1. Differentials
Almost every content creator dedicates a portion of their videos and articles to differentials, promoting the idea that this is the way to get ahead of your FPL peers. It is not. To do well in FPL your aim should purely be to score as many points as possible, drown out the noise of what others are doing and think which players will get me those points. A player’s ownership has no bearing on how many points they will score. To allow this to influence your thinking will only ever be detrimental to your FPL performance.
Ownership = Form, this is generally true and a big part of why the above is true. If you’re picking a player due to low ownership, the low ownership is usually a reflection of their poor form, they’re coming back from injury, or have a bad run of fixtures. Any of these factors make the asset risky and unattractive. If you’re falling behind your mini-league leader and want to make up ground the last thing you should do is start making high-risk bets, to the contrary, you need to see FPL as a marathon and not a race. The best strategy is to gradually gain on him by picking players based on fixtures and form as opposed to being influenced by his team selection.
2. Statistics are god
Statistics are good, but not god. The idea that they present pure definitive and unrefined truth is false. Anyone doing statistical analysis will first choose the stats they wish to use, this presents the first opportunity for subjectivity to enter. They will then choose how to present them, and propose what they mean, the second point of entry for subjectivity. Finally, the analyst will make predictions based on these statistics. All three aspects will be influenced by the subjectivity of the analyst. This is not to say don’t use stats they are rubbish but approach them as though they were an opinion piece, allow it to influence your decision making but not dictate it.
Another issue with stat’s is that they paint a rather static picture of football. The idea that teams, players, or statistics will “regress to the mean” ignores that fact that football is in a continuous state of flux. Players can get older, weaker, stronger and better, teams evolve and recently even the rules suddenly seem to be ever-changing.
Plenty of stat merchants have said the likes of Fernandes or Vardy are bad picks, but the most important stat of all would say otherwise, their FPL points.
It would be a huge mistake to ignore stats, but take care when using them. For me, nothing beats the eye test. This allows me to not only see the number of shots they take and opportunities created, but also an insight into the quality of their attacking output. It also allows me to see if they look happy, hungry frustrated or tired. It provides context and a third dimension to a player’s/team’s statistics.
3. Early transfers, Team value, and Transfer planning
Early transfers and team value- This is not the season to do early transfers.
Fixture congestion and lack of a break. The fixture congestion means more injuries, these injuries can happen at any time during the week. This leads to an increased chance of new and important information being available before the GW deadline.
Covid. Again this is an additional factor that can change the GW environment drastically.
These two variables mean the chance of major FPL news breaking before the GW deadline has increased exponentially and therefore so has the risk associated with an early transfer.
If price rises will price you out of a move then fair enough make the transfer. But to avoid this I will always try to have around .3 in the bank as emergency cash 😉
Nothing irritates me more when at the beginning of a season a content creator comes on and says this is my team and these are my planned transfers… Then the player they planned to transfer out does really well and they say: “Oh no! Now I can’t transfer him out!” So what had they hoped, that the player would perform badly? Why have him in the first place then? It’s good to make a couple of rough plans here and there, but the above sort of planning leads me to question the rationale of the content creator.
4. We want others to do well
This is probably my most controversial point and more a reflection of my own cynicism than anything else. I don’t want others to do well. I don’t enjoy it when other’s do well. I also don’t believe all the hand-clapping and congratulating that litters the FPL Twittersphere is genuine. You are competing with these people, FPL is only fun when you are doing well, to do well you have to do better than those you are competing with. Yeah, it would be great if we could all just be in the top 10K but we can’t, and to enter into the top 10k you have to take someone out of it.
Apart from FPL_AZ, for some reason, he’s the only content creator that I don’t enjoy seeing do poorly. His toxic relationship with Mahrez makes me want to call a domestic abuse hotline.
4 years, 4 months agoThank you great article. Point 4 is why I always say "Good luck to those who have the same players as me",