The final window on the FPL advent calendar has been opened, the big day is finally here! Whether you are a fantasy veteran or a first-season newbie, welcome to one of the most exciting days of the year – the first day of the new Fantasy Premier League season!
At the moment over five million FPL managers are busy tinkering with their teams, making final tweaks based on the new arrivals in yesterday’s transfer window and the latest team news emerging today. It can, at times feel overwhelming.
To help ease the pressure a little, David, Neale (aka Skonto Rigga), and the Fantasy Football Scout team, together with our wonderful community of passionate FPL managers, have been busy collating all the useful nuggets of FPL gold.
Firstly, don’t get caught out – the FPL deadline for Gameweek 1 is 7pm UK time. With more teams starting the season than ever before, be aware that the computer servers at FPL towers will undoubtedly be under increased pressure. It is advisable to select your final squad in plenty of time, just in case the servers slow down.
One of the big decisions FPL managers have to make every week is who to trust with the captain’s armband. A decision which editor-in-chief David Munday, described as quite easy on the first captaincy video of the season. The stand-out pick in the opinion of both David and Joe is Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah.
In the video, David went on to highlight the relatively low number of clean sheets Liverpool’s opponents, Norwich, kept in the Championship last season compared to the teams around them, and the number of defensive injuries they are currently suffering.
Using the new ‘Flat-track Bully’ feature in our Members’ area, David then backed up his selection of Salah by revealing that, last season, the Egyptian scored an impressive 20 goals and managed 7 assists against teams outside the Premier League top six. In the 2017/18 season the totals were 22 goals and 6 assists. In other words, Mohamed Salah is a safe bet which, more often than not, is exactly what we want with our captain.
However, if you would like to consider another option – perhaps you are like former FPL winner Ben Crabtree, an Everton fan who won FPL without selecting a Liverpool player for the entire season – the Captain Sensible article highlights some enticing alternatives.
One of the challenges of playing FPL is deciding which premium-priced players to own given our limited budget of £100m. The dilemma was articulated by James (aka HamezMace) in the must-read FPL Question Time:
“Can you fit Kane, Sterling, and Salah into the same team?”
Sam from FPL Family admitted:
“It’s impossible to fit all the premium assets into your fantasy team – I’ve tried!”
The answer according to Ted (aka Rotation’s Alter Ego) and Tom from Who Got The Assist? is to go with captain favourite Salah and Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling. Tom explained:
“My judgement is that the City and Liverpool midfielders are two who will end up being the highest-scoring players that I ideally will own all season, with the all-important captaincy armband passing between them.”
In the article featuring a panel of FPL experts, the FPL General revealed that he will be going with as many as three or four £6.0m+ defensive picks. While Tom (aka avfc82) pointed out the potential value in a certain Leicester City asset:
“It’s hard to look past Ayoze Pérez for me. Reclassified as a midfielder, Pérez scored 12 Premier League goals whilst at Newcastle last season. Now playing in a better team, you’d expect him to profit from Rodgers attacking approach and up that output.”
Of particular interest to FPL managers on the opening day of the season is the latest team news. Neale has collected all the most pertinent quotes from both today’s press conferences and yesterday’s press conferences. Using that knowledge, Neale has updated the incredibly useful Team News section of the website, featuring best-guess lineups and the latest news on a team-by-team basis.
Our Community have also been adding productively to the site with a number of thoughtful contributions. TheFantasyFreÆK, an experienced FPL manager who once finished fourth overall, started a Hot Topic on 10 things you might have missed and need to know before FPL starts.
For managers looking to find the missing piece to their FPL jigsaw puzzle, The Complete Guide to FPL Pre-season groups players according to position and budget making it easier to identify the final player to complete their squads. A wealth of information is contained within.
To highlight only three of a number of excellent community articles: shaun_drift looked at £4.5m Goalkeeper rotations; Limit80 revealed how he used underlying stats to help him to a top 10k finish last season; and Rossi3254 explained why Spurs have the potential to cause a few headaches this season.
Away from the drama of the start of the Premier League, Meltens previewed Gameweek 19 in Fantasy Allsvenskan, while TallestJohn has been helping fantasy managers with their selection in Eliteserien Fantasy, his most recent article previewed Gameweek 16.
To view all our discussions please visit our Hot Topics page, and if you’ve got some analysis, scout reports or features brewing, be sure to visit our community section to submit your article.
If you’re a member and are yet to get to grips with the custom statistics tables, you can view this movie for an explanation of how they work. Also, remember to tag them so that people can find the tables with ease.
COMMUNITY TOURNAMENTS
The regular community tournaments return for the 2019/20 season. To join Fantasy Football Scout FPL League enter ooyz44 in your Leagues’ section on the FPL site. The code to join the FFS Members League can be found on the Members page.
Last season’s winner of both competitions was the FPL champion himself Adam Levy (aka Elvy). Adam’s winning margin in the open-to-all FFS League was 70 points – world number three Andrew Green was second – and in the Members’ League Adam won by 99 points from world number 18 Tore Bjorheim.
Adam also won RedLightning’s Opening Day League last season, he finished 158 points ahead of world number 247 Timothy Shelbourne. The league is running again this season, as usual entries to this mini-league were only open for the first 24 hours following the launch of FPL for 2019/20 season in June.
This season also sees the return of the FFS Head-to-Head Leagues. These will be run by Mark Reynolds (aka MIR) with support from Geoff and Chris Atkinson (aka RMT’s Professor). To participate please join the “FFS H2H League” code: gh0126. Entries will then be put into divisions and leagues according to their HOF rankings. Right now, entry will close with the start of Gameweek 1.
TorresMagic’s Last Man Standing competition returns for a seventh season, and this year the winner will receive free Fantasy Football Scout Membership for the 2020/21 season. Simply enter bcvy39 in your Leagues’ section on the FPL site. The Gameweek 22 deadline will be the closing time for entries, over 3,000 managers have entered so far. Note that for those entering after Gameweek 1, you must pass all the previous safety scores to qualify.
Despite finishing 14,224 overall last season, Alan Robertson (aka Villaweeal) triumphed over 4,614 entrants to lift the title. He followed in the footsteps of previous winners: Nice To Finally Michu, Isco Disco, Miro, Hakchak, and Jam0sh.
In the FFS Mods & Cons mini-league, Mark was unable to maintain his lead as Ted Maw (aka Rotation’s Alter Ego) overtook him on the final day. Ted scored 87 points in Gameweek 38 and finished 633 overall. This is Ted’s first top 1k finish in his 11th season, eclipsing his previous best rank of 33,968. Meanwhile, Mark only managed a disappointing final day score of 47 (-8) and dropped out of the top one thousand.
In more drama on the final day, Andy Sullivan regained the lead to win RedLightning’s Top 10k Any Season mini-league by 13 points from Callum Croal and Craig Till Reumert, finishing as world number 44. The league is running again this year, details of how to enter will be available next week.
There was an extremely close finish in RedLightning’s January to May League with Andrew Hughes holding on to win it by a single point from Vimal Krishnan. Andrew had 8 green arrows in the last 10 Gameweeks, rising from 19k in Gameweek 28 to a stupendous 205 overall.
Ted (aka Rotation’s Alter Ego) claimed the title in The Last Ten Gameweeks mini-league to add to his success in the FFS Mods and Cons. He finished 22 points ahead of Gavin Tarrant. Ted’s top 1k finish is all the more impressive given that he was ranked at 46k in Gameweek 27.
Over the summer, FFS users have been participating in the Swedish Fantasy Allsvenskan. The current leader in the FFS mini-league is Daniel Sebestyen who is currently third in the world.
Daniel has played his ‘Two Captains’ chip and his first Wildcard, but still has the incredibly powerful ‘Park The Bus’ chip left, along with ‘Attack Attack’ and the second Wildcard. He’s 18 points off first place and 14 points behind second place. The overall leader has played all his chips, while the world number two only has his ‘Two Captains’ chip remaining.
Second in the FFS mini-league is Simon Eriksson, 36 points behind Daniel and ninth overall. A further 16 points back in third is Niklas Tysander, who is an impressive 15th overall. It promises to be an exciting finish to season, with nine Gameweeks to go there’s all to play for!
If you are running a community tournament and would like the latest scores included in future Community Round-Ups, please email us a summary of the current leaders and a link to your league, spreadsheet or head-to-head competition at geoff@fantasyfootballscout.co.uk
MORE TEAM-BY-TEAM ANALYSIS CONTENT
Arsenal | Aston Villa (manager) | Aston Villa (defence) | Aston Villa (attack) | Bournemouth | Brighton | Burnley | Chelsea | Crystal Palace | Everton | Leicester | Liverpool | Man City | Man United | Newcastle | Norwich (manager) | Norwich (defence) | Norwich (attack) | Sheffield United (manager) | Sheffield United (defence) | Sheffield United (attack) | Southampton | Spurs | Watford | West Ham | Wolves
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