What can we learn about transfers, bandwagons, stats and chips from our mums?

If you have a mum, there’s a good chance she’s heard you complain about your Fantasy Premier League (FPL) team. You might even have called her on the phone specifically to vent about your latest captain fail or about the player you just transferred out for a -4 scoring a hat-trick.

My mum has talked me off of many an FPL ledge over the years and, despite having never actually played it herself, her knowledge of the game is borderline forensic. Not only does she know how the scoring works, she knows each of the chips and what they do and she even understands the pricing mechanics which, to be honest, puts her ahead of many Fantasy managers.

However, this article is not about my mum specifically but, rather, in honour of it being Mother’s Day in the UK this week, it asks the question, what can FPL managers learn from mums? In order to find out, I’ll be looking at certain aspects of FPL through the lens of some classic mum wisdom.

“Leave it Alone”

Much like a grazed knee that won’t heal if you keep fiddling with it, being too active when trying to reform a poor-performing FPL team can be just as detrimental. Taking multiple hits as a solution often just makes the situation worse and, sometimes, the best thing to do is to just leave your team alone.

A week is a long time in FPL, often time enough for form and fixtures to change and for players to recover from injuries. However, your team might not recover quite as quickly if you keep making changes to it before it gets that chance to heal. This is why, as many of us have been reminded this season alone, it’s often a good idea to wait as late as possible in the week before you make your transfers.

“If All the Fantasy Managers Jumped Off a Cliff, Would You?”

Peer pressure is a powerful force and the FPL community is no exception. Certain ideas can snowball very quickly and, soon, you feel like you’re missing out if you don’t transfer in a certain player or play your Triple Captain in a certain Gameweek.

Luckily, mums cut through all of this nonsense, pointing out that you, and you alone, must make the decision that is best for you. Nobody ever enters a Gameweek in exactly the same circumstances so, just because everybody else is doing something, doesn’t mean that you should too.

“Do Your Homework!”

It might not feel like it at the time, but doing your homework is pretty important. It’s not just about knowing the answers to things but, also, it’s about learning how to reach those answers independently. If you always copy other people, you will never learn anything and, worse, they might not always be right.

The FPL community has always been, in my opinion, the most effective FPL tool there is and seeing what others are doing with their teams, and getting their input on yours, can be invaluable. But with so much advice available, it can make us lazy. Mindlessly following advice may get you so far, but it will never make you a good Fantasy manager, irrespective of how good a player the source of the advice might be. In the end, you have to stand on your own two feet.

“Take the Rubbish Out First”

There’s undoubtedly something to be learned from the innate ability of mums to help us prioritise effectively. While, as a kid, our attention is quickly drawn to doing whatever is fun or most interesting, mums will always remind you if there’s something that needs to be done first.

Just as watching TV comes after taking the rubbish out, fixing the biggest problem in your team is often more important than the more superficial transfers you might have your eye on. While it’s important not to miss out on opportunities, unattended-to problems such as players with poor form, injuries or players dropped from the first team may fester and grow more significant if ignored for too long.

“How Do You Know You Don’t Like it if You’ve Never Tried it?”

If, as kids, we only ever ate the things we knew we liked, we’d have very limited perspectives when it comes to food and there’s a fairly good chance we’d have died of malnutrition too. Fortunately, mums are here to broaden our horizons, and keep us alive.

As Fantasy managers, it’s very easy to get stuck in our ways and only do the things that come naturally to us or have worked for us in the past. However, by not trying other strategies, we limit our potential, become predictable (and thus easier for our rivals to beat) and miss out on some of the fun of the game. 

It’s also worth noting that the game changes faster than we perhaps realise. Rules change, teams change, players change, the number of Fantasy managers grows, sometimes it’s all about the attacking players, sometimes the defenders are on top. Believing that you’ve seen it all is the fastest way to learn that you actually know nothing when it comes to FPL.

Just as, every year at the urging of my mother, I keep trying brussels sprouts (which are, let’s face it, objectively repellant) each season I consciously try something new and experimental with my FPL team. These experiments don’t always work out and, sometimes, my rank suffers as a result. But they’re fun to try and, sometimes, I’ll find out something that comes in handy in the current or in future seasons.

With that, this article is, of course, dedicated to the long-suffering mums of FPL and written as a small thank you for their invaluable contributions, whether that be as players themselves, as our go-to therapists, or as ever-reliable sources of wisdom in life and in FPL.