Navigating The Opening Gameweeks

A Fantasy Premier League (FPL) season is a series of small games masquerading as one big one. The difference between a successful, mediocre or downright dismal campaign often hinges on our teams’ performances during just a handful of crucial moments or phases throughout the 38 Gameweeks. Some of these arrive unannounced and surprise everyone but others can be anticipated and planned for. The start of the season is without doubt the first of those “planned” phases and should be approached with caution.

Notoriously unpredictable save, perhaps, for their promise to frustrate, the first few weeks of the season will see many of our most carefully laid plans torn up as we discover that our expensive left-back really is a rotation-risk, while the “pre-season hero” proves himself to be, well, exactly that.

Nobody gets their initial squad selection completely right but, as much as it might feel like a lottery, there are some areas Fantasy managers can focus on to help shift the odds in their favour and set themselves up for a successful campaign. Here are some ideas on how best to approach the season start…

Plan for a manageable period

Pre-season can pull Fantasy managers in many different directions. Yes, it’s a once-a-year opportunity to lay the foundation for success but, ultimately, Gameweek 1 is no different to any other – we all want a good score. No one enjoys going into the first weekend with a team featuring players with poor fixtures, so, consequently, we’re driven to try and build for both the very long-term and the very short-term simultaneously. Often the result is a squad that serves neither purpose very well.

There are two things that can be helpful to keep in mind here. Firstly, despite all the anticipation, Gameweek 1 really is just one Gameweek. Nothing can be won or lost on the first day. Secondly, it is impossible to plan effectively for a whole year based on pre-season alone. It is much more realistic and, arguably, more effective, to pick a manageable number of Gameweeks and let this select period be the key influence to your initial squad selection decisions.

What kind of period is “manageable”? This can vary depending on personnel and fixtures but it should be a spell that offers the opportunity for a degree of planning without any single Gameweek being the dominant factor – it’s a delicate balance and, as a guide, I’d suggest around five to six Gameweeks.

Planning with the emphasis on shorter periods not only gives you more certainty, it opens up new opportunities. There will be rotations that might not work for the whole season but work very well for the first few weeks, and cheap players who you might otherwise ignore that have a run of fixtures which puts their point-scoring potential on a par with the more expensive options.

If you’re concerned about what happens when your chosen period ends, it’s worth remembering that, just using free transfers, it would be possible for you to change up to a third of your squad in a six-week period. That should be enough to fix any holes while maintaining positive momentum ahead of the next phase.

Prioritise Flexibility

The next factor in helping your squad selection process is the ability to react quickly and effectively to unexpected events, as and when they occur.

In the opening Gameweeks, Fantasy managers have to contend with a particularly large number of variables including line-up changes, injuries, suspensions and form, whether good or bad. There are also extraneous issues such as the influence of rule changes: the adjustments to the FPL bonus points and to the speed at which players rise and fall in price have been key in recent seasons. It pays to remain flexible so you can react.

Flexibility in this context can be determined by the speed or ease with which you can adjust your team to factors such as those mentioned, without the need to take points hits or use your Wildcard. Despite being one of the less visible qualities of a squad, flexibility can translate into Fantasy returns surprisingly quickly as rivals spend points in an attempt to transfer their way out of a corner or find themselves unable to move as quickly as you can to bring in form players.

A highly flexible team will be one with plenty of viable alternatives to the initial selection.

One simple way to help ensure this in your initial squad set-up is to choose players from a range of prices throughout your defence, midfield and forward lines. This practice will allow you options should injury, suspension or rotation strike and it should also put you in a position to move quickly on any emerging star performers. Selecting players with an eye on the alternatives and an idea of who you could sacrifice to free up funds if needed will help make your squad harder to derail and quicker to adapt.

It can also pay to be wary of other restrictive practices early on, such as maximising your allocation of players from a single team or using a cheap, non-playing “enabler” to free up funds. All these things limit your options and can reduce the pace at which you can adjust when needed.

Prioritising flexibility is a trade-off which may mean sacrificing some “big hitters” and their short-term points potential. However, creating an initial structure in your team that can easily absorb and adapt to whatever FPL may throw at you is likely to pay off in far greater sums as the season develops.

Actively Reduce Risk

Time is a dangerous thing for a Fantasy manager; believe it or not, too much time can be damaging. It can blind us to the obvious and convince us that that little-known eastern European playmaker who tore up the Veikkausliiga last season is, in fact, “essential”. Before we know it, our squads are filled with risky picks and we are effectively going “all-in” from Gameweek 1. It’s fun while it lasts but that usually isn’t very long. In periods of high uncertainty, such as the opening of the season, it pays to reduce risk where you can.

Despite the lingering memories of debut blitzes from the likes of Michu and Fabrizio Ravanelli, it’s generally rare for players new to the Premier League to start scoring heavily straight away. The same is often true even for players moving between Premier League teams. Even when they do hit the ground running, the significance of having that player for Gameweek 1 is usually smaller than we may think. We fall into the trap of inviting risk into our initial squad selection without a sizeable enough reward to really justify it.

It is potentially advantageous and often necessary due to budgetary constraints to take a few informed risks with your initial selection but these are safest and, arguably, most effective when offset by a greater proportion of more reliable, proven picks.

By selecting in this way, you are allowing yourself the opportunity to gain advantage from your differentials without being wholly reliant on them. There is, of course, no “golden ratio” here but I’d suggest that if you feel you’re taking a “punt” on more than a 25% of your initial squad, it may well be worth you reviewing it.

One common tactic, which can also mitigate the risks associated with FPL-unproven players, is the use of effective rotation. Confidence in such a player should increase with the knowledge that they will at least only be playing in favourable fixtures. In particular, having a strong rotation between two midfielders, or your fifth midfielder and your third forward, can be a very effective tactic early on.

When looking to reduce risk, it is also worth paying attention to the “teams selected by” percentage statistics in FPL. This is not because these stats are always accurately instructive of who is best to pick (they’re often misleading when viewed without additional context) but because they help you to assess the risk of not having a player.

In the same way that a selection mistake is less damaging to you if more managers also make it, a missed opportunity is more harmful if many managers have seized it. Paying attention to highly-owned players and allowing ownership percentage to help inform your selection can be an effective method of managing risk early in the season.

Finally, it’s not just the players we invest in that we need to be wary of at the season start but also the teams we select them from. It’s fairly intuitive to assume that picking lots of players from newly promoted or previously struggling sides is a risky tactic, but so can be investing heavily in any single team.

Even title-challenging outfits often start the campaign poorly. Selecting your squad from a range of teams and being wary of doubling/tripling up will help spread the risk and reduce the chances that you become a victim of the unpredictable form that so often characterises the opening weeks.

Summary

The Fantasy Premier League cannot be won or lost in the first few Gameweeks but this is where the foundations for winning or losing will be laid. Focusing on a manageable number of Gameweeks makes squad selection simpler and more certain. Keeping flexibility in your squad will allow you to react quicker to the things you can’t predict and actively minimising risk will help you reduce the damage these events might inflict when they occur.

If that all sounds a bit safe and conservative then don’t worry – as most of us have already learned, this game has a funny way of being entertaining, however it’s played.