Always risky to play a chip after a break

 

Well, certainly one of the 'bonus' chips (and as I said yesterday, the Free Hit should really be regarded as one of these too). Though, in fact, even a Wildcard play is a bit of a shakey proposition directly after an international break, as you really want your new selections to return good points for you straight away.... and in these gameweeks, there is too much uncertainty about that.

WHY?  Because the disruption of the usual club routines for the better part of two weeks tends to have a negative impact on team and individual form, and makes game outcomes more unpredictable.

Certainty, of course, is impossible in a game like FPL; but if you're going to risk one of your valuable bonus chips, or implement a major rebuild with the Wildcard, you want to have a high degree of confidence that all of your players are likely to have good games. And you just can't have that level of confidence about likely performances in the gameweek straight after a break, just as you can't in the early weeks of the season, after the summer lay-off.

Even if players aren't physically fatigued by long-distance flights and heavy game-minutes, and haven't picked up some injury niggle that hasn't yet been publicly announced, they can often be emotionally depleted by a particularly high-stakes game (especially in this most recent break, where World Cup qualification was on the line for many teams). But more importantly, their usual routines have been broken: they've been playing with different teammates, working with different coaches, implementing different game tactics and set-piece routines to what they're used to with their clubs. And when they return, they have limited time to get back in the swing of things, with only a day or two of training before their next league match; detailed tactical preparation, in particular, can be very difficult on such a tight schedule. And even the players who stayed at their clubs, while they should be feeling fresh and well-rested, will also have missed out on full training with their regular teammates for 10 days or so.

This is why we get so many wild fluctuations in form, so many 'unexpected' results straight after a break - and thus, why it's such a big, and probably unwise, gamble to play one of your FPL chips in such a gameweek.

[I'm here trying to kick off a new series, where I aim to sum up a key idea about FPL rather more pithily than usual (though I don't have the knack of brevity, I know!), with the main point being stated in the post title. I realise at least some of the entries in my other attempt at a more concise series of posts, 'In a nutshell', may also qualify for this new category. I may have to ponder on whether there's any value in having two labels.]

How to use the Free Hit (and what it could be worth!)

 

The Free Hit is a 'novelty' that has stuck with us, first introduced into FPL in the 2017-18 season and a regular feature since. It is a 'disposable' rebuild chip, allowing you unlimited transfers in the gameweek you play it in, but with your squad automatically reverting back to its pre-Free Hit state for the following gameweek: you are 'rebuilding' for one gameweek only. (Also, note that the 'unlimited changes' are still subject to the usual constraints of overall budget and club quota. In Fantasy games for the international tournaments, there is sometimes a 'Limtless' chip that gives you a completely free rein to construct your 'perfect' squad; the Free Hit is not that. Alhough you might choose to take the risk of having a very weak bench for one week, and thus rustle up just a little bit more money than usual to spend on the starting eleven when using the chip.)

There are two main ways in which this chip can be used in FPL:

1)  As a 'rebuild' chip - in emergencies, to get around the challenge of a Blank Gameweek.

If a few teams you have high representation from are missing a match in the coming gameweek, that can leave a gaping hole in your squad. Sometimes, even a single missing match can have a big impact: last year, when the first Merseyside derby was called off at short notice because of the threat of extreme weather, many FPL managers found themselves without 4, 5, 6 Liverpool and Everton players! In circumstances like this, you might want to use the Free Hit in order to put out a strong team - where otherwise you might be having to spend 'hits' on extra transfers and/or to field a short team. And, of course, there's always a possibility - particularly in the grim midwinter months - of suddenly finding yourself with a raft of short-term injury doubts (and/or suspensions), and needing to use the Free Hit to get around that transient catastrophe.

2)  As a 'bonus' chip - to try to take advantage of an unusual set of fixtures.

If a lot of clubs that you don't usually want many - or any - players from all have 'easy'-looking fixtures in the coming gameweek, and/or many of your existing top players face unusually tough fixtures and/or are drawn against each other*, you might fancy completely revising your squad for that one week to take maximum advantage of the untypical points opportunities from this set of match-ups. 

In the past, when we only had ONE of this chip, it was always sensible to hang on to it until the latter part of the season, when we knew that we would face 2 or 3 Blank Gameweeks (at least one of them a pretty big one) because of league games being postponed to accommodate ties in the later rounds of the domestic cup competitions. 

Now that we have TWO Free Hits to use, one in each half of the season, there is more freedom in how to make use of the first one. 

As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, opportunities for a 'bonus' use of the Free Hit largely overlap with the tempting Bench Boost gameweeks: sets of fixtures where thare a lot of unbalanced match-ups, promising big wins and/or clean sheets, give you the best chance of getting good points from all 15 players in your squad. But it is rare to have a gameweek of fixtures where even your starting 11 are all facing such good fixtures, so using a Free Hit to fully optimize your line-up for such an inviting gameweek is also potentially very beneficial.

There is, however, still a strong case for hanging on to it, in case of possible emergencies. The winter weather in the UK seems to get fouler year by year. Last season, we saw one game get called off becaue of high winds; and several others came very close to postponement because of thick fogs or heavy snowfalls. Even though pitches are much better protected against extreme weather these days, we have seen instances where dozens of volunteers were scrambling to clear a pitch of snow only hours before a scheduled kick-off. And there is also a possibility, particularly with extremely cold, icy conditions, that simply getting to the ground - or even going out of doors, at least for more elderly people - might be thought so hazardous that a game will be called off (that seemed to be the issue with the threatened gale-force winds around Anfield last year: not the playability of the game, but general concerns about public safety). There is a very serious danger of unexpected Blank Gameweeks occurring during the coming month or two, because of extreme weather. 

And there are, of course, other types of event that might disrupt the league schedule: public transport strikes, terrorist threats, the death of the monarch. You need to feel that the possible benefits of playing the Free Hit for pure 'bonus' value are looking very strong before you sacrifice that safety net.

So, what can the Free Hit be worth? 

After the event, you can identify a fairly specific points-lift value that it gave you, though it is a bit laborious to calculate: you have to compare your Free Hit team's haul with what your regular team would have produced (bearing in mind that, wtihout the Free Hit, you might have had to spend points on transfers in order to put out a full team, or a nearer-to-full team). 

Bear in mind, though, that this might not always capture the full 'value' of the Free Hit, since the ability to use it may have ongoing benefits beyond that particular gameweek, if you're using it as an emergency rebuild. If you'd opted to get by without the chip, you might have used up transfers you didn't really want to - transfers that might have been more valuable to you later for other changes. And you might have brought in some players who didn't have much value beyond that particular gameweek when you were caught short, and thus you might have committed yourself to using further transfers to get rid of them again as soon as possible; and if you had to carry them in the team for a bit longer than you wanted to, they might have been non-optimal points-returners for you. This kind of thing also has an effective points cost which may add to the apparent points-lift you got from the chip in the gameweek in which you played it. 

I find that the Free Hit typically yields a lift of about 15-20 points (though it can be a lot more, if a Blank Gameweek has wiped out most of your starting eleven!!) - which actually makes it the most valuable of all the FPL chips.

However, since we almost never have an 'ideal' team that's fully optimized for the current set of fixtures, the Free Hit can potentially bring a substantial points-lift in almost any gameweek; the additional benefit of playing it in a gameweek with a particularly freakish set of fixtures might be little or nothing. Therefore, there's probably no harm in hanging on to the chip 'for safety's sake' until the last possible moment. At the end of the season, it can make a great 'smart bomb' to help you win one of your mini-league cups!!  But even for this first-half-of-the-season one, you could just have a bit of fun with it in Gameweek 19....

Having said that.... there are in fact some pretty tempting openings to use it as a tactical 'bonus' opportunity in the next month. I shall have a little more to say about that soon.

[* NB: Having players in your FPL team drawn against each other sometimes is unavoidable; and it's not neccesarily a terrible thing. Attacking players may still be able to pick up attacking contributions even in a game they lose. And two good defensive teams may play out a goalless draw - or at least both avoid conceding too many, and perhaps still have their defenders and keepers pick up some additional points for saves, 'defensive contributions', and bonus points. It's only where you have attackers drawn against defenders in a fixture that there's a problem, because that's a zero-sum situation: an attacker and a defender playing against each other can't both have a good game, they're taking FPL points off each other.]

[Apologies to any early visitors to this post who spotted a sentence or two of absolute nonsense in the middle of this piece. I have been sleeping badly this week, and sometimes get a little brainfogged! Hence, I had somehow interpolated a couple of observations about Wildcard rather than Free Hit use...  Now EDITED out. Sorry about that.]

And the Lord taketh away...

For the last several years, my beer of choice among the local brews in my part of the world has been this tasty IPA-style offering from the Lao Brewery. (At least, when I'm in the Lao P.D.R. Although this beer can occasionaly be found in the neighbouring countries, it's still only manufactured in relatively small quantities, and doesn't seem to have any established export trade, even within the region.)

One of my biggest frustrations as a fan of Lao IPA has been the fact that it is only available in bottles, which militates against it as an option for home consumption (glass is heavy to carry, a hassle to dispose of 'responsibly', and carries that constant threat of breakage).

But look at this! A few weeks ago, I found some Lao IPA at my local supermarket in cans. Oh, frabjous day!!!

Alas, they appear to have had only ONE CASE of them; and when I'd bought all of those, they didn't replenish their fridge again. The appearance of the long-awaited Lao IPA cans in my life was naught but a taunting phantom, a tantalising glimpose of happiness witheld.  [I could craft an FPL metaphor out of this incident if I wanted to; but, for once, I shall restrain myself.]

Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 12

This is looking like a classic case of a post-break 'hangover' weekend: the stresses of big international games, the time players have spent away from their usual club environment, the limited amount of preparation time (and the utterly foul winter weather that's settting in back home!) have made for a lot of rather disjointed performances and unexpected results - Bournemouth nearly losing to West Ham, Brighton nearly losing to Brentford, Chelsea labouring to grind out at a win at Burnley, and Liverpool getting spanked by Forest! (I wouldn't count City's loss at Newcastle as all that 'unexpected'....)

Burnley started brightly and were well on top for the first half-hour or so, but couldn't fashion any real chances - although they might have profited from a couple of typically wayward Robert Sanchez moments early on: first, the big keeper gave the ball away just outside the penalty area by carelessly firing a rushed kick upfield straight into the back of Enzo Fernandez, and then he failed to make clear who was taking a goal-kick (it really looked as if Sanchez had restarted play from the middle of the six-yard box, but then Tosin decided he wanted to take the kick himself on the edge of the box and put his hands on the ball to 're-spot' it; they were very, very lucky not to concede a penalty for that!).  Chelsea came gradually more into the game through the second half, but were making heavy weather of what most had expected to be a fairly easy assignment for them. And there was a major question-mark over their breakthrough goal: the ball had clearly hit Cucurella's lower-arm in build-up, and for the goalscorer that would have been a strict liability offence; Cucurella was probably excused because the ball was fired at him from such close range by a Burnley defender, but that led to him controlling the ball and had a material effect on the rest of the move. Damn, the Handball Law has got so damned complex now that I really don't know whether that one should have stood or not; my gut feeling is that it should not have.

The big FPL surprises/disgruntlements here were that Reece James was withdrawn at half-time (he was all smiles on the bench in the second-half, so presumably it was a pre-planned 'managing of minutes' ahead of the Barcelona game on Tuesday; but still, it's a worrying sign of possible continued doubts about his stamina or susceptibility to injury, and is apt to undercut his value in FPL), that Garnacho was omitted from the squad altogether (I jinxed him by recommending him as a possible transfer target a few days ago!!), and that Liam Delap was shockingly poor on his long-awaited return to Premier League action (Guiu was so much better when he replaced him for the last 20 minutes or so that he should surely be preferred for the start next time?).

Bournemouth got caught with their pants down early on as West Ham started strongly and Callum Wilson rediscovered his long-lost scoring boots. But they looked a completely different team in the second-half, playing with much more energy and conviction - and they completely laid siege to the West Ham goal for the last 20 minutes or so. (Curiously, Alphonse Areola was credited by FPL with 10 saves in the match,.... but the BBC highlights only showed 4??!! My confidence in how Opta counts any of its stats declines week by week....)  Max Kilman was very, very fortunate not to be sent off for handling the ball on the ground to concede the penalty for Bournemouth's first comeback goal; presumably it was adjudged to be 'accidental' - but it looked pretty deliberate, or at least easily avoidable; and, since the action completely took control of the ball and diverted it away from the attacker, it was an obvious 'denial of a goalscoring opportunity'. That was another unfathomably bad decision which almost certainly decided the outcome of a game.  The big news for FPL in this one was the forced absence of Antoine Semenyo, who apparently is going to be unable to play for a while because of the ankle ligament problem he picked up while away with Ghana last week.

Who the hell is Olivier Boscagli??? I'd never heard of him before, but he started for Brighton in place of the usually ever-present Lewis Dunk, who'd apparently been suffering with a minor knock (but was fine to come on for the second-half). Brighton's first-half showing was very lacklustre, although they were perhaps a bit unfortunate to go into the break trailing to a Thiago penalty: Baleba's rash sliding challenge was mistimed, but he seemed to get nowhere near either the ball or the man, at least as far as I could see on the TV replays; Ouattara simply sensed his proximity and took a fresh-air dive. This was yet another instance where the on-pitch decision was at least dubious enough to warrant a second look on the monitor, but VAR seems now to have swung heavily in the direction of complete passivity. Brighton played with much more pace and vigour in the second-half, but were still struggling to make much impression on a compact Brentford defence - until a brilliant finish from Welbeck got them back on terms, and then a slightly misshit effort from substitute Hinshelwood just outside the box clawed them in front. (Hinshelwood really deserved additional points for a 'pre-assist' on that: his superb diagonal ball to set Minteh free down the right had started the move.) Even then, they nearly let the points slip away again, giving up a second penalty late in added-on time (and rightly so, this time) - only for the otherwise excellent Thiago to join the rash of players to recently flub a spot-kick! That will have been a bitter blow to the 14% or so of FPL managers who own him, but I think their selection is sound: he particularly impressed me here with the coolness of the manner in which he despatched an early one-on-one chance past the keeper (even though it was rightly ruled out for his having been narrowly offside as he ran through), in stark contrast to Mateta rather predictably missing an almost exactly similar chance in his game against Wolves. For me, Thiago has consistently been showing the best form of any striker (other than Haaland) almost all season - and I hope this mishap with the penalty miss won't suddenly break his confidence. (Also,... I can't help wondering if Brentford's away form is impaired by the awful monkeyshit-brown change strip they're lumbered with this season...)

Fulham look much better when they get on the front foot and take the game to an opponent - something they conspicuously only manage on their home turf. Sunderland were uninspired here, rarely creating any danger - except with La Fee's near-miss in the opening seconds of the second-half, when he was played in by a long ball from his keeper. I wonder if their effectiveness is hampered by the fact that their pivot pair, Xhaka and Sadiki, are both now only one card away from a suspension. Fulham had to be patient to claim all the points, though; Robin Roefs kept them at bay for a long time with another very capable performance between the sticks (4 saves in the game - officially; to most observers it looked like it should have been counted as slightly more), until Raul nicked the late winner. Fulham had actually managed half a dozen or so decent efforts during the game, and their xG was slightly better than 2.0; so, the win seemed hard-earned.

Liverpool started brightly enough in the first half, but failed to achieve much penetration, with Isak again completely anonymous (and Slot's decision to start him over Ekitike frankly baffling!). In the second half, Forest's superior organisation and workrate increasingly began to make itself felt. The mildly controversial first goal was clearly a major psychological turning-point: Ndoye was offside on the edge of the six-yard box as Murillo's crisp volley flew in, he was very near to the keeper, and he was very close to the flight of the ball (actually flinched, and twisted his legs away from it at the last moment, or it might have got a glancing deflection off him) - so, he could reasonably be said to be 'interfering with play'. We don't like to see goals disallowed for such technical infractions; but if we follow the rules strictly and consistently, they ought to be. And it must have smarted particularly for Liverpool, as a Van Dijk goal was ruled out for them in extremely similar circumstances a couple of weeks ago. One wonders if public outcry about that and other similar incidents has swayed officials towards greatter leniency on this kind of offside decision: neither VAR official Jamie Bell nor the on-pitch referee Andy Madley seemed to give this incident much thought. Shortly afterwards, the scales of injustice were perhaps slightly balanced up when a second goal from Igor Jesus was quickly ruled out for a supposed 'handball' - although the ball had pretty clearly struck him between the chest and the upper arm, which is now 'legal'. With both this call and the earlier offside, Bell seemed to be not so much rendering a decision as simply declining to go against Madley; that's not how VAR is supposed to work. The nearly 50,000 FPL managers who thought that Virgil Van Dijk might be a good replacement for Gabriel this week.... are crying hard! This defeat seems to put Liverpool's title hopes to bed - and it perhaps won't be long before talk begins about whether Slot might need to be replaced.

No sign of a 'new manager bounce' yet for doomed Wolves: they were marginally less porous in defence, but couldn't create any real threat at the other end. But Palace were somewhat below their best too. Mateta and Sarr confirmed my view of them as two of the most overrated 'assets' in FPL: Mateta shooting wide of the post when put through one-on-one with the keeper, and Sarr blazing over the top from the best chance of the game. If I were going to have a punt on any of Palace's attacking players, it would be the consistently impressive Pino or Wharton. Guehi, who'd picked up an early yellow card, was very lucky to escape a second one and a sending-off when he kicked Strand Larsen's foot as they both challenged for a high ball; it was a minor contact, arguably accidental, certainly not violent or reckless - but it was a foul, and was eligible for a second yellow card. And Daniel Munoz joins the growing ranks of players who've had an all-action game.... but are mysteriously deemed to have come up a single 'contribution' shy of earning the extra 'defensive points'. We see one or two players get abused by the new points system like this every week, and it is really starting to bug the crap out of me!

The most mystifying VAR cock-up of the weekend came in Saturday's late game at Newcastle when Schar missed his attempted tackle and crunched Foden's ankle - the most clearcut penalty we'll see all season (and, indeed, arguably a red-card offence), but once again VAR was apparently too shy to call the referee out on a poor initial decision (the game was still scoreless at this point, so this might well have decided the result). Donnarumma had made a smart one-handed save early on to keep out a firm, low hearder from Woltemade, and Barnes and Foden spurned sitters at each end just before half-time - but a lively and open game was somehow failing to produce many clearcut chances. It didn't truly come alive until a bizarre flurry of 3 goals within 6 or 7 minutes in the middle of the second half. For the decisive second Barnes goal, Pep seems peeved that Donnarumma might have been 'impeded' in the goalmouth - but he was at fault for getting himself stuck in traffic, and it was his own defender rather than the Newcastle player who was briefly hampering his movement. The stronger objection on that one would be that Guimaraes appeared to be well offside for his initial header against the bar - but the SAOT produced a graphic for us (the first one of those we've seen for a few weeks!!)... which seemed to be of a completely different moment to the one we should have been looking at. So, City can feel rightly aggrieved at this result; but the home side really earned it with a disciplined and hard-fought performance, and another great tactical gameplan from Eddie Howe. (With the return here of Livramento, Hall, and Schar, they looked to be back to something like their best again, after a very wobbly spell.)

Gawd, the Leeds v Villa game was a painful watch, both for the quality of the football, and for quality of my TV coverage (I lost my English commentary early on, and then the picture kept going on the fritz; it was almost a mercy when I lost the channel altogether for a while around half-time...). I really find nothing to get excited about from either of these teams at the moment: Villa have too many good players to go down, but really haven't been playing all that well for the most part (Watkins is still struggling to get on the ball at all), despite their recent string of good results; Leeds really don't have any very good players, and are not playing at all well: they look, to me, look obvious relegation favourites (Wolves, at least, have the talent in their squad to be able to turn their results around somewhat; I don't think Leeds do). But, at the moment, Villa aren't making much of a case that they deserve to survive in the league either. Both sides started out with very low energy, as if they were too worried about 'making a mistake' to actually go in search of a positive result. Emery was so disgusted with his team's performance that he made a major shake-up at half-time, withdrawing Digne and Buendia (slightly surprising choices, perhaps; although Malen - their only consistently dangerous-looking player in recent weeks - surely should have been on from the start). Leeds had nicked a scrappy lead early on when Nmecha somehow managed to bundle the ball over the line from a free-kick. That led to an interminable VAR delay, as a number of Leeds players had been well offside when the kick was taken - but not the ultimate goalscorer; and it would seem that none of the others was 'interfering'. Emi Martinez collapsed clutching his head - for no obvious reason; this seemed to be an attempt to con the ref into thinking he might have been fouled, or to at least garner some sympathy from his own fans,... as he squirmed with embarrassment at his costly mistake: he'd completely misjudged the flight of the ball, and failed to assert himself over the attacking players (he'd got himself caught between two Leeds men; but neither of them did anything to impede or unbalance him, so there was no suggestion of any foul). In the second half, the home side briefly appeared to have drawn level at 2-2, but this time VAR was working efficiently in ruling the goal out; it might have been forgivable for the on-pitch officials to fail to notice that Calvert-Lewin had turned the ball into the goal with his hand - but it was very obvious from the behind-the-goal camera. Two very smart second-half finishes from Morgan Rogers - a clever near-post flick with the outside of his boot from Malen's low cross, and a free-kick neatly dinked over the wall (although Perri probably should have got to that one!) - were the only highlights of a thoroughly turgid encounter.

Hincapie rather than Mosquera got the nod to fill in for the sidelined Gabriel, and Calafiori, who had been a minor doubt before the game, was fit to start on the left as usual. Thomas Frank decided to switch to a back-three, as he so often did at Brentford when facing stronger opposition; Spurs fans were probably not too happy at this admission of inferiority - and it availed the team nothing anyway, as they were bulldozed by a rampant Arsenal. Only Richarlison's audacious chip over Raya from 35 yards out (inspired by Kenny McLean's goal against Denmark earlier in the week?!) gave the visitors a psychological lift and briefly allowed them to gain some momentum in the game. Eze's hattrick (and he might well have had 4 or 5; Vicario made a good stop from another long-range drive of his late in the game) took the FPL community rather by surprise; he's thus far been playing well without often looking likely to score himself; and Rice (for dependability, and plenty of assists) or Trossard (for currently hot goalscoring form) or Saka (always classy and dangerous, even though he hasn't yet got into a regular scoring groove again) really look the preferable alternatives from the Arsenal midfield. His first goal was again rather dubious, another instance of the inconsistent application of the 'interference' rule for offsides: Trossard (and two other Arsenal players; although they were probably just onside) was clearly in an offside position on the edge of the six-yard box, and directly on the line of the shot, blocking the keeper from getting an early view of it. We don't like to see goals ruled out for this sort of thing, but the rule is that they ought to be. We really need some clearer guidelines for the implementation of this rule, because at the moment it seems like a complete toss-up as to whether a goal may be ruled out.

Maheus Cunha was a late omission from the Manchester United lineup for the Monday night game at Old Trafford, having apparently picked up some sort of head injury in training: not a huge upset for FPL, as he's only owned by about 4.5% of managers (I'm surprised it's that many, given how little he's shown so far this season, and how poorly he compares to Mbeumo or Fernandes as a midfield prospect from that club at the moment); at least that provided a rare start for Joshua Zirkzee. The other big curveball of this encounter was Idrissa Gana Gueye getting himself sent off in the 12th minute for an altercation with one of his own teammates (he was so incensed with defender Michael Keane about something that he slapped him quite hard across the face - right in front of the referee: madness!). Fortunately for the visitors, they were able to grab a goal through Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall almost immediately afterwards, so were then able to sit back in a low-block for the rest of the game - a block which United could not find any way to break down, and mostly had to resort to shooting from distance. To be fair, they did manage a few decent atempts, and Pickford needed to be sharp between the sticks - making good saves from Fernandes and Mbeumo, and from a Zirkzee header; Fernandes and Mason Mount also saw powerful drives whistle just wide of a post.  Overall, though, United really were awful in this game [Adam Clery has put out a good video on why]. The great FPL mystery/injustice of the night was that James Tarkowski, despite keeping a clean sheet and yet again being the top returner of 'defensive contributions', somehow missed out on any bonus points: one can see how Dewsbury-Hall's decsive goal and Pickford's lively performance in goal might deserve the bigger bonuses, but how did Keane and Myekolenko edge out their captain for the final extra point?? Did Keane get extra credit for taking his slap like a man???  The BPS is broken!  Amorim appeared to have saved his job with a run of better results over the past month or so; but it's a sign of how precarious the recent optimism at the club has been, how tenuous is the fans' confidence in their manager, that one disppointing home result immediately puts his future in question again.

Kilman and Guehi (and possibly Schar?) not getting sent off, an obvious penalty not being given to City, but a very dubious one being awarded to Brentford, goals perhaps wrongly allowed for Murillo and Neto (and Eze), and certainly wrongly disallowed for Igor Jesus, and thoroughly incompetent performance of VAR and SAOT throughout - the officiating is definitely looking like it's going to get us to a very high 'Luck-o-Meter' score this week. And we've had a few unexpected omissions and early substitutions too; and that penalty miss by Thiago!

The FPL 'Team of the Week' is usually one of the strongest indicators of the fluctuating 'luck factor': and it is again - as in just about every week so far this season - a thoroughly bizarre collection: 5 defenders (3 of them from Forest!), Callum Wilson up front, and Munoz initially the only player in it with any significant ownership (although later joined by the modestly owned Eze and Trossard). The 'global average' score for the week, and the general spread of scores, the disparity beween the week's lowest and highest, are also signifiers of the 'luck' quoieint; and this week, we got yet another staggeringly low 'average' score of just 39 points - but it seems hat quite a large number of managers scored well above that, and the 'Manager of the Week'' racked up a massive 95 points more than that (though that was with the benefit of a Bench Boost; nevertheless, several people got scores of 120-130 even without a chip) - that is a very unusual circumstance. With some unexpected results, a number of poor refereeing decisions, and so many of the most fancied players failing to produce anything (while Eze's monster haul came rather out of the blue!), I think this week certainly gets up to an 8 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.

I feel sorry for Archie Gemmill

I have a soft spot for Scotland and the Scots. Edinburgh is my favourite city on Earth, and I dream of retiring there one day.

I've always rather liked their national football team too. In my early childhood, England had an unfortunate habit of failing to qualify for the World Cup, so Scotland were the only 'home country' to root for in the tournament. And by the time England did manage to qualify again, in '82, I'd got rather used to following the Scots, and was actually inclined to root for them harder than 'my own team'. It probably also helped that Scotttish football was going through a 'golden age' in the '70s and '80s (the number of 'foreign players' at English clubs was strictly capped, but that rule didn't apply to the 'home countries', so there was a ready conduit for the best Scottish talent to move quickly to top English sides), and so their leading players were all familiar and beloved stars in the English First Division.

Also, my best drinking buddy from college, and one of my principal antagonists in FPL, is a proud Scot, so I always share in his joy, as well as feeling some of my own, when the Scotland football team does well.

And crikey, did they do well at Hampden on Tuesday night - securing a thrilling victory against a technically superior Danish side, to qualify them for the World Cup Finals for the first time in 28 years!! It was one of the most ecstatic football moments I've witnessed in many years. And I was very, very happy for my old friend - and for all other Scottish fans around the world.

But... it has bothered me rather that in so much of the subsequent commentary on the occasion, and in particular on the three remarkable goals which clinched the victory, people have been dubbing this result, or one of the three spectacular goals... The Greatest Moment in Scottish Football History.

Er, NO. Not unless you're a Very Young Person. It was a very great 'moment', certainly; ONE of 'The Greatest of All Time'.

But not The Greatest. Sorry, that's ALWAYS going to be this.,,,  Stocky, diminutive, prematurely middle-aged-looking midfielder Archie Gemmill suddenly channels his inner Brazilian to improvise a swerving run from the edge of the box that leaves three Dutch defenders flat on their arses, and then hammers an exuberant finish into the roof of the net..... to put Scotland 3-1 up against The Netherlands at the World Cup (and they - the Dutch, that is - were the best team in that tournament, the best team in the world at that point; should, by rights, have won the Cup that year!).

That was the single most sublime moment in my football-watching life. And I don't think it will ever be topped.

Dear old Archie (still with us; now 78 years old) is not getting the respect and remembrance he deserves.

People have such short memories today!

[By the by, of the three wondergoals Scotland conjured last Tuesday, I like Kieran Tierney's the best. Overhead kicks and lobs from the half-way line are spectacular rarities, but they're essentially a bit hit-and-hope - they require a substantial element of luck. Tierney looked like he knew his shot was going in three or four paces out from hitting it!]

Dilemmas of the Week - Gameweek 12 (25/26)

Not too many new injury concerns arising from the international matches this time, so this ahould be a pretty brief rundown!

I'm trying to streamline these weekly round-ups a bit from last year, restricting myself for the most part to just the injuries etc. affecting players that are likely to have a major significance in FPL; and also, of course, only to new injuries - I figure everyone should be aware of players who've already been ruled out for some time!  

[For some years, I have found the 'Injuries & Bans' summary on Fantasy Football Scout the most reliable resource for this kind of information; although this site, Premier League Injuries, is a very good alternative (often a little quicker to update, I think - though it did go through a bit of a glitchy period for a while last year).  Go check these out for more comprehensive coverage. 

I see the Fantasy Premier League site has added an improved 'Player Availability' page this year (though hidden under 'The Scout' tab?!). That also seems to be reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date, but god knows how it's supposed to be 'organised' - maybe by 'date of injury'? Obviously, arranging it by club and alphabetical order would be more sensible; but the denizens of FPL Towers seem to have a deep aversion to the sensible.]

So, what are the conundrums we face ahead of Gameweek 12 of the season?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

Well, of course, the major news is Gabriel pulling a thigh muscle again in Brazil's friendly against Senegal at The Emirates last Saturday. Arteta acknowledged on Friday that it was quite a serious problem, apparently confirming initial speculations that the defender was likely to be out for at least a month, possibly more. That's probably a bit too long to carry him on the bench (particularly as we're so often wanting to start 4 defenders at the moment!). It also causes much uncertainty about how Arsenal's form will hold up without their lynchpin at the back. And the permutations for a possible reshuffle to adapt are numerous: Mosquera, who's looked excellent when deputising for Saliba a few times, would be the most obvious replacement; Hincapie is more naturally suited to the left side of the centrail pairing, but probably doesn't yet have enough experience in the team; Saliba has the experience and inteilligence to move over to the left, but Calafiori or Timber might be more natural fits - leaving room for White or Lewis-Skelly to come back into the picture. Calafiori skipped international duty with a niggling hip problem, and Timber suffered a gashed knee playing for Holland, but neither seem likely to be in doubt for this weekend. Thus, the three remaining members of Arsenal's regular defensive line-up should be still be safely nailed-on, but one of them might be playing a slightly different role; and the shake-up could affect the likely points returns for them, and all of their other teammates.

Matty Cash and Ezri Konsa missed on the internationals with minor muscle issues, but those don't sound serious enough to threaten their availability against Leeds.

Patrick Kluivert picked up a knock while playing for Holland, and Antoine Semenyo suffered an aggravation of an ankle ligament problem while with the Ghana squad; neither problem sounds too major, but might make them a doubtt for the West Ham game.

Maresca has just announced that Cole Palmer broke a toe in a domestic accident this week. Toes break easily and heal easily; unless it's a really gnarly instance, he should be fine again inside a few weeks; and we hadn't heard that he was ready to return after his troublesome groin strain anyway, so this may not really have affected his availability timeline that much. (It might even be a 'good thing' - forcing him to rest up a week or two longer, preventing him from trying to rush back before that groin issue is fully resolved.)

Florian Wirtz and Conor Bradley are apparently unable to play this weekend as a result of problems acquired during the internationals. But at least Alisson is potentially ready to return in goal.

Benjamin Sesko came off with a knee problem in the last game against Tottenham, and is said to be sidelined for around a month. Harry Maguire also had to come off in that game with a hamstring strain: not too bad, but might be a doubt this weekend. And Kobbie Mainoo had been withdrawn from the squad just ahead of that one with a training knock, and is still doubtful - although he hasn't been getting any minutes from Amorim, anyway.

Randal Kolo Muani had to come off early in the Manchester United game last time after taking a blow to the face; apparently he's suffered an injury to his jaw which could keep him out for 6-8 weeks.

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

Dan Burn is serving a one-match ban for having earned two yellow cards in the last game against Brentford.

Lucas Paqueta and Sasa Lukic are suspended for one game after reaching 5 yellow cards, and a few others are now dangerously close to joining them on a 'totting up' suspension.

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

I said yesterday that I was really impressed by the recent form of Diego Gomez, Alejandro Garnacho, and Leandro Trossard - although for each of them there are some doubts about their fixtures and how regularly they will start. I nearly added Villa's Emi Buendia to that list, but the doubts about him are even graver, as he's only just graduated to a regular start after more than a year in the wilderness, and there seems to be a continuing question-mark about his stamina/resilience as Emery is still giving him rationed minutes.

Jeremy Doku, Nico O'Reilly, and - to a slightly lesser extent - Rayan Cherki have all impressed recently for City too; but Pep Roulette always gives us pause there. Doku played a few blinders last season as well, and then was promptly dropped because His Pepness felt that he was still unable to implement some of the more abstruse details of his tactical instructions; there's inevitably a lingering fear that this might happen again, however well he's been playing.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!

Picks of the Week (6)

DISCLAIMER: I always refuse to identify myself as any sort of FPL 'guru' or 'mentor' or 'expert'. And I have previously on this blog expressed my reluctance to share many details of my own selections, or to make very specific player recommendations.

However, in addition to occasionally critiquing common 'sheep picks' of the moment (not all necessarily outright bad, but ridiculously over-popular selections), I will occasionally try to highlight one or two players who seem not yet to be very widely owned but are starting to look very tempting prospects.

I will generally try to come up with at least 2 options per week - so that it doesn't look like I'm making a sole recommendation. And these suggestions are intended to be simply 'worth thinking about', not at all 'must-haves'. (And some weeks, most weeks, I'll have nothing.....)

Well, I haven't done one of these roundups yet this season, so I suppose I'm overdue....  Here goes.

The guy I've got most excited about over the past month is Brighton's new attacking midfielder from Paraguay, Diego Gomez. He really looks a complete package, and is brimming with confidence: that brace of goals against Leeds didn't look like a one-off to me. Brighton's team form has appeared to be on a strong upward trend in recent weeks, and  - apart from away trips to Liverpool and Arsenal! - they have a fairly inviting run of fixtures over the next month-and-a-half. And he's a steal at 4.9 million! If you're looking for a change in midfield - tiring, perhaps, of Grealish or Reijnders or Enzo Fernandez or Kudus or Semenyo - he's a tempting possibility; and completely 'under the radar' at the moment, with a puny 25,000 owners. However, we have to acknowledge that this would be a particularly speculative and risky pick: Gomez has only just graduated to a regular start, and Brighton have such a deep squad that rotation is always a danger; he might be competing with Mitoma or Gruda for the place before long. But I have an inkling this might be a gamble worth taking. He's just playing so damn well the moment that he might even be able to keep the start over Mitoma; but I think he could equally play off the right side (displacing Minteh), not as an outright winger perhaps, but nominally starting out wide, and drifting in to fill in a playmaker role in the right-half space, like Cole Palmer or Martin Odegaard. Indeed, I have a hunch his best position might actually be as a central 'No. 10'; it would be hard for him to achieve precedence over the excellent Georginho Rutter in that slot - but it is surely inevitable that Welbeck will pick up an injury sooner or later, and if that happens, I think it is likely that Rutter will switch to operating as their '9' or 'false 9', vacating the 'No. 10' space for Gomez. But of course, none of those optimistic eventualities may come to pass, and he might just be relegated to the bench again as soon as Mitoma's fully fit.

Alejandro Garnacho has also started to look on fire in his last couple of outings for Chelsea. At just 6.4 million, and with an ownership of less than 70,000, he too seems to be an underappreciated asset. The reservations on this pick would be that his frequent defensive weaknesses (I prefer to think of them as being down to 'inattentiveness' rather than 'laziness', but he can be a bit of a liability out of possession sometimes, especially in the defensive third) probably make him more likely to get limited minutes even when he's starting; he'l almost always be taken off for the last 20 minutes or so, whenever Chelsea have a lead to protect. And a regular start might be in doubt - as Palmer will probably start nominally wide on the right when he's available again (soon, we hope!) and Neto will probably then be regarded as the strongest option for a regular spot on the left. Also, Chelsea have a bit of an up-and-down fixture schedule: a few inviting opponents, but a home game soon against Arsenal, and then away trips to Bournemouth, Newcastle, and Manchester City over the following month. Nevertheless, I feel strongly tempted by Garnacho at the moment; I think I would resist the temptaion; and I fear I might regret resisting it - as he'll probably come up with one or two really big hauls in the next few weeks!

And finally, it might be worth giving Leandro Trossard a thoughtt as well (if you don't have him already: only 85,000 do - but that number is substantially up from two weeks ago); he's looked Arsenal's most dangerous player in recent weeks, with 2 goals and an assist in his last 4 starts. The doubt about him is that once Odegaard's available again (although there's still no definite timeline for his return), Eze is likely to switch back to the left flank, returning Trossard to the bench (although he might also start as a central striker if Gyokeres is going to be out a bit longer). Arsenal might face a bit of a challenge with London derbies against Spurs and Chelsea in their next two matches; but after that, they have a pretty soft run through the rest of December. Trossard would therefore be a very appealing pick - if only we could be confident that he would retain a regular start. (Unfortunately, that is becoming more and more of a doubt for a majority of players at the top clubs. It is a major pain for FPL selection!)

A little bit of Zen (69)

"You should be self-confident enough to abandon your 'certainty' - and to explore and to allow contradictions."

Christoph Waltz

A couple of weeks ago, the great Austrian actor was the featured guest in Mythical Kitchen's 'Last Meal' series, chatting thoughtfully with erudite host, Josh Scherer, about a range of topics, while enjoying some of his favourite dishes and wines. It's a curious coincidence that I should stumble on this pithy warning against the vice of excessive 'certainty' so soon after coming across Derek Muller's video on the same topic, 

This is one of the best things I've seen on Youtube all year: Waltz is a wise and funny man, full of intriguing insights. He's nearly 70 now, but still exudes a boyish enthusiasm about everything, am effervescent joie de vivre. The line above comes at timestamp 29.17. There is a bit earlier in the conversattion, around about 13.35, where he touches on another idea that I often like to highlight on this blog - the importance of prioritizing process over result.

I highly recommend watching the whole thing. Waltz is a treasure; Scherer too.

Another way of looking at LUCK in FPL

 

Following on from my comments the oher day about the perils of over-confidence, I want to make a further observation about how we should view our LUCK in this game.

In Tuesday's post, I pointed out that if our self-confidence in regard to our FPL decisions were what cognitive psychologists call 'well-calibrated', it would correspond exactly to the probability of the outcomes we were betting on with those choices. But there are so many variables at play in a game like football that no one game event ever has anything like a 100% probability; in fact, with there usually being multiple potential outcomes to any situation, very few of them can properly be said to have anything near even a 50/50 chance of happening. [Even an absolutely 'ever-present' player can.... catch a cold, break his toe in the shower on match-day morning, wrap his sports car around a lamp-post, have a row with his manager or his girlfriend.... No-one, absolutely NO-ONE has a 100% probability of even starting a game, let alone of achieving any particular points-outcome in it.]

We should never presume to know what a player is going to do in a game. The best we can hope for is to formulate a fairly reasonable projection of his range of likeliest points-outcomes.

And then we have to try to judge what the median likelihood return is on that spectrum of expected possible returns.

Now, it is always more likely that a player will only perform at the lower-end of that scale - or perhaps even have an unexpectedly disastrous week and return well below even his lowest predicted outcome. A disappointing - or, sometimes, outright terrible - return is almost invariably a far more likely outcome than some kind of very big points haul. Thus, the median point of a player's projected most likely returns for the gameweek will not be in the middle, but skewed quite significantly towards the lower end of the range.

Now, of course, as I observed in that post on Tuesday, if a player does really, really well for us, we always like to convince outselves that we absolutely foresaw this - with perfect confidence - and are thus absolutely deserving of all the points we receive. But in fact, even a middling points return is usually at least a little bit above what would have been a reasonable median outcome, and you should be very happy with any such returns. Every really big haul you get is well above what you could reasonably have expected as a return on this basis; every really big haul is, to a significant degree, 'LUCKY'.

Our results in this game are not earned 100% by merit. We should be more ready to acknowledge our debts to good fortune and the caprices of Fate, to cultivate an attitude of humility and gratitude when we enjoy really big points returns - rather than constantly trying to deceive ourselves into believing that such a result was entirely deserved.

The vice of OVER-CONFIDENCE

 

I've referrred to Derek Muller's consistently thought-provoking science channel, Verittasium, on the blog before - here and here.

His latest post last week was on the unfortunate human predilection towards being massively - and inappropriately - confident about our beliefs all the time. 

He starts by touching on the notorious Dunning-Kruger Effect (which identifies the tendency for less 'knowledgeable' or 'competent' people to most drastically over-estimate their abilities in self-evaluations), but goes on to discuss how EVERYONE tends to be massively over-confident - even when making a guess about a problem that we really don't know the answer to - and explains the concept of 'calibration', meaning the correlation between the confidence we have in our beliefs or predictions and their accuracy.

Playing FPL, of course, is a classic case of having to constantly make intelligent predictions of events in the football world that we can't actually know the outcomes of in advance; we are just making guesses about problems we don't know the answer to.

And such events in football all come with a high degree of uncertainty: even the great Erling Haaland, even when he's on such a great run of form as he has been so far this season, cannot be relied upon to always get a big haul against a 'weaker' opponent, nor indeed can he be relied upon to score at all in every single game.

'Calibration', in this sense, means that our confidence in a particular outcome should correlate exactly to its probability. 

Therefore, if our guessing was 'well calibrated', we wouldn't ever feel much more than 60% or 70% confident that Haaland, even in the form of his life, was going to score in any given game, and should never really be more than about 50% confident - or anywhere near that! - of him notching a brace; and confidence in him returning a hattrick cannot ever be more than a very, very low percentage - it is just too rare and unpredictable an event, even for a player like him (especially when Pep so often subs him off early!). 

And yet, somehow, we always seem to end up professing near-100% confidence in such predictions. That is a dangerous INSANITY.

It probably arises from our desire to feel good about ourselves all the time, and to look good in front of others. Anxiety about future outcomes, and doubt about the accuracy of our decisions are uncomfortable feelings, something we seek to suppress. And we imagine that other people will be more impressed by us, and be more likely to be swayed by our opinions if we express them with absolute assurance. Hence, once we've made a decision, we immediately reassure ourselves that it must - absolutely definitely - be correct, and that we can place near-100% confidence in it. But that just ain't so - EVER.

There are, I think, FOUR supplementary vices which follow on from this tendency to be over-confident in our choices.  1) It hurts harder, makes our disappointment and dissatisfaction all the sharper when we happen to be 'wrong'.  2) It makes us more stubborn: the disproof of an idea we had become so confident of, and so emotionally invested in, undermines our sense of self, and we struggle to accept that; the powerful impulse of denial drives us into thoughts such as, "I might have been wrong this week, but I'm bound to be right next time!" and into sticking by bad picks longer than we should.  3) It makes us less self-reflective, more resistant to the possibility of change in the short-term as well. (Many FPL decisions, such as the captaincy choice, playing a chip, the starting lineup and bench order, can be changed without cost within the gameweek, right up until the deadline. And late-breaking news might often give good cause to do so. But once we've made our choices for the week, we tend to be very reluctant to revisit them - for any reason.)  And 4) It makes us less grateful for our good fortune: when we get a great haul from a player, we always like to think, "I predicted that, I knew that was going to happen: I completely deserve every single point of that improbably huge return!"  Hmm, NO, you don't; you got LUCKY.

We would be much better off - certainly happier in our playing of the game, and probably more successful too (though these two things should not be inextricably correlated) - if we could break away from this habit of always wanting to be believe that we are absolutely correct in our decisions, that we know what the best FPL picks for the week are going to be. We don't; we're just guessing.

Upcoming prospects for Bench Boost (and Free Hit!)

 

Now, of course, the best time to play the Bench Boost chip will vary for each manager - probably more so than just about any other aspect of FPL 'strategy', as it depends on all 15 members of your squad (whereas, for the Triple Captain, the options are pretty much the same for everyone - especially at the moment this year!). However, as I pointed out the other day, the Bench Boost is a chip whose value derives from the collective return of the full squad: you not only need to have all 15 players starting their matches, you want to have as many of them as possible playing weak opponents. 

And sure, you will focus mainly on the fixture-difficulty for your 'usual' bench players. But the fixtures for the starting eleven can be very relevant also: if some of them are facing especially tough fixtures, you might not really want to start them that week (you probably don't want to bet on your Arsenal and Liverpool players, for instance - or not all of them, anyway - when they're playing each other). And there may be opportunities to tweak your squad - with a splurge of saved Free Transfers, or perhaps even a Wildcard rebuild a week or two beforehand; or, this year, with the over-generous award of additional Free Transfers for the start of AFCON in Gameweek 16 - to take maximum advantage of an unusually appealing set of fixtures in a particular gameweek.

This year, for the first (and, hopefully, last!) time, we are getting an additional Bench Boost chip, which has to be played in the first half of the season - before the end of December. Some people were so befuddled by this surprising and unnecessary rule change that they spent the chip very early (many even in the very first week of the season - which was completely NUTS!)

It has always looked to me as if the most promising gameweeks for this first Bench Boost would come in the latter part of its eligible window, over the coming month or so.

In fact, this coming Gameweek 12 might look especially appealing - with Villa playing Leeds, Bournemouth playing West Ham, Chelsea playing Burnley. Palace playing Wolves, Liverpool playing Forest, and Manchester United facing a recently out-of-sorts Everton. That is one of the most 'lopsided' sets of fixtures we'll see all season. But I am a little wary of it, because it comes straight after an international break, when there are increased uncertainties about players' form and fitness: travel fatigue as much as game weariness can take the edge off players' performances (South American internationals, in particular, are often rested for the first game back, just because they've had to endure such long return flights), and minor injury problems may not have been disclosed. Also, the disruption of usual club routines, and especially the shortage of time to conduct tactical preparation, means that almost all teams will be something below their best this coming weekend - and some match outcomes (more than usual!) may therefore be surprises.

Gameweek 13 is also promising, with Villa playing Wolves, Brentford playing Burnley, Liverpool playing West Ham, City playing Leeds, and Spurs playing Fulham - although Arsenal being drawn against Chelsea may give pause to managers with a lot of representation from those two teams (surely everyone now has 3 Arsenal players; but it's quite easy, at the moment, to get by with 1 or 0 picks from Chelsea!). And City against Leeds is probably a prime opportunity to chance the Triple Captain on Haaland, so that's a tricky dilemma.

Gameweek 14 doesn't look so hot, with a lot of quite finely balanced match-ups, and only United against West Ham, City against Fulham, and Palace against Burnley looking likely to be really one-sided.

Gameweek 15, though, might be another fairly good prospect: Brighton playing West Ham, Newcastle playing Burnley, Liverpool playing Leeds, City playing Sunderland (certainly not a gimme, but Haaland will probably fancy it...), and United playing Wolves. However, Arsenal away to Villa, Chelsea away to Bournemouth, and Brentford away to Spurs might perhaps go either way, and if you have a lot of players from from those teams, the Bench Boost might look a bit too risky. But if you've managed to save up a few transfers over the preceding weeks, you mightt have the opportunity to optimize your squad this week with a 'virtual Free Hit' (being able to immediately undo any changes that you want to, with the 5 Free Transfers being made available in the following Gameweek 16).

Gameweek 16 is a bit less enticing: although Arsenal, Villa, and Brentford have soft opponents, a lot of matches in this batch - United/Bournemouth, Liverpool/Brighton, Burnley/Fulham, Palace/City, and the Sunderland/Newcastle derby - might all be very tight, 

The fixtures in Gameweeks 18 and 19 include a lot of top-of-the-table clashes, where most FPL managers will have too many players pitted against each other to be able to expect a really good overall haul. And I'd tend to avoid those gameweeks anyway, because the matches are crowded together in the Christmas holiday week: family distractions, more limited preparation, and usually abysmal weather tend to hamper performance in these games, and you rarely see the best of anyone; and a lot of players may be getting rationed minutes, or be rested altogether for one of the games.

Moreover, that's a bit far away to plan for - so much might have changed with form and injuries by then. And, especially with something like the Bench Boost, which requires all 15 players to be fit, and starting, and at their best, it is too much of a risk to leave the chip until the very end of the available window for use: if a rash of late injuries suddenly renders the ploy invalid, you might have only one more week in which to play it, or..... no remaining alternative at all.

That last point also argues against leaving the BB until Gameweek 17, but bold managers might be tempted to give it a try, if they fancy Arsenal against Everton, Bournemouth against Burnley, Brentford against Wolves, and City against West Ham (although that could be possibly the strongest opportunity of the season for a Haaland Triple Cap!). However, Villa/United, Brighton/Sunderland, Newcastle/Chelsea, and Spurs/Liverpool will be rather harder to call.

And of course, all of these gameweeks with an unusually large number of one-sided fixtures - and/or some close match-ups where you might want to avoid having several of your best players facing each other - are also prime candidates for playing the Free Hit chip.

You don't want to be playing any chips early in the season, if you can possibly help it, because tactics and selections, team and individual form take a month or two to settle down - after the dust of the summer transfer window has settled. And this year, the pattern of the fixtures definitely creates a heavy bias towards using them at the very end of the available window. Heck, some lucky people haven't even used their Wildcard yet; and most people with any sense will still have all the others. Hence, we're faced with the challenge of how to make the best use of 3 or 4 chips within the space of just 7 or 8 weeks. This kind of 'overcrowding' is not an enhancement to the game. The introduction of the additional chips this year was yet another stupid idea from our FPL overlords.

NB:  You can't rely on FPL's 'Fixture Difficulty Rating' (as in the screencap at the top of this piece) as an indicator of likely outcomes. It is only, at best, a very crude guide to the relative status of clubs. It seems to take no account of factors like the form or fitness of key players, only 'expected performance' based - initially - on last year's results. It is ludicrously slow to update its assessments, doesn't appear to have much, if any, weighting towards recent results (as it ought to), and maintains an entrenched prejudice against promoted teams, even if they're doing well (4th-placed Sunderland are still considered an 'easy' opponent for almost everyone?!). The FDR grid is a handy reminder of what the fixtures are; but you have to use your own knowledge and judgement to decide which games are actually likely to be very one-sided or very tight, and which team will be the more probable winner.

Another little breather....

 

Yet another international break is upon us. We should really be grateful for a little bit of a rest from the relentless grind of the FPL season,.... and yet, and yet we do tend to fret at the sudden absence of our usual preoccupations and anxieties at the end of the week.

'Withdrawal symptoms'!!

A little bit of Zen (68)

 

“We have set our sights very high; so high, so high, in fact, that even failure would have in it an echo of glory."

Bill Nicholson

The legendary Spurs manager, who led the club to its greatest successes in the early 1960s, was a surprisingly idealistic, and indeed, at times, a poetic chap. 

We can all take inspiration from this thought.

How much is a Bench Boost worth?

I thought I'd better follow up on yesterday's post about calculating the value of the Triple Captain chip with a companion piece on its cousin, the other 'bonus chip', the Bench Boost.

As with the Triple Cap, FPL managers often like to self-deceive about the extent of their success in playing this chip. Because the points scored by all 15 squad players will be counted for the gameweek when this chip is in play, they will often protest that team selection "doesn't mattter" - and so contrive to accidentally-on-purpose leave some of their best players on the bench. If 'bench players' end up recording 2 or 3 - or even 4! - of their best individual scores of the week, then of course it will appear that their bench collectively produced enormous points,... and that can all be credited to a canny deployment of the Bench Boost chip, so these folks like to claim. But of course, that just ain't so.

Even if we go through the motions of trying to make a normal team selection, with the players who look likely to have the week's shakiest points prospects left on the bench, any of us may still fall prey to this idea that "it doesn't really matter" and be a bit lazy or hasty in deciding the starting eleven; even if we're not consciously stacking the bench with some of our more promising prospects, we might subconsciously be guilty of it. 

And even if, by a freak of good fortune, the 4 poorest prospects left on your bench have returned uncommonly well, contrary to your honest expectations - that isn't worth much if a lot of your starters have returned 'blanks'. The Bench Boost is indeed a reward for collective excellence, and you ought to evaluate it in terms of the overall return from all 15 players.

I follow two 'rules of thumb' for gauging the success of playing my Bench Boost:

1)  Decide my 'bench players' after the event, based on the lowest points returned from my squad (bearing in mind the 'formation rules' on eligible team selection): thus, I only count 4 of my lowest player scores as the value of the Bench Boost.

2)  Consider my squad total score against the gameweek's 'Global Average', to get an idea of how much bettter I did - if at all - than in a typical non-Bench Boost gameweek. (I typically manage around 10 points better than the 'Global Average'; in a 'good' week, around 15 or so better. So, I don't consider I've had a successful Bench Boost unless it's put me at least 25-30 points above the 'Global Average'. I'll make mental adjustments to that rough scale of comparison, based on how high-scoring or low-scoring a gameweek it was. But in most gameweeks, 15 points above 'Global Average' would probably still represent a very poor return on the Bench Boost, and 20-25 points barely adequate.)

Now, in practice, your Bench Boost is rarely going to be worth all that much - because, inevitably, you have your weakest players left on the bench. And, very often, you'll find that at least one of your squad doesn't play that week for some reason, so you'll only have 3 players (or sometimes even fewer....) contributing from your bench. Typically your bench consists of a back-up goalkeeper, a rarely-used (and perhaps ultra-cheap) 5th defender, and whoever your other 2 weakest players look likely to be on that week's fixtures. It's not a recipe for huge points!

That being the case, the Bench Boost can benefit significantly more from a Double Gameweek than the Triple Captain does: because these are players who are unlikely to produce any big returns, even minimum 'appearance points' from a second fixture will give a useful proportional boost to their total for the gameweek. However, if you follow my austere policy of only counting your lowest-returning players as comprising the value of your Bench Boost, you really need just about the entire squad to be enjoying a double-fixture (if only your usual bench players have double fixtures, they'd probably become preferred starters for that gameweek, and your 'true' bench, with only single fixtures. would probably not score quite as well) - and BIG Double Gameweeks like that don't happen any more. (The only week where we could sometimes see 12-16 Premier League teams enjoying a Double Gameweek at the same time was when FA Cup Quarter-Final participants would have their League games from that weekend all rescheduled to the same gameweek [and that didn't always happen; sometimes they were split...]. But since last season, the Premier League is suspending its match programme on the Quarter-Final weekend, so we don't get any postponements from that any more.)

This season, we've been given the novelty gimmick of a 2nd Bench Boost, only valid for the first half of the season - when there are no Double Gameweeks anyway! And as I observed in relation to the Triple Captain chip earlier in the season, now that Double Gameweeks are so few and so small, there's no reliable advantage in them any more (to be attractive possibilities for etiher type of Bonus Chip, at least one of the two fixtures for each of your players needs to be against a really easy opponent; and you have no idea if that is going to be the case until very shortly beforehand). 

It is a huge risk to wait until the last few weeks of the season on such a slim possibility of a slightly enhanced return for those chips; it's certainly not worth passing up favourable combinations of fixtures in gameweeks earlier in the season.

As I mentioned last week, it's best to stay agile and be prepared to play your Bench Boost opportunistically - any time when you feel really confident that all 15 of your squad players are going to start, and most of them, at least, are facing promising fixtures.

Of course, it also helps if you've managed to assemble a particularly strong squad, and one that is especially targeted towards the gameweek's weaker fixtures. In the past, we've generally liked to try to play the Bench Boost chip immediately following a Wildcard, so that our squad is fully optimized for form and fitness, and for the coming week's fixtures. 

Since last season, the new rule allowing us to bank up to 5 Free Transfers has effectively given us the theoretical opportunity of further 'mini-Wildcard' plays, where we could substantially remodel our squads if we've managed to save up extra transfers for a few weeks. In practice, it's incredibly difficult to save 5 FTs - and probably self-harming to try! - but being able to use even 2 or 3 transfers at once can be a significant advantage in optimizing the squad for a Bench Boost attempt. And, of course, remodelling this way, rather than with a Wildcard, enables you to make your changes right on the eve of the gameweek, thereby minimizing the risk of injuries removing some of your squad (a major hazard, if you're having to 'set up' for your Bench Boost using a Wildcard the week before).

Also, this season we have the further unnecessary gimmick of being given additional Free Transfers in Gameweek 16 (supposedly to ease the impact of players departing for AFCON; but at the moment, it's looking very unlikely that anyone will own any African players... apart from Bryan Mbeumo). The odd way this GIFT is being implemented - giving us extra Free Transfers, up to a maximum holding of 5 of them - means that, in order to best take advantage of this measure, we need to use up all of our existing Free Transfers by Gameweek 15. And if we've managed to save up quite a few of them, Gameweek 15 might then be a promising opportunity for the first Bench Boost. Or Gameweek 16, when we'll suddenly find ourselves magically in possession of another 5 Free Transfers. Or possibly even in Gameweeks 17 or 18, when we should still be reaping the advantages of those recent major rebuilds.  (FPL's needless largesse in Gameweek 16 could also be seen as giving us an additional 'mini' Free Hit in the preceding Gameweek: we could use saved Free Transfers to substantially recast our squad for one week only, undoing all of the changes again immediately with the extra transfers being given us for the start of AFCON.)   [I wrote a follow-up piece here - with a bit more detail on this issue of which gameweeks (in the first half of the current season) look most propitious for possibly playing the Bench Boost.]

However, even if you have managed to optimally 'set up' your squad to use this chip, you should consider 10-15 points - fairly counted - for your Bench Boost as adequate; anything around 20 is a very good return; and 25+ is absolutely outstanding.

But, again, as with the Triple Captain, you should temper your expectations, and realise that the chip can easily return little or nothing. If you have a dismal Bench Boost score this season,.... maybe you'll get a big one next time. That's how the game goes.