The BPS conundrum: abolish, replace, or modify?

As I mentioned yesterday in my 5 FPL Wishes for Next Season, I think a major revamp of the bonus points allocation in our game, and more particularly of the 'Bonus Points System' (BPS) rating scale currently used to achieve this, is needed urgently. [On top of everything else, it's very annoying that the 'ratings units' used in the BPS itself are also caled 'points'. It's really clunky to have to speak of 'Bonus Points' points. And it also causes confusion sometimes as to what people mean by 'bonus points' - the extra points actually awarded to players, or the BPS scores that determine those. I have fallen into the mental habit of usually referring to BPS 'points' as 'credits' instead; I wish FPL would follow suit.]

The sources of dissatisfaction with the current system are threefold:  a) It lacks transparency (too little information is shared about how the BPS totals are calculated);  b) It has been much abused by the FPL Gnomes this season (often the BPS scores have been adjusted after the event - apparently to produce less contentious outcomes in a few instances);  and c) Its results often appear unfair, inconsistent, and contrary to common sense (players who've had very good games - often, indeed, been generally acknowledged as the 'Man of the Match' - sometimes get strangely overlooked for FPL bonus points,... or at any rate given only a token 1 or 2 extra points, rather than the 3 points they seem to deserve).

Many long-standing FPL managers are now so disaffected with the BPS that they're grumbling it might be better to do away with it altogether.

I can sympathise with that view. Like the bonus chips (which I've grumped about elsewhere), they seem superfluous to the basic gameplay - merely an additional randomizing factor that tends to make the game even more unpredictable and less meritocratic.

At least, with the current BPS the award of bonus points is reasonably predictable for certain players over a long run of games; so, from that point of view, it could be considered 'fair', as it's not too difficult to take account of when making selections. But over a short run of games, or in a single Gameweek, it can be vexingly opaque, capricious, random. 

And it can potentially have a very big impact. While my weekly returns of bonus points don't seem to have a huge variance (almost never any less than 3 or 4, but rarely much more than 12, and mostly around 8 or 10), over a season I can easily stray 100 points either side of my 300-point median; and that's pretty much all - sometimes more than... - my typical season-to-season points total fluctuation. Bonus points and BPS might actually decide the whole shebang!

So, the bonus points are a big deal. And, at the moment, the way they are distributed is causing a lot of resentment in the FPL community.

However, I have a sentimental regard for tradition. And 'bonus points' - in pretty much the form they are now, I believe - have been around ever since FPL's inception in 2002. So, I'd be loathe to give them up completely, after being so long a core part of the game. (Apart from anything else, that would make it extremely difficult to make any meaningful comparisons between present and historical data in the game. This is one of the many gripes I have against this season's absurd novelty, the 'Assistant Manager' Chip: many people earned 30-50 points from it - more than you typically get from the other two bonus chips combined; a lucky few got even more from it; and it could conceivably have yielded 80+, maybe even close to 100 points. That is a really huge - and distorting - addition to the game's points potential for the season.)

Other critics favour replacing the current BPS with a simpler - hopefully fairer - means of deciding the weekly bonus points allocations. There are indeed a number of stats-compiling companies who offer ready-made player ratings (the current BPS is based on stats licensed from Opta; although, curiously, assists and own goals are adjudicated with the assistance of Stats Perform instead). And the Premier League itself is now making the official 'Man of the Match' awards 'democratic' by inviting fan votes through social media (though this is quite new, and hasn't been that well publicised as yet; I don't know what kind of numbers are participating).

While a ready-made player rating system could give more satisfactory results (if you pick the right one!) than the current one (which goes through the clunky additional step of filtering third-party data through a weighting template of FPL's own devising - I think that's where the problem really lies), there would be bound to be considerable teething troubles with any new rating system applied in the game. And I doubt if a new ratings provider would be immune to my misgivings about 'transparency' - since all of these stats companies seek to keep an awful lot of their process secret. 

Using these new online 'Man of the Match' polls is more immediately tempting to me as an alternative. But the problem with leaving the rating process to the subjective judgement of individuals (even very knowledgeable football professionals, as used to happen with the EPL 'MotM' awards in the past; or very large numbers of people, as we now have) is that there's a risk of the results being skewed by personal biases - especially, now, the loyalty of large fan groups. You've noticed how the BBC's 'Goal of the Month' competition, also decided by a fan vote, is very rarely won by a player from a less fashionable club (and indeed, even among the most popular clubs, a player is far more likely to win the accolade if his club was playing on the day the vote was held, especially if that was one of the 'games of the day' featured early in the show)? Heck, with a mass-participation game like FPL, there's a serious danger that groups of Fantasy managers would organise 'Man of the Match' voting in favour of the most popular captaincy picks for the gameweek. I do quite like the idea that all the popular votes could be tallied to identify the handful of most impressive players in each match in a rank order, to decide the award of FPL bonus points; but in practice, I think there would be too much scope for 'manipulation' of the results.

Another option sometimes suggested is to replace the current bonus points with new categories of points awards for specific game actions. We've seen something of this in Fantasy games for the big international tournaments: the last Fantasy World Cup introduced additional points for a certain number of 'ball recoveries'; actions like tackles or duels won, 'key passes', and 'big chances created' might be other possibilities for inclusion in such a revised scoring scheme. While I quite enjoy having to adapt to such novel wrinkles in a once-every-four-years Fantasy tournament, I feel it would be too much of an upheaval in our well-established annual competition of FPL, Again, it would produce much higher potential points scores for each gameweek, and across the whole season, rendering all earlier seasons incompatible for FPL performance comparison.

So, reluctant though I am to admit this as the only viable solution, I feel that we probably have to make do with the current bonus points format - decided by the dreaded BPS.

How, then, might we address the three areas of difficulty I outlined at the start of this piece?

a)  Transparency

Probably a lot of the problem here arises from the fact that Opta, the provider of the underlying game statistics used to tally the BPS player scores, is reluctant to share much of its data - or almost anything of the process it uses to compile that data. (All other stats compilers are much the same in this, I would imagine.)  Partly, they want to steer people towards premium subscriptions for richer data; partly they want to protect their IP, to prevent upstart businesses from too easily copying what they do; and also, probably, they don't want it to be too easy for people to check up on their accuracy and consistency by attempting to replicate their stat-compiling process, even over a small sample size.

However, this could be an area where sticking with the incumbent data-provider (rather than instead buying an off-the-shelf 'player rating' stat from a rival company) will give FPL some useful leverage: they ought to be a powerful enough client that they can persuade Opta to allow the release of more data than they might ideally like to. What I'd like to see is the full background stats BPS is supposedly based on - for every player. But if Opta is digging in its heels against that, I'd probably settle for being able to see the detailed breakdown for the 'Top Ten' BPS scorers usually listed for each match; or even just for those few players who ultimately receive bonus points. And there surely shouldn't be any problem about FPL publishing the BPS total for every player??  (In an ideal world, I'd also like to see detailed explanations of how each of the relevant game actions is defined, and at least some explanatory examples - each week! - of how potentially contentious incidents have been classified, and why. But let's work towards that slowly, eh? We probably can't get everything we want, all at once....)

b)  Surreptitious adjustment of BPS scores (after matches are over)

That seems to rest with FPL rather than Opta. But either way, it shouldn't happen - not without an open acknowledgement, and an apologetic statement explaining what happened. Most of the BPS data is updated almost live - so you can actually check on who's in the running for bonus points while games are still in play. You must expect that some things might get tweaked up to an hour or two after the game ends. But this season we've seen quite major points adjustments occurring a day or two later; if that occurs, we need to be told why.

c)  Appropriate Results

The main thing we want to see is the bonus points for each game more consistently, accurately, and predictably reflecting the commonsense assessment of player performances. 

And I think this could be achieved just with some tweaking of the current BPS scoring. 

The key problem with it is that it massively over-rewards certain game actions, while under-rewarding and even excessively penalising others - with the net effect that the bonus points tend to go mostly to the players who are already earning FPL points in the game: those who've made an attacking contribution, or defensive players who've managed to keep a clean sheet. It's a classic case of double recovery, and that is fundamentally unfair - particularly as a lot of significant game actions don't get any recognition in the main FPL points system, ('Pre-assists' are my particular pet peeve: the pass before the actual assist is very often the one that actually makes the goal; yet it earns no recognition, in either direct points or BPS credit.)  Midfield playmakers who quietly dictate the tempo of the whole game, or 'engine-room' lynchpins who break up every opposition attempt to progress the ball through central areas... are the kinds of players almost invariably overlooked by BPS - although proper football fans recognise them as the true 'Man of the Match'. And just last week (Gameweek 37) we saw an instance - sadly, not at all an unncommon one - where some exceptional goalkeeping performances from the likes of Sels, Leno and Kinsky went unrewarded. That's what we need to change.

Other game contributions get only negligible BPS recognition at present. A defender blocking a shot may be as important as a goal - but he only gets a tiny fraction of the BPS credit (for two of them!) that an attacker does for scoring a goal - essentially nothing. Defenders have never fared all that well under the BPS (unless the match is very low-scoring, they're bound to be eclipsed by all the players who contributed to the goals); and I pointed out early on this season that a small change in the BPS scoring would make it even harder for them to win bonus points this year (defenders and keepers are now more heavily penalised under BPS for conceding a goal, which makes it extremely difficult for them to get into bonus point contention if they fail to keep a clean sheet).

I'd be tempted, in fact, not to give any BPS credit for actions that are already credited in the main points system. However, that might lead to eccentric outcomes where a multiple goalscorer was overlooked for bonus points - which would also seem unfair under any commonsense view of things. So, I think we'd have to keep BPS credit for goals, assists, clean sheets, etc., but massively reduce it from the levels it's at now; while increasing the range and value of other game actions credited in BPS.

I don't see why scoring a goal should have such a massive weighting in BPS, or why it should differ for different players, different goals. There's a case for giving defenders (and keepers!) more game points for a goal, because it's so much rarer an occurrence for them (and they are under-rewarded by the overall points system, compared to attacking players). But as part of the overall 'game contribution' assessed under BPS, one goal is surely the same as another. 

I've always found it particularly baffling and exasperating that BPS awards an additional 3 'credits' for the 'goal that wins a match' - but offers no definition for that. Is it the last goal scored? Or (more probably) the last goal that moves a side into the lead? Either way, it's nonsense; it's really a matter of chance which player may get to contribute the 'most important' goal. And in any case, the truly decisive goal is the one that turns the momentum of the game - often, not one that establishes or extends a lead, but one that ties the score again, or even one that gets a side back in the match after falling a long way behind. I can see no reasonable argument for giving extra credit only to one of the game's later goals.

I'm doubtful about rewarding clean sheets under BPS as well; certainly not with a massive 12 'credits', as is currently the case. A goal can come out of nothing, out of pure fluke (or a bad refereeing decision...). It's probably undesirable that defenders and keepers get such a huge lift from a clean sheet under the main points system (but they need it, because they get no points for anything else, and usually only a fairly remote chance of big bonus points); again, 'double recovery' seems inappropriate to me - if they're getting 4 points for the clean sheet already, they don't need a huge BPS boost too. For me, there's not usually any difference in quality of defensive performance between a team that concedes 0 goals and a team that concedes 1 (or 2, sometimes....).

Weighting the BPS so heavily in favour of game actions that are already rewarded is plainly wrong-headed and unfair. If those 'credit' items are still to stand, they need to be massively dialled down, I would say. Whereas, credits for other important game actions like 'key passes', 'tackles won', and 'fouls won' should be significantly increased. That could produce BPS results that accord more closely with actual player performances.

It will be a complex task to get this rebalancing of the 'Bonus Points System' right, but - I believe it can be done. 

FIVE Wishes for next season

 

As the 2024-25 season draws to a close, I find myself brooding on things about the game I'd like to see change....

1)  Weed out 'zombie' accounts!

It is infuriating how much the overall rankings are distorted by the number of 'non-playing' accounts cluttering them up. Many managers accidentally get locked out of their accounts, or just give up on the game at some point in the season,.... yet their teams remain in play forever. There is no good reason for that. (Well, except that FPL's executives probably feel that artificially inflating the number of managers/teams may help to entice more and bigger sponsorships... But surely sponsors can see through this horseshit: it is obvious that the number of active players in the game can't be anywhere near the headline figure of 10-million or whatever.)  I would simply require a log-in every week, to confirm entry of your team for the next gameweek (even if you're not making any changes to it). Of course, people do occasionally just 'forget' to tweak their team for a week, or might run into real-world distractions like a health crisis of some sort for a few weeks; so, we might allow a 'grace' period - perhaps 3 or 4 gameweeks,.... before an account with no recent sign-ins is deleted. (Most kind souls would be inclined to allow team scores to continue to be counted during such a 'grace period'; but I'd take a hard line on that, and suggest that if you don't actively 'submit' a team for a gameweek, for whatever reason, you should get nul points for that gameweek.)

2)  Make a space for the most popular 'side-games'

On a related point to that first item, another major source of distorting clutter in our game is the number of people who are not actually playing the main game, but various little riffs on it. The main one, of course, is 'Weekly Win', where people are just chasing a one-off high score, and don't care how many transfers they use to achieve it. There may be variants, like 'Daily Win' or 'Early Lead' (chasing the best score on the first day of the gameweek) too!! And then there are some people who play a kind of 'Monopoly' where amassing squad value rather than points is the aim. There is no reason why these major alternate competitions could not be identified and accommodated within official side leagues (and let people have separate teams for them, if they also want to play the 'main game') - just as there are already separate 'game areas' for Fantasy Draft and Fantasy Challenge games. If you make it easy to enter these games, and offer some decent prizes for them, that should draw people away from trying to play them within the main game. However, I'd also be quite happy to see players expelled for 'suspicious behaviour' of this kind, or at least discouraged from pursuing such variants by placing a cap on the number of paid transfers - 'hits' - that can be used.

3)  More and better prizes!

It is ridiculous, really, that such a massively popular game, which is now regularly attracting well over 10 million sign-ups each year, offers such pitiful prizes. Rather than having huge cash prizes for the top few positions, though, I'd prefer a wider distribution of incentives, to share the goodies more generally: with multiple prizes - weekly and monthly - in all the major 'public leagues' as well as the 'Overall' competition. It's not so much to ask, is it?

4)  Do something about the 'Bonus Points System'

I've been saying quite often in my weekly roundups that 'BPS is broken'. There is a remarkable degree of general agreement among the FPL community online that the present system of calculating bonus point allocations is deeply unsatisfactory. It's utterly lacking in transparency (they only reveal the BPS figures for the 'leading' players in each match, not for everyone; and they don't give any detailed breakdown on how these totals are reached). And it doesn't appear to be at all consistent or fair,... or consonant with common sense: very often, players who've had outstanding games - indeed, who are, by general consensus, the 'Man of the Match' - get no recognition under this system whatsover. That can't be right. Moreover, this season we've seen a fair bit of flagrant skullduggery with the manipulation of the system: BPS results have frequently been adjusted - without explanation, and sometimes quite a long time after the end of the match in question - apparently to produce a less controversial allocation of extra points. Some have suggested such radical 'fixes' as replacing BPS with a third-party player rating that would more closely accord with the general perception of relative player performances; others propose abandoning 'bonus points' altogether, and allowing all players to earn additional points for specific useful game contributions, such as 'key passes completed', 'duels won' or 'balls recovered'. I see some problems with either such approach; I'd prefer to attempt an overhaul of how the BPS is calculated, and improve its clarity and consistency of implementation. [I might have a whole post on this soon... Here it is.]

5)  No more silly innovations

For the most part, we like the game as it is. It does not need any injections of 'novelty'!! The 'Assistant Manager' Chip foisted on us this year was a game-distorting aberration. It offered such a huge number of potential additional points that it was very difficult to ignore (anyone who - like me - nobly tried to do without it, in protest, probably lost at least 30-50 points on most of those who did use it; more, probably, than you'd get from both of the other bonus chips combined); and this now makes it impossible to meaningfully compare this year's scores to performance in earlier seasons. Moreover, this new chip was awarding points for things we'd never previously earned points for; it was, in effect, a completely different game - crudely grafted on to our beloved Fantasy Premier League. We do not want this kind of change in the game. We do not want the 'Assistant Manager' Chip in the game again next season (except as part of Fantasy Challenge, perhaps...) - or anything else of the kind.

Oh, and don't get me started on the UI!  That is a whole other post in gestation as well.....

Luck-o-Meter (37)

 

The rate of injuries has slowed somewhat in recent weeks, but a greater incidence of fatigue, nerves, perhaps occasional complacency or dipping in motivation, and a preoccupation, for some, with the final rounds of the European competitions, has meant that already over the past few gameweeks we've seen more and more bizarre swings in form and unexpected results. The tail-end of the season becomes even more of a lottery than usual - especially in this penultimate gameweek, when the unfortunate circumstance of the FA Cup Final and the Europa League Final clashing with the Premier League schedule this year means that we have a mini fixture logjam around this weekend; two fixtures have been moved forward to Friday night, and two moved back to Tuesday night, spreading this batch of games out over 5 days....

Spurs and Manchester United weren't nearly as bad as expected on Friday night, and frustrated their hosts for long periods. United actually put out a full-strength team, to try to get themselves in a competitive mindset for the upcoming Europa League Final. They made some good chances, but their finishing was poor; although they were unlucky that a Maguire header that appeared to have given them the lead was ruled out for the narrowest of offsides (I really don't like to see these decisions given for a matter of centimetres - particularly when it's the upper arm!); and late in the game Amad's crisp near-post shot demanded a sharp save of Sanchez. Reece James grazed the post with a long-range effort, and Madueke and Enzo Fernandez squandered decent chances, but Chelsea were making heavy weather of it until Cucurella's header gave them a late breakthrough. At least VAR was doing its job properly for once, directing referee Craig Pawson to have another look after he'd adjudged Andre Onana to have brought down Tyrick George in the box: TV camera angles clearly showed that the keeper had fairly got a hand to the ball, and hadn't touched the forward (it was a straight-up dive, for which George should have been booked - but wasn't).

Villa were similarly unconvincing against Spurs; they had far more of the ball, but weren't doing much with it, and Spurs created some of the better chances (two spurned by a slightly rusty-looking Son); the best, an early break down the left from Odobert, squaring neatly to Tel, whose cheeky back-heel angled across the goal forced Martinez into a fine reaction save with his legs. Kinsky ultimately looked Spurs's best player, though, being credited with 5 saves in  the match, including two crucial fingertips to deny Rogers and Watkins; and Watkins might perhaps have had a penalty for the challenge on him by Ben Davies as he got that shot off - but VAR saw nothing in it. Villa eventually won comfortably, but not emphatically, with their goals coming from unexpected sources: an instinctive prod home from the edge of the six-yard box, a fine poacher's goal for centreback Ezri Konsa, and then a hopeful shot from just inside the penalty area from central defensive midfielder Kamara.

Iliman Ndiaye, who's threatened to become a major goal-threat all season but rarely fulfilled that promise, came up with two slick finishes to secure an easy win for Everton in their farewell game at the iconic Goodison Park. Southampton were dogged rather than impressive in their resistance, the defensive cohesion they'd somehow attained against City last week largely evaporating again.

West Ham v Forest proved to be the brightest game of the weekend, with both keepers needing to be at their sharpest to keep the scoreline down - Sels having to make a superb stop from an unmarked Soucek header in the opening minute. It was unfortunate for Areola that, after making some great early stops. he gave away the lead with a careless pass to the predatory Gibbs-White (yet another victim of the playing-out-from-the-back malaise). Forest increased their advantage with a somewhat fortuitous 'header' from Milenkovic helping in Elanga's free-kick (it came off the back of his neck, and he didn't appear to know much about it!). But we then suffered the farce of a 5-minute VAR delay (apparently the new offside-decision technology was malfunctioning, but that's really no excuse; we have to put a time-limit on this process) to adjudicate a possible offside by an obviously non-involved player. The irrepressible Jarrod Bowen's superb volley got West Ham back in the game with 5 minutes left. Or what should have been 5 minutes left, but thanks to the VAR cock-ups and various other delays, we ended up with a staggering amount of added-on time: West Ham won a corner in the 113th minute, and the Forest defence, perhaps distracted by the arrival of Areola in their box, allowed Fullkrug to get on the end of it with a powerful header... which Sels had to desperately parry away to cling on to the 3 points - and the mathematical chance of still qualifying for the Champions League. Sels, weirdly, was only credited with 4 saves in the match; I think I counted at least 6 in the highlights, and a number of them were so crucial - especially the ones in the opening and closing minutes! - that he should have been up near the top of the bonus points as well,... instead of nowhere to be seen??!!  (BPS is broken.)

Jamie Vardy - inevitably - found a 200th competitive goal for Leicester, in his emotional farewell at his home stadium; although it had started to look as if it might not be his day, after two promising early chances had just got away from him; but then a surging run through the middle by full-back James Justin slipped him in behind for one of his classically casual finishes. Leif Davis, back from suspension, was unlucky not to get on the scoresheet for the visitors - thundering a left-foot shot against the post early on, and then having an excellent late volley ruled out by VAR (one of those offsides that's far too close to call with the naked eye.... and thus, for me, shouldn't be called at all).

More FPL woe at Brentford, where 47%-owned Bryan Mbeumo should have come away with at least 15 points for the game, but ended up with just 5, thanks to an uncharacteristic penalty miss (Leno pulled off a fine stop, but Mbeumo had telegraphed where he was going to put it, and didn't hit it that hard: a very straight run-up like that is always a bad sign...). Overall, though, justice was probably served there, since Andersen's fleeting touch on the inside of Schade's elbow was surely not strong enough to substantially impede him, and the striker's subsequent going-to-ground was a blatant dive (yet again, extremely unsatisfying that VAR isn't willing to intervene very often to question the on-pitch official's call on things like this). Fulham then somehow nicked the win, with a 25-yard banger from Harry Wilson. Flekken again didn't exactly cover himself in glory here: he probably could have done more with all three Fulham goals, especially the first one - Raul's header was low and well-directed, but not powerful, yet somehow slipped under the keeper's dive. Also, very odd that Wissa was credited with Brentford's second goal, since the ball was surely already over the line from Norgaard's shot (the credit for that could yet be reassigned before the end of the gameweek, I suppose; if it was Wissa's, it can't have been by more than an inch or so!). Brentford, remarkably, had more than 3x as many xG as Fulham, yet still lost - largely thanks to a 'Man of the Match' performance from Bernd Leno in the Fulham goal,.... again, strangely undercounted by the BPS, which barely acknowledged his presence on the field: bizarre, and very, very wrong.

Arsenal prevailed narrowly in a close-fought match against Newcastle. The visitors failed to make The Gunners pay for a sluggish start to the game, but kept their much livelier second-half performance well-contained - apart from Rice smashing home another banger from the edge of the box. 'Man of the Match', though, was David Raya, with a string of superb saves. The big upset for FPL managers (56.5% of them, anyway!) was the last-minute omission of Alexander Isak with a groin problem. And the second biggest upset might be the half-time withdrawal of William Saliba (the second most popular defender in the game, with 30.5% ownership), apparently with a hamstring strain - that will probably keep him out of the closing weekend. Raya, officially credited with 5 saves, just scraped into the last bonus point slot, but surely deserved at least 2 extra points for his heroic performance. The BPS is very down on keepers lately.

An away trip to the south coast on a Monday night can always bring out the worst in a team, but giving the night off to two of your most crucial players of the campaign, Van Dijk and Diaz, pretty much ensures trouble, and Liverpool got plenty of that, being put under constant pressure by a lively Brighton, twice losing a lead, and then conceding a late winner five minutes from the end. Lots of other FPL frustration here, in addition to the starting selections (which we must accept are going to get a bit wayward at this time of year): a fabulous Danny Welbeck being kept off the scoresheet by three massive saves from Alisson, Szoboszlai restoring the lead on the stroke of half-time with a pinger from the edge of the box.... which might well have been a misshit cross, and mighty Mo Salah missing a sitter (Gakpo squared the ball to him at pace, and he tried to hit it first time with the inside of his left foot as it went across him; but with half the goal to aim at, you'd usually expect him to bury the chance... rather than steering it just wide!). Brighton also had a penalty shout late in the second half when the always dangerous Gruda went down under a challenge from Tsimikas; the contact was light, and the Greek full-back may just about have got a toe on the ball, but he was trying to reach it from behind the attacking player, which is asking for trouble; probably the right call from VAR, but one that could have gone either way. Hinshelwood's late winner was reinstated by VAR, after the linesman had mystifyingly ruled it offside at first - it was nowhere near! (A rare 'success' for the new 'semi-automated' technology; mostly, so far, it's just been ruling out good goals on insanely thin - and unconvincing - margins.)

After Saturday's heroics, it was inevitable that Palace would rest some players for Tuesday night's game against Wolves: Wharton and Guehi were ruled out by injuries picked up in the Cup Final, while Eze, Mateta, Mitchell, and Kamada were dropped to the bench. Nevertheless, they still managed to win fairly comfortably against a very out-of-sorts Wolves - whose magnificent form of the last three months has suddenly evaporated. Keeper Jose Sa was mysteriously omitted from the squad, and his understudy Dan Bentley didn't have a great game. And star Matheus Cunha, nearly 15%-owned in FPL, was left on the bench - amid mounting rumours that he's signed a deal to move to Manchester United over the summer (so, that's his career over, then....); he got on for a token 20-odd minutes at the end, but wasn't able to make much impact. The remarkable Ebere Eze, though, picked up yet another goal in a very brief run-out at the end; his owners - also around 15% - are no doubt a bit disappointed with just a 6-point haul from hum,.... but it's 6 points more than they had any right to expect! This game also saw goals from defenders Agbadou and Chilwell; and a brace from rarely-starts Nketiah.

Manchester City have the squad depth to be able to make multiple changes to their lineup without significantly weakening it - but rotations were not as many as might have been expected; and Kevin De Bruyne's 14% ownership will have been relieved that he was able to start again just three days after the Cup Final, and last a bit beyond the hour-mark - although he failed to register any FPL contribution, and actually missed a sitter, lashing a shot against the cross-bar when presented with an open goal by Marmoush (it did bobble a bit just as he hit it...). Marmoush had opened the scoring with a 30-yard screamer that might well be a 'Goal of the Season' contender - yet that somehow wasn't quite enough to secure him the maximum bonus points. Evanilson hit a post shortly afterwards, and the game might have developed very differently if he'd been able to level the score then. And there were two sendings-off in the game: Kovacic for pulling back Evanilson when clean-through just beyond the half-way line - a fairly clearcut 'denial of a goalscoring opportunity' offence; and shortly afterwards, Lewis Cook was dismissed for a heavy challenge on Nico Gonzalez (not clear from the highlights I've seen that the tackle was bad enough for a straight red; more a clumsy shin-on-shin contact than a reckless driving-through-with-the-studs one).

The fixture rescheduling caused by the FA Cup Final and the upcoming Europa League Final added to uncertainties about selections and performance this week, exacerbating the problems of end-of-season form being generally erratic anyway. And so we ended up with a particularly weird 'Team of the Week': Ezri Konsa was the highest-scoring player, and the lineup also included James Justin, Declan Rice, Bernardo Silva, Harvey Elliott, Iliman Ndiaye, and Eddie Nketiah! But absolutely none of the most popular FPL picks.... And hence a wretchedly low 'global average' score of just 39 points.

Thus, it's looking a 7 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'; the refereeing mostly not too bad this time (apart from that very soft penalty award to Brentford), but VAR being painfully slow, and a few goals disallowed for paper-thin supposed 'offsides'. However, injuries, last-minute omissions and 'rest rotations' for some key players have contributed quite a bit to the FPL 'luck' factor this week, as have oustanding individual player performances - with a few banging goals, and even more extraordinary saves,... and a lot of goals from unexpected quarters! Moreover, the bonus point allocations have been really, really dodgy this week.

DON'T FORGET The Boycott.  Most people will have played the dratted 'Assistant Manager' chip by now; and indeed, if you haven't, it might not be available to activate any more (the rules never addressed this point). I took the high road by quitting playing the game for the rest of the season when it was introduced in GW23. [I worry that, if people don't protest vociferously about it, the new chip may become a permanent feature of the game - and it will completely ruin it.]  If you didn't feel able to join me in such an emphatic gesture, I hope you at least thought about refusing to use the Assistant Manager chip.

And even if you have played the new chip this time, please do criticise and complain about it online as much as possible. And raise objections to it with any football or media figures you know how to contact, and - if possible - try to find a way to protest about it directly to the FPL hierarchy (and let me know how, if you manage that!).

I worry that the fight on this is only just now really beginning: we'll have to push hard for the next few weeks to try to ensure that this silly, game-distorting innovation does not become a permanent feature of FPL from next season.

#DownWithTheNewChip

Dilemmas of the Week - GW37

 

As I again pointed out the other day, 'form' always becomes more and more unpredictable in the closing weeks of the season, maiking it very risky to use any purely elective transfers, even on apparently very 'favourable' fixtures. With Manchester United and Spurs facing each other in the Europa League Final next Wednesday (and not having anything really to play for in the League any more, except scrabbling to avoid the disgrace of finishing 17th!), it seems highly unlikely that they'll bother to put out full-strength teams this Friday evening,.... or, perhaps, on the final Saturday either. And thanks to the FA Cup Final this Saturday afternoon between Manchester City and Crystal Palace, the City v Bournemouth and Palace v Wolves games for this Gameweek won't be played until Tuesday evening (giving those teams less than 5 days' recovery before their final games of the season); and, whatever happens at Wembley, I would imagine both Finalists will be somewhat exhausted and using as many rotations as possible in those games.

I am trying to streamline these weekly round-ups, aiming to confine myself to just the injuries to players that are likely to have a major significance in FPL; and also, of course, only to new injuries - I figure everyone should be aware of players who were already ruled out for the last gameweek! [I currently find the 'Injuries & Bans' summary on Fantasy Football Scout the most reliable resource for this kind of information - go check that out for more comprehensive coverage.]

So, what are the conundrums we face ahead of Gameweek 37?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

Declan Rice was omitted at Anfield last week as a precaution because of an injury worry (variously reported as a hip, groin, or hamstring issue??), and Leandro Trossard had to come off in that game with a hamstring tweak - but both have been seen in midweek training, so should be available for selection this weekend after all.

Brighton's Lewis Dunk and Joel Veltman missed the Wolves game with training knocks, but could be back this week.

Leny Yoro came off with a foot injury against West Ham last week, and seems unlikely to be available this weekend. (Does anybody own him??)

Sven Botman is also a doubt, after coming off early in the second half against Chelsea with a sore knee.

Taiwo Awoniyi needed emergency surgery for a ruptured intestine after colliding heavily with a goalpost near the end of last Sunday's game against Leicester, so will miss the rest of the season. But there is relief that he seems to be OK, after what could have been a life-threatening injury.

Spurs's woes continue, as Dejan Kulusevski suffered a patella injury last week against Palace, which has needed surgery.

Do we have any players who are dropped, or not looking likely to get the starts we hoped for?

Mikel Merino and Jacob Ramsey have to serve one-match bans for picking up a pair of yellow cards last weekend.

Nicolas Jackson is now suspended for three games (and is really lucky it wasn't longer) for rather blatantly elbowing Sven Botman in the side of the neck last week. I wonder if this might not have torpedoed his Chelsea career, since he hasn't been looking that impressive recently anyway, and will now have to miss the opening of next season as well; one suspects the club will look for other striker solutions before Jackson is eligible to play for them again.

Easily forgotten, but Jadon Sancho is still a Manchester United player, and so unable to appear for Chelsea against them this weekend.

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

Manchester City and Crystal Palace players are surely too much of a rotation-risk - and injury- and exhaustion-risks! - next Tuesday in the wake of the FA Cup Final.

And Manchester United and Spurs - absolutely awful of late, anyway - surely won't be risking their best players for long ahead of their crucial match-up in the Europa League Final next Wednesday. It looks as though Antonin Kinsky may have displaced Guglielmo Vicario in the Spurs goal - but no-one is likely to have either of them.

West Ham have also been fairly dreadful recently; and although they showed significant improvement last week, that was only against woeful United - not really impressive enough to convince that they have a snowball's chance of getting anything against Forest.

Did anyone play so well, you have to consider bringing them in immediately?

Um, NO....  Last week was one of the most uninspiring gameweeks in living memory, and absolutely no-one put in a really head-turning performance; most of the star names were deeply disappointing.

Oh, OK, Ebere Eze had a good game last week; but it was only against Spurs - and now really isn't the time to be buying him.

Most people must surely have used the 'Assistant Manager' chip by now. (It was never actually specified in the 'rules' for this chip if it would cease to be available in GW37 if you hadn't activated it yet... I wonder if it has?) Anyone who hasn't must surely have forgotten about it. (Or wasn't aware of it. Or couldn't understand it. Or thought it was too much hassle to work around the other chips...) With the increasing unpredictability of results in the closing weeks of the season, it really shouldn't be a good time to play a chip based on team results anyway; and most of the top teams actually have quite tough run-ins, so there haven't been many secure wins in prospect even for the biggest names, and certainly no huge margins of victory or easy clean sheets; moreover, some of the stronger teams at the lower end of the table have recovered so well in the past month or two that they no longer have many table-bonus prospects. 

This penultimate gameweek, with the fixture logjam caused by the FA Cup and Europa League Finals, is a particularly tough one to predict - with most of the match-ups looking fairly tight, and perhaps capable of swinging either way. Given City's continuing flakey form, and the distraction of their bid for glory at Wembley a few days earlier, I'd fancy Andoni Iraola and Bournemouth to have the week's best - only! - chance of picking up table-bonus points. Although, with Liverpool having looked a bit unconvincing since securing their title, some might fancy Hurzeler and Brighton's chances against them too. Probably under-full-strength (and recently terrible even when somewhere near 'full strength') Spurs and Man Utd look the only strong possibilities for securing big wins against - for Aston Villa and Chelsea; but the two bottom-of-the-table sides have struggled more with chance creation than defensive frailty, and I'm not convinced that their opponents have the rosources to achieve the really emphatic victories that many FPL managers are fondly imagining; so, I'd definitely go with Iraola.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!

AND PLEASE DON'T FORGET The Boycott; though I'm willing to comment on its possible use, I actually loathe the pointless innovation of the 'Assistant Manager' chip - and I have been urging people to please consider quitting the game, or at least refusing to use the chip, in protest. 

But if you couldn't bring yourself to do either of those things, please do criticise the Assistant Manager chip as vigorously as possible on any relevant social media channels you use, raise objections to it with any football or media figures you know how to contact, and - if possible - try to find a way to protest about it directly to the FPL hierarchy (and let me know how, if you manage that!).  I think it's particularly important to voice these objections now, because decisions will probably soon be made about whether to include this chip in the game again next year.

#DownWithTheNewChip 

Endgame

 

Gosh, there are only just over 200 hours left before the 2024-25 Premier League season is all wrapped up! The Fat Lady is doing her warm-ups....

Overwhelmed as we've often felt by fatigue and frustration (and a frequent raging sense of injustice....) during the course of this season, we'll miss it when it's finally over....

We see a lot of people on the FPL forums at the moment frantically worrying what they can do to 'improve' their ranking over the last two gameweeks, clinch a mini-league or cup victory....  The answer, alas, is NOTHING. Just keep playing your game, and hope for the best!  People who go desperately 'chasing' points by taking wild gambles usually just shoot themselves in the foot.

If you're already in an impressive rank position - top 100,000, or top 50,000 or top 10,000, or whatever; or near the top of some of your leagues - that's about as good as you can ever hope to get (realistically, it's probably far better than you ever expected at the start of the season; and, very probably, rather better than you've deserved...); so you should be happy with that.... and not still feverishly chasing rainbows.

People who get hung up on hoping for further improvement, when they're already at Icarus altitudes, are probably just setting themselves up for huge disappointment. The upper end of the rankings tend to get pretty strung out; and there probably aren't going to be too many people who achieve significant further rises in rank in those strata over Gameweeks 37 and 38; a good number, in fact probably the majority, will slip back slightly; a good 10% or 20% (mostly the ones who were chasing too hard...) may fall back disastrously, allowing a few late entries into the upper ranks.

Croatia's Lovro Budišin and his team 'Aina Krafth Bree' (is that a pun that only works in Croatian??) are a staggering 43 points clear at the top of the global rankings, so it's pretty unlikely that anyone is now going to displace him as this year's Champion. (He's already been in the No. 1 spot for 6 weeks,... and in the Top Ten for 16 weeks!! That is a freakishly good run of form, even for the Global Champ...)

Top of the leader board -  after GW36

But only 6 other managers are within 20 points of second-place Max Littleproud, so.... there might not be too much movement at the top of the table at all over the coming week.

Only 53 managers have reached 2,600 points for the season so far; another 544 have a score from 2,550 to 2,599. And nearly 4,700 more have reached 2,500 points (an improbably large number, in fact, are currently on exactly 2,500,... and 2,499....).

98,248 managers have already reached 2,400 points - which would, in fact, be an extremely good total for season's end. And this in a season where we've had a lot of unusually low-scoring gameweeks, and a lot of surprises and upsets (City being shit for most of the season, Arsenal being much weaker than last season, Liverpool winning the title at a canter, despite being much less convincing than they were in the Klopp heyday a few years ago...); by rights, you'd expect this to be a below-average scoring season, yet all these folks have still managed to amass absolutely ridiculous points. (There's no accounting for LUCK....)

526,229 managers have reached 2,300 points or better - which I would regard as a very good total with two games left; if on 2,300 now, you should be able to reach 2,400 by the end of the season; and if you still have a bonus chip to play, or can somehow otherwise manage at least one very good gameweek from the last two (and actually, GW38 looks like it could be pretty good for everyone, with a very kind cluster of final fixtures!), you could maybe still get above 2,450. 

2,400+ points - that's pretty AWESOME: that is, in fact, about the best you can achieve on merit alone - anything more than that requires an awful lot of LUCK as well. And there is no point in hoping to be LUCKY.

A little bit of Zen (42)

 

"The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time."

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

But NOTE: to be 'eccentric' means to be an unorthodox and individualistic thinker... not to be a mad and self-destructive one. We generally see far more of the latter in FPL, alas.

Sheep Picks (14)

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

Hence, I created this occasional series of posts highlighting players I think are deangerously over-owned, are the subject of a sudden and misguided enthusiasm.

Well, I hate to do this, as I really like Eberechi Eze: I think he's a tremendous player, have often had him in my own FPL squad over the past few years, and would like to see him being given a more regular role with England. But.... he is my nominaton for a dangerously overrated 'Sheep Pick' for Gameweek 37 of this season.

He's the second-most transferred-in player for this gameweek (after Ollie Watkins, who I already raised doubts about a couple of weeks ago - although he looks a much stronger option at this stage,... if you can afford the transfer [people who rushed to buy him earlier in the week, to avoid a price rise, before they'd heard possible late injury news, were taking a big, BIG gamble!]), with a net influx of nearly 237,000 new owners. And that's purely because he bagged a brace of goals last week, to become the 'Player of the Week'. Indeed he did: but that was only against absolutely awful Spurs - it wasn't really a terribly convincing performance, either from him or his team. (And it was one of the most dire gameweeks overall that any of us can remember for years....! He was only 'player of the week' because almost all the other most fancied players failed to come up with anything.)  And yes, that does make it 5 goals in the last 6 games for him; he's certainly been in some tasty form lately. But as with Josko Gvardiol last week, one of my key objections to this sudden rush-to-buy is that you really should have had him already, bringing him in ahead of Palace's back-to-back Double Gameweeks in weeks 32 and 33. (I recommended him in preference to Ismaila Sarr ahead of Gameweek 30. Since then, he's scored 53 points to Sarr's 22!)

It is, however, worth noting that his team's form has been quite unconvincing since the beginning of April: they've only managed modest wins against defensively flakey Brighton and Spurs, while being held to a draw by dreadful Southampton. Their best result was probably the spirited 2-2 draw at Arsenal. But 4 draws and 2 losses in their last 8 games have seen them lose almost all hope of possible European qualification through League position. And - as I predicted - their performance in the two Doubles was particularly disappointing; that was because they struggle to perform well twice in the same week (they're not used to it, having never played in any of the European competitions [apart from a brief foray into the old pre-season InterToto Cup], and their squad is quite thin, so they're not able to rest players much); and they were up against four good opponents in those games. The same is the case now: after the huge emotional and physical challenge of the Cup Final against Manchester City on Saturday afternoon (which could go to extra time and penalties), they have to play their last 2 league games within less than 5 days. And those games are against Wolves and Liverpool. 

Admittedly, those two opponents have both stumbled in the last couple of games, but Palace would surely be nowhere near favourites to win either of these fixtures,... even if they were well-rested. Wolves have some of the best attacking form in the League since Vitor Pereira took over: from the beginning of February they went on a run of 8 wins and a draw from 11 games; and they were hard done-by to end a streak of 6 wins on the bounce against City two weeks ago, when they actually looked much the better side. They had a very off day against Brighton last week, but that's no reason to suppose that their glittering form of the past few months has suddenly completely deserted them. And Liverpool, yes, they have - not unexpectedly - lost a little focus and passion since they wrapped up the title with a month to spare; but they're still a team that can take apart anyone, even at 80% of their best. And you have to think that their passion will be rekindled by the desire to celebrate their championship in style on the last day at Anfield. On paper, Palace really don't have a snowball's chance in either of those games.

And they have only the slenderest hypothetical chance of squeaking into the Europa Conference League spot through their League finish, anyway. They not only need to win both of their games next week (won't happen), but they need Brentford and Brighton to each lose both of their remaining games (won't happen), and Bournemouth and Fulham to also drop points (that is pretty likely; but I'd bet that they'll both still finish above Palace).

Palace's season now rests on the Cup Final; they can't realistically finish in the top half of the League, they can't qualify for a European competition any other way - Saturday is the be-all and end-all of their season. And whatever result they get, they are likely to be completely wrung-out, and not in any condition to focus much on those two remaining League games, which will be meaningless for them. Plus, of course, there's the very serious risk that Eze, or other key players, will pick up an injury on Saturday, or at least be too fatigued by that game to be capable of many minutes on Tuesday,... or maybe even next Saturday,... or to play very well, even if they do trot out for the full 90 minutes both times. I really hope Palace can upset City at Wembley; but either way, that match is surely going to ruin them for next week. [Well, HOORAY - Palace did pull off that fairytale 'underdog' win in the Cup (though, on this season's form, they can't really be considered underdogs in this match-up), to the delight of all 'neutrals' around the world. Moreover, they didn't appear to pick up any injuries (though Wharton, who is pretty important to them, might be a doubt; and Guehi, who took a ball in the side of the head, might be excluded on Tuesday night by 'concussion protocols'), nor get any suspensions either (but, oh boy, was Dean Henderson lucky!); it didn't go to extra time; and City didn't even give them that tough a game physically (although it was, by English standards, quite a 'hot day'....). So, my reasonable concerns about whether they might be severely fatigued or demoralised, or suffering a significantly depleted squad this week, may have come to naught. And maybe there's even a possibility that the elation of their Wembley success will raise their game over their last two league matches. However, I still maintain that it was a huge risk to assume/hope that they would come through Saturday so well.  And it is still overwhelmingly likely that they will be tired, and lacking motivation in these remaining matches - particularly on Tuesday evening (when they'll presumably also be very short of tactical preparation, having spent 24 or 48 of the intervening 73-and-a-half hours celebrating...!). It is a very rare - almost unheard-of!! - circumstance to have teams playing in the Cup Final before the end of the League season; but when that does happen, you don't really want to be gambling on players from those teams.]

Ebere Eze is a tremendous player who can come up with a goal contribution at any time, against any opponent. But in the context of a crowded last week of the season, when he and his teammates will have nothing to play for, and facing two very dangerous opponents, it really doesn't seem at all likely that he will do so in Gameweeks 37 and 38. If you'd fancied his prospects over the past month-and-a-half, with the double Double, you should have had him already. But now is the time to sell him, not buy him.

The LOTTERY

I've joked a few times recently in my weekly roundups that, because of cumulative fatigue, nerves, or complacency, form tends to get more ragged for just about every team in the last few weeks of the season, and game outcomes thus wildly unpredictable. Hence, trying to predict FPL points returns becomes even more of a lottery than usual.

Apparent fixture-difficulty is no longer much of a reliable guide to likely points returns. (We just saw Manchester City held to a goalless draw by [second] worst Premier League team ever, Southampton!) And, basically, any attacking player might produce something between 0 and 3 attacking contributions across a couple of fixtures - regardless of how 'hard' or 'easy' they ought to be. Few, if any, will get any more than that; quite a few of the most fancied options, the biggest names.... will probably blank twice.

With only 2 games left to play - within the space of 7 days (less than 5 days for Palace, City, Wolves, and Bournemouth!), it really is impossible to guess how most of the remaining fixtures are going to pan out. Hence, elective transfers - choosing to swap out a starting player for someone else - at this stage of the season are a huge gamble, particularly if they're to be made at the cost of a 'hit' (although there can be indirect costs even with a Free Transfer, if you then don't have that available to sort out a last-minute injury problem and have to use a 'hit' there instead). It's always very difficult to be confident of recouping that 4-point spend in just one gameweek; but you can sometimes justify it if you foresee likely additional value in the new player over the next 2 or 3 fixtures as well; at the fag-end of the season, that consolation is no longer available to you. You are simply betting that the player you're dropping wouldn't have scored anything, and that the player you're bringing in is bound to score something,.... and should produce more than 4 points more than the guy you're replacing. And that is a VERY BIG BET at any time, but especially amid this end-season climate of increased uncertainty.

The one small kindness the Fantasy Gods have shown us this year is that the final Saturday is full of very unevenly-matched fixtures, so there should be rather more predictability about results than usual then - and the prospect of some good points returns from several leading players. (It's actually looking rather a promising Gameweek to drop the Bench Boost or Triple Captain chips,.... if you've somehow forgotten to play them until now. Even without a chip for that last week, it's probably worth saving up transfers until then.) But even that apparently tempting prospect may turn out to be illusory, just a taunting mirage.

And making elective transfers this week??  GOOD LUCK with that!!

Are you a 'good' FPL manager?

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Eternal Quest

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

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

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

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

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

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