With just over a week to go until the 2021/22 Fantasy Bundesliga season kicks off, our series of preview articles continues with our five top tips for new managers.
We’ve enlisted the services of Fantasy Football Scout site user Stats Don’t Lie, who has been playing Fantasy Bundesliga for the past two years and who has achieved a top 2k finish in both of those seasons.
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If you’re new to the game or just need a reminder of the rules, check out our ‘how to play’ guide below.
TIP #1 – ADJUST YOUR EXPECTATIONS
Due to the unique nature of the scoring system, what constitutes a good performance and a good Gameweek differs significantly in Fantasy Bundesliga, and as a result, you’ll need to change your expectations.
In this game, you want most of your players to be getting a base score of 7-8 points and your team to be hitting at least 100 points each Matchday.
Obviously, you can look at your weekly rank to gauge roughly how good or bad your Gameweek was, but it’s good to set your team some thresholds and targets.
For my captains, I like to aim for a 15+ point base.
Last season, Robert Lewandowski (17.0m) seemed to achieve this almost every week on his way to breaking Gerd Müller’s long-standing goalscoring record.
Angeliño (14.0m) also felt like a permanent captain in defence before his injury and falling out with then RB Leipzig manager Julian Nagelsmann (now at Bayern Munich).
Such scores should be easily achievable if you set your team up well and allow yourself to play the fixtures.
TIP #2 – A 15-MAN PLAYING SQUAD IS KEY
It is critical that you have a 15-man playing squad, which gives you more opportunity for points.
It means that if you have an asset playing on Friday and they have a poor game and get only five points, for example, you can substitute on one of your bench players and hope for them to get a better score instead.
Also, as injuries, suspensions and rotation occur throughout the season, you may find yourself with weeks where even three free transfers are not enough to fix all your problems.
A 15-man squad means you can at least make sure you put out a strong first XI in those difficult weeks.
This also emphasises why making the most of the budget and finding those cheap gems is so important.
Last year, for example, many of us were able to get two playing goalkeepers for around 6.0m, which was great as the goalkeeper position is one where you usually want to spend as little as possible anyway.
Most weeks there was also a very cheap midfielder playing like Mateo Klimowicz (7.0m), Tanguy Coulibaly (7.0m) or Jamal Musiala (12.0m), or a cheap performing forward like “tallest player in the Bundesliga” Sasa Kalajdzic (12.0m).
You will need to find these players to build a full, playing 15-man squad, and this leads us nicely onto our next point…
TIP#3 – MAKE YOUR MOVES AS LATE AS POSSIBLE
The Fantasy Bundesliga deadline is always the kick-off time of the first game of the week and with price changes always occurring at the end of the previous Matchday, this is not a concern during the transfer window.
Waiting until the deadline gives the more astute managers the chance to react to surprise line-up inclusions like Musiala, who was a 1.0m midfielder last year, or omissions of big names like Erling Haaland (16.0m).
Especially at the start of the season, making the most of your budget is really important.
150.0m is basically 10.0m per player in your 15-man squad, but it also means that for every Lewandowski you need a Cedric Brunner (5.0m).
With the sacrifices required to afford more expensive players, you simply can’t afford to have guys that set you back 15.0m+ not turn up and likewise you want to get on any cheap gems as soon as possible.
That way you can better use your funds in loading up on a big forward line like the popular Lewandowski, Haaland and André Silva (15.0m) trio last season.
TIP#4 – STAY FLEXIBLE
You may have already gathered this from reading some of the rules, but staying flexible is key!
One of the best resources to follow for help with any planning is @DNLFantasy on Twitter. This account posts great graphs and fixture tickers to help you plan your captaincy and transfers.
Having more captaincy options is essentially buying more tickets for the lottery in the hope that one of your players will hit that 20+ point haul (someone hits that most weeks).
To do this, try and bear in mind the way a player increases or reduces your flexibility when you are looking to transfer them in.
This is often the deciding factor with those tight 50/50 calls, but staying flexible doesn’t just relate to making sure you have your captaincy covered.
It also means having players at various price points and having some money in the bank whenever possible.
Though having three transfers each week feels like a lot, it isn’t when you suddenly want to bring in both Christopher Nkunku (14.0m) and Dani Olmo (14.0m) ahead of a good run of fixtures while simultaneously trying to free up the budget needed to afford them.
You want to make sure you can jump on any players as easily as possible. This will also give you more room for taking some fun punts and for capitalising on fixture swings.
TIP#5 – STATS ARE YOUR BEST FRIEND
When playing Fantasy Premier League (FPL), or what I’d call “output-oriented” games, we tend to become very results biased in our opinions of player performance.
We need goals, assists, clean sheets.
Though these are still a very relevant consideration in Fantasy Bundesliga, this version of the game also rewards actual on-field performance much more strongly.
A comprehensive stat breakdown will follow this article but essentially Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are just as important to Fantasy Bundesliga as actual output.
The fact is that, most of the time, these two metrics will go hand in hand but there were a lot of occasions when players could rack up hauls purely on the basis of the additional points from key passes and shots.
A good example is Paulo Otávio (12.0m), a full-back for VfL Wolfsburg, who garnered 102 of his 180 points simply from winning duels, which more than compensated for his lack of attacking returns.
Similarly, Angeliño, the top-scoring defender in the game last year with 293 points, only got 80 of those (27.3% of his total) from goals, assists and clean sheets. Meanwhile, he picked up 60 points from goal attempts, 51 points from passes to a shot and 66 for duels won.
This shows that players don’t have to have crazy output, as long as they are heavily involved in the play they can rack up points through their KPIs.
HOW TO JOIN OUR FANTASY BUNDESLIGA MINI-LEAGUE
We’ve launched our very own mini-league, which we are delighted to announce will offer prizes to the manager of the month and overall winner and runner-up.
Click on this link here to sign up to our Fantasy Bundesliga mini-league. No password or pin is required.
