Pro Pundits

Why ‘Top 50k’ should be the new ‘Top 10k’ in FPL

Ex-FPL winner Simon March: How to avoid getting carried away with your GW1 picks

For well over a decade of Fantasy Premier League (FPL), a top 10k rank finish has been the gold standard target for most of us managers. While there are some who achieve it so regularly that it probably feels more like a formality than an achievement at this point, for the mortals among us, a 10k finish has been the iconic badge of honour, the shorthand for ‘I’ve had a really good season’ and, if you’ve managed more than one, a clear demonstration that, at some point at least, you were pretty good at this game.

A top 10k finish will always be a great achievement in FPL but, as the game grows in size, it no longer represents what it used to; a highly-challenging yet achievable goal. Instead, top 10k has become a somewhat anachronistic and perhaps overly-elitist measure of managerial prowess. This article will discuss why this is the case and argue why we might need to adopt a new standard for what a ‘Top 10k’ finish used to mean and, I will argue, that this standard should be ‘Top 50k’.

The Game Has Grown

The first and most obvious argument for why we should consider reviewing the 10k standard is that the game is much, much bigger than it was when that standard was established. I had my first top 10k finish in 2012 when, I believe, there were about two million players but now, ten years on, there are over nine million. In fact, if you finish in the top 5.3 million this season, you will have beaten more managers than it took for me to win FPL in 2015.

To put it another way, a top 10k finish 10 years ago would have put you in roughly the top 0.5% of all managers whereas a top 10k finish this season would put you in the top 0.1%; there is a world of difference between those figures.

In pure probability terms, the more people that play the game, the more difficult it becomes to succeed in it or, rather, to succeed as a result of skill alone. That’s not to say that anybody ever did succeed as a result of skill alone, but with nine million opponents playing a game, it is highly likely that a good proportion of those will outperform you on the basis of luck, even if their technique is objectively worse than yours. This effect will compound the bigger the game grows.

In addition, it’s not simply the fact that there are a lot more people playing FPL now but there are also a lot more people remaining active throughout the whole season. While I don’t have access to the numbers themselves, in the past you could sense that outsized gains were achievable simply by not losing interest halfway through the season. Nowadays, those gains still exist in some form, but they are far less significant. For most people, a really good rank requires a season-long effort.

The Gap Between Serious and Casual has Narrowed

Speaking of technique, however, it would be wrong to say that skill is no longer a factor. While FPL managers have good and bad seasons by their own standards, it is no accident that those who take the game more seriously tend to do better more consistently than your average player. Indeed, there are managers and content creators within the FPL community who are having incredible seasons right now, and some are even flirting with the possibility of winning the whole game.

So skill and dedication are not dead as factors in FPL and never will be, however big the game grows but, aside from the quantitative argument detailed above, we also need to factor in the qualitative element that the skills and techniques that tend to make a good manager are no longer solely the purview of those of us who stumbled across an FPL blog a decade or so ago and stuck around for the stats tables.

Nowadays the ‘secrets’ of FPL success and the information necessary to gain an edge over rival managers are more easily accessible and more plentiful than ever before. The net effect of this is that there are not just more FPL managers playing the game but more with the toolkit required to play it well.

In totality, whether it be the number of people playing, the increased luck factor or the growing sophistication of the average player, achieving a good FPL rank is becoming an ever more challenging objective. This is why I believe we should be looking at ‘top 50k’ as the ‘new’ top 10k.

Why Not Just Stick to 10k?

The counter-argument to this might be that, even if these factors have made the game more challenging, they shouldn’t necessarily dictate how we judge success. Lots of games and sports have become more competitive over the years without the definition of ‘doing well’ being relaxed. Heaven forbid that the dog-eat-dog theatre of war that is FPL should become the domain of participation-trophies or *shudder* ‘just playing for fun’. The competitive spirit that surrounds FPL is a big part of what makes it so compulsive. However, that is not the reason why 50k should be the new 10k.

A top 10k finish was always supposed to be an exclusive club but not necessarily an ‘elite club’. The point of it was that, if you were a dedicated player, it typically remained just about achievable as a goal at least up until the business end of the season and this added a lot of engagement and motivation for that type of FPL manager.

Nowadays, unless you have an extraordinary run late on, your chances of a top 10k finish are probably more-or-less determined by the start of the final third of the season, probably even earlier. Because we don’t talk about breaking the top 50k with the same sort of reverence that we talk about breaking the top 10k, we find at this stage, a small (and ever-decreasing relative to the whole) group of managers in and around the 10k with lots to compete for followed by, well, everyone else. It’s a bit like how you might imagine the lower leagues would be without the play-offs. 

There are tens of thousands of managers in and around 50k who, for reasons explained above, should feel like they’re having a great season with everything to play for, but because our conventions and our standards of success haven’t evolved or expanded along with the game, instead these managers are probably just waiting for the season to end.

Why 50k? Well, technically we’d be best served by shifting to a percentage-based model where we’re all aiming for the top 0.5% and the target evolves automatically alongside the number of players but, probably because we look at ranks in absolute terms, that model never seems to catch on. ‘Top 50k’, on the other hand, is probably just about catchy enough to stick and, being the equivalent of ‘Top 10k’ about ten years ago relative to the number of players then and now, it should serve us for another few seasons at least, depending on how fast FPL continues to grow.

Conclusion

A top 10k finish may never not be an iconic target in FPL, particularly for us old-school managers, but it no longer means what it used to mean. The game is far bigger and more competitive than it was when ‘Top 10k’ emerged as the de facto target for serious FPL managers looking to measure themselves against more than just their mini-leagues.

A top 10k finish is now arguably closer to what a top 1k finish used to represent and there’s a reason why ‘top 1k’ was never the standard. For a competition to be compelling, targets need to be challenging but also realistically achievable for a big enough group of people so as to maintain the competitive motivation at a scale that can sustain its community. This cannot be done if those targets are too narrow, or too elitist in nature.

If you are the type of FPL manager who understands the difference between finishing 10,000 and 10,001 in the world, you will also understand why finishing in the 40,000s versus in the 50,000s or 60,000s should also matter but, right now, I’m not sure that it does and the game suffers as a result. That’s why we need to adopt the top 50k as the standard target for serious managers.

Postscript; coincidentally, yes I have just broken into the top 50k for the first time this season, I’m really not sure why you’d think that is important…

369 Comments Post a Comment
  1. OptimusBlack
    • 10 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Pick one to get from city from those
    A- Laporte
    B- Dias
    C- Mahrez
    D- Foden

    1. McSauce
      • 14 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      C

    2. Silent Hunter
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      C

    3. Indpush
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A

  2. McSauce
    • 14 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Dias or Laporte?

    1. Bavarian
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Laporte

    2. Silent Hunter
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Dias

    3. Indpush
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Laporte

  3. AC/DC AFC
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 8 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Since Pep and his boys pepped the final, are they less tempting for the league run in?

    They've got to be deflated but should be professional enough to pick themselves back up.

    Or is it easier to just focus on Son and Spurs?

    1. Qaiss
      • 8 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Man City will still win the league, not sure who they will drop points to, especially if West Ham go through today.

    2. ebb2sparky
      • 13 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      I think it’ll make them even more determined to win the league. They won’t want to see Liverpool winning the quadruple.

      1. AC/DC AFC
        • Fantasy Football Scout Member
        • 8 Years
        1 year, 10 months ago

        Yeah, you're probably right on that.

        I also thought that Pep may leave this summer with a Champions League win, as that still eludes them he may go for it again with Haaland.

        In a footballing sense it's good to see the £100m for Grealish wasn't enough to win it. But i get it's against Real Madrid.

        Liverpool have shown they could well have beat them again anyhow.

  4. Piggs Boson
    • 12 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Who scores more iyo?

    A. Saka (LEE, tot, new, EVE)
    B. Zaha (WAT, avl, eve, MUN)

    1. Holmes
      • 10 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A

    2. Bavarian
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A

    3. Calv1n
      • 2 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A

    4. Il Capitano
      • 3 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A

    5. Silent Hunter
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A

    6. Piggs Boson
      • 12 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A

      1. Rohirrims
        • Fantasy Football Scout Member
        • 8 Years
        1 year, 10 months ago

        lol

    7. OptimusBlack
      • 10 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A

    8. Camzy
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 13 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Saka easily.

    9. Natflax
      • 1 Year
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Doesn't everyone love answering the easy questions lol

    10. Grande Tubarão
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 2 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A

  5. Viper
    • 14 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Which combo looks best for this week & Gw38

    A. KDB & Martinelli

    B. Diaz & Richarlison

    C. Diaz & Jesus

    D. Diaz & Dias

    1. Holmes
      • 10 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A

    2. Deulofail
      • 8 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      C>A>B>D

      1. Rohirrims
        • Fantasy Football Scout Member
        • 8 Years
        1 year, 10 months ago

        this

    3. Silent Hunter
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A

  6. Calv1n
    • 2 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Start:
    1. Ramsdale
    2. Foster

    Captain:
    A. Son
    B. KDB
    C. Saka
    D. Mount

    1. Silent Hunter
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      1 , B

      1. Bucket Man
        • 5 Years
        1 year, 10 months ago

        Agree with this

  7. Kloppage Time
    • 8 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    I´m thinking or either Mahrez or Foden as my third City player to replace Mount, but I should I bring in Saka instead?

    Yes/No

    1. Sea-goals
      • 8 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      No. I like City despite the minutes in the CL. Foden seems the safer bet but Mahrez is tempting. I'd go Foden

      1. OptimusBlack
        • 10 Years
        1 year, 10 months ago

        But Foden played 120 minutes dude

    2. Camzy
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 13 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Don't replace Mount imo.

    3. Indpush
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Keep Mount

  8. checkit_j
    • 4 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    What to do with this crew?

    A)Kdh - Gordon ? Too sideways?
    B)Pukki to Jesus?
    C) Roll

    Schm

    Taa - James - Laporte - Cancelo
    Mount - Son - Salah - Coutinho - KDH
    Nketiah

    Pukki - Davies - Gelhardt

    Might TC this week Salah/Son or punt TC Coutinho GW37 to catch up

  9. Il Capitano
    • 3 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    0.3m ITB - 1FT

    Ramsdale
    TAA Robbo Cancelo Laporte
    Salah Saka Kulu Raph
    Kane Pukki

    Foster - Nketiah Ramsey Doherty*

    BB36, no FH for 37:

    A) Doherty > 4.9m Def (Everton, Palace, Leicester, Spurs)
    B) Doherty + Ramsdale > Digne + Schmeichel (-4)

    1. Bucket Man
      • 5 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A. Ramsdale will probably get a clean sheet so could match or even beat Schmeichel. Would get Guehi.

      1. Il Capitano
        • 3 Years
        1 year, 10 months ago

        Cheers

  10. Sea-goals
    • 8 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    How to use my 2FT? FH37, so it's use them or lose them. 1.6ITB

    A. White and Havertz > Laporte and Foden (play 5-4-1 with Barnes on the bench)
    B. Barnes to Foden (play 4-5-1)
    C. Something else?

    My team:
    Schmeichel
    Alonso Matip Robertson Cancelo
    Saka Havertz Barnes Salah(c) Kulusevski
    Kane

    Bench: Foster White Rodriguez Ferguson

    1. Rohirrims
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 8 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Kane and Kulu to Son and Jesus?

      1. Sea-goals
        • 8 Years
        1 year, 10 months ago

        Interesting, thanks! I had been stubbornly sticking with Kane, but this is certainly an option. A bit unsure of Jesus getting minutes

  11. Rohirrims
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 8 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    On a BB this week and will be FH in 37.

    Alisson - Foster
    TAA - Cancelo - James - Laporte - BDavies
    Salah - Sterling - Mount - Saka - KDH
    Pukki - Watkins - Nketiah

    1 FT, 1.6 ITB.
    Going to move Sterling to KdB and could take a hit to bring in Gordon if KDH looks unlikely to start. Any thoughts?

    Don't like Ben Davies all that much but he is needed for GW38.

    1. Sea-goals
      • 8 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      I'd stick with Gordon. He's more attacking and against Watford in one of the games. Most likely both of them blank

  12. FPL MAN 123
    • 6 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    G2G?
    1FT in the bank.
    FH next week.
    *DGW

    Ramsdale*
    TAA* | VVD* | James*
    Salah*(TC) | Saka* | Maddison* | Kulu* | Coutinhio*
    Kane* | Dennis*

    Foster* | Broja | Schar | White*

    1. FPL MAN 123
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      tempted with a -4

      White and Maddison > Fodder & Mount

  13. TopBinFC
    • 2 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Had Foden & Saka on WC, changed to KDB & Odegaard, yay or nah?

    1. Rohirrims
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 8 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Nah

  14. Taegugk Warrior
    • 5 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Alonso or diaz..?
    Already have cancelo & james

    1. Bucket Man
      • 5 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Alonso for attacking upside.

  15. Tommo1212
    • 3 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    I personally think you should always play your strongest lineup when available.......but with potential rotation or so called minute management , whatever you want to call it these days...how many mins will these 3 assets get across the DGW?

    A - Mount (Wol/lee)
    B - Foden (New/Wol)
    C. Bowen (Nor)

    Thoughts?

    1. Hktrader88
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 5 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      A. I expect 90 in the first game. If Spurs lose and Chelsea win then benched in the 2nd.

      B. Benched in the first, probably 0 minutes. Starts 2nd

      C. I expect he will play. West Ham need to secure 7th.

  16. Tigger_7
    • 2 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Have Cash & Coutinho (FH in WK 37)
    Switch out for -8 to Alonso & Saka??

    1. Tigger_7
      • 2 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Using BB this week

    2. Indpush
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      No

  17. Trovsmash
    • 10 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Playing my BB, some feedback would be greatly appreciated 🙂

    Pope
    TAA James Laporte Cash
    Martinelli Saka Salah Son Ramsey
    KAne

    Dubravka Broja Hwang Holgate

    A. Kane & Martinelli to Pukki & KDB -4
    B. Broja & Pope to Nketiah & Pickford -4
    C. Kane & Martinelli to Foden & Rich -4
    D. Kane & Holgate to Richarlison & Cancelo -4

    1. AC/DC AFC
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 8 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      B but can you afford Broja to Nketiah on his own?

  18. dabber7
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 3 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Hey guys, for the rest of the season ...

    A) Guaita & James
    B) Pickford & Laporte

    Many thanks

    1. Bucket Man
      • 5 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Probably B.

    2. AC/DC AFC
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 8 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      I know they've got the motivation and fixtures but Everton's away form has been terrible.

  19. BoroPhil
    • 2 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    On BB, all DGW players
    Schmeichel, Foster
    Cancelo, James, TAA, VVD, Laporte
    Salah, Saka, Havertz, Gordon, Foden
    Pukki, Watkins, Nketiah

    1FT. £1.1 ITB

    a) Foster to Pickford
    b) Havertz to Maddison
    c) Watkins to Richarlison
    d) something else

    FH37 so rolling burns a transfer

    1. Bucket Man
      • 5 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Would probably go C. Will Maddison play both games?

  20. thomashl
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 7 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Mount to Foden for free this week or no?

    1. Indpush
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      No. Use it for something else or roll

  21. SpaceCadet
    • 10 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Best defender under 5.4m for the dgw?

    Schmeichel dubravka
    Robertson cancelo XXXX white schar

    1. fish&chips
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 13 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Matip

      1. SpaceCadet
        • 10 Years
        1 year, 10 months ago

        Good shout, cheers

  22. hobfpl
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 2 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    I have to go aggressive in my mini league for the final few gameweeks.
    1st 2nd and 3rd have the following same players in common:
    Alonso, TAA, Salah, Saka, Mount.
    Think i need to roll the dice here inorder to catch 1st and 2nd.
    I need to transfer out some of the common players and hope to catch them on points.
    Who would ye move out and for who ?

    1. Indpush
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Alonso for Laporte or Dias

  23. fish&chips
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 13 Years
    1 year, 10 months ago

    Would you take a hit to move havertz or mount on?

    Trouble is all of the options are rotation risks themselves so not sure it's worth it even though I'm unlikely to get 2 games out of them

    Foden, Diaz , Jota, maddison

    1. Indpush
      • 6 Years
      1 year, 10 months ago

      Nope. Keep them this week