My FPL resume is not extensive (hence a greenhorn):
Currently in my 1st full season in FPL – having joined a bit late last year, but seeing significant improvement once I discovered FFScout (thank you all for that by the way!). Last season’s outcome was decent; managed to claw my way back to 2nd position in my mini-league with 2 games less than my opponents and finished at around 1.7mil OR with 2012 points from 35GWs.
As any Football Manager (Fantasy, CM/FM series or real life!) having a full pre-season to prepare in 2019/20, I started the season well, reaching 100k by GW6 with an average of 63 points per gameweek and continued nicely, finding myself around 150k in GW14! Taking into account that my season’s goal was to achieve a top 100k finish, this was really encouraging.
Season derailed a bit from GW15 to GW22, when I managed an incredible 2 green arrows in 8 weeks (!) and this is clearly illustrated from my current 430k-ish rank. Highlights of this period include my transfer out of De Bruyne’s 19pt haul and captaining Son’s for his dismissal, ‘spending’ few transfers on a failed Leicester defensive double-up, but also and on a more positive note – I enjoyed Trent Alexander-Arnold’s 24pt haul against Leicester!
Moving forward, I still struggle to balance gut vs stats in my transfers’ rationale and would really welcome any advice in the form of experiences / learnings from everyone.
Meantime, to live up to the title, I have made the following conclusions from the immense 58 gameweeks I have managed so far:
1. This is a Game of Skill
Last year, when I saw that certain people did well for a number of years – it really made me keener to improve! Repeated success in any field is hardly ever a coincidence.
So, starting the season with proper planning, meaning creating a team for a minimum of 4 gameweeks & reassessing after the first 2 for the upcoming 3-4 was a good way for me to start.
2. It requires time & commitment
Realizing the use of ‘heavy’ words above, I still think that in part after the first 10-12 games, I lost a bit my focus. Started doing ‘reactive’ transfers rather than basing decisions on pro-active thinking and I paid the price.
3. Community is really helpful
From GW15 to GW22, as I already mentioned, I had only 2 green arrows and the 1st of those came mainly through TAA’s crazy haul.
Thankfully, before GW22 I watched Joe’s interview with Pranil (Lateriser12) for FFS ‘Meet the Manager’ series and I really recommend this to everyone! Pranil’s passion & way of thinking led me back to my stats tables (very handy feature of FFScout’s Members Area).
4. Element of luck
Elephant in room spotted.
As in many other strategy games, varying from board games (e.g. Risk) to poker and for sure football, luck undeniably plays its part in FPL too. Dealing with this is (maybe) the most difficult part. Pep has in the past been quoted saying (through a Thierry Henry interview in Sky Sports): “My job is to bring you up until the last third. Your job is to finish it!” Unfortunately though, the outcome of this ‘job’ is a matter of both individual skill and luck. So, in a similar fashion, we Fantasy Football Managers, can give ourselves improved probabilities of winning points through our selections, but in the end the outcome is not straightforward.
Moving forward, this brings me to my double gameweek 24 plans and trying to give myself the best chances for (hopefully) the 1st 3-digit score in my short FPL history!
Getting to the above team required my 3rd hit for the season, in order to swap Adama Traore (£5.7m) and Tammy Abraham (£7.9m) for Mohamed Salah (£12.4m) and Dominic Calvert-Lewin (£6.0m).
Fully realize that each and everyone will base his/her decisions on numerous different combinations of data, history and gut feeling, I decided to base mine on my ‘Basic Attacking Data’ table, which shows that both Salah & Sadio Mane (£12.4m) are right on top for xGI in the past 4 gameweeks.
Off course who to captain or even triple-captain will be a point to think about, but currently armband is on the Senegal international and is likely to stay there.
Next step is eventually addressing my team’s defense, which apart from TAA and Lord John Lundstram (£5.1m), whom I got for £4.0 and would not sell unless he loses his place on the side, is looking fragile to say the least…
Let me know your thoughts, it will be really appreciated! Also, whether you agree / disagree on the way I look at things so far…
Good luck to all for the business end of the season
4 years, 2 months ago
Cheers for this luv4rotties
We always hear from managers that have been doing this thing for years and years, so it's nice to hear something a bit different!
Hopefully this will be useful to some of the other new managers on the site. Best of luck this season!