The Suspension Tightrope – Gameweek 29

Yes. Differentials sounds like a term for massive punts.

A differential is a captain choice and for me a defence with attacking returns. There is also the 4th midfield spot and 3rd striker spot that I consider a differential

Not so calculated risks. I've been burned in kind. Captaining a differential rather than being content with them simply being a differential. Taking risks on potential when there are other obvious options I'm ignoring. I think the lesson is let FPL make the obvious decisions for you. The other no so obvious ones are where the ground is there to be gained or lost.

Pick the players likely to score the most points. My teams are always pretty top 10k template mostly because the top 10k have a similar view of the players most likely to score pts. However in my 3 years playing and posting here I've never actually seen an identical starting 11 to mine. There is enough variance that it's always possible to climb. Same with captains, go for who you think will score most pts. This week I feel kun is over backed and alternatives like Sanchez are a worthy alternative.

... and at this stage it's about judicious transfers so you always have 11 players, which means keeping the squad strong, looking at injuries and suspensions, and anticipating fixtures. I think safe choices bring more rewards than differentials at the moment. That said, what am I doing with Bentaleb in my team??

I'm sure that you're right. The secret is picking the right captain. Not always easy.

Sorry, but this is nonsense.

The top 10k are like a swarm of bees. They tend to all go in a similar direction once the direction is established. They call it "the template" and they cite "ownership" as justification.

The fact is that some of their "swarm" decisions are good and some are not. If you can avoid most of the bad ones and be early with most of the good ones you will do very well. That's the challenge of FPL and it requires you to have better judgement than others.

If you just want to follow the template I can't understand why you'd even want to play. You may as well hand your team over to the FFF bot and have it managed for you.

I've had 5 or 6 green arrows in a row and up to top 7k now. I have a pretty "template team".

Don't bother looking for differential captains, just whoever will score most that week even if it's the template choice.

I don't particularly care about rank so will let others make the call to try different things. I stick to my own plan.

If you were concerned mainly with your mini league you'd probably win with the template.

But challenging the top 10k and getting some punts in is more fun. You're less likely to succeed, but template teams will only help you climb a few places at a time, whereas if you happen to have some bizarre differential who scores a hattrick, you'll be shooting up the ranks.

If you believe your own analysis is better than that of the 10k population then you simply choose the combination of players who will score the most points.

The only time ownership should factor into decision making is in final games of the season where you buy highly owned players to get achieve the average score and maintain your rank (low risk) or buy players with low ownership to score above average and increase rank (high risk).

Captain choice can be very tricky and involves more luck than choosing the squad. Where you genuinely can't make up your mind you need to decide whether you want a low/high risk strategy and captain with/against the consensus.

No.
I don't think that I would do much experiment with the captain armband. Though I do appreciate the upside of it paying off.

But just consider this, if my differential captain scores big only, can we actually say that the decision has paid-off ? NO.

It pays-off only when my differential captain scores and simultaneously the popular captain choice blanks. But probability of that happening is simply quite low.

It is very much possible that, in the week my differential captain scores big, but the popular captain also does the same (and will probably do, the reason why he is the popular choice that week) and in that case, all my bravery simply goes in vain. I know I sound like a dullard, but this is what I think honestly. 🙂

I'm not sure I agree with this.

If I ignore Aguero v Burnley when 70% will captain and he is the top scorer for the week I'm crippled, I could drop 20-50k places.

If I swap out Silva for Puncheon and he blanks while Silva scores it's probably not gonna be that bad.

I guess it depends if you want to risk it all to make a huge gain in one week or spread the risk to make steady gains over several weeks.

Reading that back I'm not sure any of that makes sense...

Forget about differentials. Ownership should only come into your thinking if you are trying to make up ground in a mini league in the last few gameweeks. Pick the players to maximise your points.

Set and forget your captain on the best player in the game. Trying to move the armband around has never worked for me.

A good way to rise in the rankings is to resist the temptation to take hits when others can't.

yes and no. i would never get a differential just to be different. but templates dont last and you should just be alert when someone is showing good stuff on pitch/nice fixtures. silva & santi, for example, were not template before christmas. you got some good points from them if you hopped on early. now santi seems to fade away, silva is maybe still a good pick. downing also was not template right away. those who jumped on early (and knew when to dump) got the benefit. fabregas also a good example, once essential, now not anymore. of course captain is an extra player every week so as important as any other player in your starting 11.