doherty?). And of course, he absolutely refuses to consider ever taking any players from Arsenal. Or Liverpool - he particularly hates them too! Heck, it's only recently that I've been able to cajole him into occasionally taking a player from City or Chelsea or Man Utd.  He doesn't do very well at this game...

Of course, that's an extreme example - but you get the idea.

2)  Personal affection for (or aversion to) individual players

In addition to prejudices for or against certain clubs, many of us also have strong feelings about certain players. It might be because of the way they play, or their personality or public persona; or it might be specifically because of the way they've performed for you in FPL in the past.  You can't afford to dismiss a player from consideration for FPL just because you have formed a strong negative opinion that they are 'dirty' or 'lucky' or 'inconsistent' or 'overrated' or whatever (or because you disapprove of their private life...),  nor let yourself be swayed into automatically picking them because your fundamental opinion of them is highly positive.

Moreover, a player's value - or lack of it - in FPL isn't only dependent on his basic form or ability, but on the global context of all the other players you're comparing him against in the current season. Whether he did well or badly last season is only a small part of that. It is not a good idea to pick, e.g., Salah, just because he's always done well for you in FPL in the past, or because you think he is in general terms 'a great player'; you need a stronger rationale for the selection than that. (He is a great player: but how do you justify choosing him at his price-point this year, in comparison to Haaland or Watkins, or Palmer or Foden, etc.? That's what you have to think about; and the context for a selection like this is different every year.)  Similarly, you can't afford to write a player off just because he's 'let you down' in the past.

You have to start afresh each season, and give everyone fair consideration.

3)  Not watching enough (or any?!) football

I am amazed - and appalled - by how many people I see on FPL forums who clearly don't watch very much of the actual Premier League, if any at all. They must approach FPL as a form of pure gambling. (It seems insane to me. I likened it recently to 'driving on the highway blindfolded...')

There really is no substitute for watching the games. Following gurus, seeking tips from other fans, scanning pages of stats - that may all help, but it's barely scratching the surface; and without the context of some personal knowledge of what's going on in which to ground it, it's really not very likely to do you all that much good.

You need to watch as much football coverage each week as possible (including cup ties and European games): ideally, as many full games as possible - live, and with good commentary and post-match analysis in your native language. [This is my principal handicap in the game: living in SE Asia, I often struggle to catch many full games; and when I do, it's almost always with Thai or Vietnamese commentary, which is incomprehensible to me.]

4)  Not understanding stats

People who think they understand stats, and gleefully pounce on one or two metrics to justify a decision they already wanted to make anyway, are usually worse off than those who don't bother with stats at all. You need to know which stats to look at, and understand what they're telling you.

I recall someone on a forum once insisting that a player in a major points drought had 'good underlying numbers' because he was still getting a lot of shots on goal. I had to point out that he was getting a lot fewer shots on goal than at the same stage the previous season, and that his shot conversion rate had fallen almost to zero - which didn't look like very good 'underlying numbers' to me. (When you hear someone drop the phrase 'good underlying numbers' to justify a recommendation, be on your guard; it's generally a sign that they're talking out of their arse.)

I don't use stats a great deal myself, as I think they're a poor substitute for watching game action closely (there are always some details of a player's or a team's performance that stats are going to fail to capture). The ones I chiefly recommend paying attention to when you're considering a new pick are the 'expected' number for goals, assists, or goals conceded, and how they compare to the player's actual performance. Also, although I have all sorts of gripes about its transparency and fairness, the game's BPS ratings are a pretty good guide to general form (not the bonus points allocations themselves, but the credits for various individual game actions which are used to calculate who should receive the bonuses in each game; you can find this number in the 'Player Info' charts).

And you need to consider the returns-per-game (whether that's points, saves, goals, or whatever), as well as - in preference to! - the returns over the whole season (you might have to work this out for yourself - ugh, maths.!)... because a lot of players didn't play the whole of last season.

5)  Being lazy in how you use information to choose picks

A lot of FPL managers make quick, impulsive selections, without giving the matter sufficient thought. But then - even worse - they often look at just one piece of information to justify a selection, and convince themselves that this makes the choice incontrovertibly right.

I mentioned the other day how many managers were picking Turner as a back-up goalkeeper this year probably only because he's first on the list of keepers in the 4.0 price category (he started some games last year; he won't this year). Similarly, a lot have gone for Flekken as their starter - because he's top of the list of 4.5 keepers (but only because he's the only one who didn't miss any games last season). If you make picks for such superficial reasons, you must expect to get punished for them.

6)  Superstition

Related to the earlier points about allowing emotions about a player or a club to affect your picks, many of us also get traumatised by past bad experiences (or unduly elated by good ones), whether in following a favourite team in the real EPL, or in our FPL efforts. If particular players, or particular game strategies ('Always use WildCard in GW8...  Always use Triple Captain in a Double Gameweek.... Always use Bench Boost in GW34.... etc., etc., etc.), have worked out particularly well, or badly for you, it's easy to become convinced that they must inevitably always work out the same way in the future. It ain't so: you have to try to rid yourself of that kind of mystical thinking.

7)  Being too 'reactive'

A lot of FPL managers - especially, but not only the less experienced ones - fall prey to the 'emotional rollercoaster' of immediate responses to the Gameweek's events, making impulsive choices to move a player out because of one bad performance,.... or move a player in because of one good one. Now, sometimes, of course, that will be a valid response to a situation. But you always have to look for an underlying trend - is there a reason why this player's 'form' suddenly appeared to change, and is that likely to continue, or might it just be a very short-term phenomenon or a one-off aberration?

This kind of hyper-reactvity plays into the next point as well....

8)  Falling in with the flock

Unfortunately, far too many FPL managers spend a lot of time exchanging their anxieties on online forums, or following the dubious advice of self-styled 'influencers', or.... treating the vapid content churned out by FPL's The Scout seriously....  And this tends to engender a 'collective mindset' - it can create a huge momentum towards buying certain players (and ditching others). All too often, alas, this is not a collective wisdom but a collective stupidity. (And even if the choices might be justified, their value is diminished by so many people going for them at once...)

Now, I will often counsel that you shouldn;t avoid a pick just because it has become very popular; but you certainly should not choose any player just because they're a popular pick.  It's fine to go along with the sheep so long as you've thought about the decision carefully for yourself and are confident there's a good reason for it - rather than just lazily assuming that the majority must know what they're doing (oh, dear me - NO!) or timorously seeking comfort in the idea of 'safety in numbers'. 

9)  Stubbornness

We all prefer being 'right' to being 'wrong'; we all like to think we're right all the time. And it can be very, very difficult to acknowledge the hard truth that this isn't so - to accept that we've made a mistake and need to backtrack on it.

Possibly the No. 1 most damaging mistake that FPL managers fall prey to is not making a very bad pick, but obstinately refusing to change that bad pick even when it's become very apparent how bad it is.

Though perhaps even more difficult is letting go of a good pick when it ceases to be a good pick....

There are probably a few more I could write on another time, but I think these are the main ones. I hope we can all avoid them as far as possible this season.  GOOD LUCK, EVERYONE!

More BAD PICKS (some slightly less obvious ones!)

Following on from yesterday's post about some of the most egregious 'BAD Picks' I see a lot of FPL managers making at the moment, I present a few more examples.... that may seem more surprising or controversial to a lot of people.

Now, yesterday's examples weren't bad players (well, apart from Turner and Flekken!); but they were very conspicuously poor picks for their position and price-point.

This is how ruthless FPL rquires you to be. You only get 2, 3 or 5 picks in each position category; and across each of those positions, you probably have a particular amount of budget in mind, a range of just one or two price-points, for each individual selection. So, you're not just looking for 'one of the best' players for a certain position; you're looking for absolutely THE BEST, in FPL points potential, in that position, at that price-point - for every slot in your squad. (But you also have to consider filling each valuable squad slot not just in isolation, but in the global context of how many players you can take from each club, and how much more bang-for-your-buck you might get from taking a same-position player from another club, or perhaps a different-position player from the same club, or.... The combinations of factors you have to juggle are daunting.)

In order to achieve that, you have to look beyond merely superficial appeal (so many people are clearly just picking whoever happens to have scored the most points last season in each price/position category; that's so lazy - and deserves to be punished!).  You need to look deeper into the stats. 

In particular, you need to work out returns-per-game, not just look at the whole season numbers (a lot of players didn't play the whole season). It's also valuable to review the xG ('expected' goals), or xGC ('expected' goals conceded) for defenders and keepers, and to look at whether those numbers are lower or higher than the actual numbers of goals scored or conceded; this 'delta' factor (the difference between 'expected' and actual performance) is a key indicator of whether a player has been doing a good job.

You also need to try to recall the story of the season as a whole. Did a player play the whole season? Was he consistent across the whole season, or did he have peaks and troughs in form? Did he, overall, improve or decline across the course of the season? How did most of his points come about? What changes in tactics or personnel at the club contributed to his differing returns?  (If you don't watch much football, or can't remember, you should read up on some old match reports, or season summaries for the leading clubs - most clubs put out their own, and there are some good ones on Wikipedia too. And there are some good tactical analysts on Youtube who sometimes put together reviews of the season to explain how a top club achieved success. Adam Clery of FourFourTwo magazine had a particularly good one on Arsenal's so-near-and-yet-so-far-away season a couple of months ago.)

So, here are 5 players who look like very good picks - but AREN'T... for perhaps slightly non-obvious reasons.

Raya

Reason:  Arsenal were way ahead of the pack on clean sheets last season, and Raya conceded fewer goals than any other regular keeper. And he ended the season as the second-ranked FPL goalkeeper.

Yes, but... he was only a negligible amount ahead of Leno and Onana, and miles behind Pickford; so, not very convincingly one of the top few goalkeeper picks for FPL. (Onana, bouncing back after a dreadful start, looked the much better prospect in the latter stages of the season. And Leno has been consistently at the top end of the FPL goalkeeper rankings during his two seasons with Fulham.)

Moreover, his 24 goals conceded was actually slightly above his xGC - which suggests he is prone to the occasional lapse.

And he has a similar problem to Ederson at City over the last few seasons: the rest of the team dominates games so much, is so good defensively, that he rarely gets an opportunity to make a save. And saves - and the bonus points which can come from them when the keeper has a busy game - tend to be worth more than clean sheet points (that's why so many keepers from clubs at the lower end of the table manage to return decent FPL scores). His 'saves' total for the season of 46 was way the lowest of any keeper - barely a third of what Sa, Leno, Areola and Onana posted. And he managed a puny 6 Bonus Points for the entire season - compared to 15 for Leno and 22 for Pickford.

So, if you ponder the stats for a moment, Raya - despite his huge clean sheet potential - just isn't one of the more attractive goalkeeper options.

But that's NOT the reason you shouldn't have him in your squad. The key reason is the differential advantage offered by other Arsenal players. Raya probably won't be the top-scoring keeper this season; and even if he is, he won't significantly outscore a raft of other goalkeepers who cost 0.5 or 1.0 million less. But last year, White, Saliba, and Gabriel massively outscored every other defender; and they almost certainly will do so again.

So, you probably want at least 1, more likely 2 players from the Arsenal defence. You also probably want 1 of their very potent attacking midfielders, Odegaard or Saka. You might even fancy Declan Rice as a more budget option for your 5th midfield spot. And you might also be interested in Gyokeres up front, if that transfer comes off. Or you might just want to keep one of your three Arsenal slots open for another player who might get a run of starts and hit some rich scoring form for a spell - Martinelli or Trossard or Havertz or Jesus, perhaps.

David Raya might be a 'Top 5' goalkeeper option -  but he's not a 'Top 5' pick from Arsenal.

If you don't consider the full range of relevant goalkeeper stats (saves, bonus points, and delta xGC) - you'll make bad choices. If you don't pay attention to the relative value that other players in other positions at the same club offer - you'll make bad choices.

Saliba

Reason:  He's the best defender in the League. And Arsenal were way the best defence in the League last year (miles ahead on clean sheets), and are almost certain to be so again.

Absolutely. But.... being 'the best' in your position in real life means very little for your value in FPL 

All members of the Arsenal defence get the same 4-pt bonus for the many, many clean sheets William Saliba helps them to earn; but they all offer more than him in the potential for further points. Gabriel presents a more consistent threat at attacking set-pieces (it's a fairly marginal advantage, and might not always translate to an actual points lift; but it is worth paying attention to); and Ben White, when he pushes forward to link up with Saka, provides a regular possibility of assists and even a few goals over the season. Calafiori - if he starts immediately, if he beds in well and lives up to his potential - should also become a major attacking force down the other flank this season, and could conceivably even out-score White.

(Also, there might be just a little bit of a worry about Saliba's physical resilience, because he did end up missing about a third of his debut season at The Emirates - with what had initially seemed to be a fairly innocuous back strain.)

So, paradoxical as it might seem, while Saliba is, by common consent, the best defender at Arsenal, he's the worst defender pick from Arsenal for FPL.

The exact same thing happened last year. Almost everyone went for Saliba, rather than White and Gabriel, at the start of the season. And the season started weirdly: Gabriel mysteriously out of favour and dropped for a few games, White moved back into central defence (where he's much less productive in FPL terms),... and then Saliba nabbing a couple of - extremely untypical - headed goals. So, the sheep who'd gone for Saliba because everyone else had gone for Saliba, felt smugly vindicated: Saliba was miles ahead of those other two after the opening handful of games. And his owners then felt it wasn't worth using a transfer to switch to one of his rivals later on, even when that started to change. But once things had settled down at Arsenal, Saliba's two clubmates did indeed outscore him during the remaining portion of the season, Gabriel fairly narrowly, but White very substantially. Saliba wasn't the best pick from the Arsenal defence last year either.

Ben White costs 0.5 million more than Saliba this year. Last year, despite missing a few starts at right-back, and having a fairly subdued opening phase to the season, he still ended up with nearly 20 pts more than him. And Saliba might not get on the scoresheet again this season so,.... there's a strong chance that White's advantage over him this year could be in the 30-50 pts range (and Calafiori's haul perhaps similar!). You look to earn, ideally, around 30 or so points for every million spent on your starting 11 (realistically, a little less than that for defenders); and there aren't actually many differential picks where you find that kind of potential advantage for an extra half-million or million spent. But Ben White is absolutely worth the extra half-million he costs this year - if you can afford it; he will almost certainly score quite a lot more points than Gabriel or Saliba.

If you focus on real world status rather than Fantasy points value - you'll make bad choices. If you don't properly consider the rival choices in the same position at the same club - you'll make bad choices.

Gvardiol

Reason:  He scored 4 goals in a handful of games at the end of last season!

Yes - but, as I remarked somewhere on this blog just a few days ago, when defenders score a few goals in quick succession, it's almost always a fleeting streak, not an emerging trend. A lot of the FPL managers piling in for Gvardiol are absolutely expecting this to to be a consistent trend, they think he's going to be rivalling Haaland's scoring figures. That won't happen. He might well not score a goal all season.  [We see the same thing, a little less strongly, with the popularity of Pedro Porro this season (see below). And we saw it with Pervis Estupinan, one of the great 'sheep picks' from the start of last season, who had likewise bagged a couple of spectacular - but extremely untypical (I don't think he'd ever scored in his career before; other than from the penalty spot for Ecuador) - goals towards the end of the previous campaign.... Remember how that worked out?]

He is primarily a central defender, and is likely to be used there rather than at left-back at least some of the time. And when he does play at left-back, it's extremely unlikely that the ultra-conservative Pep is going to sanction him playing in such a marauding style very often. (And if he does, it's likely that opponents will be much more alert to the danger now, and will try to make sure they don't allow him time and space with the ball around the edge of their penalty area.)  The prospects of him repeating last season's goal-spurt are, alas, very, very slim.

There's such squad depth in the defensive positions at City that no-one is likely to start every game. Despite his outstanding form at the end of last season, Gvardiol is not even a guaranteed starter for the beginning of this season - and he certainly won't be an invariable starter for the whole campaign. 6.0 million is a lot to pay for someone who might only get 25-30 starts. (And City haven't even been keeping that many clean sheets over the past season or two!)

Gvardiol, again, is not an outright terrible choice: he's obviously one of the strongest defensive options for the year. But he is a very extravagant choice, a profligate use of funds. There is little need to take any of the defenders priced at 6.0 million or more; and if you do, there are probably better picks at the premium price level than Gvardiol.

If you think 'black swan' events will start happening every week - you'll make bad choices. If you ignore the reality of 'Pep Roulette' - you'll make bad choices.

Porro

Reason:  He got 3 goals and 7 assists last season

Indeed he did. And he is a very talented player, with some good potential for attacking returns. However, it's probably wildly over-optimistic to think that he might equal or better last season's tally - because he doesn't play that high up the pitch most of the time. The majority of those attacking contributions came in a handful of games, where he was playing as a very advanced wingback... because all of the right-sided creative mdfielders were out with injury.

And Spurs have a pretty terrible defensive record. With Postecoglou insisting on a suicidally high line, and a keeper who's very flakey and ridiculously easy to bully at set-pieces, they are always likely to leak a lot of goals. Moreover, the BPS tweak this year, with defenders and keepers now being more heavily penalised for conceding a goal, means that Spurs defenders are much less likely to pick up many bonus points in games in which they don't keep a clean sheet. Thus, even if Porro does get some good attacking points over the year, he's still fairly unlikely to get near his last season's points total again.

Porro's not a terrible pick; but he is a bit of a 'sheep pick' - and that collective enthusiasm for him derives from unrealistic expectations. With so many very strong defensive options this year priced at only 4.5 and 5.0 million, it's very difficult to justify paying 5.5 million for someone with such doubtful clean-sheet potential.

If you allow yourself to be swayed by headline numbers, without looking at the pattern of the whole season - you'll make bad choices. If you go along with the sheep too easily - you'll make bad choices.

Gakpo

Reason:  He always impresses for the Netherlands; he was brilliant at the Euros.

Indeed, he's been great for the Dutch in the last three big tournaments. But club and country are completely different worlds. For the national team, he enjoys the confidence of being a guaranteed starter in his favoured position down the left side of attack; and, in the absence of an established central goalscorer, he's been free to cut inside as much as he likes... and take on the mantle of being the team's primary goal-threat. He'd love to be able to play like that at Liverpool as well - but it ain't going to happen.

Gakpo's never really staked his claim at Anfield yet. Diaz (and Jota, when fit; and now maybe Carvalho too) has clearly been claiming priority on the left side of 'the trident', and both he and Jota can also usefully fill in through the middle, when Nunez is missing the sticks too often. Yes, Gakpo can play deeper in midfield as well, though that's not the best use of his talents; and there's probably even more competition for places there. 

He's more of a support player than an outright stiker anyway, so not a super-prolific source of goals. And it's difficult to see how he's ever going to become more than a handy utility player at Liverpool. There are so many forward options 1-2 million pounds cheaper who are primary goalscorers for their club and start every week.

If you let yourself be dazzled by someone's 'potential' rather than their likely prospects at their club - you'll make bad choices. If you get too impressed by someone's international form - you'll make bad choices.

How many of these guys do you have?  Maybe you should think about switching them out....

Not that any of these guys are dreadful picks, of course. They're all excellent players, and they will all very probably return very strong results in FPL this year. People who own them probably won't feel much remorse. But the objections I've raised above are mainly based on the context of the overall selection: to me, they look severely non-optimal when compared to other players you might pick instead - whether that's in their position category, their price category, or just across the range of choices at their club.

I'll try to remember to return to these guys a few times over the season to check how they're doing.