The Going out with a Bang league was set up in the Fantasy Premier League to assess how the game’s new chips were best used for the season run-in. Launched in Gameweek 32 it looked at how those who took part used their Bench Boost and Triple Captain chips around double Gameweeks 34 and 37 in particular.
Now that the dust has settled, I have performed the following analysis to determine how successful the chips were and which order was the best way to play them. The data collated includes the top 50 managers from this 287-strong league, which was eventually won by Goonerbyron.
For this analysis managers have been grouped into three strategies, which relate to how the Triple Captain and Bench Boost chips were played:
- Triple captain GW34 and Bench boost GW37 (TC34BB37)
- Triple captain GW37 and Bench boost GW34 (TC37BB34)
- TC and BB played in another way, for example TC33 BB34 (Other)
Analysis
As we can see from the above chart, adopting the strategy of Bench Boosting in GW34 and Triple Captaining GWK 37 was the most popular option compared to Triple Captaining in GWK 34 and Bench Boosting in GWK 37. There were 11 mangers in the Top 50 who decided to play their chips differently. Of these alternative strategies, triple captaining Romelu Lukaku for his DGW in 33 and then bench boosting for the DGW 34 was the most popular.
So, how did these strategies perform when looking at the chips in isolation? To calculate this we need to look at how many points were on your bench when you played the Bench Boost chip and add this to the extra points your Triple Captain got you.
Looking at this result, Triple Captaining in GW34 and Bench Boosting in GW37 looks to be the most fruitful with Alexis Sanchez (25) or Sergio Aguero (26) giving TC34BB37ers the edge. If you adopted the TC37BB34 strategy this was by no means a bad decision with significant bench points to be had in GWK34, however the lack of standout Triple Captaincy options in GW37 meant managers were left to take a punt on on Andy Carroll (3) Jermaine Defoe (10) Eden Hazard (12) or Dimitri Payet (12) which proved to be costly in comparison. The ‘others’ also benefited from a strong bench in GW34, however (in hindsight) Lukaku (4) as TC in GWK 34 was not the way to go.
Now, lets look at the total points gained by the managers’ squads when they played the Triple Captain and Bench Boost chips
As observed in the above chart there is not much difference in team points between TC34BB37 and TC37BB34. This implies that while TC34BB37 was the most profitable, over the two weeks the difference evened itself out.
Finally, we will look at how using these different strategies impacted on the total points gained by managers from GW32 through to GW38.
The analysis, which is represented in the above median total points chart shows that managers who adopted a TC34BB37 strategy had a slight edge overall, however, this is not significant. What we can observe from this is that if you wildcarded in GW33 to Bench Boost in GW34 your squad actually picked up more points in the non-DGW periods than managers who held their WC to GW36 for BB in GW37.
Conclusion
While GWK34 was the best week to use the TC chip, in the end both the TC34BB37 and TC37BB34 stategies yielded similar results. If you did not use Bench Boost and Triple Captian in GW34 and GW37 you were in significant danger of being left behind, as those that Triple Captained Lukaku in GWK 33 found out.
What next season has in for us I am not sure, however one thing we will agree on: if the chips are here to stay then save them for the double Gameweeks.
7 years, 11 months ago
Thanks for this and for organising the league. Lots of great data there from these managers.