With Fantasy Premier League (FPL) live for 2023/24, we’ll be welcoming back our team of Hall of Famers and guest writers for the new campaign.
We’ll be hearing from a different contributor every day in the aftermath of the FPL relaunch, to get their thoughts on the pricing and to see their initial picks.
Our writers will be providing regular articles and team reveals throughout the new season, with only Premium Members able to access every single one.
You can sign up here for the new campaign – once you’re aboard, you’ve locked in the price of your Premium Membership for good, so long as you don’t cancel!
Next up, seven-time top 10k finisher Zophar reveals his initial thoughts for the new season.
The 2022/23 FPL season was probably the least enjoyable for me since I started playing in 2009. An unshakeable template, strait-jacket team selections, three wildcards and Chelsea being awful made me count down the days till the end of May.
Truth be told, I didn’t really miss it much. The June break was refreshing and I enjoyed focusing on my other hobbies rather than constantly agonising over whether I should make the switch from Solly March to Alexis Mac Allister.
By the time July came around though, I was fully recharged, refreshed and raring to go and I am excited to be writing my first Scout article for you ahead of the new season.
In this piece, I will be sharing my initial thoughts and impressions on pricing and structure, plus a general feeling of what lies ahead for us over the next 10 months.
It was good to see the premium assets from last season receive their due – Erling Haaland (£14.0m), Mohamed Salah (£12.5m), Harry Kane (£12.5m) and Trent Alexander-Arnold (£8.0m) have all been fairly priced.
Having two of the attackers is doable, having Alexander-Arnold + Haaland is doable but going for the popular trio of Haaland, Salah and Alexander-Arnold absolutely kills off the team balance.
The dilemma now is picking between perfectly good assets, all of whom are affordable.
There is no real way to predict which of Martin Odegaard (£8.5m), Gabriel Martinelli (£8.0m) or Bukayo Saka (£8.5m) will score more points, especially in the short term. All three saw purple patches at different times last season, so do we hop on/off or do we just stick with what we have?
The wealth of options in the £7.5m-£9.0m bracket in midfield is absolutely staggering, and my initial thoughts are that I would rather have 3 x midfielders from this category, for say approximately £26m, rather than Salah + two £6.5m midfielders.
The likes of Saka, Marcus Rashford (£9.0m), Phil Foden (£7.5m) and James Maddison (£7.5m) are all capable of huge point hauls on their day and with the captaincy likely to stick on the Norwegian for the majority of the campaign, at least early doors, I just can’t see the value in going with Salah. This could of course change if he bangs a couple of hat-tricks towards the tail end of pre-season.
What this also does is increase the luck factor over skill. In the years past, finding the next unknown gem, an Andy Carroll or a Charlie Adam was pivotal to your squad balance. You just couldn’t afford the big players you wanted without a few of these guys. Now it’s very easy to make a team entirely of players from top-eight sides.
Additionally, no amount of listening to podcasts, consuming YouTube content or diving into stats tables is going to let you actually predict who is going to score more between Saka or Martinelli any given week. That’s just going to come down to luck, or ‘variance’ as we like to call it.
That is something we will have to accept and condition ourselves to. As my friend Pras said on our latest pod, you aren’t a genius if you get it right and you’re not an idiot if you get it wrong. It’s something I need to keep telling myself when I’m on the wrong end of a coin toss this season.
I also want to talk about defence a bit. Apart from Alexander-Arnold and Kieran Trippier (£6.5m), I think FPL have got it grossly wrong this year. I mean £5.0m for Gabriel Magalhaes is ridiculous. Sven Botman (£4.5m) is the same price as a promoted defender! Newcastle United had the joint-best defensive record in the division, that’s ludicrous and it boggles my mind!
Last year we were all about big at the back but now you can get something like Nathan Ake (£5.0m), Gabriel and Pervis Estupinan (£5.0m), basically a top-six defence for just £15.0m. If you do want to go with three premiums, then playing a few of these £5.0m guys in a back four/five could work.
There is no need to look at defensive rotations either really, just play your defenders from the top-six sides every week! The goalkeeper position is the only one you could really look to rotate I guess but even then if one of the Brighton and Hove Albion shot-stoppers becomes the clear no. 1, you don’t even need to do that.
FIRST DRAFT
We discussed prices team-by-team, structure and our initial thoughts ahead of the new season on our first 2023/24 episode of the FPL Wire, which you can check out below.
It’s good to be back!
