Being on time to the points party can save your FPL season

Ever feel like you’ve arrived late to the points party?

Not fashionably late – when the dance floor’s in full swing and you’re soon knocking down a delicious cocktail of goals, assists, clean sheets, and bonus points – but really late, when the host has turned down the music, the guests have started leaving, and you’re left wondering what happened to all those fantasy points you were promised. Points your rivals were gulping on. Now you’re sipping a bitter cocktail of shaken confidence with a nip of frustration. If only you’d been on time.

In hindsight there were warning signs. That player had always proved an inconsistent, unreliable source of points with a penchant for all-too-brief hot streaks. His underlying stats were modest at best. Yet his name had popped up in the template and you wanted a piece of the action. Now, having completely missed those precious points, you find yourself needing to regroup. To make matters worse, the player has already cost you 0.1m from the annual party budget. It’s a disaster of third season Mourinho sized proportions.

If this is a familiar story in your FPL season, it might be time to mix up your game plan. We all try to focus on points, of course, but sometimes we get side-tracked. We chase previous results. We worry about value. But there is another way. It’s possible to pour out those bottled-up frustrations and find fresh solutions. To make superior short-term decisions. To set the ever-changing template, not regret your tardiness.

As you may have guessed, I strongly endorse a proactive style of fantasy team management. I believe that thinking outside the proverbial penalty box and staying ahead of that mysterious curve can be the keys to a successful season. Or an even more successful season. Success, of course, is a relative concept. It could be defined as a top 10,000 finish, top 1000 finish, or higher. It could simply be winning your mini-leagues or beating your best friend. Whatever your goals, in a game played by millions of people, with hundreds of points on offer over 38 glorious gameweeks, there is always scope for improvement.

With that in mind, I invite you to consider alternative approaches to that tried, tested, yet perhaps ultimately suboptimal transfer policy. Ready to get as radical as a Paul Pogba hairstyle?

FORGING THE ‘TEMPLATE’

Somehow almost every active team appears to look at least a little bit ‘template’, right? So how are some teams so far ahead of others in overall rank? For starters, there is no actual template. Never has been, never will be. The ideal squad with the highest point-scoring potential changes all the time.

Your objective should therefore be to remain a few steps ahead of what others perceive to be the template. If you think a particular player is set to explode, buy that player now. Don’t wait for the purple patch to begin then feel red-faced when it does. Back your judgment. Take a hit if you need to. If you’re right, other managers will soon be following suit; following the fluid template you helped to forge – but by the time they catch up, you will be moving on to the next big thing.

In recent times you could have moved early for the likes of Heung-Min Son, Lucas Digne, Paul Pogba and more. The signs and/or stats were there to see. Did you launch in with gusto or hold back with trepidation?

As it turns out, patience is not always a virtue.

The better managers react faster to looming trends. They grab the points on offer while others wait to be sure. There’s nothing wrong with a bandwagon, as long as it’s you behind the wheel, fully prepared to jump off the ride before the inevitable crash. Points earning, not points chasing.

PREMIUM HOKEY-COKEY

While it sounds like a lot of fun, ‘hokey-cokey’ is sometimes seen as a dirty term. Pick your premium assets and stay loyal, they say. But why? What if you could have the top one or two captaincy options in your team every single gameweek? It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.

By paying close attention to upcoming fixtures, locking in a ‘set and forget’ defence and being prepared to take occasional hits, you can rotate your heavy hitters as often as you like. There is simply no need to carry an expensive asset through a tricky run of fixtures. Play around with your budget, shuffle the deck, use mini-wildcards, try to find multi-transfer moves that could have explosive results. It’s not a question of Eden Hazard or Raheem Sterling; it’s a question of when to have one, when to have the other, and when to have both. In other words, play the form and fixtures hard. Extremely hard.

ONE HIT WONDERS

What’s the difference between a great gameweek and a bad gameweek? With the right captain and a few strong differentials, you can easily beat your rival by 20-40 points. You’ve seen it happen. For some reason, though, many of us are reluctant to pay 4 points for a clearly superior team and/or captain in any given gameweek.

Points hits are not the enemy; poor decisions are the enemy.

Rather than fearing the loss of 4 points, perhaps calculate the enormous potential of a hit that works the way you expect it to. A big haul minus 4 beats no big haul at all. Even better if it’s a player you want to keep for the medium term.

If you can change your mindset, you can open up exciting transfer possibilities that your rivals won’t even consider. An injured Benjamin Mendy to a low-ceiling Aymeric Laporte? No thanks. Surely those funds could have been spent on a more attacking set of transfers. Transfers that set your team apart from the pack.

Remember, the most important gameweek is always the next one.

Don’t miss another points party!