Pounds EQUAL Points

[This coin, worth approx. 4 million USD, was  stolen from a museum 

in Germany in 2017.]

It's a very simple and obvious equivalence - but, somehow, many FPL managers seem to overlook it.

Some of the most important implications of this are:

1)  It is wasteful to leave any budget unspent (especially at the start of the season)

You may sometimes want to keep just a little in hand (half a million or a million, say) to facilitate a planned transfer in a week or two. But you need to be careful not to do that too often - because it is potentially costing you points. 1 million pounds should be worth about 0.75 points per week. [I'll get to that calculation a little later...down at the botom of the post.]

2)  Leaving premium-price players on your bench can be very costly

If someone just has a slight knock (or a - hopefully! - brief dip in form, or a suspension), you might not want to waste transfers moving them out of your squad and then back in again within a short timeframe. But leaving a high-price player unused, for more than a week or two, can damage your points return. Leaving Haaland, for example, on the bench for a month because of injury, or Salah because of AFCON (every other year) is a big risk. 

Based on the above ideal points-per-pound value, you might theoretically be bleeding 8 or 10 pts per week if you do that. In fact, it's not quite that bad, because at least some of your bench places are redundnant; you can afford to leave one or two slots empty because you'll hardly ever use them - and thus they have no direct value. In fact, you're only measuring the difference in price between your unused premium player on the bench and the player you're replacing him with in the starting eleven. (And because premium-price players tend to have low points-per-pound returns anyway, the drop in points might not be as bad as all that.)

You may well have what you think is reasonable back-up for your missing 'star' - maybe even the best available alternative - without needing to spend money and use a transfer (so, you might not be suffering any avoidable points loss at all; but it is a danger you should be wary of). And transfers themselves have a value, which you don't want to 'spend' unless you have to.... 

3)  Transfers also have a points value (and hence a pounds-equivalent value)

The FPL gnomes price additional transfers at 4 points each. And they're pretty shrewd about the game's dynamics: they want to make you think twice about paying points for an extra transfer. (Although, you hope to get at least 5 or 6 points per game - on average - from all of your starting players; so, actually a transfer should be worth rather more than that.)

Hence, it is reasonable to apply that same points-value to your Free Transfers. The FTs are extremely useful: they can strengthen your squad and increase your points return. And you really don't want to be caught without one (or two - or even more this year, since we're now allowed to hoard up to 5 at one time) when a sudden need arises to replace someone. So, keep in mind that nominal points value - and don't use them frivolously. 

And if you can get 6 points in the next game from a player you've transferred in, that is equivalent to an optimum use of 8 million of your budget (as against a zero use, if you're replacing someone who's out injured).

4)  The points-per-pound return from your squad is of paramount importance (but it's not everything)

Now, in theory, you should be able to assemble an optimally successful squad by picking all the players with the highest 'Value (season)' figures on the FPL stats page. (Keep in mind that at the start of the new football year, this stat is using last season's points returns divided by this season's prices. So, it's useful for assessing a player's likely value this year, but doesn't show how good they were on this metric last year.)

In practice, it's not quite that simple because... for one thing, that probably wouldn't use up all your budget! You also need to make sure you're getting the highest overall points-scorers (with the best points-per-pound returns) that you can afford.  

But then there's a further complication. The size of a player's overall points haul, their differential advantage (their excess of points over the next best player, and over the average 'good score' for their position and/or price category), their reliability of returns (how confident can you be that they will again return somewhere near their theoretical best?), and their consistency over the season (how many blank spells might you have to suffer with them?) are all factors which can justify spending a huge sum on a Haaland or a Salah.... even though their points-per-pound returns are very poor.

An effective squad usually contains a number of the highest total points-scorers (even if some of them represent very poor points-per-pound value), balanced with several cheaper players who offer excellent points-per-pound.

5)  You need to pay attention to boosting, or at least maintaining squad value

A lot of people dismiss squad value as an 'irrelevance', and disdain to take any notice of it. It's perhaps got a bad reputation in the FPL community because there is a bizarre side-game where a small minority of players focus all their attention on transfer trading, trying to grow squad value rather than earn points.

However, squad value is important because it translates directly into your points potential. If you can grow your squad value by 4 or 5 million over the opening months of the season, you give yourself the opportunity to bring in one or two more premium players that you couldn't initially afford, and that should boost your points returns.

It may be getting harder now to achieve these sorts of profits. (I believe the algorthms have been heavily tweaked over the last year or two, and price change thresholds seem to be reached very rarely now, compared to a few years back. Almost all of my overall gain in squad value last year came from Cole Palmer - who remained a strictly paper 'profit', since I didn't want to cash him in to try to upgrade other positions!)  But you should still be wary of shrinking squad value. Players who pick up a serious injury, or fall out of favour with their gaffer, or suffer a serious slump in form.... need to be jettisoned very promptly (before a general sell-off triggers a price dip).

And finally....  THE FUNDAMENTAL CALCULATION:

You get a 100-million pound budget at the start of the season. You have to spend at least 17 million on your bench (some might spend a little more). 

You might grow your squad value by 5 million pounds or more over the season. But then again, you might not (as I just noted above, the game dynamics seem to have shifted recently towards making it much more difficult to generate any significant profit on transfer trading). And most of that growth in value might be spent on bolstering an initially weak or half-empty bench, or simply tied up in a player you don't want to sell. There's unlikely to be a major change in the effective value of your starting eleven over the season, probably not more than a few million, at best.

Hence, it's reasonable to suppose that  the value of your starting eleven across most of the season is a little over 80 million.

In recent years, the global leaders have regularly been getting over 2.600 points, and occasionally 2,700+ or even 2,800+. And it is widely accepted that 2,500 points is an excellent score that we should all strive for....

Sure, you can in theory get double points for one of your best players through judicious use of captaincy picks - but, in practice, you have to be very lucky to get more than about a 10% boost on your basic team score from that; and usually it's a lot less than 10%.

That means you really want to be earning very nearly 30 points across the season for every million pounds invested in that starting eleven.

And that translates to a little over 0.75 points per million per week...  It really is worth keeping that in mind. (Although, in practice, you should settle for a little bit less than that - because those sorts of numbers would get you up around the very top of the global rankings, an unreasonable thing to aim at.)

[Momentous revelation: Almost NO PLAYER ever breaches that 30-points-per-million-of-cost number, and only a handful get anywhere near it. You cannot achieve a top-of-the-rankings score with a stable squad; you have to be constantly rotating the most in-form players in and out to try to maximise your returns.... so that the average returns for each slot in your squad are greater than the average returns produced by any one player over the season.]

To Haaland, or not to Haaland...

That is the question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More BAD PICKS (some slightly less obvious ones!)

Following on from yesterday's post about some of the most egregious 'BAD Picks' I see a lot of FPL managers making at the moment, I present a few more examples.... that may seem more surprising or controversial to a lot of people.

Now, yesterday's examples weren't bad players (well, apart from Turner and Flekken!); but they were very conspicuously poor picks for their position and price-point.

This is how ruthless FPL rquires you to be. You only get 2, 3 or 5 picks in each position category; and across each of those positions, you probably have a particular amount of budget in mind, a range of just one or two price-points, for each individual selection. So, you're not just looking for 'one of the best' players for a certain position; you're looking for absolutely THE BEST, in FPL points potential, in that position, at that price-point - for every slot in your squad. (But you also have to consider filling each valuable squad slot not just in isolation, but in the global context of how many players you can take from each club, and how much more bang-for-your-buck you might get from taking a same-position player from another club, or perhaps a different-position player from the same club, or.... The combinations of factors you have to juggle are daunting.)

In order to achieve that, you have to look beyond merely superficial appeal (so many people are clearly just picking whoever happens to have scored the most points last season in each price/position category; that's so lazy - and deserves to be punished!).  You need to look deeper into the stats. 

In particular, you need to work out returns-per-game, not just look at the whole season numbers (a lot of players didn't play the whole season). It's also valuable to review the xG ('expected' goals), or xGC ('expected' goals conceded) for defenders and keepers, and to look at whether those numbers are lower or higher than the actual numbers of goals scored or conceded; this 'delta' factor (the difference between 'expected' and actual performance) is a key indicator of whether a player has been doing a good job.

You also need to try to recall the story of the season as a whole. Did a player play the whole season? Was he consistent across the whole season, or did he have peaks and troughs in form? Did he, overall, improve or decline across the course of the season? How did most of his points come about? What changes in tactics or personnel at the club contributed to his differing returns?  (If you don't watch much football, or can't remember, you should read up on some old match reports, or season summaries for the leading clubs - most clubs put out their own, and there are some good ones on Wikipedia too. And there are some good tactical analysts on Youtube who sometimes put together reviews of the season to explain how a top club achieved success. Adam Clery of FourFourTwo magazine had a particularly good one on Arsenal's so-near-and-yet-so-far-away season a couple of months ago.)

So, here are 5 players who look like very good picks - but AREN'T... for perhaps slightly non-obvious reasons.

Raya

Reason:  Arsenal were way ahead of the pack on clean sheets last season, and Raya conceded fewer goals than any other regular keeper. And he ended the season as the second-ranked FPL goalkeeper.

Yes, but... he was only a negligible amount ahead of Leno and Onana, and miles behind Pickford; so, not very convincingly one of the top few goalkeeper picks for FPL. (Onana, bouncing back after a dreadful start, looked the much better prospect in the latter stages of the season. And Leno has been consistently at the top end of the FPL goalkeeper rankings during his two seasons with Fulham.)

Moreover, his 24 goals conceded was actually slightly above his xGC - which suggests he is prone to the occasional lapse.

And he has a similar problem to Ederson at City over the last few seasons: the rest of the team dominates games so much, is so good defensively, that he rarely gets an opportunity to make a save. And saves - and the bonus points which can come from them when the keeper has a busy game - tend to be worth more than clean sheet points (that's why so many keepers from clubs at the lower end of the table manage to return decent FPL scores). His 'saves' total for the season of 46 was way the lowest of any keeper - barely a third of what Sa, Leno, Areola and Onana posted. And he managed a puny 6 Bonus Points for the entire season - compared to 15 for Leno and 22 for Pickford.

So, if you ponder the stats for a moment, Raya - despite his huge clean sheet potential - just isn't one of the more attractive goalkeeper options.

But that's NOT the reason you shouldn't have him in your squad. The key reason is the differential advantage offered by other Arsenal players. Raya probably won't be the top-scoring keeper this season; and even if he is, he won't significantly outscore a raft of other goalkeepers who cost 0.5 or 1.0 million less. But last year, White, Saliba, and Gabriel massively outscored every other defender; and they almost certainly will do so again.

So, you probably want at least 1, more likely 2 players from the Arsenal defence. You also probably want 1 of their very potent attacking midfielders, Odegaard or Saka. You might even fancy Declan Rice as a more budget option for your 5th midfield spot. And you might also be interested in Gyokeres up front, if that transfer comes off. Or you might just want to keep one of your three Arsenal slots open for another player who might get a run of starts and hit some rich scoring form for a spell - Martinelli or Trossard or Havertz or Jesus, perhaps.

David Raya might be a 'Top 5' goalkeeper option -  but he's not a 'Top 5' pick from Arsenal.

If you don't consider the full range of relevant goalkeeper stats (saves, bonus points, and delta xGC) - you'll make bad choices. If you don't pay attention to the relative value that other players in other positions at the same club offer - you'll make bad choices.

Saliba

Reason:  He's the best defender in the League. And Arsenal were way the best defence in the League last year (miles ahead on clean sheets), and are almost certain to be so again.

Absolutely. But.... being 'the best' in your position in real life means very little for your value in FPL 

All members of the Arsenal defence get the same 4-pt bonus for the many, many clean sheets William Saliba helps them to earn; but they all offer more than him in the potential for further points. Gabriel presents a more consistent threat at attacking set-pieces (it's a fairly marginal advantage, and might not always translate to an actual points lift; but it is worth paying attention to); and Ben White, when he pushes forward to link up with Saka, provides a regular possibility of assists and even a few goals over the season. Calafiori - if he starts immediately, if he beds in well and lives up to his potential - should also become a major attacking force down the other flank this season, and could conceivably even out-score White.

(Also, there might be just a little bit of a worry about Saliba's physical resilience, because he did end up missing about a third of his debut season at The Emirates - with what had initially seemed to be a fairly innocuous back strain.)

So, paradoxical as it might seem, while Saliba is, by common consent, the best defender at Arsenal, he's the worst defender pick from Arsenal for FPL.

The exact same thing happened last year. Almost everyone went for Saliba, rather than White and Gabriel, at the start of the season. And the season started weirdly: Gabriel mysteriously out of favour and dropped for a few games, White moved back into central defence (where he's much less productive in FPL terms),... and then Saliba nabbing a couple of - extremely untypical - headed goals. So, the sheep who'd gone for Saliba because everyone else had gone for Saliba, felt smugly vindicated: Saliba was miles ahead of those other two after the opening handful of games. And his owners then felt it wasn't worth using a transfer to switch to one of his rivals later on, even when that started to change. But once things had settled down at Arsenal, Saliba's two clubmates did indeed outscore him during the remaining portion of the season, Gabriel fairly narrowly, but White very substantially. Saliba wasn't the best pick from the Arsenal defence last year either.

Ben White costs 0.5 million more than Saliba this year. Last year, despite missing a few starts at right-back, and having a fairly subdued opening phase to the season, he still ended up with nearly 20 pts more than him. And Saliba might not get on the scoresheet again this season so,.... there's a strong chance that White's advantage over him this year could be in the 30-50 pts range (and Calafiori's haul perhaps similar!). You look to earn, ideally, around 30 or so points for every million spent on your starting 11 (realistically, a little less than that for defenders); and there aren't actually many differential picks where you find that kind of potential advantage for an extra half-million or million spent. But Ben White is absolutely worth the extra half-million he costs this year - if you can afford it; he will almost certainly score quite a lot more points than Gabriel or Saliba.

If you focus on real world status rather than Fantasy points value - you'll make bad choices. If you don't properly consider the rival choices in the same position at the same club - you'll make bad choices.

Gvardiol

Reason:  He scored 4 goals in a handful of games at the end of last season!

Yes - but, as I remarked somewhere on this blog just a few days ago, when defenders score a few goals in quick succession, it's almost always a fleeting streak, not an emerging trend. A lot of the FPL managers piling in for Gvardiol are absolutely expecting this to to be a consistent trend, they think he's going to be rivalling Haaland's scoring figures. That won't happen. He might well not score a goal all season.  [We see the same thing, a little less strongly, with the popularity of Pedro Porro this season (see below). And we saw it with Pervis Estupinan, one of the great 'sheep picks' from the start of last season, who had likewise bagged a couple of spectacular - but extremely untypical (I don't think he'd ever scored in his career before; other than from the penalty spot for Ecuador) - goals towards the end of the previous campaign.... Remember how that worked out?]

He is primarily a central defender, and is likely to be used there rather than at left-back at least some of the time. And when he does play at left-back, it's extremely unlikely that the ultra-conservative Pep is going to sanction him playing in such a marauding style very often. (And if he does, it's likely that opponents will be much more alert to the danger now, and will try to make sure they don't allow him time and space with the ball around the edge of their penalty area.)  The prospects of him repeating last season's goal-spurt are, alas, very, very slim.

There's such squad depth in the defensive positions at City that no-one is likely to start every game. Despite his outstanding form at the end of last season, Gvardiol is not even a guaranteed starter for the beginning of this season - and he certainly won't be an invariable starter for the whole campaign. 6.0 million is a lot to pay for someone who might only get 25-30 starts. (And City haven't even been keeping that many clean sheets over the past season or two!)

Gvardiol, again, is not an outright terrible choice: he's obviously one of the strongest defensive options for the year. But he is a very extravagant choice, a profligate use of funds. There is little need to take any of the defenders priced at 6.0 million or more; and if you do, there are probably better picks at the premium price level than Gvardiol.

If you think 'black swan' events will start happening every week - you'll make bad choices. If you ignore the reality of 'Pep Roulette' - you'll make bad choices.

Porro

Reason:  He got 3 goals and 7 assists last season

Indeed he did. And he is a very talented player, with some good potential for attacking returns. However, it's probably wildly over-optimistic to think that he might equal or better last season's tally - because he doesn't play that high up the pitch most of the time. The majority of those attacking contributions came in a handful of games, where he was playing as a very advanced wingback... because all of the right-sided creative mdfielders were out with injury.

And Spurs have a pretty terrible defensive record. With Postecoglou insisting on a suicidally high line, and a keeper who's very flakey and ridiculously easy to bully at set-pieces, they are always likely to leak a lot of goals. Moreover, the BPS tweak this year, with defenders and keepers now being more heavily penalised for conceding a goal, means that Spurs defenders are much less likely to pick up many bonus points in games in which they don't keep a clean sheet. Thus, even if Porro does get some good attacking points over the year, he's still fairly unlikely to get near his last season's points total again.

Porro's not a terrible pick; but he is a bit of a 'sheep pick' - and that collective enthusiasm for him derives from unrealistic expectations. With so many very strong defensive options this year priced at only 4.5 and 5.0 million, it's very difficult to justify paying 5.5 million for someone with such doubtful clean-sheet potential.

If you allow yourself to be swayed by headline numbers, without looking at the pattern of the whole season - you'll make bad choices. If you go along with the sheep too easily - you'll make bad choices.

Gakpo

Reason:  He always impresses for the Netherlands; he was brilliant at the Euros.

Indeed, he's been great for the Dutch in the last three big tournaments. But club and country are completely different worlds. For the national team, he enjoys the confidence of being a guaranteed starter in his favoured position down the left side of attack; and, in the absence of an established central goalscorer, he's been free to cut inside as much as he likes... and take on the mantle of being the team's primary goal-threat. He'd love to be able to play like that at Liverpool as well - but it ain't going to happen.

Gakpo's never really staked his claim at Anfield yet. Diaz (and Jota, when fit; and now maybe Carvalho too) has clearly been claiming priority on the left side of 'the trident', and both he and Jota can also usefully fill in through the middle, when Nunez is missing the sticks too often. Yes, Gakpo can play deeper in midfield as well, though that's not the best use of his talents; and there's probably even more competition for places there. 

He's more of a support player than an outright stiker anyway, so not a super-prolific source of goals. And it's difficult to see how he's ever going to become more than a handy utility player at Liverpool. There are so many forward options 1-2 million pounds cheaper who are primary goalscorers for their club and start every week.

If you let yourself be dazzled by someone's 'potential' rather than their likely prospects at their club - you'll make bad choices. If you get too impressed by someone's international form - you'll make bad choices.

How many of these guys do you have?  Maybe you should think about switching them out....

Not that any of these guys are dreadful picks, of course. They're all excellent players, and they will all very probably return very strong results in FPL this year. People who own them probably won't feel much remorse. But the objections I've raised above are mainly based on the context of the overall selection: to me, they look severely non-optimal when compared to other players you might pick instead - whether that's in their position category, their price category, or just across the range of choices at their club.

I'll try to remember to return to these guys a few times over the season to check how they're doing.

Squad value - why it matters

I am frequently astounded by how many folks on the FPL forums profess to be utterly uninterested in growing their squad value - positively contemptuous of the very idea; and how often they cite as authority the thoughts on the subject of various supposed 'top performing managers'.  If these people really did say things like that, they're being at best disingenuous, if not dishonest or self-deluding. (And they're probably not really as good at the game as their fans believe....)

I can see that some people become disdainful of squad value because there is a small minority of managers in the game who focus only on that, treating FPL like Monopoly, competing to try to build the most expensive squad by season's end; it's fair enough to dismiss that as weird and silly. And I can see that others want to emphasise other factors in their selection decisions - even if squad value is playing a role too. A lot of people, not unnaturally, resent feeling pressured into making a transfer move early because of an imminent price change,... and want to protest that they never let that happen to them: it's an affirmation of their autonomy, a refusal to bow to the force of circumstance. But that's also weird and silly: you need to pay attention to the changing circumstances of the game, and act accordingly.

Squad value is vitally important.  Here's why:

1) As I explained more fully in an early post on here, Pounds EQUAL Points: the more money you have deployed in your starting eleven, the more points you should be capable of earning each week. (That's not infallibly true in all cases, of course: you still have to make the best possible picks, and enjoy a little bit of good luck. But in general, someone with a 105-million-pound-squad should be able to do substantially better than someone with a 99-million-pound squad.)

2)  More money in the bank doesn't just raise your points ceiling in theory: its more direct practical benefit is the amount of flexibility it gives you. At the start of the season, with the 100-million budget cap, it will have been a struggle to afford all the premium price players you might have coveted. But once you've grown your squad value by 3 million or so, you can bring in at least one more of those... or, perhaps, upgrade more modestly in 2 or 3 other positions.

3)  The unfortunate flipside of this 'flexibility' benefit is that you can be hamstrung by a loss of squad value: a shortfall of just 100 k can prevent you from acquiring a player you want.  This is particularly the case early in the season when, because almost all of the price steps are still in even increments of 500 k, a 100 k loss in squad value is effectively the same as a 500k drop: you can no longer afford anyone at a desired price-point, only half a million cheaper. Occasionally, a sudden price-drop can be even more limiting than that: for example, if you bet on Quansah at the start of this season, and were caught out by his price-drop, you can now only replace him with a 4-million-pound player - and there aren't any decent starters at that price-point; so, you might feel obliged to hang on to the Liverpool youngster, desperately hoping that his price won't fall any further. This is why, especially early in the season, you do need to take care to avoid possible loss of squad value. You should always try to buy players just before they go up in price; and you should always look to sell players who are likely to drop in price.

4)  Furthermore, squad value is an excellent indirect indicator of how well you're playing the game. Good players become popular and rise in value; if you get maximum benefit from their price rises, it means you recognised their value early, anticipated their improving trend in form or good run of fixtures, and were one of the first to buy them. Players who lose form, get injured, or otherwise fall out of favour at their club will lose value; you don't want players like that in your squad; you might move them out quickly to have the benefit of another player in their place giving you better points potential, rather than specifically to avoid a possible drop in price - but the consequence is the same. Once again, preserving your squad value is a precise indicator that you are regularly making good decisions to optimise your squad.

[I would argue that consistent growth in squad value is actually the best indicator of your ability in the game. Average points returns fluctuate from year to year, and are very susceptible to wild swings of luck. Ranking is even more variable, since the number of players in the game - and how good they are... and how lucky they are! - can  change massively from one year to the next; and, as I explained on here before in some detail, the upper reaches of the rankings are inevitably going to be dominated by people who are more-lucky-than-good. But a good rise in squad value every year is a really reliable sign that you're doing as many things as possible right.]

This is why squad value matters. And why it's so vital to move quickly for players you fancy (especially early in the season): if you were interested in bringing in Jackson or Wissa or Muniz or Wood or Welbeck or Vardy, or Salah or Jota or DeBruyne or Smith Rowe, or Romero or Faes.... you probably can't afford to do it any more! And if you have an eye on Savinho or Lewis, or Diaz or Son, you'd better move fast.

EVERYTHING you always wanted to know....

 

.... about FPL.  (But were afraid to ask??!!)

I've been quite busy over the past couple of weeks compiling content that - I hope - might be helpful in selecting a first Fantasy Premier League squad for the new season, about to commence tomorrow.

Here's a list of links to all the resources I've so far assembled (including a handful of key 'How to....' posts from earlier in the blog's history):

How to choose the INITIAL SQUAD

A fairly comprehensive guide to all the principles you need to keep in mind for squad building.

And a checklist you could run over that squad afterwards: How should you judge if your squad is any GOOD?

Possible Picks [Pt. 1]

My roundup of the most promising options this year among the goalkeepers and defenders.

Possible Picks [Pt. 2]

The companion piece on the most tempting possibilities in the midfielder and forward categories.

A few HINTS & TIPS

A helpful catalogue to my 'In a Nutshell...' series: a collection of 'shorter' posts on key points about the game of FPL that I've learned over the past several years.

And.... This year's EARLY 'Sheep Picks'

A warning against some of the most popular picks among the premature drafters - tempting selections that might be better avoided...

The shape of things to come...?

A heads-up on some of the less expected changes we need to watch out for in the new season!

The ONES you should be watching...

Some recommendations for the tactical analysts (NOT 'FPL experts'!!) I find most helpful in improving my understanding of the game.

From longer ago....

Pounds EQUAL Points

An explanation of how BUDGET works (amazingly, very few people seem to properly grasp this!).

Goal setting

Some thoughts on the kind of 'targets' you can set for yourself to gauge your FPL performance. (Subsequently revisited, and somewhat expanded, in this post.)

And a brief rundown on typical 'levels of achievement':  What counts as A GOOD SCORE?

A couple of key early posts: Why people are BAD at FPL...  and  How to get better...

A warning about all the ways that LUCK can impact your FPL outcomes: What's LUCK got to do with it?

And finally...  my ultimate guide to how to get better at the game:

Are you a good FPL manager?

BEST OF LUCK FOR THE SEASON AHEAD!