Scout Notes – Kane Delivers Ill-Timed Double

Went the early transfers route last year and while i did sometimes get some good value boosts, I was too often bit by injuries/rotation that limited any points gains. I've been trying to hold the transfers til just before the start of a GW this year, and so far I'm roughly 300 points better off and leading my ML.

It’s obvious there is manual intervention occurring. The sums don’t add up and you can blame it on an algorithm change, however, it seems there is more than meets the eye. Transparency from FPL would be welcome

One thing is certain. FPL towers treat players like Salah and Kane differently in price changes. They rise easily,while drops are rare

Always a balance I suppose. This week I got Lingard and Alonso before price rises as was fairly confident they will have an easy week / rest in league cup.

Would not do it before champions league for example.

With more than 600k NTO since his injury or 9% of FPL selling him it goes over my head how he hasn’t had a price fall yet.

Sold him and was anticipating a 0.2 fall atleast. But I got the points and his replacement also has a better fixture this week.

Definetly a key part of the ganme which gives us an edge over rivals. I am all for points over price however I went early this week as my next planned transfers are fine margins. I want Ageuro next week and if I waited to get Alonso I wouldnt be able to afford Aguero next week.

The two times I’ve ditched Kane (injury and “poor” fixtures) he has cost me more to buy back.

In general throught my years playing FPL I’m the type of manager who more often than not has made my transfers by the Monday/Tuesday after the weekend to catch price rises and to generally just have done with the decision of ‘who to bring in’.

One of the flaws of my personality is that I’m quite impatient and I like to get things done as soon as I can, so this is a big part of the reason I often make early moves. I’ve also found team value to be very important in the second half of the season, especially not the bench boost chip is around. I often have a better second half to the season and I feel my team value has a part to play.

That said however, this year the decisions seem to be harder and there seem to be more important variables. Not least the worry of rotation being a lot higher with many teams even aside from Man City. This has meant I’ve often delayed my transfers/decisions most Gameweeks. Although I still mean x it up with an early transfer to catch a rise, where I know it’s a move I want to make. Lingard this week for example before he rose last night.

Personal view is unless you only had 0.2 or 0.3 to lose with him, it wasn't a move worth making since it was only ever likely to be a short-term injury.

But your argument is self-contradictory. 🙄

I sold an injured Salah for a Spurs DGW midfielder and got 10 points instead of zero. That move was made for points.

It was those that held because they didn't want to lose some cosmetic TV that worried about price more than points, Jonty.

I would have expected Salah's price to fall - and it should have done - but whether I bring him back for 9.9m, 10.0m or 10.1m is of very little concern to me. Who knows, I may well not bring him back at all. I have no immediate plans to anyway.

Never short Salah.

One could argue that those selling Salah did it for the points and not the price.

Say you didnt have a good bench and got Eriksen in for Salah, you are 8 points up now.

It can depend - some people are firmly of the view that they don't give a monkeys about it, others really pay close attention to the market and make moves driven by "perfect cash".

I personally find it incredibly interesting in terms of how it provides an insight into understanding manager behaviour. We definitely see some of the active managers unable to restrain themselves when a player performs on a Saturday/Sunday and rises in NTI immediately after a player delivers. We then see the final bump on the night before deadline as, broadly, the more patient take their moves with all the data available.

It's certainly difficult to understand, with a lack of transparency surrounding how price rises are calculated. Gaps exist in our knowledge, especially around double game weeks where the conditions for rise in terms of the threshold for increase seem to be changed artificially. Since the guys who are behind the game don't have any public-facing platform, we're reduced to pure guesswork in that regard and a few guys like fplstats interpreting the data from the API for us luddites to get 🙂

This year, it's been best to restrain oneself I think - as it usually tends to be. We've seen injuries and mishaps midweek galore, with many a manager being caught out by jumping early and needing to pay -4 to rectify their impatience. Sometimes you do need to take the calculated gamble (e.g. a player has nothing midweek and you can't deal with a 0.2 swing) however I often err on the side of caution often if it means losing out on a rise or two.

TL;DR - Points > Prices!

Salah's ownership went from around 58% to 50%. That's something like 300,000 sales in a short space of time with not even a 0.1 drop in price.

It's possible to play the market if there was consistent rules that treats all players equally.

It's impossible to play a system were manual intervention into the algorithm appears to be happening a bit too frequently.

no idea what all the salah sellers are moaning about. You would have gained 0.1 by selling and buying back at best so it was going to cost you more to buy him back no matter what.
Its almost certain you made points out of it, even of you need to take a hit to get him back.
Deal with it and move on.

I think you have missed the point and sentiment for many in the Salah sale, most sold for a dgw player for points, hopeful that the loss in value was ‘cushioned’

Holding Salah at the time to maintain his TV in the hope he didn’t drop, in the place of getting 10 + points, was just as much ‘playing the market’ as selling imho 🙂

People crying about price movement and "manual intervention" need to grow up. 4.3% of teams used their wildcards and 2.6% used their free hits, which is up to 6.9% of all teams that may have transferred out Salah, where the transfer was not an "effective transfer".

We know this by now, that price changes are not linear. In order for that to be the case, it would have to be a simple "net transfers" calculation, and price changes would have to happen whenever a threshold was passed, not at a fixed time each day. We don't know what all the factors are, but it seems likely that if a player is underpriced relative to the rate at which they are scoring points, their price will be inflated slightly to help adjust for this. Salah has performed like 12.0 this season, so it makes sense that it would be harder for his price to fall.

fplstatistics is brilliant, but it is not gospel. Where changes have been made to the algorithm, they have to make tests to determine what exactly these changes are. This isn't the first time people have been left confused, but as far as I could tell, Salah was never going to drop more than once regardless. DGWs require double the number of effective transfers and combined with the new WCs and people using FH chips, it really isn't that out of the ordinary.

tl;dr quit crying.

Instead of selling Salah I sold the bench player that would have replaced him. That happened to be Gomez who got 2 points, but as I sold him for Vertonghen I ended up with 9 points instead. So I got more points AND kept Salah. Win-win situation.

I just can't believe Salah sellers thought they would be able to buy him back close to their selling price. That was never going to happen. Wishful thinking methinks.

Want a case study that emphasises how moving too early with price rises can derail your season? Here you go.

Sunday evening on the 17th December 2017 - I was looking to bring in Sterling and Lukaku and had exact money in ITB so couldn't wait the five days until the GW deadline ahead of the Friday night match between Arsenal and Liverpool. Sterling was rising that night, Lukaku had just scored at WBA and a rise for him ahead of lei, BUR, SOU also looked likely in the coming days. So to ensure the transfers could be made, I went early - Sterling and Lukaku in, Carroll and Kane out. Three days later, Morata (one of my three strikers) picks up his fifth booking of the season having played in the League Cup tie vs Bournemouth - a match I assumed wrongly he'd be rested for. Of course, if I'd waited and not chased the price rise, I'd have kept Kane instead of the suspended Morata and worked out another way of getting Sterling and Lukaku in without losing Kane. The rest is history with Kane banging in back-to-back hat-tricks and Morata having a stinking Christmas. Bit of a 'Sliding Doors' moment in my season and one I very much regret.

I seem to side with FPL Virgin rather than Mark on this topic.

We love this game because it is the perfectly difficult venue to combine our knowledge (statistics, scouting) with our mind (foresight, intuition) and add a touch of magical element (luck), to reach the world's summit in the world's most popular game. All these criteria are transparent.

When it comes to price rises/falls, it is the other way round. All is hidden. That is the rule of the game, so we have nothing to do but accept it. However, it upsets too many fair and enthusiastic players. If the game (not third party intervenors who guess price falls) gives you the feeling that you can even master that (and it does; an almost 10% fall in ownership was always a price fall), you are rewarding those who do not care about mastering that aspect. Price rises/falls, as long as they exist, must be foreseeable. I do not expect algorithms to be declared publicly, but there must be certain hints or a consistency. Salah's example was not consistent.

Lastly; I own Salah, I did not sell him, all my ML rivals did, and I have a 0.5 profit against them all. I could not be happier. But it could have been the other way round.

Some high scoring players like Salah and Kane should just be kept in your side. For the rest, the market is predictable

Important Mini league GW ,please help with the changes, 2.0 in bank
1 Lingard for Richarlison
2 Suggest someone for Charlie Daniels or Kenny ?
Please help

This hot topic doesn't make much sense and actually shows the flaw in the pricing system. If, like Jonty said, so many managers have ditched Salah then why hasn't his price dropped?

Trying to second guess the 'secretive' price system has proved very frustrating for me recently. One reason I went for six DGW players recently was because I thought their price would shoot up. How was I supposed to know FPL would alter the DGW players price change threshold? It wouldn't be so bad if they gave us a heads up in advance.

I sold Salah (and Coutinho) so I wouldn't have to sell Hazard at Arsenal who was guaranteed to start and overdue a return... I sold Cout because the 'injury' stunk of transfer market muscling...

Salah was very tough as I sold for 9.6... I made the move expecting to lose 0.2-0.3 TV, but not 0.5-6 like it will probably be when the dust settles.

I played for points over pounds, have been relatively well rewarded by Haz, Eriksen and Son at least in the short term.

I pulled the WC trigger last gw and even then didnt consider taking out Salah simply because of the value damage that my team would take. Its been a tough season for me both pointwise and TVwise. Had brought in Salah At 9.2 which meant selling him for 9.5 and making it practically impossible to ever get him in again at 10.0. So each to their own i suppose. The fact that i had a WC going on allowed me to field someone off the bench knowing that salah wouldnt play. Those who hadnt played a WC or didnt have the appropriate bench for last gw surely had valid reasons to transfer him out for a DGW spurs MF. I apply game theory to my decision making and this instance under my own circumstances it made more sense to hold onto him until hes back given his status as a "uber must have"

I can't say I ever considered dropping Salah, as it looked short term and would cost me 0.5 to get him back (assuming no drops). I think it's part of the game, and I have no problem with it. I'll continue to move early for rises, but the drop predictions have always been a dark art and I'm far more cautious making any decisions in expectation of them. Especially when it's a player I don't have great need to get rid of.

Price and points matter, both of them. I hade transferred Salah in last time at 9.8 and saw this as a good opportunity to get both points and increase sales value while risking team value. Salah may be essential, but perhaps not straight after injury or against MCI.

One aspect that has not been mentioned in this discussion is the possibility that Salah gets injured again. Those managers (playing their "money game 😉 ) who kept him (for not to lose tv) would be again in trouble should he miss 3-4 gw:s.

And the price of Lingard has risen nicely in the meantime and Son may also rise. Transferring Son in even for a hit was a good move imo. Complicated things are not just black and white.

Sorry I disagree with the hot topic summary.. Salah was replaceable given his injury and DGW.. That is points over price.. Just because FPL are meddling around with the algorithm doesnt make this line of thought right..

I sold Salah for Son (and Richarlison for Alli). As it happened, I had Coutinho, Kenny, Long and RLC who didn't play so I was glad I did sell from a points perspective.

I didn't expect Salah to fall by much, 0.1 or 0.2 max, but I am a little peeved that he had such huge sales and didn't drop. Value wasn't my reason or a consideration for selling him though.

There are advantages as a Salah seller. One is that his is playing City next. He is still a doubt for that match, no definitive word on how bad the injury is. Also, as it's against City, if he plays (a) He is less likely to haul against best PL team and (b) He will be captained by far less people, thus cushioning the blow if he does haul.

Another advantage as a Salah seller is that if/when I buy him back in, I won't be subject to worrying about losing TV if he gets injured, rotated around Champs League, etc. I have more freedom than most to move him on. There is a danger that people hold players like Salah too long in fear of losing TV.

Finally, I personally don't know if he can continue his phenomenal run of form all season long. I'm not adverse to risks and I'm glad I at least have the option of going Salah-less if he experiences a dip in form or minutes.

I had a different perspective on the Salah sale Jonty (echoing some of the other comments above). I sold Salah for 9.7 (bought at 9.3) for Alli for Points. Alli got 10 points vs. Salah autosub 1. Plus we have the EVE game to come. I think relative to expectations Alli underperformed in the DGW. But so be it. I will buy back Salah (or may instead buy Mane). At this stage of the season my plan was to trade 0.3-0.4 of TV for c.20 points. Will make that same trade again. I have built TV in the first half of the season (at 105.8). Second half is all about maximizing points.

Salah was over 58% and now is on 50 anc didnt fall in price . If he need to lose 10% of his ownership just to drop 0.1 than his next rise up must be equally hard. So it would be fair if next price rise if he reach 60%

The price rises and the bonuses have been a disgrace this year. No consistency. As a FPL manager you are just hoping to get lucky and that is not how it should be

My Team Value is 103.4 which is low. I Normally make my moves on Friday after team news.

It's actually the opposite for me I ditched salah for points over price. Got alli in for the dgw was prepared to lose some money on salah but figured allis potential points over the dgw and against Everton would be more benifical than salah missing the dgw and potentially the city game but having an extra 0.5.

I have preached this for years and I have never understood why some on here are so obsessed with TVs, player prices, etc over what matters most: points.

Ive made 2m in the bank from selling players tgrough out the season. Ive just sold Salah for KDB. Made 0.5 profit lost 0.5 value. But since ive made bank im not really losing any ability to purchase Salah back later in relation to when i bought him at the beginning.

Thats how i see it.