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Choosing quality over quantity is a canny way to go about living your life.
But what if you could have both?
Well, in the world of football – and more specifically Football Index – the time for both quality and quantity is round about…now.
Football Index is a real-money betting platform where you can buy and sell shares in footballers.
These players’ value can rise or fall depending on their performance both on and off the field.
I’m actively using FI this season with more than a nod to FPL, seeing which aspects of each game marry up, and which don’t.
The quality involves players from the likes of Manchester City and the quantity is the fixture list. But then the quality kicks back in again because those fixtures are top tier stuff.
Or, to put it in FI parlance, they’ll be Gold Match Days.
From now until the end of March, excluding possible FA Cup ties, City will play at least nine matches (more rearrangements are expected), including two in the Champions League, and all of the nine currently scheduled will take place on Gold Match Days.
That means the pay-outs for the best performing players on that particular day are the highest available on FI, with £0.14 per share handed out to the best players in defence, midfield and attack, a further £0.14 for the overall star player and even £0.03 for the best goalkeeper.
That’s in addition to the Media Day Dividends where success breeds success, with those players excelling on a match day highly likely to dominate the media rankings as well.
Finding value in the City squad is tricky.
Phil Foden (£4.31), for instance, is cheap as chips, relatively speaking, on FPL, but his star turn in the win at Liverpool has helped his FI share price stick around the £4 mark when six weeks ago it was close to half that.
But one player kind of flying under the radar on both FPL and FI is Foden’s England team-mate Raheem Sterling (£1.96).
Ilkay Gundogan (£0.97) might have gone goal crazy in recent weeks, scoring nine in 11 league games, but you feel that run is unsustainable.
Sterling has plodded along by comparison, although he’s showing some good form just as the season approaches its business end.
His manager, Pep Guardiola, is of course notorious for rotating his squad, but Sterling has been used relatively sparingly in recent weeks, with a day off against Sheffield United at the end of January and an eight-minute cameo against Brighton before that.
He contrived to miss a penalty in that short amount of pitch-time, but across the other five starts he’s had since then, Sterling has four goals and an assist.
He’s now scored for three straight games, and yet his FPL ownership has dipped, partly due to his lofty price in that game.
That is not an issue on FI.
Take the Gundogan streak out of the equation, and Sterling has the most goals (eight), shots on target (19) and penalty area touches (162) of any City midfielder. For comparison, FPL darling Kevin De Bruyne has three, 18 and 72 – and that hugely inferior goal tally comes despite the Belgian having had more attempts (60 v 42).
Taking the long-term view, Sterling will be a shoo-in for England’s European Championship squad, injuries notwithstanding, so his dividend potential should also stay strong for months to come.
Just don’t necessarily expect the England man to tear it up in the ultra-short term.
City have a Double Gameweek coming up in FPL, but a visit from Spurs is likely to involve a bus or two’s worth of parking from Jose Mourinho, while a trip to an Everton side that seems to have relocated its mojo won’t be the easiest of away matches.
After that, visits to a struggling Arsenal and Borussia Monchengladbach for the first leg of their Champions League round-of-16 clash could be when Sterling really hits the gold standard.
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