GW1 - What did we learn?

 

Refereeing standards are still leaving a little to be desired - with two players sent off somewhat harshly, but two others unfathomably being allowed to stay on the pitch, a few contentious penalty decisions (Chelsea surely should have had two?!), Anthony Taylor somehow forgetting he had a yellow card in his pocket for most of the game.... and then that monumental cock-up by debutant Sam Barrott over the Eze free-kick.

And while it is refreshing to see the role of VAR being heavily trimmed back this year (the more sane approach to interpreting the Handball Law is a great relief), it looks as though things might have swung too far in the opposite direction, with the VAR officials now appearing to be reluctant to intervene for anything (only one pitchside review suggested to a ref all weekend??). There was a serious lack of clarity and consistency over the last couple of years about when the VAR team could apparently make a call on their own, and when they should direct the on-pitch ref to take a second look at something. And there was an unfortunate element of bias that intruded, with the threshold for recommending an on-pitch review being perceived to be so high that referees were condidtioned to presume that they must have made an error and were oblighed to change their initial call; very, very few ever had the courage to stick to their guns and reafform their original decision in that cirumstance. But those problems could have been ironed out with clearer protocols, and better training for the men in the VAR room and the on-pitch team, so that an on-pitch review could always be seen as a 50-50 call.  Now, alas, it seems that VAR has all but disappeared; we're probably only going to hear from them when the referee has clearly missed an incident altogether (and perhaps not even then some of the time, because they're so damned nervous about drawing more flak from managers and pundits....).  I would hazard a guess that all of this is going to mean considerably fewer penalties this season than last.

City are immediately looking very good; and one wonders if Kovacic and Lewis might have played their way into a more regular role with the team this year, after their hugely impressive opening-day performances.  And as I predicted a week or two ago, Gvardiol played well - but came nowhere near even having opportunities to attempt an attacking contribution. (Managers who bought him this year thinking he was going to be a goal-machine are going to be sorely disillusioned.)

Liverpool also look threatening, with Salah - as usual - quick out of the blocks.  But.... that midfield doesn't work for me. If Endo doesn't impress Slot, I think they desperately need to buy a proper holding midfielder in this window (what happened to that Zubimendi deal?), rather than trying to get by with Gravenberch, Macallister, Jones.  And I also worry about whether Darwin Nunez will work in this system, after (as, alas, seems inevitable eventually, and very possibly after just a handful of games...) Diogo Jota gets injured again. Trent Alexander-Arnold is looking very comfortable under the new manager - but I'm still not convinced that he can justify a 7 million price-tag, when there is significant budget pressure this year from the high prices set on Haaland and Salah (and Palmer and Saka), and on the Arsenal defence.

Lots of positives for Chelsea; Palmer starting well, even if he couldn't get on the scoresheet, and Jackson also looking very sharp (his movement was much better than last year, and he also showed some great passing ability; he still needs to get better at keeping onside though - it was a fairly tight call against his goal, but he was definitely culpable on that one: he wasn't making a quick run in behind, but just standing and waiting for something to happen, looking along the back-line - he should have known that his leading foot was several inches nearer the byline than any of the defenders'...). I found it a bit baffling that Enzo was made captain, though. And I wonder if he will continue to be an invariable starter, since his position is the one most likely to be filled by Dewsbury-Hall, who Maresca obviously rates very hightly. (Surely there must now also be doubts about the future at the club of James, Chilwell, Mudryk.... as well as the publicly disgruntled Sterling.)  And dear me, why is Sanchez starting? They have better options in the squad already.  Maresca prioritises ability on the ball; but Sanchez's shortcomings in that area were why he got dropped from Brighton two years ago; and he has been regularly dreadful at this throughout pre-season, and again on Saturday. Even his sthot-stopping might be a little in question, with him failing to get anywhere near Kovacic's accurate but not particularly venomous drive late in the game...  I find this a very confusing selection.

Arsenal, as I remarked the other day, already look quite terrifying - although there will still be questions about their squad depth if they don't manage to bring in two or three more players before the deadline. At the moment, their overall solidity rests very heavily on the form and fitness of Thomas Partey; so long as he's starting in the 'hole' for them, I think they're likely to be pretty unstoppable.  But.... it did look as if Saka had twisted his knee quite badly, as he did a swift half-turn to crack off a shot from just outside the box early on; and he again looked to be walking very stiffly when he was subbed off late in the game. That looks very like a cartilage problem to me (I've had them myself); I hope not - but that would be a very big loss for them if he gets ruled out for two or three months.

Pretty positive start for Man Utd also, with Mazraoui and Zirkzee looking like they might be two of the best signings of this summer. And if De Ligt helps shore up the centre of defence... I wouldn't bet against Onana being the top FPL keeper this year.

Newcastle obviously have problems at the back at the moment, with Botman and Lascelles still long-term injuries, and Trippier seemingly poised to depart. But the return of Pope is welcome, and Livramento and Hall looked quite bright as the new full-back pairing. Howe's men would surely have prevailed far more comfortably but for that ridiculous sending-off. (I hope they'll be able to get that overturned on appeal, or at least get the suspension reduced - because whatever that was, it wasn't 'violent conduct'. Being without Schar for a month might be calamitous for them.)

Villa weren't quite on it straight away, although there were a few encouraging signs from Rogers and Bailey; and Onana looks like he'll be a valuable acquisition, toughening up their midfield, and giving them an additional goal-threat at set pieces.

Bit of a disappointing start for Palace, and if Mateta's knock might keep him out for a while, that could be a heavy blow. However, if they don't get any more of their major players poached in this window, I think they should be able to continue their momentum from the end of last season and mount a decent charge to get in the European places this year. The result here would probably have been very different if that free-kick had been allowed to stand. (They should surely at least have been allowed to re-take it...) 

A very encouraging opening performance from Fabian Hurzeler's Brighton too - although I wouldn't get too carried away just yet. They still have some of their injury problems lingering on from last year, and struggle to find a best eleven or a good overall balance from such a bloated squad. They lack steel in the middle of the park, having still not found decent replacements for Caicedo and Macallister (and now losing Gross too?). And their impact on Saturday relied heavily on the form of Danny Welbeck - who, unfortunately, can't be expected to stay fit for very long. So.... I think they might again have a bit of a yo-yo year, and will be lucky to finish above 10th.

Brentford progressd the ball very impressively, and didn't look like they will miss Toney (much overrated, in my book, anyway) up front. However, they still have a lot of injury problems, especially at the back; so, keeping well clear of the relegation end of things is probably the summit of their ambitions at the moment. And they need a better keeper: Flekken pulled off a couple of very good saves, but in several other instances looked extremely flakey - nearly giving away a goal with a sloppy pass out early on, and then being caught sleeping by that Eze free-kick (surely an instance where a two-man wall was essential?).

Wolves, I suppose, must hope that Sarabia can find more consistency and provide a decent alternative to the departed Neto. But Kilman is also a big miss at the back, and their usually very solid defence was floundering a bit this weekend. Hwang and Cunha (injured already??) aren't quite firing yet either. I suspect that they, along with West Ham, Brentford, Fulham, and Brighton should be able to establish themselves safely in lower mid-table, but not have the strength-in-depth to push any higher.

Everton look like they might be in all sorts of trouble: they still can't score to save their lives, while the departure of Onana looks like it's going to leave them very vulnerable in the middle. And if they lose Branthwaite, last year's defensive solidity - a bit of a fluke to some extent, anyway - is likely to evaporate. I don't think I'd be betting on Pickford as an FPL keeper again this year: he always does pretty well for saves, but I can't see last year's huge haul of clean sheets being repeated. And they might well spend most of the season deep in the relegation mire again, even without a points deduction.

Bournemouth are inevitably going to struggle without Solanke; but I think I trust Iraola to patch things up and get them playing pretty solidly; but again, they're going to be in the mid-table scrap, not challenging for Europe, I don't think.

Forest, I suspect, will sometimes look quite daunting at home, thanks to the ferocious atmosphere generated by their fans; and they will be intermittently dangerous in attack, with the talent of Gibbs-White, Hudson-Odoi and Elanga and Wood/Awoniyi at their disposal. But I don't think that will be enough, if they can't start defending better. They've really looked like they deserved to go back down the last two seasons, and I suspect this year they will.  (Sorry, Forest fans.)

The promoted sides so far have looked a huge improvement over last year's crop: both Ipswich and Southampton were well-organised, worked very hard, and showed some threat on the counter-attack - though we've not yet seen any evidence of their finishing ability. And I wonder if they might be 'peaking too early' - pulling out all the stops for their challenging early fixtures, only to wilt in subsequent games rather than find continued improvement...

I haven't seen Leicester play yet, but my guess is that Ipswich will prove to be the best of the three new sides (though perhaps only narrowly), Unfortunately for them, few of the established teams in the division really look all that vulnerable - apart from, at the moment, Everton and Forest... and maybe Wolves or Bournemouth. If I were going to place an early bet on the relegation battle, I'd take Ipswich to displace Forest, and the other two to go straight back down. (Sorry, Leicester and Southampton fans.)

POSTSCRIPT:  It was difficult to tell much from very brief highlights of the Spurs v Leicester game. I have serious doubts about Steve Cooper's competence at Premier League level, so Leicester would probably be my favourites for relegation, unfortunately. However, they seemed to at least defend very resolutely, and were occasionally dangerous going forward (Vardy might become a top pick for the cheap third striker spot?). Spurs aren't fully clicking as yet: Solanke will take a few weeks to find his feet there; and Son seems to have failed to have an impact (literally did not feature in the clips I saw at all; I had to check a match report to find out if he had been on the pitch!). And the way the defence left Vardy completely unmarked on the edge of the six-yard box for several seconds was.... a worry.

What's LUCK got to do with it? (2)

 

A few days ago, I itemised the major ways in which LUCK manifests itself in our game, defining the concept as 'positive or negative points swings arising from entirely unpredictable events'.

I pointed out that I believe LUCK plays a huge role in Fantasy Premier League (probably far larger than most participants would like to admit).

In this follow-up, I want to go over the relationship between skill and luck in the game, and how they appear to be distributed across the community of FPL players.

The Scope of LUCK

So, how much is whatever success we achieve in the game down to luck, and how much can be credited to skill?

Three observations are relevant here:

i)    Most players 'plateau' after a certain number of years playing the game: they improve little by little, year on year at first; but then they reach a consistent level. You would expect luck to be completely random; it shouldn't grow steadily for a while, and then suddenly become stable. So, I believe this early development trajectory that almost all FPL managers (the better ones, anyway!) exhibit is a fairly accurate indicator of their level of skill.

ii)   After players have reached this plateau, their variance over the years usually remains fairly small, their scores almost never straying up or down from their average by more than 150 or 200 points, and in many cases by much less than 100 points. Those year to year differences might be accounted for by fluctuations in the total points produced in a season (some years are significantly richer than others: the global average scores are usually a pretty good guide to this - unfortunately, FPL doesn't aggregate the weekly averages into an annual total for us, but you can add it up for yourselves), they might be caused by small variations in a player's skill (or, more probably, in the amount of effort and attention they put in), or they might be mostly down to variations within the normal range of 'average' luck.

iii)  People's best-ever scores are often 200-300 points above their typical average 'plateau' score.... or even above their previous best score. This suggests that the range of variation for 'above average' luck is ± 300 points per season. (And the range of possible variation for 'exceptional luck' may be far greater still....)

My feeling is that one's points return (as a proportion of whatever the 'global average' for a given season may be) probably varies little or not at all for reasons of skill - once we've learned our way around the game. 

Once we've allowed for those annual shifts in the 'points available', our individual annual totals - deriving from skill - will tend to be extremely stable. But they will often vary - sometimes quite substantially - for want of attention to the game. All sorts of life circumstances may occeasionally prevent us from devoting much time to football. (This is my main handicap. I live in an adverse timezone, with poor local TV coverage; and I travel a lot. Watching live games is difficult for me; sometimes. even catching up with highlights shows is impossible. And when I'm on the road, I occasionally even miss a weekly deadline to update my team.)

If we factor in those two constraints, that it may have been an unusually high-scoring or low-scoring season, and that we may have knowingly made some missteps through not always being able to focus on the game enough....  the variation from one year to another will be very, very small; perhaps ZERO.

Or.... it would be, but for LUCK. And we see so many people's scores - good, consistent manager's scores - regularly swinging up and down by 50 or 100 points or more each season, I think this must be inescapable evidence of luck operating at its mildest level.

For most people, most of the time, their luck in the game is going to be pretty 'average'. And if they do get a few weeks of spectacularly good luck, these will, most of the time, be more or less balanced out by a few weeks of spectacularly bad luck: the net PLUS or MINUS contribution of luck over the season won't be that great... most of the time. But in a small proportion of cases, it can be much bigger; it can occasionally be HUGE.

How much are results attributable to skill alone?

If the above analysis is correct, we ought to be able to get a fairly good sense of most people's general skill level from finding their average 'plateau' score - once their performance has appeared to be fairly stable for at least 5 years.

From randomly scanning the top few 10s and 100s of thousands quite extensively over the last 5 years or so, I have inferred that the peak skill level possible probably corresponds to an annual points total of around 2,400 (a little above or a little below, depending on those inevitable wobbles in 'available points' from year to year).

And across the board, for all skill levels there will be an identifiable corresponding points score (if we can filter out those two distorting variables of up-and-down Premier League performance and sheer luck). 

And I would imagine (although this is not provable; at least not without an awful lot of data-crunching, which is not possible for me) that there are probably rather more 'unskilled' than 'skilled' players in the game. Well, I think that's bound to be true, simply because there are such large numbers of debutants entering the game every year. But even among moderately experienced players, there seem to be an awful lot who obviously don't have much idea what they're doing. I think we'll probably see that something more than half of FPL managers are at least slightly 'below average' in their skill level. So, if we represent that with a distribution curve, we won't see a nice symmetrical 'bell' shape as in the typical illustrative 'normal' distribution...

No, the curve for FPL skill distribution will have its hump displaced a little to the left of its median point.

Moreover, there is a limit to how bad you can be (unless you're deliberately trying to achieve a low score rather than a high one; there are some dingbats like that out there...), and it's substantially more than a zero points score. So, the left side of the curve will drop off quite steeply, and won't approach zero.

The right side of the curve, however,.... well, that might be a little contentious. My hunch is that it's likely to be a little more extended than the left side; but there is still a hard limit (even if we can't see it), and while the drop-off will be less steep, I don't think it will be very tapered; there are limits to how much you can know about the game and how sharp your judgements can be. I don't believe there is a rare, 'superhuman' level of FPL skill found only in a handful of players. (If there were, we'd see those players consistently maintaining an average score above 2,500 or 2,600... but we don't find people like that.)

The skill curve for FPL probably looks something like this...

What about a curve showing the distribution of luck?

Well, in a fair world, we'd like to think that it would look pretty much like our first example: the nice neat 'bell curve', showing an equal amount of good and bad fortune.

Alas, no: I don't think so. Call me a pessimist or an embittered man (fair enough...), but the subjective experience of luck in the game for most of us certainly seems like there's much more BAD than GOOD. 

Now, probably to a large extent this is a misperception arising from cognitive biases. We want to take credit for the good things that happen in the game, so we convince ourselves that we foresaw those and deserved them and they weren't really lucky at all; whereas we bitterly resent every setback, and tend to overexaggerate its impact.

Nevertheless, I think there may in fact be at least a little bit of a skew towards the less-than-average side of the median here too. And, as with the skill curve, there's definitely a lower limit which will compress the tail-off on the left side of the graph. (It might be just about theoretically possible to score less than zero in one gameweek [though I doubt if anyone has actually suffered that]; but not for a whole season!)

Thus, I contend that our luck curve probably looks fairly similar to our skill curve - with the hump displaced slightly to the left; the tail-off on that side greatly compressed, more gently sloping on the right.

On the right side of the luck curve, however, there is no obvious limit. In practical terms, clearly there must be one; it can't tend towards infinity, because there is a limited pool of points available in the game and thus a maximum possible score.... if you were perfectly lucky all season (and I'm fairly sure we're never going to see anyone get anywhere near that limit). [This, by the way, was one of the main reasons why I chose to discuss 'luck' and 'skill' in correlation to actual points scores. If we used a more subjective measure of defining 'luck', such as fairness/unfairness, the curve could stretch to infinity in both directions!]

Our luck curve, then, won't have exactly the same profile as the skill curve: its shape on the left side might be a little less squashed; and on the right side, I think it's going to be much more spread out, with a gently descending slope.... and a very, very long thin tail.

Our point on the skill curve is what we're really interested in: we want to feel validated - we want to know how good we are, how much we deserve our points and ranking success.

But that pesky element of luck interacts with the skill curve, adding or taking away points if we've been more or less lucky than 'average'.  And we don't simply overlay those curves on each other matching at the median; the median of the luck curve has to slide along the skill curve so that we can see how much impact luck might have at any given skill level.

This is why it doesn't really matter that much if the skill curve has a long thin tail on the right or not. The fact is that, whatever the exact shape of the curve, there are going to be such small numbers of people at the highest skill levels that it is vanishingly unlikely that any of them will ever enjoy super-high levels of luck.

It becomes more and more likely that we will see examples of 'well above average' luck... and 'extraordinary luck'.... and 'super-colossal' luck the further back up towards the centre of the skill curve we go.  

And this effect continues on and on,  beyond the centre of the curve into the 'below average' and 'poor' zones of the skill distribution. It is here that that long thin right-tail to the luck curve might make itself most vexingly felt: some really quite bad players, maybe not many but some, can potentially reach the uppermost levels of the global ranking just by having outrageous luck.

That means that you're going to find the highest concentration of 'very skillful' players in the global rankings around about the 2,400 points mark, and perhaps 100 points either side of that; and such players are going to become increasingly rarer as you move up through that last 200-300 points towards the global champion. I suspect they'll be in a minority above 2,500 or maybe even 2,450; and certainly starting to get pretty thin on the ground much above 2,600. (And that's in a 'normal' year. As I pointed out in my earlier post on this topic, last year was a year of so many freak events that the impact of luck was much greater than usual. And so the proportion of quite average, or even below-average players in the top half million, and especially in the top 100,000, was extraordinarily high.)

I'm not saying that the global champion from last year - or any year - is no good; or that the top 100, 1,000, 5,000 or whatever are no good. But it is possible - likely, even - that a majority of people at those upper levels are not the most skillful, but are just 'quite good' or 'average' or perhaps even 'a bit below average' players who happened to get very, very lucky that year. And no-one can reach that kind of eminence without enjoying way above-average luck over the season.

But wait - it's actually even worse than that. I would suggest that the more skillful you are in the game, the less likely you are to benefit from good luck.

Hear me out. If you're skillful, you make only good choices. If good choices produce good results, that's not entirely lucky; you anticipated and deserved some of that points haul. (Less skillful players might have made the same pick on impulse, or following someone else's recommendation, without realising how good a choice it was - or not understanding why it was. For them, the benefits were a pure windfall, 100% luck!)  But if, on the other hand, good choices produce bad results (as they all too often do), that's really very bad luck.

By being good at the game, you're necessarily setting yourself up to experience more bad luck, and less good luck. 

And the converse is true of the weaker players. Luck tends to have its biggest impacts with really bad choices that unexpectedly come good. (I'm not suggesting that anyone should make deliberately 'bad' choices in the hope of achieving some lucky breaks. But... there is maybe a case for being a bit more of a risk-taker, if you hope ever to reach those higher reaches of the rankings.)

Sure, yes, this is just a thesis. I don't have the data resources to prove it. And so much of it is subjective or definition-dependent, I think it's essentially unprovable. But it is a compelling idea - carefully thought-out, and, I hope, persuasive....

The hard news for FPL enthusiasts (who almost all want desperately to believe that their 'success' is entirely deserved, derives solely from their shrewd judgement) is this: 

The game rankings are not a  pure meritocracy - they depend far more on luck than anything else. You can achieve good points and rankings by being lucky without being very skillful at all; but you can't achieve good points and rankings by being skillful if you're not also - at least a bit - lucky.

It begins....

The new season gets under way this evening - with an 8pm kick-off (UK time) at Old Trafford between Manchester United and Fulham.

Even with the Euros over the summer, it feels like years since we last had any football!  I can't wait for things to get started again....

It's probably a bit late now, but I will throw in one last plug for my bizarre side-project in Fantasy Premier League this year, the THRIFTY LEAGUE - where you have to limit your budget to 80 million (initially; thereafter, you have to ensure that at least 20 million of whatever budget you have is always left unused).  Anyone can sign up to it with the code:  tgombg

BEST OF LUCK FOR THIS NEW FANTASY SEASON, EVERYONE!!!

What did we learn from pre-season?

 

A big fat ZERO, basically....   (So, for once, this is only going to be a short post!)

The pre-season friendlies are always a rather dubious guide to form, selection, or even tactics, because managers are often using them more as a PR exercise (especially on overseas tours), or just as an opportunity to try out a few youngsters, rather than to do some serious workshopping on ideas for the season ahead.

But this year, there have been such generous extra rest periods bestowed on everyone who was involved in the Euros or the Copa America (even those who were only shining the bench with their buttocks), that a majority of the leading players have only got token minutes, if any at all, in this year's games - rendering them completely useless as any sort of form guide for the opening weekend.

Past experience should have taught us not to get over-excited about pre-season performances, and yet... many people still do.  In recent years, it seems, in fact, to have become something of a curse, with so many of the outstanding players in the warm-up games then succumbing to major injuries on the eve of the season. Mainoo and Chukwuemeka were sensational last year, but....  This year, poor Oscar Bobb is the latest victim. Let's hope there aren't any more.

The other headline-grabbing displays this year have come from Jacob Murphy, Yankuba Minteh, and Morgan Rogers. But it would be a rash punt for FPL to splash cash on any of those, when they're still far from being sure of a start.... and certainly not a regular start. 

Minteh wasn't wanted by Newcastle last season (wasn't even recalled from loan in the depths of their injury crisis), so I'm not convinced that he can be ready for an automatic start in the Premier League yet. And Brighton, anyway, are geared towards making money from developing promising young players, and have to rotate a lot among a bloated squad; even if he were to assert himself as the first choice, he probably wouldn't start every week - especially when he's competing with the likes of Adingra, March (when he's fit again), and their new Croatian acquisition Gruda. Rogers, likewise, might get a few starts early on - but it's difficult to see him holding his place against the likes of Bailey, and the soon-to-return Buendia. Jacob Murphy is probably the strongest bet for the start of the season; but the poor lad has been very injury prone, and Barnes or Almiron might well be preferred in the attacking role on the right flank. 

So - sorry, I think I'll pass on all those. (For the first week or two, at least!)

The only team who did show us something worthwhile in pre-season, I think, were Arsenal. (Well, OK, Liverpool too...  And arguably Chelsea;:at least we saw the system Maresca wants to try to implement, but probably not with all the players he's actually going to use. And so far, it's not working.)  They actually played something like their proper starting eleven in most of the friendlies. And the message that sent out to the rest of the League was: Be afraid; be very afraid.  They're still showing their need of an outright striker, but they're getting more and more fluent, and developing some new attacking ideas; and generally, they're so much more stable and balanced with Partey available to take the holding role in central midfield. (Declan Rice might just be the best value midfield pick from them now, over Odegaard and Saka.....)

Fantasy Football Hub had the best round-up of the pre-season games I could find this year.

They also have a pretty good listing of this summer's transfer activity so far.  [I used to like the Fantasy Football Scout website for that; but their updates haven't been so prompt or helpful over the past couple of years. I've got a nasty feeling they're starting to restrict their free content, or are making it just a little bit more crap.... to try to goad you into buying beyond their paywall.]

"Once more unto the breach, dear firends..."

A little bit of Zen (3)

 

"We must imagine Sisyphus happy."

Albert Camus

This game we so love and hate does seem very like the famous mythical punishment in Hell: endless toil, constant setback... ultimate futility.

We must learn to value the effort expended for its own sake, to celebrate the endeavour to achieve, rather than achievement itself.

Only.... 18 hours to go now until the new season gets under way. Stand by your boulders....

Possible Picks?? [Pt. 2]

Following on from this morning's post on the most promising goalkeeper and defender picks for the season ahead, I'll now try to provide a survey of the best prospects in midfield and attack. [I hope it won't take too long.... But it probably will!]

Midfielders

I'm wary of Salah and Son, at least at the start of the season, because both their sides are going through a little bit of upheaval,... and they both ended last season in rather subdued form. Salah is one of those players who, like Haaland (as I discussed a couple of days ago) could produce another stunning season and be - by a good margin - FPL's top points producer of the year; but for a star passing his prime rather than just entering it, that is a much more uncertain hope to cling to. My hunch is that Salah will end up having a pretty good season, but not reattain the 250+ totals he managed in his two best recent years (much less the 303 pts he got in his remarkable debut season with Liverpool).  It's a fine call as to whether a relatively 'modest' 220-230 from him is worth 12.5 million. I think it probably is.

Son I'm less sold on. I think he's far too 'streaky' to justify a 10.0 million price-tag. While he has generally looked capable of matching Salah over the last four seasons (except in 22-23, when he was noticeably inhibited by an injury for much of the season), he has tended to get his points in short runs of games (indeed, largely in just a handful of individual games, where he produces huge hauls!), with long, long, long dry spells in between. It's great if you manage to catch him in one of his brief scoring surges; but he's deadweight in your squad for extended periods - and I just don't think you can afford that from such an expensive player. It's better to gamble that you can rotate a number of in-form players into his position who will produce more consistently across the whole season,... and, hopefully, end up giving you more points overall as well. (I fancy there are a number of other players at Spurs who might produce more than him this season, anyway, or at least offer much better points-per-pound value.)

Palmer is probably a must-have after last season. I am not a super-optimist about him, though. I think last season was so extraordinary that he can't possibly repeat it, let alone improve on it; changes under the new manager will be unsettling, and may take a while to start working; and he might not be quite so productive under the new system. There are already signs in pre-season that he might be sharing creative duties with Nkunku this year, rather than being a sole provider almost all the time. And probably defences will give him closer attention now, trying to aggressively man-mark him to stop him getting on the ball in the final third so much. So, I can see him perhaps only managing 180-200 pts this season - which still isn't bad, but might not quite justify his new 10.5-milliion asking-price. However, I'd say that this is his minimum likely output; he could do a lot better. And I'm more confident of him at least getting near 200 points than I am of any other midfielder (except Salah).

My personal preference would be for DeBruyne over Foden (Pep often plays Foden in a variety of different roles, some of which really don't suit him; and KDB is likely to take the more prominent creative role most of the time when they start together), and Odegaard over Saka (Odegaard had a slightly erratic and disappointing season, by his standards; where Saka had an extremely successful one, though only really - in FPL terms - in a couple of fairly brief spells where he scored points like a maniac... for most of the season, his returns were disappointingly below what they had been in previous years, and I fear that's going to be a growing trend, as Arteta's tactics increasingly demand a more disciplined and 'controlling' style of play from him; so, I foresee their points tallies being much closer this season, or perhaps even swapping around - and Odegaard is 1.5 milliont cheaper).

It's hard not to like the outright forwards generously classed as 'midfielders' by the FPL gnomes (players like this tend to be the highest producers in the game, certainly for polnts-per-pound, and often overall as well): Mbeumo, Bowen, Diaz, Nkunku (admittedly, looking like he might play more like a creative midfielder or No.10 rather than an attacker much of the time, but still a major goal-threat), Jota (if only he could stay fit!), and maybe Hwang Hee-Chan (although he has tended to blow hot and cold; and Wolves have a tough start to the season); and not forgetting Bournemouth's Antoine Semenyo, who's a 'midfielder' for the first time this year, only costs 5.5 million, and might now be taking a more prominent attacking role after Solanke's departure.

Then there's a welter of attacking wingers who might also pick up a lot of goals and assists: Mitoma, Adingra, Gordon, Barnes, Martinelli, Hudson-Odoi, Elanga, Garnacho, Diallo, Neto, Madueke, Kulusevski, Johnson, Doku, Savinho, Carvalho, Iwobi, Sarabia, Rodrigo Gomes, Summerville, Sinisterra, Kluivert... and probably a few more too.

There are a few very creative midfielders who also pose a significant goal-threat as well as providing lots of assists: Bernardo Silva, Eze, Maddison, Kudus, Gibbs-White, Smith Rowe, Emi Buendia (if he's back to his best, after a long injury absence), and, of course, Bruno Fernandes,... and perhaps even Harvey Elliott (who seems to have been staking a strong claim to a start as a sort of No. 10 for Arne Slot in some of the friendlies).

And then there are some midfielders who might be seen primarily in a more defensive light, yet do also have a strong attacking element to their game: Bruno Guimaraes, Gross, Rice, Rodri, Wharton, McGinn, Macallister, Andreas Perreira,... and perhaps Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall.

I can't give you any more help than that, sorry. You just have to pick the ones you have the best feeling about - given their price, and their opening 5 or 6 fixtures. Any of them might start out the season in blazing form.... or be a complete dud. There is no way to tell. 

At least I've pared the choices down to about 50 or so, from the getting on for 400 available in this category.  If you're finding it really difficult to choose,...you might as well just write all the names on Post-It notes, stick 'em to a wall, and throw darts at them blindfold.

Forwards

This category is rather easier, as you only have to pick three, and there are considerably fewer options to choose from.

As I said yesterday, it's become a 50/50 whether to risk going without Haaland or not, because of his exorbitant price this year. Going without him will be hard work, but I think it could succeed; in fact, I suspect that on average, the two approaches may work out just about the same.

I already outlined in this post on 'How to choose the initial squad' that I would recommend (and I think most draft squads I've seen so far are following this approach)  picking two  from Haaland, Watkins, and Isak - since these are very obviously the three best options up front this year. Some people are getting very excited about Solanke's move to Spurs, and are suggesting that he might now be worth considering in that category of the very top picks who can be seen as alternatives to Haaland (if you feel you can't afford him). I think he could do well at Spurs, and would rate him him now as the fourth best FPL forward prospect for the year - but still quite a long way short of the top three.

For me, all the forwards priced at 8.0 or 7.5 fail to be interesting this year, purely because of their price. And the ones available at 7.0 don't look very impressive. I am intrigued by Zirkzee and Fullkrug at 7.0 - but, since they're new imports from Europe, I probably wouldn't take a chance on them from the start of the season; but I think they have great potential, and are worth watching.... to pounce on if they do start showing some form. And Gyokeres would be tempting, if his rumoured move to Arsenal should go through.

However, given that you rarely want to play all 3 forwards (because you can almost always get more points, or at least a much better points-per-pound return, from a reasonably-priced attacking player in your 5th midfield slot), you can afford to go pretty cheap on your 3rd forward place. 

A lot of the less expensive forwards this year look like they could actually produce some decent points, and not serve merely as a cut-price squad-filler: Cunha at 6.5, Awoniyi and Wood, Muniz and Raul, Thiago and Wissa, and maybe Duran (if he moves somewhere he can get a start) at 6.0; Joao Pedro and Evan Ferguson (when he gets fit again), and perhaps Delap, Vardy, or Armstrong at only 5.5; and maybe even someone like Kalajdzic, Vinicius, Deivid, Archer, or Jebbison, at just 5.0 million, might have a chance of graduating to a regular start at some point.

Again, you might as well just throw a dart.....

So, that's it: my take on how the choices break down this year.  I think there's a wider range of choices this time than there has been for quite a few years (a lot of players coming back from long injuries, a lot of interesting new players joining the league; many of the recent high-flyers coming off slightly disappointing or injury-restricted seasons, or suffering big hikes in their price which could restrict their appeal); and more general uncertainty about the likely course of the season, with four top-half clubs adapting to new managers and four of the top six mired in major makeovers.

It's going to be a great season: anything could happen!

Possible picks?? [Pt. 1]

Well, I said on here a few days ago that I will generally avoid giving direct recoomendations for or against any specific player (and I certainly won't be sharing anything about my own squad; not in advance, anyway; maybe occasionally retrospectively, just to share a few 'war stories' for general enlightenment - and acknowledge my fallibility), but.... since we're now on the eve of The Big Kick-Off, everyone is becoming obsessed with polishing up their opening squads.... and casting around for additional sources of advice.

So, I'll attempt a brief-ish rundown of who I think are the players most worthy of consideration, for each position and price category.

Goalkeepers

I don't think any of the 5.5 keepers justify their price-tag (although, if you can find the money in the kitty, Alisson might be a promising start-of-season pick, just because of how soft Liverpool's early run of fixtures is).

Pickford (last season's top keeper), Onana (who improved dramatically after a terrible start to the year, and ended up well out in front on number of saves; and might be playing behind a much more stable defence this year, with the arrival of De Ligt), and Leno (consistently one of the best-value keepers for the last two years at Fulham; but it's a pity his price has gone up this year) are as 'premium' as I would go between the sticks; they look like they'll offer very good value at 5.0.

But I think it's probably smarter to start with two 4.5-million-pound keepers, since there are so many strong options at that price-point: Henderson (appears to have the start at Palace now; and has good early fixtures), whoever starts at Chelsea (probably Jorgensen? the best early fixture run of all!), Areola (slightly daunting early fixture run, but was an outstanding keeper for most of last season: second only to Onana on saves, and would have finished higher in the overall points rankings if he hadn't missed a few games with a minor injury), and maybe Sels (I have little confidence in Forest, but... they also have fairly kind early fixtures, in five of the first six, anyway); Neto might also be worth considering (if he keeps his place), and Sa (once Wolves are past their, um, first eight games....); maybe Leicester's Hermanssen (outstanding with the ball at his feet; although I worry about how well any of the promoted sides will stand up defensively, especially in the early weeks).  And Aaron Ramsdale will be well worth a thought, if his touted move to Forest (or anywhere else he'll be the starter) comes off..   [I wouldn't touch Flekken with a bargepole; he's one of the weakest keepers at that price-point anyway, and he has absolutely the worst first 5 games of any of them! However, I'd keep an eye on Valdimarsson, as I think he might be promoted over Flekken to become Brentford's No.1 - making him the only starting 4.0 keeper this year.]

At this point, it still doesn't look like any of the 4.0 keepers will get a start; and I don't like to clog up my bench with non-playing players - even at the start of the season. (Especially at the start of the season: I want to find cheap bench players that will get starts and hopefully show a little form, so that other FPL managers will take notice of them - and push their price up, so I can sell for a profit. Non-playing bench-fillers sooner or later drop in price and erode your squad value.)

If you do choose to adopt this tactic of taking a non-playing 4.0 keeper to free up an extra half a million for another spot in the squad, the only sensible route to it is to take the club back-up to your first-choice keeper (that way, you have a guaranteed replacement if your starter ever goes AWOL). I would go for Fabianski, since we saw last season that he's still very capable (and might perhaps even still be good enough to displace Areola on merit, without him picking up another injury); Bentley seems to be the only other possibility. (I suppose Virginia at Everton or Benda at Fulham could also work; but if you're going to spend 9 million on a pair of keepers, you'll almost certainly be better off with two starters.)

Defenders

Arsenal's three (almost) ever-presents - White, Gabriel, and Saliba - were way out in front of everyone else last season. And that seems very likely to be repeated again this year (with Calafiori possibly joining them as a preferred regular starter at left-back), with no other sides approaching them in defensive solidity.  (Of course, there's a lot of uncertainty at the start of this season, with new managers bedding in at Liverpool, Chelsea, West Ham, and Brighton - but it seems unlikely any of them will quickly rival Arsenal as the league's clean-sheet masters.)

City have too much talent to choose from at the back: hence 'Pep Roulette' is an inescapable hazard - last year, none of their defenders got more than 28 starts. (Well, OK, Walker managed 30; but that seems unlikely to happen again, as he's never really been Pep's absolute first-choice at right-back when other options are fit - and he has started showing signs of aging.)  As their clean-sheet record hasn't been great in the last couple of seasons either, I can't see how any of them are 'worth' 5.5 for FPL, let alone 6.0!

Likewise at Liverpool, while you might expect Van Dijk, Alexander-Arnold and Robertson to be natural starters as long as they're fit... Robertson has often been injured over the past two seasons, and his attacking returns have trailed off a lot from his peak a few years back; Van Dijk has rarely come close to justifying his 6.0-million price-tag in value-for-money terms (he's a signal example of how being excellent in real-world football often has little relationship to how good you are for FPL); and Trent.... is just too much of an unknown: he really needs a 200+ points season to earn back his money, and while he does potentially have that in him, I can't see it happening this year. (There are the additional problems for TAA of having to adapt to a new manager and a new style of play, his oft-stated desire to become more of a deep creative midfielder than a defender.... and the uncomfortable fact that young Conor Bradley revealed himself in his brief spell last season to be simply much better than him as an outright right-back...)

I think it's probably worth taking one or two of the Arsenal defenders; but no-one at the 5.5 or 5.0 point really impresses me as a 'must-have'. (although Munoz or Mitchell, Maatsen, maybe Cucurella, and Branthwaite - and De Ligt, if his price is going to be somewhere around there - might be worth considering)... when there are so many strong options at 4.5 this year.

Full-backs almost always give better returns than central defenders (much more chance of attacking contributions, at least with the more progressive ones), so long as they're in a side with a decent defensive record, so I'd focus on options like:  Robinson, Ait-Nouri, Mykolenko, Burn (although he looks likely to play in central defence this year, at least iniitally), Tete, Castagne, Kerkez, Emerson, Roerslev, Toffolo, Aina (if he gets a regular-ish start this year), perhaps Semedo (when he's fit again), Livramento or Hall (if they get a regular start at Newcastle this year)... maybe Reguilon (if he gets a start anywhere this season).

Amongst the cheaper centre-backs, I like Andersen, Tosin, Van de Ven, Guehi and Richards, Senesi and Zabarnyi, Murillo,,... maybe Quansah or Chalobah (if they ever get a decent run of starts).

There are some starting defensive options at 4.0 in the 3 promoted clubs, notably the dependable Belgian international centre-back Wout Faes at Leicester and Southampton's youngster Taylor Harwood-Bellis (who picked up a moderately impressive 3 goals and 6 assists in the Championship last year; but is already dangerously over-owned in FPL - when he disappoints initial hopeful expectations of him, his price might plummet).  However, I'd be very wary of taking any defenders (or keepers) from these clubs until we've seen how they can stand up for themselves in the Premier League; in recent years most of the newly-promoted sides have been woefully off the pace and have just served as punching-bags for most teams - you don't want defenders (even as emergency back-up on the bench) who offer you hardly any points at all, because they're regularly taking a thrashing.  [There is one 4.0 defender, though, at an established Premier League side, who looks likely to get at least a few starts early on, because of injuries at the club. You can dig that out for yourselves. I don't want too many people piling in on him!]

So, that's about it for the defensive half of the equation....

I'll try to get around to a 'Part Two' on the more attacking options this afternoon... or tomorrow.

What's LUCK got to do with it?? (1)

 Well, unfortunately,..... pretty much EVERYTHING!!!

You're choosing a squad of 15 players, from amongst more than 700 possible selections at the start of the season - about the majority of whom, you know absolutely nothing. Every week, you're having to try to think about whether to use transfers - or a 'chip' - to change any of those players. And you're having to try to identify your strongest 11 to start each game (and determine a 'bench order' for the rest, in case you're going to need any of them too - which you very often do!); and nominate one of them to receive a double-points bonus as your 'captain' for the week....

That amounts to many hundreds of possible decisions at the start of the season, and dozens or hundreds more every single week of the season. And sure, making the most promising possible choices for each of those dilemmas is a matter of skill. But, alas, making the most promising/most probable/most likely choices doesn't actually decide how many points you get.  However objectively 'good' all of your predictive decisions may have been.... they can still turn out well or badly; or very well.... or very, very badly: THAT'S all a matter of pure luck.

So, how does 'LUCK' manifest itself in our game of Fantasy Premier League, and what sort of impacts does it have?

Well,.... it's impossible to quantify with any precision (and people are going to differ in their definitions and interpretations of what constitutes 'luck). But I have explored this topic quite extensively over the last 4 or 5 years, and I have some key observations on the issue I'd like to share here.

The sources of luck

How does luck most forcefully express itself in the game? Any time there is a significant swing of points for a not-entirely-predicted reason...  These are the most obvious ways:

i)     Exceptional performances by an individual player

Even freakishly good players like Salah and Haaland, who do score hattricks almost every season, and often 2 or 3 (or very occasionally, perhaps, even more) in a season, cannot be guaranteed to do so - not even over a whole season, and certainly not in any individual game. And when they do, even if it's when they're on a hot run of form and facing a promoted side, it cannot be said to be entirely expected; you still have to acknowledge that there's at least a small element of luck involved in a great player fulfilling an optimistic expectation; even if it did seem like a very strong bet, it was still a bet.

If those players get a huge haul when they or their team have apparently been in poor form, and/or they're facing one of their toughest rivals - nobody was expecting that, and you've got to consider it a pretty lucky event.

When a lesser player gets a big attacking haul, and you happen to have him, that's definitely lucky. When it's a defender - or a goalkeeper! (only six have ever scoredl in the EPL) - who gets a goal... or sometimes, a brace of goals... that's very, very lucky.

And of course, a penalty save is a freakish rarity, entirely unpredictable - yet it gives your keeper a very handy points boost.

But other saves can turn the course of a game too. And sometimes these are positively superhuman saves (or goal-line clearances or heroic last-ditch blocks from a defender) by a player who's been having an iffy season up until then. In FPL terms, that's LUCK - good luck if you have that player, and bad luck if you don't.

Also.... player and team performances can often be greatly helped by individual mistakes on the other side (or, sometimes, the whole opposition side somehow just 'not showing up').

NB   FPL's 'Team of the Week' often includes fairly few of the highest-owned players. Very occasionally, it might include none at all. Just about every week there are some really unexpected players who get big hauls. (And some good players who were expected to do quite well.... but did hugely well. If you were on any of them,... you were LUCKY.)

ii)    Unexpected results

Many games are turned, unexpectedly, by individual moments of brilliance - or mistakes, or accidents, or dubious refereeing decisions - but many others are characterised by a surprisingly good performance from one side... and/or a surprisingly poor showing from the other.

Sometimes, the 'form book' just goes out of the window, and a leading team - even City or Arsenal or Liverpool - can get turned over by a side in the lower half of the table. Good teams, seemingly out of nowhere, suddenly have an 'off' day; and terrible teams suddenly play out-of-their-socks and pull off an unlikely upset. These kinds of aberrant events can also cause huge and unpredicted points swings in FPL.

iii)   'Acts of God'

Players missing games, or having to go off early - most commonly because of injury; but it can also be as a result of a virus (Covid still going around!) or some other illness, a personal issue, a social media indiscretion, trouble with the police or the FA, or just a spat with a manager or a teammate - also have a huge influence on points returns.

And then, once in a blue moon, you get a raft of fixtures cancelled at the last minute because of a mass disease outbreak or an extreme weather event or the death of the monarch...

iv)   Injuries

The rate of injuries in the Premier League has been rising alarmingly over the past decade or so - and, it seems, particularly in the last few years - probably driven by the increased pace and intensity of the modern game,  and especially the frequent emphasis on vigorous pressing when out of possession. I haven't found an authoritative tally of this online, but I'm fairly sure last year was the worst ever for injuries in the Premier League's history. (I had to replace 55 significant injuries in my squad during the season - more than 50% more than my previous worst!)

Obviously, when you suddenly lose a key player - particularly on the eve of a game you'd been expecting him to do really well in - that's a major dose of bad luck. And in the world of FPL, absences hit especially hard when news of them only emerges late in the week... often after the Gameweek deadline, leaving you no opportunity to move them out of your side.

v.}   Improbable 'Bonus Points' allocations

The weighting of the BPS ('Bonus Points System'), the rating scale that FPL uses to determine the award of 'bonus points' in the game, is WAY off. Very often a player who was, by common consensus, the 'Man of the Match' will mystifyingly fail to receive the maximum 3 extra points; sometimes, rather too often, he won't even get 1 'bonus point'. The system is notably biased against some players and in favour of others. (Mo Salah, strangely, is not beloved of the BPS; he registers few if any defensive actions, doesn't get much credit for anything except goals, and is rather heavily penalised for 'missing' chances - so, he very rarely picks up all 3 'bonus points' unless he's produced multiple goal contributions in a game. His teammate Trent Alexander-Arnold, on the other hand, with his rare combination of attacking and defending involvements, regularly receives 3 extra points, even when he's apparently had a rather 'quiet' game!)  At least these tendencies of the BPS scoring, though they seem inappropriate and unfair, are reasonably predictable. Sometimes, however, the distribution of the bonus points can be unfathomably eccentric. And this is a big deal: you hope to get something around 300 or so points from bonuses over the season, but the return can easily swing 100 or more points above or below that - and that's pretty much all of most people's season-to-season variance in points total!

vi)    Poor decisions by the officials and VAR

Obviously, yellow and red cards have the most noticeable impact on your weekly points score. And we know that subsequent review on TV analysis shows frequently reveals them to have been highly dubious, if not outright wrong decisions (even when they've been reconsidered via the VAR process - which they're not, most of the time).

But penalty awards (particularly under the now absurdly over-complicated and highly subjective Handball Law) are also a pretty much weekly source of bitter controversy. And free-kicks (and corners too, or sometimes even throw-ins) given or not given, or given the wrong way, can also have a huge impact on the course of a game.

But goals being disallowed for nonsensical reasons (or, more rarely, being allowed when they shouldn't have been) is the major impact for FPL. I have a particular gripe with the modern obsession with trying to decide 'offside' calls to the millimetre. The technology isn't good enough to achieve that - and never will be; it's fatuous even to try. There ought to be a more practical definition of the offence that could be called accurately with the naked eye (most of the time; and then by video review, if necessary, all the time.... and quickly).

And the refereeing really seems to have been getting worse in the last couple of seasons. As with injuries, I think last year was surely the worst yet for VAR screw-ups, with multiple bizarre decisions being scrutinised by the pundits on TV almost every week, and PGMOL several times having to issue a public apology for a particularly egregious error. And they reached a new nadir with the bizarre disallowing of the Luis Diaz goal against Spurs (assisted by Salah; both of whom I had in my squad that week... Not that I'm bitter; well, yes, I am!), where the VAR team apparently got the call right... yet somehow miscommunicated it??!!

vii)    'Quirky' decisions by managers

It can be infuriating when managers suddenly 'rest' a star player for no apparent reason; though I tend to find it even more vexing when they shake-up the entire tactics of the side and/or play your man in a new position - thereby eliminating your prospects of a good haul from him that week in a more fiendishly subtle way. Pep Guardiola is so notorious for this sort of thing that many FPL managers are actually reluctant to use almost any of his players, for fear of how unexpected rotations may damage their points returns. But Pep is by no means the only one; this tweaking-the-tactics just for the fun of it is becoming more and more a feature of our modern game.

Taking players off before an hour has passed (particularly frustrating if it's actually in the 60th minute!) is also a cruel affront to FPL managers, because it robs them of an extra point for a 'full appearance' - and also possibly, if their man was playing well, of adding to a fine attacking haul. Pep again is the most egregious offender - loving to take Haaland off almost as soon as he's completed a hattrick (thus making it very unlikely that the lanky Viking is ever going to score 4 goals in one game in the EPL). But Jurgen Klopp was also quite bad at substituting players just shy of the 60-minute mark; and several others have been guilty of it as well.

Last season was quite possibly The Luckiest Ever (certainly in my time playing FPL): all of the above types of events occurred numerous times - far, far more often than in a typical season; including, for example, a remarkable number of goalkeeper changes (the most I can ever remember). We also saw - though not solely for the reasons above - both the highest scoring week in FPL history and the lowest scoring week (on global average, that is; not the highest individual scores) - in the same season! That was weird. 

We did have some more pleasant - but still results-distorting - surprises like.... Arsenal keeping 18 clean sheets and running City close for the title, or Cole Palmer escaping the City bench to become FPL's Player of the Season, or Jean-Philippe Mateta improbably matching Wayne Rooney's long-standing record of being the only player to score double-digits in both legs of a double gameweek...

So, yes, overall, it was a season with an unusually high number of exceptional - and unpredictable - events in it (injuries, bad refereeing decisions, yo-yo-ing form for some leading clubs and players, yet more injuries...), and that had a very distorting effect on outcomes for FPL managers last year. A lot of people in the top 50,000 or 100,000 were debutants, or people who'd never done that well previously in the game. Even the Global Champion, although he has had a pretty solid record in recent years, hadn't actually averaged any better than me over the previous five seasons, and his winning score was more than 300 points ahead of his previous best!! And most of the people that I've identified over the years as outstanding managers.... had a really bad season last year: many of them finished outside the top million, a few were outside the top 2 or 3 million.

How does that happen? How can we have a year where so many 'average' managers dominate the top of the charts, yet 'good' managers strangely tumble down the ranking?  Well,.... it's LUCK.

I shall have more to say on this in a little while - about how 'luck' and 'skill' interact in outcomes, and how they appear to me to be distributed across the community of FPL managers.

To be continued....    (At the weekend, maybe....)

To Haaland, or not to Haaland...

That is the question.

The BIG, HUGE, overwhelming question of the moment for FPL managers everwhere. Many have been obsessing about it for weeks already.

The FPL gnomes have priced him at a staggering 15 million pounds for the start of this season - a new record for the game. Pricing him at 14.0 million last season (a level only previously reached by Thierry Henry [twice], Cristiano Ronaldo [just the once, in his youthful heyday a decade-and-a-half ago], and Robin van Persie [also just the once]) did nothing to diminish his massive ownership levels from the previous year,.... so they've gone one better this time; or one worse. Will that have the desired impact, in forcing people to consider going without him?

Well, partly. Most people are at least having a good long think about the conundrum. And at this point, his ownership is still just a shade under 45% - far lower than it was at the outset of last season.

But those ownership numbers are creeping up all the time, and it wouldn't surprise me if he's above 50% before the opening weekend kicks off.

In most of the online ponderings I've seen, three main levels of over-simplification can be found:

1) The most superficial argument is just to compere Haaland to his closest position competitor, and say 'Oh, Ollie Watkins (or Alexander Isak or....) is better.... or at least better points-per-pound value.'

2) The second level recognises that, because Haaland is so much more expensive than every other player this year, it's not fair to compare him simply with the forward you might replace him with; you also have to throw into the scales at least one other player that you're able to buy as an  upgrade with the money you save on the Viking. And so these folks offer up some example comparison pairings...: Haaland AND Nkunku... OR... Isak AND Palmer, for example.  But that doesn't work too well either, because even the most expensive midfielder (Salah) and the second most expensive forward (Watkins) still cost the same as or less than around 20% of the 250+ possible Haaland-plus-a-midfielder combinations. You're not just comparing Haaland to his replacement forward PLUS 1 other player, but probably to his replacement PLUS at least 2 or 3 other players.

3) The third level of superficiality changes tack, and simply asserts that Haaland can't be justified on a value-for-money basis. But as I briefly outlined in my post yesterday on the relationship between pounds and points, there are other factors (a high confidence of reaching an exceptionally high total, and of delivering consistently throughout the season with few serious fallow spells...), which can justify choosing a high-priced player, even if their points-per-pound return is very weak.

The fact is, if you omit Haaland and downgrade his forward spot to Watkins (9.0), Isak (8.5), Havertz (8.0), or one of the dozen or so other contenders priced a little lower at 7.5 or 7.0, you have so much extra money to spare that you can afford 2 or 3 major upgrades (to premium-price players), or perhaps 6 or 7 or 8 or so  more modest but nevertheless significant upgrades in other positions. (Actually, since many people seem to have been going for two other premium or semi-premium strikers - as well as Haaland! - anyway, you might in fact be talking about the possibility of a downgrade from 15.0 to only 5.5 or 6.0 million: that's a HUGE wodge of cash to redistribute.)

And there is just no way to know if that many squad changes will outweigh the very large number of points that Haaland is likely to bring.

Including Haaland is probably the safer path, because his points returns are very reliable: he will play every game he's fit; he's one of the best finishers the game has ever seen, and he plays for one of the best attacking teams; he'll almost certainly get 5 or 6 or 7 really big hauls during the season (braces or hattricks yielding well into double-digit points); he probably won't have many long fallow spells.

If he stays fit all season, he could well get close to, or even surpass 300 points. Perhaps no-one else will get above 250 this year; probably only a few will get even a little above 200. Haaland's advantage - if all turns out well for him this year - could be 50-100 points over any other player.

If that happens, he would be worth paying even this ridiculous 15 million pounds for.

But that is the optimistic end of his possible range. Maybe he won't do nearly that well, maybe he'll have a little bit of an 'off' season... and maybe several other players (including perhaps some surprising ones - like Palmer last season) will get very high totals, similar to or better than his.

And even if he does have a pretty good season.... having 6 or 7 'better' players in the rest of your side than most squads-with-Haaland can afford should be able to keep you on terms. If only half of those players get an extra few points more than most of the Haaland-squad players every week, it will almost wipe out the advantage of Haaland's very big weeks... and could - should? - start to open a little bit of a lead on those Haaland squads, bit by bit, whenever he returns a few blanks.

On paper, it really looks as if the No-Haaland option should work out better. 

But it's more of a risk, because Haaland is a set-and-forget player: he's so dependable that you can just put him in your squad for GW1 and leave him there for the whole season. If you choose to try to go without him, you absolutely have to make the most of every pound of your budget: those 5 ot 6 or 7 'better' players that you bring in with the money you save on him have got to produce every week. Some weeks  they won't; and sometimes one or two - or all! - of them will hit a run of poor form. With someone like Haaland, you usually feel safe riding out a run of a few bad games, because you're confident in how many points he can bring you overall. With lesser players, you are constantly assailed by doubts about whether they're going to work. And you'll have to constantly be searching for better, more in-form alternatives you can switch in for them.

Going without Haaland will be a lot of stress and hard work; but it could certainly bring success.  But you have to be prepared to endure the intense pain of remorse and doubt you will suffer every time he has a big week.....

And I tip my hat to the FPL gnomes for once; I think they have got the game's pricing structure very finely judged this year - it really is coming down to a 50-50 choice of whether to take Haaland or to leave him.

As I advised in one of my earliest posts here, I think the best approach is to draft a Haaland squad and a No-Haaland squad. Then take a long hard look at the two drafts side by side.... and go with whichever one calls to you more.

Ultimately, I think this choice, though it may be definitive for each of us individually, is not going to be a clear binary split that determines the shape of the season for the FPL community overall. Just as it is essentially a toss-up whether to include Haaland or not, so too I think it is a toss-up whether this year's global champion will have taken the Haaland or No-Haaland route. It's quite possible that both options will enjoy broadly equal success - and it is surely likely that our outcomes will be determined not by whether we had Haaland or not, but by who else we had in our squads.

[Also, of course, it is possible to change horses in mid-stream. Last year Haaland's price dipped a little during a lengthy spell of injury. Palmer established himself as the season's only true 'must-have' - at a ridiculously cheap price. And in the latter part of the season, the other two leading premium-price players, Salah and Son, both had a bit of a crash in form; so, we were able to ditch them, and have plenty of money in the kitty. Hence, it was actually quite easy to do without Haaland for large chunks of last season, but have him back in for the final run-in when he started producing again.]

What counts as A GOOD SCORE?

Season high scores from the global frontrunners can swing up and down a fair amount - so you might have to adjust your expectations according to the average returns in a given year..

Weekly high scores can vary HUGELY, and unpredictably - so, setting one arbitrary target there is pretty meaningless. 

I hope to be 10-15 points better than the global average every week.

And when I launched this blog, I stated that my ultimate goal is always to reach 2,500 points for the season.

Now, these days, you're probably going to need well over 2,600, or even 2,700 points - some years, perhaps, even above 2,800 points - to have a chance of being the Global Champion. But that's pie-in-the-sky stuff - not worth thinking about.

2,500 points usually represents the top 1% or so of participants, and is a massive pinnacle to climb!

2,300 points is a very, very good score - and if you can consistently achieve above that for a number of years... I would say you've arrived as a more-than-competent FPL manager.

2,100 points is fairly respectable - and would in fact be an outstanding debut season score for someone new to the game.

If you are a complete newbie, you should be reasonably happy with 1,800 or 1,900 points in your first season - that should put you at least a little above the global average.

Always striving to be better-than-the-average is a very good place to start in this game. Then, as you get better, you can gradually ramp up your expectations of how much better-than-the-average you can be!