Interestingly Andy in his etream this morning has also noticed this trend and has said he will no longer be confirming his transfers or wildcard teams prior to the deadline to avoid this happening.

I got a massive 105 points. I came JOINT first in my ML with a rival who had one different player. Neither of us copied an 'influencer' - it's just the narrowness of the opening template.

There is a strong template for sure this year, people who in my work and friends leagues were more casual now have players they previously wouldn't have known existed, that said while I don't like everyone having the same teams I do like competition so I'm all for it. And it'll crumble soon anyway a low scoring week with both Salah and Bruno blanking will have people tearing up teams

Content creation. And a plethora of FPL Twitter accounts are definitely increasing the percentage of template teams. 😀

We were really in the minority with this website. That edge is becoming thinner every year..

I can never understand this argument. Aiming to have the players that score the most points is the object of this game. If non template losing is your thing then crack on.

cant believe how sad and bad people would have to be to just copy someone elses team

IMO, the two main reasons for why there are so many template teams:

1) While the pricing this year seems to be better, Salah and Fernandes are arguably underpriced (as evidenced by the fact that they’re in almost 60% of teams at their price). If they were priced at 15 and Mane were priced at 11, you could have Mane, Son and DCL for the price of Salah & Fernandes, which would bust a lot of teams up.

2) the bonus points system is garbage. It rewards players that have already done well in a match. It would be better if it rewarded players who dominated the midfield defensively (ball recoveries, interceptions) like Kante or the players who ‘assisted the assister’. This would add a large random element to the game IMO.

I don't understand what's the problem here. Should every sheep follow one or some people on Youtube, it would make winning this game much easier. Should there be million sheeps following him, winning Andy would mean winning million sheeps. There is nothing wrong in it. Only real sheeps can afraid of competition. This is free world and everyone has right to get advice if they want to, even for free.

Most boring start in my ml in 10yrs. Pretty much everyone has 11/15 same players.

With 105 points in gw1 I was 6th. Even the guy who plays his second season, rarely watch footy had the likes of Tsimikas and Bemrahma.

So easy to get spoon feeded information on social media and hidden gems aren't hidden no more, thanks "content" creators.

I also blame fpl pricing popular players too low. Shaw should have been 6.0, Mane 11, Tsimikas 4.5, Raphinha 7.5, Jota and GW 8.0 etc.

Personally I think a lot of the blame lies with the pricing. If, say, there were more of a gap between Salah and Mané's prices and the likes of Shaw + Raphinha were more expensive, then we would have a greater diversity of teams imo.

The price change system needs a rework. It enables and promotes template building.

My suggestion is another price change system that takes place between GWs and is 100% transparent. Unlike the current system, that additional price change system would be based around ownership and to some degree performance. This price change system would not affect your team value. When you own a player that rises, you lose 0.1 from the bank. When you own a player that falls, you get 0.1 added to your bank. If the price changes take you below 0.0, you can't confirm your next transfers until your transfers take your bank back into positive. When you sell players that have risen in value through this system, you get to keep all of the price rises, instead of only 0.1 per 0.2 rises.

This system would correct much better for mispricing of players, and force people to consider more players in the game. Unfortunately it would probably be difficult to write a good algorithm.

I think you are all missing it..

Here in America, DFS has taken over Fantasy Football and Gambling both. DFS is basically FPL; salary cap, universal player choice, known information. What has happened is people use statistics, algorithms and historical reference to narrow the many different options from 32 nfl teams down to a few “elite” options for the relative price points. The result is that the weekly “template” is predictable and ubiquitous and the winners are teams with the slightest variation from that template in a way that captures the unmeasurable luck factor.

Limited allocation of capital, known information (stats/fixtures) and limited combinations are going to produce a “right” answer. “Going against the template” will never work because as we like to say “it’s the template for a reason”. Because maths.

yeah it's something that concerns me about the game...hard to control though unfortunately and we're often shot down on here for bringing up such topics...glad this was hulked, GL for the season!

The first step to increase diversity is making all 22 players on the pitch an option for FPL.
Currently, most of us are just looking at 2 full backs and 3 attackers for each team.
There is no team where you would consider more than 4-5 players for FPL.

How many people are considering anyone from Everton apart from Digne DCL and Richarlison?

How many people are considering anyone from Brentford apart from Toney and their GK?

The pool of players narrows down to just around 40-50 players when it really should be 220 players.

Then the content creators come in to narrow the 40-50 down to 15-20 and we see a very strong template.

Possible Solutions:
- without changing the simplicity of the game and introducing points for tackles, blocks and passes, we need to figure out a way to make players like Kante and Kovacic an option.
Can we have all cdms listed with defenders?
Can we say CDMs get 3 points for a clean sheet?
They really have to come up with a way where the best CDM in the league should have similar points to the best full back in the league. (This has to be true for all positions- we should have a 180 point CB, 180 point FB, 180point CDM.. and so on)
That's when the player pool increases, and diversity kicks in.

I still think this year would be interesting once Lukaku and Kane come into the picture.
Currently all content creators point to the same Bruno + Salah team.
Casuals would have to make their own decisions if the advice of Andy, BigmanBakar and Mark is different.

IN CONCLUSION It would really be nice for a full on podcast on the subject from the content creators on this site.

If people want to "cheat", let them. However, if and when things go awry, they won't have the understanding or knowledge of how to get themselves out of it, because they haven't learnt anything. I'd also question what enjoyment they are getting out of the game but that's their perogative. There's also no guarantee of success in cheating, if you copied Andy 2 seasons ago you'd be well out the top 200k. If you copied Fpl general 3 seasons ago you'd be outside the top 500k!

As engaged fpl managers the stupid thing to do right now would be to get frustrated, or panic and make daft differential chasing transfers or captains in an effort to beat the sheep, and actually fall further behind in doing so. The template is strong right now. So be it. Pick your battles, choose your timing to attack wisely. In the meantime, let the points roll in!

Also, what does every decent content creator preach at this time early in the season? Stay with the pack, it's a marathon not a sprint, don't fall behind. This is exactly what we should be doing, what we are doing, and it's working. Why the hell is anyone complaining?

I understand the concern, but really, it only changes some of the dynamics of the game, which you and I have to adapt to and approach differently.

1) "Gather your opponents at the same place and obliterate them all at once" - pretty straightforward. As Rumormill had mentioned, most template "copiers" will not be able to get themselves outa trouble.

2) it's not the system, it's the people. And i'll give you a small example to debunk all those system change "solutions" provided by the lads above (price, bps, etc...)

Say the system changed, even massively. Andy would STILL share his team, and 200K would STILL copy it.

3) be happy! the MORE template riders there are, the BIGGER the bubble burst would be when it happens - that's pure mathematics.

4) it is almost impossible to keep up with someone's template even if they're sharing their team weekly, you WILL miss price changes, that say, Andy, won't. Week by week this WILL happen.

5) the "Salah Bruno" template is a very normal thing - we do see that every year, captaincy ALONE should be a great differential.

In MY conclusion:

- It's not a big issue, rather a phenomena.
- Bigger template leads to bigger bubble burst.
- it will be impossible to keep up
- opponents are allowing you to dig them a mass grave with time

Another way to think about it as that all these sheep provide a strategic manager with an opportunity to rise above the pack. So many potentially good FPL assets are ignored, you hardly have to worry about them, you only have to beat the core template because it's so ridiculously strong. Having got off to a decent start by doing things a little differently, it was a case of seemingly jumping a start on rivals in a variety of different mini leagues large and small, since they were all 90% the same, with the heavy hitters, the same captain choice, the same excuses of not wanting to take any risks early on. Cool, no Alonso 15-pointer for them then with possibly the best GW1 fixture available and virtually certain to start with Chilwell missing pre-season. Easy points, move on.

Agree with you about the copycat thing but you can't change it so no point bemoaning it.

The underlying problem this season is that FPL completely screwed the pricing up. Essentially they rushed prices out early because they wanted to keep the PL in people's minds with Euro2020 going on. In order to do that they essentially based the valuations on last season's finishing prices.

On the face of it that sounds OK but it isn't. A player doesn't move that much in price in a season, the finishing price is always rooted in the price the player started at. Consequently we have pricing that is, at root, based on performance in the 19/20 season and only slightly moderated by 20/21 rather than having pricing based on performance in 20/21.

As a result, those teams that improved considerably (or beat expectations considerably) last season are across-the-board underpriced. That means West Ham, it means Leeds, it means the United defence, to take just 3 examples. Any regular starter among those teams is likely to be under-valued (and they are).

Other side of the coin, teams that disappointed and/or regressed last season - think Southampton, think Wolves, think Liverpool - are now generally over-priced. The ridiculous 0.5m differential between Salah and Mané is a case in point; clearly not justified by last season's performance but based on the season before when they were much closer. In the case of Liverpool it may not matter if they are back to 19/20 levels this season with VVD back and so on but it's hard to imagine anyone wanting Wolves or Southampton players at the start of the season other than the very cheap fodder-type ones.

Then you had players moving to clubs where their valuation looked better - Grealish, Ings - or those who are great when fit and were starting the season fit - Antonio, Wilson. Then you can factor in the fact that a number of players that might usually be in contention were injured and/or late back to pre-season following Euro2020 and Copa - KDB, Chilwell, Kane, Rashford, Sancho.

All of that together has created a narrow pool of players that could be considered good choices. That will expand as the season wears on.

Two free transfers a week would work i reckon. Would allow for more flexibility and risk taking imo. lots of options out there not being considered prior to gw1 due to transfer window being open, late return from off-season, player being transferred to a club after gw1, injuries, etc

If you look at the Mods and Cons League, you may notice that Mark Sutherns, Andy LTFPL and myself all have very similar, but not quite identical, starting elevens.
Ten players the same, and different MCI players for the eleventh.
The result was that we all scored exactly 100 points in GW1, but in GW2 my Cancelo outscored Mark's Torres and Andy's Gundogan.
But no cheating or copying was involved. We are all capable of thinking for ourselves and making our own decisions, but after examining information, ideas and opinions from many sources we just happened to finish up with very similar near-template teams - and many of the players in the template are in there for good reasons.
I think that one of the main culprlts for the similarity of so many 'casual' teams is FPL itself. If you look at the Scout tab on the FPL web-site you will find a tremendous amount of spoon-feeding, even including a number of ready-made complete suggested squads.

There have been templates long before there were YouTube content creators. Anyone here (or reddit, or any one of dozens of sites/forums) can listen to any of the 5 million RMTs, agree with one from a poster they like, and voila, they are cheating? Complete nonsense.

I don't like templates any more than anyone else, but we're on forums to discuss... sometimes said discussion leads to a broad consensus. That's hardly cheating. You seem to be moaning that people have access to information that used to be exclusive.

What you seem to want is a draft league. I hear FPL has one availalable.

This has been one of the best HT:s I can remember. Thank You. One easy solution would be better pricing. We all knew that Shaw will be the popular pick over AWB when both were 5.5. But for example, what if Shaw was 5.7 and AWB 5.4 or 5.3 to start with? That would give us immediately much bigger pool of players to start with. Is leaving little money itb too difficult for casuals? I doubt it.