How did he DO that??

 

The sustained dominance through second half of season of this year's champion

The 2024-25 FPL Global Champion, Croatia's Lovro Budišin, enjoyed a truly exceptional year in the game. It wasn't quite the highest total ever (second best, I think?), but it was the only one above 2,800 points this year (and only 137 others managed to reach 2,700; despite the substantial points lift available from the 'Assistant Manager' novelty chip, it was overall a rather low-scoring year on average - which makes Lovro's performance even more of an outlier), and he finished a fairly comfortable 23 points clear of the runner-up. The really remarkable thing, though, is the degree and duration of his dominance: he spent almost the entire second half of the season in the overall Top Ten, and the final 8 weeks straight at No. 1. I don't think that's ever been done before!

So,...  Congratulations to Lovro Budišin!  But how on earth did he accomplish this - what were the key decisons during the season that anabled him to gain such unprcedented success??

I was surprised to see that he got off to a somewhat rocky start; indeed, he almost plummeted out of the top 3 million after a very poor Gameweek 4. I noted in my 'Review of the Year' a little while back that it really hurt to be without Erling Haaland during that record-breaking early points-spree of his over the first 5 gameweeks: missing out on that 63-point bonanza looked like a near-irrecoverable sertback, likely to prove fatal to most FPL managers' hopes; yet Lovro had staked his colours to the No-Haaland strategy at the start of the season, and bravely stuck to that.

It didn't look a great initial squad in many other ways, either: he'd gone very light on the bench, with three weak and irregular starters (he was one of many who took a punt on Jarrell Quansah getting a run of starts for Liverpool early in the season, only to see Slot grow disenchanted with him after the first 45 minutes against Ipswich...), and a non-playing keeper. He'd also - rather sentimentally? - gone for Son (who only managed 3 decent hauls in the first 8 games, which still didn't add up to a very impressive ppg average) and Bruno Fernandes (who did nothing much for the first 9 gameweeks...) in his midfield, rather than Palmer and Saka - who both started super-hot; and he had Nkunku in his fifth seat! However, one of Lovro's 'secrets' this season was that even his 'bad weeks' weren't usually too bad: despite missing out on the big early points from Saka, he'd got good initial returns in GW1 from Havertz and Wood (who weren't the most obvious forward picks for the initial squad), and from Diogo Jota, putting him only just outside the top 300,000.

The Champ's Initial Squad

He quickly repented of most of his more dubious initial picks, but held off going for an early Wildcard (fair enough, perhaps, when the team was still turning in strong scores for him almost every week - although I would say that he ultimately left it a bit too long): he dumped out Nkunku immediately for Morgan Rogers, than Quansah for Konsa, then (rather more quirkily, since Isak had just scored, while Watkins had also started the season in frail form) Watkins for Isak; then, over the succeeding weeks, he swapped Mbeumo in for Jota, Saka for Bruno Fernandes, Foden for Son, and Solanke for Havertz. Foden, of course, turned out to be a poor choice; and although Solanke produced a nice 16-point haul against Villa in GW10, and another half-decent little run a little later from GW15-17 (by which time Lovro had already abandoned him again) neither was Solanke. He was also very late to get his hands on Mbeumo and Saka, who really had a nearly overwhelming case for inclusion from the start of the season. And he didn't finally acquire Cole Palmer until he played his first Wildcard in Gameweek 12; although he got another 5 double-digit hauls out of the Chelsea youngster, he'd already missed out on his hottest streak of the season - 79 points from the first 9 games. And he didn't let Palmer go again until GW33, which was probably much too late (even worse: he actually blew two transfers in moving Palmer out for his blank fixture in Gameweek 29 and then immediately reinstating him the following week).

He continued to struggle a bit with his forward choices too. Cunha, just starting to show some form when introduced in Gameweek 10, seemed quite a shrewd selection; although it mght perhaps have been done at the expense of someone other than Chris Wood, who continued to play well through a sticky patch of fixtures following. Bringing in Hojlund for Watkins the following week was a real headscratcher, though (and he repented of it immediately, dropping him for Joao Pedro on his Wildcard the following week; Pedro delivered him a nice haul that week, but did nothing subsequently and was himself dumped within 5 weeks.... for Gabriel Jesus??!!). And it didn't show much forethought - or patience - to bring Bruno Fernandes back in on that Wildcard when he was facing a tricky set of upcoming fixtures: Lovro dropped him again, for Jarrod Bowen, just two weeks later (despite him having just picked up a 9-point haul in GW13,.. and being about to repeat the feat in good performances against faltering Forest and City!). Overall, not a great first Wildcard - with Cunha, Saka, and Joao Pedro producing nicely in that first week (and Saka also the following week), but then lapsing into a string of blanks again (Joao Pedro not really doing that much more all season; Cunha subsequently having his impact blighted by the two extended suspensions in fairly quick succession...). With the urgent case for bringing in Palmer, Mbeumo, Saka, and perhaps Bowen, and a few others in other positions too, he probably should have gone for that first rebuild quite a bit earlier.

However, Lovro was one of the beneficiaries of the FA's uncommonly lenient treatment of Cunha over his assaulting a member of the public after a tetchy match against Ipswich in GW16. It had seemed likely (and appropriate!) that Cunha would receive an immediate and lengthy ban for this incident, and it was reasonable to have dumped him out in anticipation - in order to avoid suffering from a major price-drop on him. But, astonishingly, it took the powers-that-be a few weeks to render judgement at all, and then they incredibly let the Brazilian off with the token wrist-slap of a one-game ban from the EPL. He produced rather nicely through that spell as well, massively - but somewhat unjustly - rewarding those who'd taken a huge risk in hanging on to him.

There were a number of times Lovro appeared to have a crystal ball - bringing in players who would produce really well for him a few times, maybe just the once; somehow being able to bring them in at an opportune moment, and then offload them again at just the right time... often without any clear triggers for those decisions in what was happening on the pitch. To give just one example, was a solitary goal against Villa enough to bet on Phil Foden from Gameweek 18, when City had been looking so abject throughout November and December? And although they had a tougher set of fixtures coming in February, was that enough reason to drop him again - after Pep's men had shown signs of a renaissance at the turn of the year, and Foden had been on fire for a spell? Had Lovro somehow foreseen that Foden would abruptly fall out of favour with Pep and get only limited minutes for the rest of the season?? 'Good judgment' of form/fixtures can't justify here how he came to transfer in one of the season's great under-performers for the five games in which he produces 55 points!!

This is how it goes, sometimes; this is the essence of the whole game. There is no single, unversally accepted 'template' (as so many regular FPL managers delusionally choose to believe): for almost every position in the team (not Salah's, obviously; not this year...) there are almost always at least two or three justifiable selections - occasionally, quite a few more than that for the crucial last few spots in the lineup. And your overall success is determined by the number of weeks in which you happen to have THE ONE who produces enormously in a given position that week - or rather, how many of THE ONES you have, since most of us have at least one or two of them nearly every week. And there's not really a lot of skill in that. Most of Lovro's highest-returning picks (most of any of the best picks for any one of us!) were not obviously standouts for that particular week, or were in fact clearly non-ideal over a slightly longer run of games. Happening to have been on them for that game or two (or, in a rare case, three or four games in fairly quick succession) is mostly LUCK.

Remember how rarely you come across a player in your side who notches 15 points or more in a gameweek? By my count, Lovro had 17 - apart from Salah. I haven't been able to turn up the season total stat for that, but he must have been on close to all of them; well an unusually high percentage of them, anyway. And that's an arbitrary cut-off point, of course: I noticed he had an uncommonly large number of players coming in just under that with 14-point returns for the week as well; and a great many 10-pointers...

Lovro was decidedly flawed and fallible in this incredible season of his. He made quite a number of objectively poor choices. He left a few high-scoring players on his bench here and there. He missed out on the most productive spells from Palmer, Mbeumo, Saka, Bowen, Kluivert, Eze. And I think he failed to capitalise on some briefly very high-earning players like Amad Diallo, Alex Iwobi, Dango Ouattara, Enzo Fernandez and Harvey Barnes altogether. Yet somehow, over and over again, he had three, four, five double-digit players in his team. And he only slipped below the global average three times, in Gameweeks 4, 20, and 27. (I would guess - from my own experience! - that 6-8 times per season is more typical, for reasonably good managers.)

He was perhaps even more blessed in his captaincy picks. Of course, the amazing consistency of Mo Salah this year made it quite a bit easier for everyone: he was the FPL 'Player of the Week' a remarkable 11 times in the first 28 games. However, he did blank here and there; and there were other players who hit even hotter form from time to time, albeit in shorter spells - most people would have been tempted to try someone other than Mo Salah on occasion. Lovro only missed out on one of those weeks that Mo was the game's highest scorer! And he didn't suffer too badly in that one, since his preferred alternative, Song Heung-Min, came up with a pretty decent score for him in GW2!! Nor did he suffer from sticking with Salah 'too much', as the Egyptian marvel only blanked for him as captain twice. His success with the captaincy faltered in the later stages of the season, but through into February, he was rarely going astray: 14 times in the first 28 Gameweeks, he correctly handed the armband to his highest-returning player (and a couple of them weren't Salah); and 4 more times his captain pick was a fairly close second-place returner in this period (and twice more again in the closing 10 weeks). That is an utterly freakish rate of success with captaincy selection, and is possibly the biggest single element of his astonishing lead over the field this season. 

Now, sure, there is an element of 'skill' in choosing your captain; but there's a very large component of luck as well in getting returns like that. It's difficult to discern why he would have been confident in Son as captain against Everton in GW2 after Spurs had stumbled to a draw against Leicester in the opening week (it was a non-ideal pick, compared to Salah; but it still did very well for him), or in Palmer in GW13, after Chelsea had only managed an unconvincing win against Leicester the week before, and after struggling to draws against Arsenal and Manchester United in the two previous games - in all three of which, Palmer had blanked. But for most of the first six months or so of the season, he could do no wrong....

However, a lot of this was just down to choosing players who would produce one or two good returns almost immediately; very few of his picks actually worked out well for any more extended period. Consequently, his squad value (which, I think, is one of the most revealing indirect measures of how well you're managing your squad - how well you time your transfers, how early you're spotting emerging form/talent, how promptly you bin players whose returns are drying up, etc.) was very slow to grow, especially early in the season. It took him until GW16 to reach a value of 104 million, and he'd only just dragged himself up to 106 million by the end of the season - which is a pretty respectable final total, but by no means stellar.

And in his chip play - usually considered the prime marker of 'skill' in FPL - Lovro really wasn't so impressive this year. I already mentioned above that his first Wildcard was a bit of a mixed-bag: probably played a bit too late (after realising that he was missing 3 or 4 of the highest-returning midfielders, any Arsenal defenders, or any decent goalkeepers in his initial squad), and the new signings not all being that impressive (he still didn't have a strong keeper pair, and two of his new players were abandoned again within just a few weeks - on form/fixture grounds rather than because of injury). His second in GW30 wasn't much better, with Areola for Henderson being a pointless-looking change (other than for cost-saving, which wasn't really an issue by that stage of the season), as was the reintroduction of Palmer; and the acquisition of Livramento (although, yet again for lucky Lovro, he came up with a BIG haul out of nowhere the following week, before lapsing into anonymity again for the remainder of the season); and he was a little late to the party with Eze and Murphy and Mateta. The week he played that, Gameweek 30, was actually one of his worst of the whole season - only scraping home 1 point above a very low global average. 

He opted to use a 'hit' and put out a 10-man team in the Blank Gameweek 29, rather than use his Free Hit as the great majority did. It's difficult to assess if that actually worked out or not, since he did manage exceptionally good scores both in GW29 and in GW34 when he made use of his saved Free Hit (71 and 86 points, respectively - pretty HUGE!); however, those results were again down to him having uncannily got all the right players in general, rather than the chip strategy per se; I'm not convinced that the lift he got by Free-Hitting in 34 outweighed even the points he sacrificed in 29, let alone the extra points he might have got with an optimum use of the FH in 29. The only 'advantage' he sought tactically was being able to play his Wildcard in GW30 instead of GW34 - but he really didn't make very good use of that.

His 'bonus chips' were an even more clearcut 'fail'. He went with Arne Slot for his 'Assistant Manager' from GW24 (perhaps just to get the damned thing out of the way, since its sprawling three-week duration was the most irksome aspect of the new chip and confounded the use of other chips in the final portion of the season). But Slot, of course, was famously - and not entirely unexpectedly - outpointed by his Merseyside rival David Moyes in that gameweek (the one where Liverpool and Everton both enjoyed an unexpected Double Gameweek as a result of the first Merseyside derby being rescheduled from early December because of gale-force winds); and, more importantly, he passed up the chance to play his Triple Captain on Mo Salah that week, who returned a season-highest 29 points. He switched to Oliver Glasner for a healthy 20-point return in the final week of the chip, after Slot had again disappointed somewhat in GW25. But a 48-point total for this chip, while pretty respectable, was far short of the maximum possible - a lot of people probably made 55-65 points from it. And its value was further undercut by having had to use a transfer on it, and by missing out on the Salah bonanza.

He eventually went with the other two bonus chips in consecutive weeks, the Triple Captain in GW32 and the Bench Boost in GW33. Isak produced a respectable 11 points for the TC - though since that was a Double Gameweek with two quite promising fixtures, it must have been a disappointing return. And it's very rarely worth using the captaincy, let alone the Triple Captain, on a 'forward'; there were other, better double-fixtures to aim for (not just for Mo Salah, although....). And his Bench Boost was a real damp squib, yielding a miserable 14 points.

So, he was 18 points below the optimum (and fairly obvious) Triple Captain pick, perhaps 10 or 15 off a best-possible AssMan score, and maybe 20 or 30 below a top Bench Boost return (and 5 or so below an adequate one). And he still trounced the other 10 million or so of us???

It is rather terrifying to reflect that, phenomenal as Lovro's season was, if he'd made a few better initial picks, done a bit better with his use and timing of the Wildcards, and got a stronger return from his bonus chips,... he might have cracked the 3,000-point ceiling!!!

Well, good on him, anyway!  It just goes to show - you don't have to be PERFECT to win the title, or anywhere near.

But Lovro clearly isn't a super-genius; he's just an ordinary guy who happened to have a season where almost every second pick turned to gold for him. [You can read an interview with him by the Fantasy Football Scout website.]

He appears to be relatively new to the game, this being only the fifth year he's competed (at least on his present account). And he was pretty awful in the first two! But he seems to have 'got the hang of things' unusually quickly, as in 2022-23 and 2023-24 he was remarkably consistent, and got solid points and rank finishes - in the second 500,000 (which, I reckon, is about as good as you can hope to get without substantial slices of good fortune).

We can all take encouragement from this. Most good players in the game are hovering around the 2,350-point mark most years, rarely going up or down by more than about 75 points or so from that mean. I'd guess that's between one and two standard deviations (very hard to gauge, since neither 'luck' nor 'skill' in FPL follow a standard distribution!) To be the champion, you have to get up to about 5 standard deviations. And yes, Lovro suddenly jumped up by 440 points over his previous best this year! If he can do it, we all could. (We won't. But we could....)

Getting ready for our NEW summer tournament

 Bracket for the FIFA Club World Cup 2025

FIFA's big new-format Club World Cup tournament gets under way next Saturday evening (8pm EST in Miami) - intriguingly, a breakfast kick-off in my part of the world.

There seems to be remarkably little (good) information about it online as yet, but here's the best of what I've been able to turn up over the past couple of days.

Here's the official schedule of games.

And here's a link for accessing full coverage on streaming service DAZN (allegedly FREE, but I bet there's a catch to that...).

This is Goal magazine's list of the qualified teams, and an explanation of the seeding system (FIFA's own team list doesn't seem to include any actual information about them!); and here's a bit more information on how they qualified.

Club World Cup seeding pots

And Yahoo Sports - amazingly - appears to have the best ranking of teams' likely prospects so far.

More detailed team and player information, including predicted lineups, is available on Fantasy Football Community and Fantasy Football Scout.

I'm actually quite excited about this tournament. There are things to have misgivings about: it's probably too big, the quality of football is likely to be undermined by having so many makeweight, punchbag teams in it, and it's bound to have a detrimental impact on sharpness and stamina for many players at the start of the next domestic season. But it is, on the whole, a good idea, I think: a bigger spectacle, a more inclusive tournament - and moved away from being an annual event (now, once every four years, like the major international tournaments) plonked in the middle of the domestic season - lots to like about all of that.

[And, of course, we'll ALL be rooting for the plucky Kiwis of Auckland FC - who are amateurs!!]

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!!!

Last chance to BANISH the AssMan!

 

As I've mentioned, often, I absolutely HATED the silly innovation of the 'Assistant Manager' chip, which I think RUINED the game for everyone this season.

If you're signed up for the regular FPL updates, you should have received an invitation in the last few days to participate in their End-of-Year Survey.

It includes questions about what you thought of the 'Assistant Manager', and whether you'd like to see it again next year (please, God, NO!!!!). PLEASE, EVERYONE, fill this in, and make sure to be as negative as possible about the dratted AssMan chip!!!

How to answer the FPL survey

If we don't all complain about it vociferously, there's a very real danger that it (or something even worse...) will be included in the game again next year - and RUIN IT FOREVER. This may be our one chance to make our displeasure with the chip heard.

There is also a space at the end of the questionnaire for you to address any other areas of complaint. I would suggest throwing in some criticisms of the AWFUL 'Player Info' screen, or various other aspects of the data presentation in the UI, the lack of any ready way of reviewing the player-by-player contribution to your team performance over the season, or, of course, the urgent need to revise the bloody 'BPS'....

#DownWithTheNewChip

One more WISH

 

I know I said I was done with this wishful thinking when I came up with this afterthought a week ago, but.... one final FPL wish-list item has occurred to me. This will be it now, I promise. (Until next year, anyway.....)

I'd like FPL to introduce a display of 'Team History' - not just the 'Gameweek History' list we have at the moment, which provides only headline stats for each week, but a more detailed breakdown of how each player has performed for us.

I envision a grid display, with our current players listed in 15 rows,... and then all players we've previously owned in further rows beneath those; then a column for each Gameweek, indicating which players started for us then (or were only on the bench), and how many points they returned. (It would also be nice to have a little pop-up triggered by the mouse-cursor clicked on each Gameweek, or even just hovered over it - revealing the breakdown of how the player earned his points for you in that week.)

The first few columns should also give a few summary totals: how many games the players have started for us, how many points they've returned, how much their price has changed while we've owned them.

This is pretty basic stuff, surely not much to ask??

A little bit of Zen (45)

 

"I am glad to be rid of sex - like a slave at last escaped from a cruel and capricious master."

Socrates

I feel much the same way about FPL. - GW

Although there'll be a Fantasy Club World Cup along shortly to keep us enslaved over the summer break too....  That kicks off in a week!

[I haven't been able to track down a citation for this wonderful line of the ancient Athenian philosopher's... and I am beginning to suspect that it might have been an invention, or at least a zestful expansion, by my old Classics teacher. But I think this is a case where we want to print the legend.]

'Ones to Watch' - for next season

 

Reflecting on the season just past, I got tempted to list a few players I think have shown us enough to make them very interesting prospects for FPL next season.

But NOTE: 'interesting', not sure-thing; and 'prospects', not already established leading picks. (FPL's own Facebook account the other day was touting Omar Marmoush as 'One to Watch' for next season. Either they're seriously undervaluing him, or.... they're applying a completely different understanding of the term than mine!)

So, in no particular order, here are some of the players I'll be watching with particular interest next season, players I hope could take a big step forward in their FPL points output.

Myles Lewis-Skelly and Nico O'Reilly, despite playing for different clubs, are in a very similar position - both outstanding youngsters who unexpectedly got an extended first-team run-out this season, and looked good enough to lay claim to being given a regular place. Now, if that were to happen, and if FPL reclassified them as defenders, and if they weren't priced any higher than 5.0 million in that position (although, obviously 4.5 would be much more appealing; but it's a measure of how well they did this year that it seems inevitable 5.0 would be their price-point; they might not be far off 5.5),... then, damn, yes, they would be very alluring defensive picks next time. But unfortunately, those are some very big 'IFs'. They're both really midfielders, who were only given an emergency deployment in a defensive role this year; I'm afraid it's quite likely they'll lose their claim to the left-back slot (and will have even less chance of regular starts in midfield). Once Pep's complement of central defenders are fully fit, we're quite likely to see Gvardiol return to being the usual left-back (and, of course, Rico Lewis has also been used there a lot in the past); while at Arsenal, Timber, Calafiori, Tomiyasu, and Kiwior are all alternatives in that position. Moreover, Pep and Mikel are two of the most notoriously 'risk-averse' managers in the League, and, however good an Academy player has been for them, I think they'd probably prefer to spend stupid money on an established world-class talent to plug a hole in their lineup, rather than continue to develop young talents like these two. So, I'm not holding my breath on these lads. They'd probably be more exciting for FPL if they took loan moves to another EPL club. ("But not with their current club..." might become a recurring refrain for these selections of mine...)

I have similar misgivings about Oscar Bobb - absolutely outstanding young prospect, but how much game time is he going to get at City? I am ever so slightly more optimistic for him, as Grealish seems set to be leaving this summer, and Doku has been called out by Pep as being unable - so far - to adapt to inverting into the middle (which is what City wingers are expected to do, currently; although that, of course, may change again at any moment...); Bobb, I suspect, having come up through City's Academy system, should be more 'adaptable' in this way, more able to continually modify his style of play according to his manager's latest whim. But, at the very best, he's still likely to be sharing minutes sometimes with Doku.... and Foden, and Marmoush. So... yep, that's another 'only if he goes to another club' option, I'm afraid.

Kevin Schade and Mikkel Damsgaard were already getting themselves into contention for occasional rotation into that crucial 5th midfielder slot this year, whenever form/fixtures looked particularly positive for them. And I think they might possibly kick on and provide even more regular returns next season - particularly if they have to fill in for some of Bryan Mbeumo's goalscoring contribution. (But equally, of course, Brentford might well fall apart if - as seems very likely - they lose Mbeumo and/or Thomas Frank this summer, So, that's all highly speculative.)

But while trying to maintain some optimism about Brentford's future, I'll also give a mention to Rico Henry and Aaron Hickey. I noted once or twice early in the season that these are two of the only full-backs who might still offer a strong chance of attacking returns, since that style of full-back play has largely fallen out of fashion in the EPL in the last couple of seasons. However, after so long out with injury, one wonders if they will ever get back to their best levels of a few years ago; or indeed if their team will still want to use them as that kind of attacking wing-back, even if they do. But it's a possibility to keep an eye on, I feel. (You see, some players might be exciting prospects for the season ahead, even if they haven't played this year!!)

Another defender I feel has the potential to explode is Ola Aina. If Forest can sustain the admirable defensive solidity they showed for most of this season, he'll certainly deliver very solid points. He wasn't too far behind his teammates Murillo and Milenkovic this time, despite missing a few games. He got a couple of absolutely banging goals, and looks well capable of providing assists too. But the problem is, Forest have shifted away from pushing their full-backs up to support the wide attackers; they may make occasional sallies forward, but most of the time they sit in their own half. I find Aina a thrill to watch whenever he gets on the ball anywhere near the final third; but it just wasn't happening all that much last season. Alas, this could be yet another instance of 'Only if he moves to another club...'

Iliman Ndiaye and Jake O'Brien are another two who caught my eye this year. Ndiaye excited a lot of people with his swift and skillful play - yielding 9 league goals, including a few real belters (though I'm surprised to find he didn't register any assists). And, given that he almost always started out wide on the left, and was mostly required to stay there by David Moyes, he should surely be reclassified in the game as a 'midfielder' for the new season - which, if his price hasn't taken a big jump, would make him another promising contender for an occasional 4th or 5th seat inclusion; all the more so if he is in fact to be given a more attacking role at Everton. But that might be hoping for too much: Moyes has to be cautious in trying to make the best use of his rather limited resources, so I fear Ndiaye will again be tasked a lot with holding width and helping out his full-back, rather than often being given licence to drift inside and terrorise opposing defences (again, if he gets a move to another club, things could be very different). O'Brien, rescued from reserve-team limbo by Moyes, was one of the outstanding defenders to emerge last season; and Everton, despite wallowing at the lower-end of the table most of the time in recent seasons, have still managed to maintain a pretty niggardly defence. He might be cheaper than Branthwaite and Tarkowski, yet he'll probably offer slightly more threat of an occasional attacking contribution. (I don't mention Dwight McNeil here, because everyone's known how good he can be for some seasons now. I was tempted to give a nod to Beto too, but...  while I think he might occasionally be worth considering as a cheap 3rd forward, I suspect Moyes isn't completely convinced about his all-around quality, and will likely be shopping for a new first-choice centre-forward this summer.)

This is probably a bit of a sentimental pick, but I am a huge fan of Adam Wharton. It's unlikely that a deep central midfielder will ever yield very much for FPL - though, damn, he is very much a playmaker as well as a ball-winner. And if there were points credit - or even a significant BPS lift - for 'pre-assists', I think he would be in much stronger contention for an FPL place: so often he plays in someone like Eze, who then sets up Mateta or another teammate for a goal. But he's got a few goals in him as well, I believe. And if he manages to stay fit all season, who knows what may happen....?  (I'm hoping he'll have the kind of season that will make him an obvious and essential pick for England in the World Cup...)

And for forwards who've shown us a lot of promise this season, but probably not yet quite enough to make them super-popular picks at the big kick-off: Evanilson and Jørgen Strand Larsen. Enough said.

And a final pair - less obviously exciting players, perhaps, but ones I have a good feeling about, players I think could, if things go well with their clubs next season, take a big step forward in their points returns - enough that perhaps they could at least get into occasional contention for the last squad place in the defence or midfield categories: Jack Hinshelwood and Illia Zabarnyi. The big Ukrainian has tended to be overshadowed at Bournemouth by his more illustrious teammates - Kerkez, Senesi, Huijsen; but he has been very, very dependable - and almost ever-present - for two seasons now. Bournemouth, despite the loss of Kerkez and Huijsen being heavy blows, look to me as if they could be capable of pushing much more strongly for the European places next season; and if they come up just short on that, they might at least concede slightly fewer goals. And Hinshelwood - damn, he's unglamorous, but you've got love his attitude, he is all-action. At Brighton, I fear, with their huge squad, he might never get a weekly start; he's another one I'm hoping will take a loan to one of the promoted sides, to make him a bit more of an FPL possibility.

I will close by reiterating my opening qualification that these are NOT players I necessarily expect to produce huge numbers of points next season. But - to put it in very FPL terms - a 'one to watch' recommendation is the sort of player who's unlikely to have an ownership of much more than a few percent at the the start of the season,... but might well be owned by 10 or 15 or 20% by the end of it; someone who's not yet on everyone's radar... but might start to become so over the course of the coming season.

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....