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The three-time top 500 finisher will be writing about all things Fantasy Premier League (FPL) on a weekly basis as well as bringing his much-loved ‘59th Minute Podcast’ – previously hosted by The Athletic – to Fantasy Football Scout.
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It’s good to be back writing about FPL – it’s been a while! Before I get into it, I want to thank the team at Fantasy Football Scout again for rescuing the 59th Minute Podcast and giving me the opportunity to type some words about the game we all love (and hate). I’m looking forward to sharing my FPL thoughts with you once a week for the rest of the campaign and for the next few seasons! There will also be a new podcast episode today after the press conferences.
I’ve been given free rein for this first piece so I’ve decided to use it as an opportunity to reflect on my rank rise from outside the top one million at the restart following the World Cup, to 65k going into Gameweek 30. Is the top 10k achievable? I’m certainly going to give it a crack!
When FPL managers are not where they want to be in the rankings or mini-leagues, one of the most common questions I get asked on a weekly basis is – who are the best differentials to close the gap?
The key message I want to get across in this piece is that you don’t need differentials to make up ground. I’ve been playing this game for a very long time (since 2002/03) and I’ve been in the position many times where the season is not going to plan and you get to a crossroads. One route is to keep plodding along, playing it safe and chipping away slowly at the rank. The alternative is to ‘go for it’ and make some risky transfers and captaincy picks. Having explored both paths over the years, I’m very much in the camp of keeping it simple, making sensible transfers and captaincy calls, focusing on the good value picks from the best teams that have great fixtures. That’s FPL in a nutshell.
Differentials are called differentials for a reason, they differ from the optimal picks. More often than not, going with too many low-owned players will lead to bigger problems.
When I think back to the start of the World Cup, my plan for after it was to come back and play very aggressively due to my poor rank. However, over the course of the tournament, my thoughts reverted to my usual ‘safe’ style of play and my Gameweek 17 squad didn’t include any surprise selections. I took the slow-and-steady approach to climbing the rankings.
Gameweek 17 Team
Looking back, from Gameweeks 17 to 25, my starting XI was almost exclusively made up of players from Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur with a sprinkling of Double Gameweek picks from other teams at various points. Squeezing in as many players as possible from the best teams in the league might sound like an obvious FPL strategy but it’s one I constantly have to remind myself of. When there’s a 50/50 call on a transfer, the team they play for is often the deciding factor. A good example of that was Bruno Fernandes (£9.6m) vs James Maddison (£8.3m) for Double Gameweek 29. I was torn on which way to go. In the end, the asset from the better side made it in, not that it got me any points (yet!).
A key decision with the unlimited transfers in Gameweek 17 was to drop the best bargain basement midfielder we’ve ever had in FPL, Andreas Pereira (£4.3m), in favour of a stronger midfield five. On paper, Arsenal’s fixtures weren’t great at that point which resulted in most managers going with just one of their midfielders. I viewed that as an opportunity and went with both Bukayo Saka (£8.6m) and Gabriel Martinelli (£6.6m), which paid off.
Going with Kepa Arrizabalaga (£4.7m) in goal at that point also played a big part in the rank rise. Josh from the excellent Always Cheating podcast famously once said, “When the game throws you a bone, you grab it”. A Chelsea goalkeeper at £4.5m felt very much like that.
TRANSFERS
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