The Fantasy Football Scout Members Area helped me achieve my best ever FPL rank last season.

I am convinced that if you sign up for the first time in 2019/20, you could be saying something similar by the time Gameweek 38 comes around.

As many of you know, when I joined the FFS team, my overall rank history was nothing to be envied.

After eight seasons playing the game, I had never managed anything higher than 176,058th place worldwide.

However, in my first year as editor of this site, I smashed my personal best by some margin, ending the 2018/19 campaign with an overall rank of 17,083.

I don’t want to take too much credit for that achievement, if anything the greatest factor in that improvement was the time I was able to spend in the Members Area, longer than ever before.

Sometimes I wonder if the great Mark Sutherns hired me as part of some social experiment, a Fantasy football version of Big Brother if you will.

Take a journalist with a pretty average FPL history, stick them in the Members Area for eight hours a day and watch what happens.

Whatever the brief of this reality show was, it’s hard to argue it was not a success.

Admittedly, it was not hard for me to beat my previous best rank, but at the start of 2018/19, I never even dreamed I would end up finishing 17k.

I even spent time inside the coveted top 10,000 managers last season, holding a place there from Gameweek 16 to Blank Gameweek 27. These were dizzy heights for someone with my FPL history.

So, how did the Members Area help this achievement and what could it do to help potential newcomers in 2019/20?

Let’s start with the Season Ticker, a cornerstone of success in Fantasy football.

This fully interactive model for displaying fixtures was an invaluable tool.

The ability to sort each team’s schedule by difficulty, either by defence or attack, saves you so much time when it comes to identifying who has the best or worst fixtures.

Having this tool allowed me to pick a strong team for Gameweek 1, helped me with both my Wildcards and guided my transfer policy throughout the season.

As the campaign progresses, the Fantasy Football Scout Season Ticker lets you identify the all-important fixture swings and know when it might be a good idea to move one player on for another.

Another large part of my success in the early part of the season was the captaincy, as I (somehow) managed to get returns from the first 17 I selected in a row.

This is another area where I can only credit the Scout Members Area for making most of those choices a lot simpler than they would have been without it.

Using the data available to me I was able to compare the candidates each week based on several key statistics, namely shots in the box, shots on target, big chances and expected goals (xG).

Once the form player(s) had been established, an analysis of opposition defences usually showed the way to go.

Using the tables in the Scout members area I was able to assess which of the candidates’ opponents were allowing the most shots, the most in the box and the highest number of big chances.

Combining data on the form players and the most obliging defences, more often than not, led to the captain decision coming off.

But this data did more than just help me pick captains, it guided the selection of my entire squad.

Using both the tables and comparison tools I was able to identify form players, assess their position on the field, analyse all of their shots in terms of quality and much more.

Combining this information with the Season Ticker is what helps you time these transfers correctly.

One particular table that was the most useful for me was Joe’s famous Goals Imminent table.

One of the most frustrating things in FPL is when you sell a player who has not delivered in recent matches, only for them to punish you immediately after their departure from your team.

This was something that characterised my playing-style before jumping feet first into the Members Area. I was often too impatient with my assets in years gone by, but Fantasy Football Scout Membership changed all that.

Joe’s table is the perfect tool for working out which of your underperforming Fantasy players is still showing strong enough underlying statistics to get back in the goals next time out.

For example, it was a combination of the aforementioned captain analysis and Joe’s table that ensured I held on to Salah and gave him the armband for that memorable hat-trick at Bournemouth, a week in which he suffered mass sales.

Perhaps the thing that surprised me the most about last season was how easy it felt to achieve what I did, which sounds silly to say given how much my overall rank improved.

Historically, FPL had been a game of toil and strife for me. I suppose for many it still is, and I’m still not sure on my Gameweek 1 team for 2019/20, but looking back, I was playing the game blind, without the incredible tools I have now.

Many mini-leagues titles that I had struggled to claim for years were swept aside in one fell swoop, including one or two with cash prizes.

Access to all the data and the time to sift through it armed with everything I needed to make the right choices.

In a game such as FPL, most of the time, the more information you have, the easier it becomes.

My 2018/19 campaign is very much testament to that philosophy. Research is everything. Not only does it help you make a sound choice more often than not, but it also eases the decision-making process.

Now, you might be sat there reading this article thinking, ‘of course David is going to push the Members Area on us, it’s his job.’

That may be true in part, it is my responsibility as the editor of this site to convince as many of you to sign up as possible, but this is far from me trying to blow my own trumpet.

That’s because I can’t really take credit for the incredible gold mine of FPL information that is the Members Area. It’s an absolute masterpiece forged by the hard work of others way before my time.

That’s why I feel very comfortable signing its praises. It’s not my creation, I was just fortunate enough to inherit the best Fantasy Football website in the business from the veritable Godfather of FPL.

If you have never had Membership before and are hoping to have a good year of FPL, then I can only recommend that you sign up.

As my experience from last season proves, with access to everything Scout has to offer, it will be hard not to improve your overall rank history.

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