My wife, who rarely watches a match, is destroying me in FPL. Yes it’s embarrassing. Yes I’m pulling my hair out. No she doesn’t have any sympathy.
The worst part? She doesn’t even watch the games.
Honestly it’s a sore one right now, but it does raise an interesting question: should you bring in a player if you haven’t watched them play?
Most of us would say no. Maybe it has to do with gut feelings. For me, seeing a player in action is absolutely essential before I will consider bringing him into my team.
But is that logical? The Eye Test is the reason nobody wanted Harry Kane for some time, even though he had the third-highest overall points tally for forwards in the league and Spurs’ fixtures were looking nice. Many FPL managers don’t see the energy, intensity, or drive when they watch him play. The same could be said for Salah before his hat trick. The eye tests, in these cases, seem to be trumping the numbers for a lot of FPL managers.
But numbers never lie.
I’m not writing about my wife’s team because I think it’s a squad you should emulate. I’m writing about her team because I think we can learn from her approach and the fact that she’s been able to work her way up without watching any of her players. It makes you consider the power behind the numbers alone, and how our passion for the game can cloud them.
I live in Arizona, so early weekend games can come on at 4:30 AM – but even if they were on in primetime, my wife wouldn’t watch them. It just doesn’t interest her. However what does interest her is isolating problems and using information to predict the future. That’s why she’s an auditor.
I want to focus on her differential picks. For someone who doesn’t seek out FPL advice, she somehow chooses differential players that perform exceptionally well and find their way into many top 10k teams. Does the fact that she’s an auditor with a Master’s degree in accounting come into play here? It’s possible.
For her, it’s literally all about the numbers.
She brought in Sterling and Fabianski right at the start in Gameweek 1 (Fabianski warming the bench until recently). She picked up Fraser a week later in Gameweek 2. She brought in Alonso in Gameweek 3, then Mitrovic in Gameweek 5. She has been playing Michael Keane since Gameweek 8 and got Doherty into her squad in Gameweek 10. Most recently she picked up Jimenez in Gameweek 13. As of Gameweek 17, she acquired Felipe Anderson, which gave her immediate returns.
As of Gameweek 18, she will still have Sterling, Alonso, Doherty, Fabianski, Keane and of course Anderson in her squad.
She doesn’t spend much time on her team, which could be advice in itself. Her laid-back approach is brutal when she’s beating you, but it’s also eye-opening. She isn’t focused on any gut feelings, any FPL pundit opinions, or any player form she sees with her own eyes. She is literally focused only on numbers that are available.
As I look across the room at her casually tinkering with her team, watching Top Chef, and feeding our son all at the same time, I’m hunched over the dim light of my computer screen for the umpteenth hour surrounded by scribbled stat notes, suffering over the decision to either play Laporte vs Richarlison or Paterson vs Holebas, and agonizing over a trickle of points like a maniac.
Nobody said FPL is fair.
It’s a cruel world, but we can definitely learn from it.
When I look back at the differential picks she made early on and how they played out over the season, it’s hard to convince myself that she got lucky. She not only picked up Fraser in GW2 – she has kept Fraser since GW2. Same thing with Alonso. Sometimes, keeping a player can be just as hard as trading them. For her it seems like there’s no emotional attachment to any players or teams and therefore it comes down to math and numbers.
Instead of struggling because she doesn’t watch the games, she is actually doing well because she doesn’t watch the games.
For me, I think I need to combine the deep, underlying, differential statistics and also look at the broader leaderboards and simple stats in order to improve my team over the rest of the season – if anything, that could be some advice for others outside the top million.
Next season, if I can improve my performance, I can return a bit of focus back into those deep numbers. For now, I need to be willing to experiment with players I haven’t watched extensively so I’m not limiting my squad’s potential.
Does it make sense to start considering the players that we’ve never watched? How important is the eye test, and has it clouded your vision?
What combination of the eye test and data do you aim for?
5 years, 4 months agoNice article! Thanks for submitting.
For me, the eye test is somewhat supplementary in that it's not the first place I go. The way I learned to play was, at first, using the data that FPL provides - mostly home and away form, goals and assists, fixtures, etc.
That then became a focus on FFS data which was more involved, and then I added in a lot more of the eye test. I lived in Canada when I started playing FPL and I didn't have a community of friends playing to draw from except FFS, and watching games on television was tough at the time. I also had the early morning problem.
The more info we can get to help us make our decisions the better!