Team of the Season – Ryan Bertrand

Become a FFS Member

Copy triggerlips.

Don't chase points.

Ask them why they have only just discovered FPL

Don't start playing FPL! 😆

Use this site and don't treat the advice as anything more than that.

Seriously though, apart from general things like join FFS, it would probably be something like:

Continually build the overall quality of your team by using your transfers to remove the weak links in the team

Plan ahead

To join all my mini leagues and put cash into all of them 😉

But otherwise form > fixtures.

Don't buy expensive GK's and play 3 at the back most weeks.

Play 3-4-3

3-4-3.

Don't buy last Gameweek's points

Make sure you have at least one big hitter in the forward and midfield positions. It's much easier to downgrade than upgrade when you come to do transfers

Just one piece of advice?

Mistakes happen. Dont be kicking yourself too much for getting in the wrong player or avoiding a key player. Dont go knee-jerking and chasing lost points or take massive hits to 'fix things'. just dust yourself down and prepare as best you can for the next GW

probably to play 3-4-3

Enjoy it.

start the team with the forwards and mids and only after pick def and gks... or you will end with 2 expensive gk and 5 good defenders, 8the most common mistake i see in new teams)

use the fixture list as your guide as pre season form is meaningless. Can adjust to form with ft's

Pick players that play

Read the rules on the FPL website thoroughly! It's amazing how many people in my work ML either don't know about a wildcard, how BPS are calculated or the point of a 15 man squad.

Casuals.

Take plenty of hits to make sure you have no chance..that way you'll be able to sleep at night. And then enjoy it.

Buy defenders from Pulis's teams.

Pick the best player in the game and captain them. (Newbies seem to be too easily put off by astronomical prices - perhaps because it forces them to buy squad players they've never heard of.)

I would advise someone to actually avoid this place at first. Just play it & enjoy it for a while then when you start to get the hang of it & you want to push on to the next lvl then join & analyse every tiny little detail. Sometimes it's good to learn by yourself wihtout having your decisions constantly influenced by other people. Just my 2cents.

Everyone saying 3-4-3 might want to look at what March used early on this year 😉

Take the gun, leave the cannoli

Crikey, only one piece of advice! If this person really is a newbie I don't think one piece of advice will take them very far, and I don't even consider FPL a particularly complex game, once you have a bit of common sense and the advice on these forums I think anyone could do great. If we assume they've read and know the rules:

1) Pick your squad in the knowledge that you have to bench 4 players every week, keep most of the money in your starting 11. Don't spread the money too evenly, or all in one position like two premium keepers, and give yourself lots of benching dilemmas, and as a result lots of money regularly on the bench and a cheaper playing team than others.

2) Rotate some defenders for fixtures (and possibly keepers), looking for good fixture rotations, but generally do not rotate attackers. Cheap defenders that can score points are available, results are much more linked to team performance, and vary more with fixtures.

3) Generally always try and field as many attacking players (mids and forwards) as possible. Essentially play 3 at the back.

4) Don't take lots of hits, or make too many sideways transfers, rolling a transfer can avoid you a hit in the future. Most players you buy won't have an expected score of 4 more than the player you take out, and some don't even have an expected score of 4.

5) Look out for double game weeks, and favourable fixture runs, doing some advanced planning.

6) Don't knee-jerk and over focus on recent points scored, if a player is actually has good points potential, they'll come good; if a player is not so great they won't keep it up.

7) Generally make transfers as late as is reasonably possible. Watch price change prediction sites, and only really make them earlier to catch price rises and avoid drops, though this become less important as the season goes on (as you'll have less time to use any profits).

8) Keep up to date with selection, set piece taking, injury and other relevant news.

9) Look at community sites to see what other FPL managers are saying, you'll pick up lots.

10) Don't stick to dogmatically to rules! You have to be pragmatic.

Hi All - long time follower, first time poster.

For me, captain choice is key. A good captain choice will give you the bulk of your GW points, so have a couple of reliable options to choose from.

As a FPL newbie this season the advice I most wish i'd been given before I started is "Read the bloody rules!".

I didn't and it cost me horribly.

Never buy a Spurs defender

Advise them that the captain armband gives that player X2 points....
Took me about a month to realise that in my first campaign 🙁

watching football becomes more frustrating ! wanting rivals to score and keep clean sheets, when u normally dont want them to, or even your own team conceding because your rival has their def in {of course makin sure your team are a couple of goals to the good ! }
on more serious note,just enjoy it, have fun in a ml against your mates,enjoy the banter,an learn from your experiences

1. Learn about how best to structure a squad for FPL, especially if you haven't played with a 15 man squad before.
2. Don't be afraid to experiment and treat your 1st season as a learning process. There is no point just copying everyone else without understanding why.
3. Research, research, research. The more you know about players, teams, tactics and stats the more informed your decisions will be.
4. Later in the season there will be double gameweeks. Don't disregard them. 😕
5. Captain choices are important. Pick the player voted top of the FFS captain poll as captain unless you have a good reason to do otherwise but don't just play hunches.

Easy. I've gotten close to 40 people in my town to play/join my local leagues. I get this question often.

If they want to play fantasy it means they have an interest and that interest is usually in a specific club or player(s).

Always my advise to them is if you want to do well you'll have to be objective. Just because you like so and so or like this club doesn't mean they're good fantasy assets. Course every spurs and Liverpool fan who joins automatically pick up 3 of their squads players and end up doing poorly, without fail...

Look for low risk differentials to get ahead. For example, WBA defenders were relatively cheap and provided a reasonable return of clean sheets. If you had put three defenders in since Tony Pulis, you would have ten clean sheets on your hands and a boost in rankings.

I'm probably the only poster you should listen to really with this sort of thing.

Go for expensive and cheap but all nailed. Mostly avoid mid priced players.