The NEW Challenge

So, our new summer diversion is here.....

https://play.fifa.com/fantasy/

But how does it work?

Well, fortunately, it's pretty similar to the Fantasy Premier League game we're familiar with, in most respects.

Squad and team selection

You have to select a squad of 15 players, with an initial budget of $100 million (yes, dollars, not pounds - to make it more 'international'!); 2 goalkeepers, 5 defenders, 5 midfielders, and 3 forwards.

And the usual formation restrictions apply to your starting eleven: 1 keeper, at least 3 defenders, at least 3 midfielders, at least 1 forward.

Differences: The budget cap is increased to $105 million after the initial group phase; but player prices do not change during the tournament. [And the budget cap here is a beast. My opening effort was nearly 15 million over... Of course, it doesn't help that the running display of 'remaining budget' is at the very top of the screen, and disappears from view while you're scrolling up and down the player list to make selections!]

The 'club limit' is 3 players per club, just as in FPL, for the Group Phase. However, because the number of competing teams is progressively reduced through the tournament, this limit then increases for each subsequent round, to 4 per club for the Round-of-16, 5 per club for the quarter-finals, 6 per club for the semi-finals, and 8 per club for the final (as in the Fantasy games for the Euros and the World Cup).

Substitutions

Choosing a starting eleven, selecting a captain who will receive double points for the round (and a back-up vice-captain, who will receive that double-points bonus if your captain doesn't get any minutes), and setting your preferred bench order for back-up players to be auto-subbed in, if needed (because one of your starters doesn't play any minutes), likewise goes just the same as in FPL, except that.....

Differences: As with the Fantasy World Cup game, manual substitutions and changes of captaincy are allowed during the course of each 'MatchDay' (what they call the batch of games in one round of this tournament, rather than the 'Gameweek' that we have in FPL).

You can swap in any player from your bench whose match hasn't yet started (after their game has kicked off, they are considered 'locked' and you can no longer make use of them).

You can swap out, and then put back (if you want to) any member of your starting eleven whose match hasn't yet started. But more importantly - the purpose of this feature - you can remove a player whose match has been completed if you didn't like their score (though you can only replace them with someone who is yet to play, whose points return is unknown - so, it's a bit of a gamble).

Hence, unlike FPL, where you simply leave your weakest players on your bench, in this format, you could seek to stack the bench with players who have matches late in the 'MatchDay' - after most or all of your original starters have played, so that you'll have maximum options to make changes for a second chance.

You can also change your captaincy selection (once) during the 'MatchDay' (and the vice-captaincy too - although there doesn't seem to be any point in that... as the auto-subbing in of a vice-captain is disabled if you've made any manual changes!), if you don't like the return from your first pick. As with substitutions, above, you can only swap your captain pick to a player who has not yet played.

NB  Auto-substitutions work as in FPL, with your bench players replacing any of your starting eleven who don't play. However, auto-substitutions (and the vice-captain stepping in for a non-playing captain is treated as an auto-substitution) do not occur if you have made any manual substitutions or captaincy changes during the 'MatchDay'. [So, for each 'MatchDay', you have to choose whether you're going to try to tinker while the round is playing out, or just rely on auto-subs, as in FPL.]

Scoring

The points scoring is also much like in FPL, except that the awards for goals are quite different: forwards get 5 points rather than 4 for a goal, midfielders get 6 points, defenders get 7 points, and goalkeepers get a whopping 9 points. Goalkeepers and defenders also get 5 points rather than 4 for a clean sheet.

There is no BONUS POINTS SYSTEM in this game (hurrah!). But midfielders earn an additional 1 point for every 3 successful tackles and every 2 chances created. [So, it might be worth giving consideration to some more defensive midfielder options, especially for the last one or two spots in the squad, when budget is squeezed.]  Forwards receive an additional 1 point for every 2 shots on target.

You can also pick up an additional 1 point for a goal scored from a free-kick!

And the big novelty item in the scoring system here is what they call the 'Scouting Bonus' - which gives you an additional 2 points for any player scoring 4 or more points in the 'MatchDay' who is below 5% owned.

Because of this rather more generous points provision (and the fact that there are several really outstanding teams in this competition.... and rather a lot of makeweights; so, in all probability, a lot of very one-sided fixtures, especially in the Group Phase), we might get significantly higher team points from each batch of games than we do in FPL - well, potentially, anyway.

Transfers

You get 2 free transfers for the 2nd and 3rd Round games in the Group Phase; 4 free transfers for the quarter-finals, 5 for the semi-finals, and 6 for the final.

You can only 'roll' an unused free transfer over to the next 'MatchDay' between the 2nd and 3rd Group Phase games.

'Taking a hit' (spending points to purchase an additional transfer) only costs 3 points, rather than the 4 points we're used to in FPL.

You have unlimited transfers at the start of the tournament for the 1st Round of the Group Phase,... and also for the Round-of-16.

Chips

These are called 'Boosters' in the game.

Maximum Captain gives you double-points for your highest-scoring player in the round, without you having to designate a captain. (I rather like this one! Possibly the only novel rule that has ever appealed to me...)

12th Man allows you to select an additional player to receive points for in one round (a player entirely outside your current squad, and an entirely free choice unfettered by budget restrictions; i.e., you still have your regular squad and starting eleven - you're just getting extra points from some guy you don't own....).

Wildcard, just as in FPL, allows you to use unlimited transfers in one round. [This is probably best saved for the quarter-finals or semi-finals, where you might find yourself a bit short if you've guessed wrong about the outcomes of the previous round, and find yourself with a lot of players from eliminated teams....]

And, oh dear god, they've got a 'Mystery Booster' too - which they're not going to reveal until the knockout phase starts. I really, really hope it's not going to be a 'Manager' chip that gives points for team rather than individual performance. That idea was an abomination that ruined FPL for me last season.

You can find the complete 'rules' here (weirdly, labelled 'guidelines'): 

https://play.fifa.com/fantasy/help/guidelines

But be warned.... they are very, very badly written. I think you'll find my summary above much easier to follow.

Rediscovering the 'Beautiful Game'

I came across this fantastic Youtube post (about the place of tactical systems in modern football, and their limitations) from The Football Purist a few days ago, and felt I had to share it. (I don't think I'd come across him before; he hasn't been posting much recently - but a piece like this obviously takes a long time to prepare. I note that much of his previous output has been on a similar theme - celebrating the primacy of individual creativity over rigidly structured tactical systems.)

This video essay promotes the idea that individual flair can still trump tactical structures, and should be prioritised over them. Taking an analogy from complex adaptive systems found in Nature, like ant colonies, it suggests that a 'collective intelligence' between players can be an emergent phenomenon within the team performance - if they are given the freedom to 'self-organise' and improvise their own solutions to challenges on the pitch, rather than following 'rules' conditioned into them as part of their coach's game model. Further, it demonstrates that the swift and fluid passing patterns that grow out of such an approach - lightning-quick intuitive interactions between players that theorists have dubbed synergies - can still be cultivated through structured training drills (slightly paradoxical though that may seem!).

Some coaches, like Ancelotti and Scaloni, seem to be achieving a lot of success with this kind of philosophy. 

Let us hope that this is the 'future' of our game - a game that can once again be less like a chess match and more like a piece of art.

Players of the Year

 

Following on from my survey last week of how the 2024-25 season panned out in FPL, here is a rundown of the most valuable player picks in the game this year.

Jordan Pickford was obviously a strong choice between the sticks for the season, given his propensity for pulling off large numbers of saves when his team are getting pummelled, but with his defence being solid enough to help him keep a fair few clean sheets as well; and given the fact that he ended last season well out in front in the FPL goalkeeper rankings. However, with his being priced at 5.0 million, one might have preferred to go for two 4.5 options instead (at least at first, to save a bit of money in the initial squad) - or to have switched to that, when Everton started the season so poorly. Apart from huge hauls against Newcastle (of course!) and West Ham, he only really started hitting form around a third of the way through the season. Matz Sels and Dean Henderson were always the better bets for me (though Henderson and Palace became significantly stronger in the second half of the season); and indeed, Sels was only edged out of top spot by Pickford in the final week, so I would still go for the Nottingham Forest man as the keeper of the season - more consistent in his returns than Pickford, and more keenly priced.

Kepa and Areola and Sanchez also looked promising in spells, but you don't really want to be swapping keepers around too much. Raya never quite convinced for me; he never got higher than 3rd in the goalie rankings, I don't think, and was often outside the Top 5. Brentford's Mark Flekken - somewhat surprisingly! - managed to be in overall contention as well, just creeping into the Top 5 goalkeepers in the latter part of the season; largely down to the huge number of saves his defensively frail side needed him to make, which made up for a rather paltry total of just 7 clean sheets. I'm always wary of taking a keeper from a defensively weak team, though: that saves-for-clean-sheets trade-off is extremely risky! And Flekken is fundamentally not a very good keeper; although significantly improved this year (he doesn't have a massive negative 'delta' on his GC/xGC, a surplus of goals conceded over the 'expected' figure, as he did the previous year; but it's still not a positive number, which is what you're looking for from a good keeper), he's still been at fault, I think, for a lot of the goals Brentford have let in.

Trent Alexander-Arnold missed a spell with injury, and was rotated with Conor Bradley a few times over the closing month or so; both entirely predictable dents in his season total, and factors which had always argued against him being an ironclad season-long hold. Early in the season, it had looked as if he might just about justify his outrageous 7.0-million starting price-tag; but he was only ever just on the cusp of doing so, never absolutely nailing it; Slot just wasn't using him in the advanced overlapping role he'd need to get close to the double-digit assists he'd recorded in a few of his highest-scoring seasons. As it was, he came up just shy of 150 points for the season, which would barely justify a 6.0-million asking price, let alone 7.0 million. As with Haaland, though, Trent fans may have benefitted from a hot start (41 points from the first 7 games); if they'd switched to other premium options after that, they would have had an advantage over the season.

Josko Gvardiol ended up in top spot among the defenders (apparently confounding my eve-of-season view that he was over-hyped). However, he only snuck into 1st place in the final weeks of the season, after claiming 6 clean sheets in his last 9 games - somewhat fortuitously, I felt, since City still looked very shakey at the back in these games, despite facing mostly quite weak opponents. He only managed just over 150 points, which is not a great return for 6.0-million-pound defender (and not very much ahead of a bunch of 4.5 options); and he only edged Trent Alexander-Arnold and Gabriel out of the lead because he was almost ever-present throughout the season (which cannot have been expected at the start of the year, since Pep tends to rotate heavily among his defenders), while his two leading rivals both missed a lot of games. I maintain he was a risky and unpromising pick - at that price-point - at the beginning of the season, but was probably worth getting in from around the mid-point onwards, once City started to rally from their slump a little (he got 89 points in the last 20 games - which is value for the price-tag). 

The much fancied Pedro Porro (nearly 30% ownership at the start of the season, and it soared even higher in the following few weeks after he got off to a flyer by claiming a goal in the opening match against Leicester) ultimately disappointed the most among the initially popular defensive picks. He missed several games with injuries, so a haul of 2 goals and 6 assists was pretty good from a limited number of starts; but his owners had greedily - unrealistically - been expecting a lot more from him. And of course, despite quite a good attacking return from him, Spurs's defensive form completely fell apart, and he came up shy of a ton for the season.

My observation from back in October that we didn't seem likely to see any really big returns from defenders this year proved accurate. The tweak in the BPS, penalising defenders and keepers more heavily for goals conceded, makes it significantly harder for them to win bonus points. Arsenal's defensive form of last season was a bit of a freak; neither they nor anyone else could get anywhere near that number of clean sheets again. And there has been a sharp shift in EPL game tactics away from the type of full-back who pushes far foward all the time, linking up with the wide forward to create overlaps, pushing to the byline to provide crosses or cutbacks; we just don't see that level of attacking contribution from anyone at the moment. And that means that it must be rather questionable whether premium defenders are worth it any more. You really want to get something like 160 points from a 6.0-million-pound defender, at least 170 or 180 from one who costs any more than that - and this season, no-one got close to that. (At least, in recent times, that has been the calculus. We might have to revise our expectations downwards, if this trend persists. At least there was NO BUDGET PRESSURE this season, once the Haaland issue was closed, so we could afford to pay a little over-the-odds for the top-scoring defenders, even though they weren't giving great value-for-money.)

For me, Gabriel was the outstanding defensive pick of the year, until that hamstring injury unfortunately wiped him out for the last 9 games (he was well ahead of Gvardiol at that point). Of course, his Arsenal central defensive partner Wiliam Saliba wasn't too far behind (although he was looking a little less imperious, a little more fallible than in the previous two seasons); but Gabriel enjoyed a clear edge by virtue of being the main aerial target-man at set-pieces, which are such a key source of goals for the club. Ben White and Jurrien Timber might have out-performed either of them, if injuries and rotations hadn't so limited their minutes; next season, they might perhaps be the more tempting choices from the Arsenal defence.

Nottingham Forest's excellent defensive form was the revelation of the season. Their towering Serbian centre-back Nikola Milenkovic, ended up being the most popular FPL selection from them, with ownership up around 20% for a while. As with Gabriel, his aerial threat at set-pieces gave him a slight edge over his colleagues, and he produced 5 goals over the season. However, Murillo and Ola Aina also produced very good points, despite a few short injury absences; and Neco Williams also shows strong potential (although it's hard to be confident who will start at left-back, with Alex Moreno and Harry Toffolo offering some stiff competition for the place).

Daniel Munoz, Milos Kerkez, Antonee Robinson, and Rayan Ait-Nouri are the only full-backs who do still offer good prospects of attacking returns, but the latter two had fairly disappointing seasons: Robinson's output dropped off a cliff from January, while Ait-Nouri's only intermittently began to improve after the mid-season change of manager at Wolves. Hall and Livramento at Newcastle also showed some promise, as did Mykolenko at Everton, and in the latter part of the season, Wan-Bissaka at West Ham. However, none of these began to approach the kind of points totals we've seen in the recent past from Kieran Trippier, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joao Cancelo - or even Ben White last year.

In the absence of much attacking output from defenders this year, the dependable Virgil Van Dijk was once again among the top performers - finishing narrowly ahead of Munoz and Kerkez. However, for most of the season, his partner Ibrahima Konate was offering the same points for less money - so, I don't think Virgil was ever an ideal, much less 'essential' pick.

Bournemouth's Dean Huijsen was the 'pleasant surprise' of the season: one of the oustanding young defensive talents to emerge in recent years. He only attained a regular start when Marcos Senesi got injured at the start of December, but made an immediate impression, and racked up a fairly impressive (for a defender...) average of 4 points per start for the rest of the season, despite Bournemouth's indifferent form in the latter stages. His ownership in FPL eventually climbed above 5% - despite Kerkez (and Zabarnyi and Kepa) claiming most people's attention as a prime defensive pick from his club. It's such a pity that he's been poached by Real Madrid already; but perhaps we'll see him return to the Premier League one day.

Mo Salah, of course, is a no-contest for the 'most valuable player' of the year, in any position; despite his advancing years, and the uncertainties of bedding in a new manager at Liverpool, he smashed his own record for the most FPL points in a season, and pulled out a lead of more than 100 over the next best. Bryan Mbeumo was a gallant runner-up, amply confirming and building upon the promise he'd shown in the previous two seasons. He did suffer one mini-blip from around the start of November, when Brentford dropped 8 points in 5 games, and Mbeumo recorded only 1 assist, and did suddenly look strangely out of sorts (it seemed possible that he was not adapting well to sharing goalscoring duties with just-back-from-injury Yoane Wissa - but, if that was ever the case, they soon developed a good understanding and were both producing alongside each other throughout the second half of the season); I - like many others - was prompted to cut him loose for a while, as he was facing a tricky turn in the fixtures as well; but, of course, he then found his scoring boots again and notched goals against Newcastle, Chelsea, and Arsenal in December. However, these were about the only two midfielders that you could 'set-and-forget' this year.

Jarrod Bowen was arguably the third, producing one of his best and most consistent seasons (apart from a four-game spell he missed with a cracked bone in his foot, he never 'blanked' more than once or twice in a row all season, and ended up with 6 double-digit hauls) - despite the handicap of playing for a relegation-worthy West Ham side. However, all the other most fancied midfield prospects frustrated and disappointed to some extent. 

Cole Palmer, increasingly vilified by the FPL hordes later in the season, had started off the new campaign just as devastatingly as he'd played most of the previous year; he was in fact running the great Mo Salah very close through the early months of the campaign (slightly ahead of him at the end of Gameweek 6!!), and was looking on course for a 300-point season. And if Chelsea had been awarded something like the same number of penalties as last year, rather than fewer than half as many (and they really were shockingly unlucky in this, especially early in the season: in almost every game, they seemed to be having one or two very strong shouts for a spot-kick inexplicaby ignored by both the referee and VAR), he would probably still have equalled his last year's total of 244, despite the dramatic fall-off in the second half of his season. I maintained that he was still playing extremely well, but without the steel of Lavia in the middle, and with no fit forwards to spearhead their attack, Chelsea began to look increasingly clueless from early December onwards. Despite the huge drop-off in his returns from that point on, Palmer was still the 3rd biggest FPL points-scorer of the season. So, he was certainly worth having - indeed, essential, I would have said - from the start of the season; and arguably, perhaps, as a season-long hold, since with players of that rare calibre, there's always a chance they'll come up with a big haul from time to time, however badly their team is playing. Despite Chelsea's faltering form, Palmer recorded goals against Fulham, Palace, and Bournemouth around the turn of the year. With the benefit of hindsight, you can say that it would have been best to jettison him soon after Gameweek 20; but it was difficult - it would indeed have been over-hasty and rash - to make such a call at the time.

As so often, when an exceptional player has his FPL productivity start to dry up, it's very difficult to judge when to let them go. There was an odd combination of circumstances - Palmer occasionally still producing an outstanding individual performance that rekindled hope in faithful owners, Chelsea occasionally showing hints of a general improvement, so many of the likely alternatives to Palmer getting injured (Saka, Amad, Bowen, Son), a promising turn in the club's fixtures just ahead, etc. - that encouraged me to stick with him longer than I probably should have. But as I said, a player like him can come good again at any moment; unless there's a really compelling alternative pick you can swap him out for, you might as well just continue gambling on him. This time, that gamble ultimately didn't pay off; but in another season - perhaps with Palmer, perhaps with another top player - it might.

None of the other top prospects quite came up with the goods this year, not with sufficient consistency, or over any extended period, anyway. Bukayo Saka looked as if he might have an extraordinary season, bringing up his ton in just 14 games (one of which he'd had to sit out with a slight knock); but soon afterwards, he was wiped out for much of the season with a serious hamstring tear. Although he surprised us by getting fit again in time for the last two months of the campaign, he got very rationed minutes in that comeback spell and, apart from a fairytale goal in his return appearance, failed to have any further FPL impact.

Ebere Eze managed to stay fit for most of the year, and almost invariably looked Palace's best player - but didn't have much to show for that for long stretches of the season. That unjustly disallowed goal that he put straight in from a free-kick at the start of the season really set the tone; he seemed to be having near-misses - battering a post, drifting a delicate curler inches wide, pulling a top-drawer save out of the keeper - in very nearly every game: if even one of those had gone in, it might have galvanized him into a 200-point season. I'm sure he's got that in him. This time, though, you probably didn't want to think of bringing him in until the last couple of months of the season.

Kaoru Mitoma is another player who strikes me as particularly 'unlucky' - the kind of player who's always setting up potential assists that his teammates then squander, or who has actual assists denied him because a lunging defender got a toe-end on his deft cutback before it reached the Brighton forward. And of course, it doesn't help that his Brighton team were exhibiting even more yo-yo form than usual this year. However, he still managed 10 goals in all, including the 'Goal of the Season' - so, not too shabby. Unfortunately, he just never managed a consistent enough run of form to make him a really attractive FPL acquisition this year. If you happened to be on him when he managed 4 big hauls in 6 games in January/February, you were very fortunate.

The (mis)fortunes of Luis Diaz also regularly break my heart. I think he's been Liverpool's best player, after Salah, over the past few years; but the cruellest combinations of circumstances always contrive to deny him the FPL points that would fully reflect that. This year, he didn't start 10 games, was often subbed off with 15 or 20 minutes left in those he did start (and once, shy of the hour mark!), and was most often played through the middle rather than in his preferred left-flank role. Yet he still managed 13 goals and 7 assists over the season, and was neck-and-neck with Bowen for the 4th best midfielder slot!! Imagine what he could achieve if Slot started him every week, in his best position.

Diogo Jota is arguably even more ill-starred. He made quite a promising start with Liverpool this time, racking up 34 points in in the first 7 games (effectively only 5 games, as he had to come off early against Forest, and then missed the following match against Bournemouth). However, he then - inevitably - picked up a medium-term injury, and when he came back was mostly used as a sub, or withdrawn quite early when he did start.

Antoine Semenyo is a rather surprising appearance at 7th position in the midfield rankings; but a huge haul for his brace against Leicester on the last day catapulted him several places up the chart. It's also a measure of how disappointing the output from the midfield position was in FPL overall this season: ordinarily, you'd expect perhaps 10 or 12 players to be scoring in the 170-190 kind of range, but this season only 3 did.  I'd fancied Semenyo's prospects before the season kicked off, as he'd looked very lively at the end of the previous campaign, and it did seem he might inherit Solanke's mantle as Bournemouth's main goalscorer. However, it soon became apparent that that role was more likely to fall to Dango Ouattara; and then they brought in a new specialist striker in Evanilson; and then Kluivert had a breakout season, largely stealing everyone else's thunder at the club, at least for a while. Semenyo had a few other nice hauls as well, but they were very spread out over the season, and he rarely looked like posing any really consistent threat. From the beginning of February, he went on an 8-game run that yielded only 2 assists; when I was still seeing him in a lot of people's sides in March, I thought there was something very odd going on.... He was never really the best attacking pick from Bournemouth at any stage of the season; and by then, when Bournemouth's team form was faltering badly in the closing third of the season, none of them were worth having any more.

Bruno Fernandes is, of course, one of the best players in the Premier League; but, unfortunately, he plays for one of the worst teams - which seriously calls into doubt how far you can ever rely on him to be a consistent FPL producer. He did have a few very nice little runs this year: back-to-back double-digits in Gameweeks 10 and 11, closely followed by three 9-pointers in four games across the end of November and the beginning of December; and then another little spurt of 46 points in just 4 games from mid-February. But also.... a lot of barren spells, alas. If you happened to have him during one of those hot streaks, you were lucky; but neither he nor United were producing regularly enough to make him a good bet for an extended hold in your squad (unless there just weren't any other decent midfield prospects available - which might have happened once or twice this year!).

I mentioned in my earlier post on the overall course of the season that many FPL managers had gone for Morgan Rogers in the 5th midfield spot early on (and mainly just because he was cheap, rather than because they knew anything about him), and were sufficiently impressed to hang on to him all season. I feel that was a mistake - an error of complacency or apathy. Not that I have anything against Rogers; in fact, I'm one of his biggest fans in the real world; but in the sphere of FPL, he just wasn't quite a regular enough producer to justify the long-term hold (and that was mostly down to Villa's problems with consistency, rather than any failing on his part). He only managed decent back-to-back hauls once all season. And he suffered a particularly bad lull from January onwards, missing the New Year game against Leicester, and then only managing a solitary assist in his next 8 appearances. Now, it was certainly an outstanding debut season, and (in this year when so many top midfielders have disappointed...) he wound up as FPL's 14th best player (and 8th best midfielder). However, he was edged out of a higher spot by the late lunge from Semenyo, while the likes of Murphy, Kluivert and Iwobi were a negligible distance behind; so, he wasn't even clearly the best of the ultra-low-budget midfield options this year. 

And the fact is, the end-season standings don't always count for that much. Even if you correctly guessed who the top 15 performers for the year were going to be way back last August, and could afford them all in your initial squad, they probably wouldn't have given you anywhere near a league-topping score if you'd stuck by them all year. There are very few players who are consistent enough to rely upon for the whole season. All the other positions. you have to rotate furiously - to try to keep finding the most in-form picks for the moment. That was particularly true in the cheaper midfield slots this year - because these were the players producing the most (very often not just the best points-per-pound return, but the highest absolute points), but also they were the players who were shifting in and out of peak form most rapidly. Although Morgan Rogers might have looked like the best budget midfield pick overall, there were almost always at least 2 or 3 others in the 5-to-6-million price category who were outperforming him over a short run of games: Emile Smith Rowe at the beginning of the year, and then his teammate Alex Iwobi (or, for very brief spells, perhaps even Harry Wilson or Adama Traore!), Dwight McNeil, Justin Kluivert, Georginho Rutter, Enzo Fernandez, Amad Diallo, Julio Enciso, Jacob Murphy, Harvey Barnes, Anthony Elanga, Kevin Schade. Spotting the emerging form of guys like these, and getting on them - and then getting off them again! - quickly was especially crucial this season.

Strange things were happening up-front this year. For a long time now, maybe a decade or so, the forward selection has been very limited. We've usually had just one or two really outstanding performers - Vardy, Kane, Haaland - with few if any of the other contenders getting anywhere near to their eminence. But this year, we have 2 forwards in the Top 5 overall FPL points producers,.... and 6 in the Top 11! That is unheard-of - at least as far back as I can remember. Partly, of course, it's down to the disappointing performances or injury absences of so many top midfielders this year; but also, it's very rare to have that many forwards all doing that well.

Chris Wood, for me, was the pick-of-the-crop this year. Although he slipped behind Isak in the overall points totals, he was often the more consistent points producer through the first two-thirds of the season, his finishing was uncannily efficient (beating his xG by nearly 50%?! WTF???), with him again and again claiming a goal from just two or three half-chances in a game, he was a lot cheaper than Isak, and he was a much more unexpected success story of the season. His form did falter from around mid-February, though, with two or three games missed with a knock he picked up on international duty, and only 2 more goals during that closing phase of the season. Almost no-one - apart from Salah and Mbeumo - was a season-long hold this year!

Alexander Isak confirmed his enormous potential in his second full season, managing to stay clear of major injuries this year, and looking very much like the most complete forward in the league. He started a little sluggishly, perhaps carrying an injury of some sort from the summer - managing only a couple of returns in his first six outings, and then missing a couple of games with a 'broken toe'. After that, he began to settle into a groove, and never went more than two starts without a goal for the rest of the season. I worry that the FPL Gnomes are going to make him stupidly expensive next year. It wouldn't be that unreasonable, as he is pretty much on Haaland's level; but it would spoil our fun to have two of the top attacking talents rendered unaffordable.

Matheus Cunha was the other outstanding forward of the year, posting very decent numbers even with such a weak side as Wolves (deep in the relegation mire for the first half of the year), and often manifesting an other-worldly brilliance in his approach play as well as his finishing. His temperament is the one big problem, of course; if he hadn't got himself a couple of extended suspensions (and he was really fortunate that they weren't longer, especially the one for assaulting the Ipswich steward), he probably would have finished at least 3rd in the forward rankings, and might have challenged Isak for the top spot.

But as it was, Ollie Watkins and Yoane Wissa were the best of the rest this time. Wissa was the breakout star among the forwards this year (well, assuming that we allow that we've known about Chris Wood's potential for the best part of a decade, even if he hasn't often realised it): apart from a few games missed with an injury from the end of September, and a brief goalscoring lull in January/February, he has been remarkably consistent in his output throughout the year. Watkins had a bit more of an up-and-down year: he too looked to be troubled by some sort of fitness issue to begin with, then there were rumours that he was out of favour with Emery (perhaps because he was angling for a move away from the club at the end of the season?), and pundits began to muse that he might - perhaps should - lose his start to the very sharp-looking Jhon Duran, and later to loanee Marcus Rashford. It didn't help that Villa were struggling with the unfamiliar burden of Champions League football, and often weary and woefully inconsistent in the League, especially in the first half of the season. But class will out, and Ollie ended up having another pretty solid season; he looks to be forming a particularly productive rapport with Morgan Rogers, and it's notable that although his goal tally wasn't that great this year, he supported it with an impressive 8 assists.

Erling Haaland, of course, presented the great conundrum for us at the start of the season, when FPL priced him at an outrageous 15.0 million pounds. At that cost, the only sensible decision, really, was to try to go without him in your initial squad. But only about half of the FPL community chose that path, while the other half paupered the rest of their squad to keep Haaland; and they were absurdly well-rewarded for their faith in him when he banged in a remarkable 10 goals in the opening 5 games, for an unprecedented 63-point haul. But City's season began to unravel immediately after that, and he only managed 3 goals and an assist over the next 13 games. Although they began to rally somewhat around the end of the year, their form still looked shakey. Haaland, though, was nearly back to his best and scoring consistently: but was 8 goals and 2 assists in 11 games from Gameweeks 19 to 29 enough to justify that 15-million price-tag (remarkably, the sell-off on him during City's long slump was so slow-and-steady that he never dropped lower than 14.7 million!)? Probably not, when there were so many other strikers in great form, at barely half the price. Just when people were starting to get tempted by the Haaland option again around the start of March, he picked up an ankle injury and was out for two months. Yet he still ended the season on 181 points, the 5th best forward in FPL, and 10th best player. For a forward who only cost 8 or 10 million, that would have been just dandy; but for one who cost 15 million???  His price is bound to come down again next year, after this relatively 'disappointing' season; but I fear it won't drop enough to significantly change the dynamics of the game - he'll still be unaffordable!

There were a number of other forwards who looked like good acquisitions for a limited spell: Danny Welbeck and Raul Jimenez looked very good at the start of the season, Joao Pedro often looked the most enticing super-budget option (although, like Cunha, he has temperament issues which seriously undermine his FPL value), and Evanilson and Strand Larsen could have had much more impact if they hadn't suffered spells of injury. Omar Marmoush had an eye-catching debut half-season. Nicolas Jackson started the year very impressively, but then started to lose his way, as did Chelsea; and then he got sidelined for a month or so with an injury, and couldn't rediscover his scoring touch on his return,... and then got himself suspended for a particularly ugly foul near the end of the season. (With the news that Chelsea are now in the process of signing Liam Delap from Ipswich, I wonder if Jackson might have ended his career at the club with that rash assault on Sven Botman.)  Delap, Beto, and Ndiaye all looked intermittently promising prospects as well. But the much fancied Mateta, Solanke, and Havertz all disappointed (though it might be said that a lot of that was down to injuries sustained, and shakey team form, rather than bad performances from these players when they were fit).

I did own all of these most outstanding players at some point; most of them, in fact, were in my initial squad. And yet I still had a thoroughly appalling season! 'Tis a funny old game, indeed....  Having most of the right players, most of the time - isn't enough. You've got to have all of the right players, at all the right times - to do really well in this game. And get all your captaincy picks right as well....

No rest for the WICKED....

 

FIFA's Fantasy Club World Cup game is up and running:

https://play.fifa.com/fantasy/

The new expanded competition format features 32 teams (most of whom you've never heard of!!), and lasts a full month. It gets under way on Saturday 14th June.

I'll try to compile one or two summaries on here of how the rules are going to work, and who the most promising players seem likely to be, in the next few days.

The trouble with VAR

I just came across this interesting video from Youtuber Dagnal Diagonal, which provides a pretty good survey of some of the most egregious examples of VAR screw-ups over the last couple of seasons - and presents some suggestions for improvement. (Strangely, although it's invariably a major focus of discussion on TV highlights shows, I haven't seen very much commentary on this issue anywhere online.)

Dagnal's main points are:

1)  The overall quality of officiating needs to improve. And in particular, referees need to focus more carefully on getting their initial decision right. There does seem to be a psychological reliance - perhaps unconscious! - on the presence of VAR being able to get them out of trouble, which may lead to them making hasty or over-cautious - or, sometimes, over-bold - calls at first instance. (I suspect, in particular, that they will often give penalties a little more easily, with the 'safety net' of thinking that VAR can overrule them, or suggest a second look, if they've misread the incident. And that they'll often be hesitant to give a red card for a bad tackle, knowing that VAR will take a closer look.)

2) The scope of VAR responsibilities needs to be expanded - particularly with 'second yellow', or potential 'second yellow' incidents (which are just the same in game impact as a straight red card, so it's absurd that they should be treated differently under the VAR protocols).

3)  Refs need to get over the prejudice that there's an overwhelming expectation they ought to change their original decision if they're directed to the pitch-side TV monitor (easier said than done!). Dagnal suggests it might help if they're allowed an additional category of response, as in pitch-side reviews in American football, where an initial call can be simply 'not overruled' - instead of actively confirmed - if the TV playbacks are not readily able to provide conclusive evidence one way or the other.

I rather feel that this last suggestion of his really goes to another issue: the frequent fallibility or inconclusiveness of the available TV coverage of an incident. Encouraging referees to be more confident in their original decision, and not put under any weight of expectation as to what conclusion they should reach when sent for a second look at an incident, is more a matter of training. 

And I think stricter guidelines on the way that the on-pitch and off-pitch officials communicate with each other are essential too. They should not be getting into any extended conversations; the VAR official should not be giving any indication of what he thinks happened. There should be a set list of formulaic 'instructions', giving the reason for the suggested review, the particular event or events that need to be looked at - but without any extended detail, which might be prejudicial. And the word 'possible' should always be included, to emphasise that the question is entirely OPEN for the referee: 'Possible contact on ball by tackling player', 'Possible handball by goalscorer', 'Possible holding by x and y', 'Possible obstruction of goalkeeper's sightline by z' - that's ALL the VAR official should ever be saying.

And there's a lot of scope for improvement in the technical side of things too (something that Dagnal omits to comment on in his video). We often see a referee apparently only being shown a slow-motion or freeze-frame picture on the monitor (which, again, tends to be prejudicial), or only being shown one or two camera angles of the incident, when more - and much better ones - do exist. WHY???  This is the kind of staggering incompetence in the implementation of the system that they need to stamp out, if they are to build any public confidence in the operation of VAR.

Let us hope we'll see better things in this area next season. But I'm not at all confident we will.

The story of MY season

 

I've already summarised how the first quarter or so of the season panned out for me, and then the next third, in a couple of earlier 'self-review' posts.

An overview of the conclusion to my season can be very brief - as I took the noble, self-sacrificing decision to quit the game after Gameweek 23 in protest at the monstrosity of the 'Assistant Manager' chip. Until just now, I hadn't logged into my account since shortly after the GW23 kick-off; I have been stumbling towards oblivion as a 'zombie' account for nearly 4 months....

My one small 'cheat' was that I set up for Double Gameweek 24 before retiring (though, in haste - and before any of the Gameweek 23 results were known), and played my Bench Boost on it.

My team, for the last 15 weeks of this season, looked like this:

My ZOMBIE Team

I'd been rushed into playing my two bonus chips earlier than I might have wished, to get them out of the way before my protest withdrawal from the game. They didn't work out too badly (although could have been much better...): I picked up an extra 8 points for a Triple Captain punt on Salah against Ipswich in GW23, and a handy 33 points on my Bench Boost (though, in truth, only 11 or 12 points for my lowest-returning players in that week!) for this Everton-stacked bench in DGW24.

Of course, I'd realised that my end-season performance was bound to be massively compromised by refusing to play the potentially very lucrative AssMan chip, and cutting myself off from the considerable benefits of my two rebuild chips (or any additional transfers), and not being able to rotate anyone off my bench or switch my captain's armband around, and particularly by not being able to adjust to the late-season speed-bumps of blank and double gameweeks; but... I had thought that maybe, just maybe, if I didn't get too many injuries, I might still do OK...

However, my DISMAL LUCK this season continued, and I got a stack of injuries: Amad (lately my best player) and Jackson and Ndiaye all got struck down in that very first week, and Lewis Hall not very long afterwards. Hall was out for the season, and the other three only returned to availability fairly late on, unable to have any very big impact for me. Gabriel too, of course, missed the last 8 games of the season, and Aina was out for GWs 31-33. So, my squad was suddenly full of holes, and I put out short teams in Gameweeks 28. 31-33, 35, and 37 (when Nico bloody Jackson got himself suspended...); and in Blank Gameweek 29, of course, I was royally screwed, fielding only 5 players, with a return of 15 points (barely half of my previous worst-ever).

Moreover, Gordon had a few problems with short-term injuries and a couple of suspensions, and just not being in his best form; while Cole Palmer's output remained in the doldrums for the rest of the year. And I was left with Jordan Pickford, who had an outstanding finish to the season,... stuck on my bench - ooops!  At least Salah amd Mbeumo and Isak produced fairly well for me; but the rest of the team had melted down around them almost immediately.

Not surprisingly, I was mostly well below the global average during these 14 weeks where my team shambled on rudderless - although I did have 4 fairly good weeks early on in that run, before the injuries hit me too hard; and strangely, I rallied at the very end, managing slightly above the average score in GW37, and a surprisingly solid 67 points in the - for most people - very low-scoring GW38. 

I was losing, on average, around 150,000 places per gameweek in the global ranking during that run - finishing way outside the top 3 million. And my squad value crashed from 107.2 million to 105.0 (although it had rebounded by nearly 1 million from its lowest point of 104.1 over the closing few weeks).

Trying to look on the bright side,... at least I am reasonably confident that I will DO BETTER next year!

DON'T FORGET The Boycott, The Protest.  Even if you have played the new 'Assistant Manager' 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

A final WISH

 

Could we possibly - pretty, pretty please - make the very simple rule change that...

Bonus Chips no longer count in Cup ties?

Just about nobody thinks that this is fair - even people that profit from it. (I actually had someone offer a heartfelt apology to me a few years ago when he knocked me out in a quarter-final with his Bench Boost, and assured me he hadn't realised it would give him an advantage in his Cup match.)

This is my last wish to address to the FPL authorities. (For now. I'm sure I'll think of some more next year...)

Oh, wouldn't it be NICE if some of these wishes were granted before the start of next season?

A little bit of Zen (44)

 

"I've looked at Life from both sides now,

From 'Win' and 'Lose', and still somehow...

It's Life's illusions I recall;

I really don't know Life at all."

Joni Mitchell - 'Both Sides, Now'

The STORY of the season... 2024-2025

It has indeed been a funny old season - with rather more unexpected twists and turns than usual.

I noted at the start of the season that THE BIG CONUNDRUM of the year was going to be whether to go without Haaland, after the FPL gnomes priced him at an eye-watering 15 million pounds. That came down to more or less a 50-50 split among FPL managers at the big kick-off. And which way you'd flipped the coin on that..... largely decided your entire season. 

It would have been reasonable to doubt Haaland and City at the beginning of the season. Pep's men have usually been a little slow to find their rhythm in the early games. We'd seen in the previous year how disastrously unsettled they could be by Rodri's absence; and he was going to be missing for a while with a hamstring problem picked up in the Euros Final. Pep had said that other key players - Foden, Bernardo Silva, DeBruyne - were also going to be rested for the first 2 or 3 matches after a late return from the summer tournament. And their early fixture run - away to Chelsea in the opener, and then facing Brentford, Arsenal, and Newcastle from Gameweeks 4 ot 6 - looked quite challenging. Hesitating over whether to bring in Haaland, or boldly deciding to go without him, were entirely reasonable choices - really, the better choices. But the Viking colossus pulled out back-to-back hattricks in Gameweeks 2 and 3, and then a brace in GW4. as well as singles in the first and fifth games - for a phenomenal opening haul of 63 points in 5 games. If you'd missed out on that, your season was pretty much SUNK immediately. (Though.... never say NEVER!  Global champ Lovro Budišin was actually struggling in the early weeks, having gone without not only Haaland, but also Saka, Palmer, and Mbeumo - rashly favouring Fernandes, Son, and Jota in his side instead. I may at some point attempt a deeper examination of how such an apparently 'bad' team ended up doing so phenomenally well...)  And that advantage to Haaland owners was unfair, because that early blitz really came out of nowhere, contrary to all reasonable expectation (even the demolition of promoted Ipswich wasn't entirely predictable, as they had appeared to be the strongest of the three new teams joining the League, and had given Liverpool a very tough fight in their opening game); going-without-Haaland had really seemed the more sensible strategy for the season.

And so, indeed it would prove to be - from Gameweek 6 onwards! After that opening avalanche of points, Haaland's - or rather, City's - form fell off a cliff, and he only managed 3 more goals in the next 13 games. It was a collapse so dramatic that even Haaland's most passionate idolaters - most of them, anyway! - soon accepted that they'd have to give up on him for a while,.... and hence switch to the No-Haaland strategy, which had looked as if it should have been preferable all along.

So, if there was ONE FACTOR which had the most decisive influence on season outcomes in FPL, it would be that: you needed to have been on Haaland for the first 4 or 5 games, but to have dumped him out as soon as possible after that. The nearly half of managers who had opted against him initially - and hadn't been immediately persuaded to reconsider by one good return, against a weak team - were most royally screwed. But they would probably still have been OK, the No-Haaland strategy might still have more than balanced out in their favour over the remainder of the season,.... if City's form hadn't crashed so emphatically that almost everyone was soon forced into joining the No-Haaland camp, Funny how life goes.

The second big game-changer right from the get-go was Bukayo Saka, who notched 12 points in his opening game against Wolves, and racked up 90 more in the first three months of the season (with just 1 game missed with a knock, and 3 blanks over the next 12 fixtures). Once again, there had been many tempting alternatives to Saka before the start of the season; and despite his white-hot start, some of them might have proved better in the long-haul, if he'd suffered one or two dips in productivity (which was already starting to happen, with three blanks in a row from GW13....). But he had to come off in the first half against Palace in GW17 with a hamstring problem that would effectively wipe him out for the season. So, once again, people who'd merely been a bit lucky to make the 'right' pick on Saka for the early phase of the season were forced to ditch him at an opportune moment, rather than possibly sticking with him - out of misplaced loyalty or mere superstition - too long through a barren spell, perhaps even through the whole of the rest of (what might have been) a relatively unproductive season from there on (exactly as subsequently happened for many people with Cole Palmer!).

Even at Arsenal, Saka wasn't an absolutely obvious or inevitable pick. There had been signs last season that Arteta was requiring a more disciplined and controlling contribution from him, often doing more defensive work deeper in midfield, or sticking to the touchline to stretch the opposition defence - rather than being given free rein to drift inside at will and seize on numerous goal-scoring opportunities in the right-half space. Even his impressive points total the previous year had mainly come in two absurdly hot streaks, offset by some lengthy runs of little output. And over the previous two seasons, Odegaard in particular, but also Martinelli and Trossard in spells, had sometimes been higher-producing Arsenal assets in FPL. I myself would have been tempted to go with Odegaard initially - a more central creative force, and, at least when at his best, a more consistent points prospect. But the Norwegian was not at his best this time, in fact, by his elevated standards, it was a very disappointing season: a fairly respectable 8 assists ultimately (though down on last season's 11), and a paltry 3 goals (compared to 8 last year and 15 the year before). Being tempted to punt on Odegaard rather than Saka in the initial squad wasn't a rash or foolish choice, but it would have backfired horribly - with Odegaard picking up just 7 points in the opening 3 games (against Saka's 24!), and then getting wiped out by an ankle injury for two months.

Another big surprise was what I came to think of as the Revenge of the Grandads...  Suddenly, a bunch of aging strikers, who'd rarely in their youthful prime managed a long run of consecutive starts and almost never produced an extended scoring spree, were somehow now staying fit and playing the best football of their lives, able to start every week, and banging in a cracking goal almost every week. There was a case for taking an early punt on Chris Wood, as he'd finished the previous season with Forest very strongly (although his age, and the likelihood of competition for the place from his athletic understudy, Taiwo Awoniyi, appeared to make it quite a risky punt); but the sudden rejuvenation of Danny Welbeck and Raul Jimenez surely blindsided everyone.

The unexpected strength of these fairly cheap forward options early in the season made it much easier to go without Haaland or Isak or Watkins - and to spend more money in midfield or defence. And with Isak avoiding long-term injuries this year, Wissa stepping up a notch, Cunha often looking one of the best players on the planet (when he wasn't suspended...), Mateta eventually starting to come good after a very slow start, Gakpo becoming an FPL prospect once he finally started getting some regular starts in the second half of the season, and newcomers Strand Larsen and Evanilson also showing a lot of promise (and Marmoush too, of course, after his introduction in January) - along with occasional fitful showings from the likes of Muniz, Delap, Ndiaye and Beto - meant that we really were spoiled for choice in the forward positions this year. I wasn't playing FPL in its early years, but I'm sure there have been occasions in the past when there were 3 or more really strong forward choices, and you might often want to start all of them. But in the last several years, that has not been the case. There has rarely been more than 1 forward in the top 5 or 10 overall FPL points producers; and, even if you could afford the best 3 forwards, the 3rd best has almost always been outperformed by not just 5 midfielders, but 8 or 10 or 12 of them! So, for some time now, you haven't really wanted to play 3-4-3, except by necessity, when one of your midfielders is unavailable for the week (or facing a really bad fixture). But this season, with so many strong forward options, and so many of the 'usual suspects' in midfield disappointing or sidelined with injury, 3-4-3 suddenly became common again - perhaps even the default option for many.

Yes, the midfield - usually the main foundry of FPL points - was a constant challenge and vexation this season. Many of the most promising producers - Saka, Amad, Bowen, Maddison, Son, DeBruyne - missed big chunks of the season through injury. Palmer, after another blistering start, had his output collapse in the second half of the season. Kluivert and Semenyo enjoyed brief hot flashes, but much looonger barren spells. Phil Foden - last year's 'Player of the Season' at City - suddenly couldn't get a regular start any more.  Poor unlucky Luis Diaz suffered a lot of rotation and was mostly played out of his best position. Eze and Mitoma were slow to rediscover their FPL scoring knack. Newcastle's Jacob Murphy only really got going in the second half of the season. Merino and Asensio failed to fulfill their early promise as goal-scoring midfielders. Bruno Fernandes and Morgan Rogers did heroic work trying to single-handedly carry very inconsistent teams, but in those trying circumstances were only able to manage sporadic FPL contributions. Yet, note that these players, despite patchy, or in some cases very short, seasons, were all still well up in the top 40 or 50 midfielders, and in most cases in the top 20 or the top 10! Apart from Salah and Mbeumo, all the leading midfield prospects seriously under-performed this year - in season-long terms, as against their undoubted potential in more favourable circumstances.

For that reason, even more than usual, one had to rotate constantly in the midfield selections, to try to optimise returns from those most in-form for the moment. I think this was particularly true in the cheaper spots - because there was a broader choice there, and more constant shifting of form. Many FPL managers had plumped for Morgan Rogers at the start of the year (and in most cases simply because he was very cheap, rather than because they knew his abilities from his Manchester City youth team performances, or because they'd seen how well he might fit in at Villa from his pre-season displays with them), and were content to stay with him for the whole season. His final ranking was certainly very good for such a cheap player, but not outstanding overall (he only just managed to edge back up into the Top 10 midfielders and Top 15 in all positions towards the end of the season, as Villa finished the campaign quite strongly - while so many others fell away). There was invariably at least one other cheap midfield option - sometimes, two or three or four - producing better than him for a run of games: Smith Rowe or Iwobi (or, for very brief spells, Harry Wilson or Adama Traore!), McNeil, Enzo Fernandez, Amad, Kluivert, Barnes, Murphy, Elanga, Schade.

And frankly, there was never much pressure on budget this year - certainly not once Saka had got injured, and Haaland and Fernandes and Son and eventually Palmer had all proved dispensable. (By the end of the season, most managers - most in the top third or so of the rankings, anyway - had boosted their squad value to 106 or 108 milliion; but in the last few weeks of the season weren't even spending 100 million of that - many leaving as much as 8 or 10 millon unutilised. I've never seen that before.) You didn't have to limit yourself to fifth midfielders who were cheap. It was just that - with most of the usually stronger options failing to produce - the cheaper midfielders were giving the best returns most of the time!

There were a lot of unexpected turns in regard to team form as well. We expect the promoted sides, these days, to be poor; but on paper, this year's trio had seemed to have some promise - particularly Leicester and Ipswich. But in fact, they proved to be the worst set of new clubs coming up in history, and were all beyond hope by Christmas - much to the relief of Wolves and West Ham, and Manchester United and Spurs! And yes, we probably expected Spurs and United to have another very disappointing year - but not, surely, to be down in the relegation zone! 

City's collapse was even more dramatic, and - to most - even more unexpected (I'm not saying I saw it coming, but I think we should have done....; the early loss of Rodri for the season was only one part of the problem). They rallied somewhat in the second half of the season, with winter-window signings Marmoush and Gonzalez and Academy-product Nico O'Reilly providing much-needed vigour; but they needed to ride their luck in making the most of a fairly soft closing run of fixtures over the last couple of months to scrabble back up into third spot. During the middle of the season, they'd looked as if they might struggle to qualify for the lesser European competitions. Indeed, 20 points dropped in just 8 games in November and December was looking like relegation form (if relegation had still been an option for any of the established clubs...).

Arsenal had a pretty disappointing season as well - again, hardly surprising, after their frankly disastrous failure to make any major new signings over the summer, while losing almost all of their back-up players. A constant stream of (relatively minor, but still disruptive) injuries meant that they were seldom able to field the same back-four. Having Ben White, outstanding down the right flank the season before, hampered by a long-standing knee problem early in the season, and eventually needing surgery and missing most of the rest of the year, may have been one of the biggest defensive curveballs in FPL this season; if he'd been at his best, choosing other defensive options from Arsenal - Gabriel, Raya, Timber, Saliba? - would have been a lot trickier; and Trent Alexander-Arnold or Josko Gvardiol might not have been such overwhelmingly popular choices for a more attacking premium defender option. However, it's an ill wind that blows no-one any good.... David Raya had been a poor goalkeeping option the season before because Arsenal were so watertight defensively that he hardly ever got to make any saves; the much more rickety team performance this year meant that he was able to claim 13 points for saves (including 6 in the first 4 gameweeks!) to compensate slightly for the 5 fewer clean-sheets his team managed, and keep him up among the top handful of keepers throughout the season.

Chelsea also had a 'season of two halves' - looking impressive, and even perhaps outside challengers for the title, until early December, and then crashing horribly. The dichotomy is most graphically revealed in Cole Palmer's FPL returns: he produced exactly 3 times as many points in the first 21 games as he did in the last 17!! (And I maintain, he wasn't playing badly during that later period; but with the rest of the team in a complete meltdown, there was nothing he could do.)

Liverpool also, perhaps, surprised us somewhat - in being so immediately reinvigorated under Arne Slot. However, they were efficient rather than breathtaking - often doggedly grinding out a result in a game where they hadn't really played very well; and rarely blowing opponents away as they so often had in the Klopp heyday a few years ago. Alas, frequent rotations in the attacking positions meant that Salah was the only pick you could rely on from the Champions (outside of Konate or Van Dijk, as a reliable defender, that is); though we might have liked to make some use of Luis Diaz, or Diogo Jota (when fit...), or Cody Gakpo, or Dominik Szoboszlai, or perhaps even Darwin Nunez on occasions - we just couldn't rely on any of them getting a regular start. Salah, however, oh dear me...! He'd turned 32 over the summer, had suffered a slump in form and seemed to have had a bit of a bust-up with Klopp at the end of last year, and had had contract extension negotiations hanging over him all this season, with persistent associated rumours that he'd accepted offers of obscene money to join the Saudi League,,.... and yet he smashed his own FPL record for the most points in a season. How is that possible??  I have no idea; but we are privileged to have witnessed it. (He was so astonishingly consistent this season that - for possibly the first time in FPL history - it actually made sense to regard the same player as your default captain choice almost every single week.)

The BIG SURPRISE of the year, though, was undoubtedly Nottingham Forest - who went from narrowly avoiding relegation in the last two seasons to challenging strongly for a Champions League place throughout this campaign. WTF???  Nuno Espirito Santo really should have won 'Manager of the Year' for achieving that - with such a thin squad. Players like Sels (actually the best FPL keeper for most of the season; only edged into 2nd place by the inevitable Jordan Pickford in the last few weeks), defensive giant Milenkovic (a leading clean-sheet producer, and often a threat in the opposition box as well), and old warhorse Wood (who rarely produced more than 1 goal in a game, but was managing that with uncanny regularity - and often from only 2 or 3 half-chances in each game!) became favourite picks for everyone this year.

Eddie Howe also deserves a shout-out, for turning Newcastle's season around - without the benefit of any new signings. With 5 draws and 4 defeats in their first 14 games, they were floundering in mid-table at the start of December, and questions were being asked about the manager's future. But an astute tactical reshuffle galvanized the team's performances, and they then pulled out a string of 6 wins on the bounce - when so many others were faltering under the strain of the midwinter fixture logjam. And 9 more wins out of the last 16 was - just - enough to drag them back up into Champions League qualification.

Bournemouth and Crystal Palace rallied strongly from poor starts (in which they were both desperately unlucky and abused by fate...), and show the possibility to kick on to a much higher finish next year. Wolves and Everton also enjoyed a much stronger second half to their seasons, after inspired changes of manager.

Villa struggled with the novel demands of Champions League football this year, and were very disappointing in the first half of the season. Some good signings in January (and crashing out of the Champions League in the quarter-finals) re-energised them, and they managed a strong finish to the season. But still, none of their players - not even their two finest, Rogers and Watkins - really managed enough consistency to make them compelling FPL picks.

Brighton were exasperatingly up-and-down in their performances under their bold young manager. And their bloated squad makes them unappealing to Fantasy managers. Adingra and Minteh and Gruda and March are all attractive attacking players down the right, but..... which of them will play? Rutter and Ayari and Joao Pedro and Riley are all impressive creative midfield options, but....?  Aside from Mitoma (when he's in form) and Joao Pedro (when he's not suspended), you don't really want to be going near any other Brighton players very often.

Brentford and Fulham once again punched above their weight impressively; but, with relatively thin squads, they just couldn't find the consistency to haul themselves above mid-table. Bryan Mbeumo, however, emphatically confirmed the promise he's shown as a primary goalscorer over the past couple of seasons, and emerged as the season's strongest FPL performer (after Mo Salah, of course); and his sidekicks Yoane Wissa and Kevin Schade also made a big impression.

As I noted long ago in this post, there were a lot of innovations in FPL this year, which unsettled the usual pattern of the season and the 'traditional' thinking about tactics. The most momentous of these was the ending of the BIG Blank and Double Gameweeks that used to result from fixture reschedulings from the FA Cup Quarter-Finals weekend. But the rule change allowing us to save up to 5 Free Transfers (effectively a 'mini Wildcard' - if we could ever manage to pull that off!) is also a big - though very positive - shake-up in the game.

The introduction of the absurd novelty of the 'Assistant Manager' chip caused 'excitement' for some,... but horror and dismay for most of us long-time FPL managers. It was a game-distorting aberration (probably worth more than the two traditional bonus chips combined; potentially, perhaps, two or three times as much - and hence likely to be the ultimate determinant of ranking outcomes; moreover, it made it impossible to compare this season's performance against previous years) that really SPOILED the season. We must hope that it will be dropped next year.  #DownWithTheNewChip

We had the first Merseyside derby game called off at very short notice at the beginning of December due to concerns about possible high winds (which did not really eventuate, not to the extent feared...) - which at least gave us an additional Double Gameweek in the season, and a golden opportunity to bet our Triple Captain chips on Mo Salah. And we were further reminded of the potential for additional Blanks and Doubles to be created by unexpected events with several other games over the following month or so being threatened by thick fogs (one or two of which really did seem to be compromising visibility too far for the matches to have kicked off) or heavy falls of snow (requiring dozens of volunteers to frantically clear the pitch just hours ahead of a match). Though none of these subsequent 'extreme weather' events actually resulted in any further postponements, they served as a salutary warning: the possibility of such fixture disruption is something we should be constantly alert to, especially over the winter months.

Finally, one of the biggest differences in the EPL this season - though not much talked about anywhere so far, at least not that I've seen - is that there have been massively fewer penalties awarded this year: 23 fewer than last year, and 41 fewer (down by over 30%) from the record high number in the 2020-2021 season. This has affected some clubs far more than others: Chelsea have only been given 5 penalties this year (and Palmer managed to 'miss' one of them; although I feel it was illegally saved by Mads Hermansen, who clearly had both feet off the ground before the ball was kicked), as against 12 last year (that's a big part of Palmer's 'disappointing' return this season right there). The reasons for this are partly a revision of the guidelines on the interpretation of the Handball Law, making it less likely for defenders to be penalised when the ball is struck against their hand or arm (in principle, a good thing; though, in practice, it doesn't so far seem to have given any more clarity or consistency in the decision-making); and partly, VAR now being reluctant to go against the on-pitch referee's initial decisions in most instances - to the extent that penalty calls are now scarcely reviewed at all, and very rarely referred to the pitchside monitor for a second look. (The attempt to move away from excessive VAR interventions has swung much too far the other way this year, so that the VAR oversight now seems often otiose and impotent. This needs to be fixed for next season.)

I've been trying to monitor the impact of 'LUCK' on FPL points returns all season - and I'm afraid I think this has probably been an unusually lucky season. Some of the elements of 'luck' are always to be expected, and we just have to accept them and adapt to them - eccentric managerial decisions, jaw-dropping goals-out-of-nothing, horrendous defensive howlers,... and sudden bad weather, etc. However, the major element this season has certainly been poor refereeing: we have seen some truly dreadful decisions this year - penalties or red cards wrongly awarded or not awarded, goals occasionally bafflingly disallowed, goals ruled offside for ridiculously paper-thin margins... There's hardly been a week without at least one instance of such a significant injustice in the game; often there have been three or four, or more. This is unacceptable, it's got to stop.

I'll attempt a follow-up post with a few more specifics on the Players of the Year in a day or two....