Locked and loaded GW 6

Have used both the free transfers this week, and the exit plan for Chelsea players has started. Jackson out for Alverez was necessary, Jackson is falling heavily in price, and has looked like a player utterly devoid of confidence, a Million miles from the happy smiling lad we saw in pre-season.

Alvarez will have had well over One Million transfers in by the time deadline arrives, which has to be some kind of record, it has been relentless, and this time of the season am more than happy to ride the price wave.

My defensive transfer was to bring in the differential, Reguilon, I see attacking returns in him, and at 4.4 and only 0.6% ownership I was quite keen to bring him in. Defence is One area where am happy to make a differential play. Without any Man U attackers, if they do go crazy then at least I stand a good chance of picking up an assist or Two. I will wait on a Newcastle defender, for when I remove Chilwell.

Tricky decision this week whether to start Chilwell or the ultra attacking Cash. Will give Chilwell one last chance, if he does not start then he will have to go ASAP.

Good luck all

Locked and loaded gw5

Rolling the free transfer this week, a chance Jackson falls in price before the deadline, but with a match against Bournemouth, and no obvious replacement it seems illogical to sell him at this point, so one of the rare occasions where I have risked allowing a price fall.

The team looking in very good shape, not a single injury anywhere, although that will likely change, so having Two free transfers is key, especially with a few upcoming fixture swings.

Wishlist this week includes a better performance from Chelsea, otherwise will have to remove Jackson should he look poor again.

Resisted the temptation to bring in Son, if I had it would have been for Foden, but craving those Two free transfers. Good luck all

Locked and loaded GW 4

The wildcard was played, mainly to stave off quite a few incoming price falls, and to remove Brighton assets, plus a better keeper rotation.
Have deliberately left over 5M in the bank in case the Foden gamble fails, and can switch to Salah once the Saudi transfer window closes. Liverpools fixtures begin to improve, and want to be able to retain him as an option.

The keepers rotate really well, defence seems really solid, Cash is there for the cash ! and may at some point become a Newcastle player, although it remains to be seen how they handle the demands of the champions league.

Foden has been bought in as an high upside pick, but we know how Pep is so have to wait and see on that. His spot is likely to be my transfer spot, used to bring in high upside picks.

Locked and loaded GW3

This week ended up with just the One transfer, Gabriel to Saliba. The planned move Fernandes to Sterling did not take place as Fernandes held his price, so I can start him against Forest.

Other good news is that Maddison looks to have returned to fitness, he has been a longterm target, so if Fernandes looks like falling in price after the deadline then I will probably make him my priority target.

The captain will be Haaland this week. I could really do with returns from the midfielders this week or they are all going to come under pressure. I could well be on the wrong Arsenal players, and a poor week could well see a temptation to wildcard.

Plans for GW 3

One transfer has been made already, chose the simple Gabriel to Saliba move. Cannot take the chance Gabriel misses out again, and had to act due to an imminent price drop. Was deciding between Saliba, Trippier, Udogie and Gusto. Decided it was a week Too early for Trippier, Udogie I am not convinced is nailed, same with Gusto.

Sterling

With Fernandes looking like falling in price I may have to use my other free transfer. I was going to move to Foden, however it looks like they are bidding on Nunez and Eze, so the last thing needed is more competition for Foden, although he should be ok for the short term.

I have decided to target Luton who are a championship quality side, and have been very impressed by Sterling last week. I have watched every minute of Chelsea in pre season and the first Two matches and Sterling has improved with each appearance. He looks like a new player this season. He is still only aged 28 and should in theory be in his prime. Maybe he will even get to take a penalty or Two

He is playing more like he did in his Liverpool days, after he went to City Pep changed him, not for the better. He is now back to the old Sterling (I hope) reinvigorated with the help of Poch, and with other creative players missing, the onus is now on Sterling to provide the spark.

Here is what Sterling himself says

His performance against West Ham backs up his words. He broke records against West Ham ~ Completed 6 dribbles (previous best 4) ~ 27 sprints (previous best 26) ~ 16 touches in the opposition box (previous best 12) ~ Averaging 7.5 attempted dribbles this season (3.3 PG last term)

So should Fernandes look like falling in price, I shall be taking the risk, and it is a risk, on Sterling. Pre wildcard is a good time to try something different, and if you want to make a crack at the top 1k you need to be proactive, and be slightly ahead of the curve. It is an added risk removing Fernandes before Forest, but I refuse to take price drops, it could backfire, but can’t be ruled by fear.

Playing in a chess tournament this week so may, or may not have time for a locked and loaded.

Locked and loaded GW 2

It has been an interesting first week to say the least. Before a ball had even been kicked there was a team leak concerning Gabriel which I missed. He failed to start GW1, many others swapped at the last minute for Saliba and ended up obtaining a small advantage which currently stands at Four points.

So for me this week has largely been concerned with what to do with Gabriel, I had decided I would sell if his price was going to fall but with no more price changes before the deadline he is still only -48%. His price may fall early next Gameweek which could be annoying as Arsenal do not play until Monday night. If he plays, which I expect him to then all the sales will probably stop, but will it be too late? Hopefully not.

My plan had been to sell a defender next week to bring in James, who sadly is now injured, which means I need a new plan, not something I have time to worry about before the deadline, so the decision is fairly easy for me this week, and that is to roll the transfer, but will have to put some work in over the next couple of days to find a replacement, should Gabriel look like falling in price.

Captain is another easy decision, Haaland, although I have not been that impressed with City this season, and would not be surprised to see a blank, but without Salah I see no other good options. If I owned Salah I would almost certainly have captained him

Here is the final team, unless we hear of any more injuries before the deadline

Locked and Loaded GW1

After plenty of tinkering have settled on a team. Kane leaving the league led to a few late changes. Am now fairly settled on this lineup unless their is late news. It is pretty much the same team I have had for the last Two weeks. They are all decent Fantasy assets, the only one that is in my side due to a good pre season is Jackson, but as Chelsea’s only striker I considered it worth a punt, as he has very strong fixtures after the Liverpool match.

• Proven assets
• Minimum spend on bench
• Cheap keepers
• No risky punts
• Good spread of price points
• 2M in bank

The plan is to save the free transfer, and then look at a Tottenham player for Gw 3

The magic ingredient

Having re-read my 2014/15 blog I believe I have found the source of my subsequent ranking declines. Which is good news, as should be able to rectify the issue. After Five seasons of playing good ABC fantasy I started to try and force success by trying to be too clever. Buying players that had high upside, but were not necessarily proven and solid.

Picking players

As I wrote back then, picking players was never my strong point. I am no better at picking players than anyone else, so clearly picking players was not what got me to the top. There had to be a magic ingredient, something others were not doing as well.

Someone pointed out to me the other day that if you added my finishing ranks together, during that Five year spell they add up to just 3576. Thats not an average, that is the total. Nobody else has achieved that or probably ever will. So what was this ingredient that I am now trying to rediscover?

If it is not picking better players than everyone else then it clearly has to be the way I was managing them, did I Instinctively know when to remove them, was I better than other people at selling? If I am not better at picking players then it seems unlikely I am better at selling them.

I think it is none of the above, I am decent at those things but not exceptional. Having re-read the season, One factor above all other stands out, and that was my obsession, and ruthlessness with money management.

Money management

Time and again, nearly every week I was talking about price implications, sometimes selecting players purely for financial reasons. Nobody was allowed to fall in price, I spent more time on the price change site than the FPL site, more time studying price changes than studying player statistics. Not a day went by that I missed the price change deadline

One of my hobbies has always been share trading, and I bought that financial discipline into my FPL planning. It was more a game of financial management than a point collecting exercise . By Christmas 2014 for example I had a team value of over 108M. Yet had only taken Two hits.

So although I was no better than anyone else at selecting players, I was able to build up more team value than others, so that I could bring in better quality players quicker. The financial management side sounds easy but it is actually quite complex, and requires discipline and patience, and is a part of the game that is not taken seriously by most managers, and a part of the game I excelled in.

Every purchase made was concerned as much about their future value as their points potential. We cannot control how many points a player will score, but we can control how exposed to price falls a player is that we bring in.

Others did it but not as well

I was not the only person trying to build team value, far from it, but I think I was better at it than most. Many only managed it by taking far too many hits, they were not careful enough over which players they bought it, did not see that certain players bring more future price issues with them than others. It is a difficult balancing act. Not easy.

That is the magic ingredient that powered me to those Five top finishes, that and good planning, which my chess training probably helped with, together was a very good combination.

The downfall

After those top finishes, I was in the spotlight and the pressure came on, I started to focus way too much on the players, people were constantly asking me who to bring in etc, and the problem with concentrating too much on the players was that I stopped concentrating on the most important factor, which was controlling the finances.

See, anyone can pick good players. AI can now do it in seconds, we all know who the good players are, yet we all think we have to pick better players than everyone else to win. That is just a small part of it, and that is what I forgot. I began trying to get ahead by picking what I saw as great players before others did.

I criticised others for making sheep picks etc, I thought that to win I had to be different, that picking the same as everyone else meant I could not win. My picks became more extreme, like taking out Haaland last season.

The last few seasons I have barely even looked at the price change website, I completely lost my way, lost my edge, I had lost that magic ingredient.

Will the magic ingredient still work

Now I have rediscovered what gave me an edge will it still work? The initial selection is easy enough, just pick good players that have good fixtures. We already know who they are. No more starting with differentials (boring I know)

The big unknown now is does Money management even matter now? My team at the moment has Two Million in the bank, which quite frankly for GW1 is just ridiculous. Plus if Kane leaves, and Haaland or Salah are injured then money maybe almost irrelevant.

Are my skills now redundant?

Has the dumbing down of the game turned me into a dinosaur? Is saving 0.1 whenever possible and religiously avoiding price drops actually going to make any difference to my final score? It will be a lot easier if Kane stays, without him, then at least I ŵill be able to afford a few extra luxuries than the majority of players.

However even now we can all afford teams entirely made up from players from the top sides. So I suspect the advantage of having an extra Five Million in the bank maybe a lot less than in previous years, but we shall see.

Anyway this season I am back to basics, ABC player selection and tight money management, no more anti sheep picks in a vain attempt to leapfrog over the herd.

Team taking shape

Sat down quietly for an hour or Two and had my first serious look at my team. It is starting to take shape, and has now come down to One or Two 50/50 decisions like Rashford/Fernandes, Nkunku/Jackson and Stones/Gabriel (Arsenal defender or Two midfielders.)

The biggest conundrum is whether to play Two Arsenal midfielders or not, and if so who to replace, Foden or Mitoma. (Probably Foden) For me Mitoma is the best 6.5 pick simply because he has the best Three fixtures. There is Three Million in the bank and the plan is to turn Mitoma into a Tottenham midfielder after GW 3. Either Son or Richarlison.

Jesus/Nunez

I am leaning towards Jesus over Nunez, although the charity shield will ultimately determine which Arsenal players I go with. Martinelli and Havertz are Two contenders I am considering should Jesus look out of form, if that is the case I will go with Nunez up top

Jackson/Nkunku

I was heavily favouring Jackson, the gap has closed a bit now, Nkunku is showing good signs of settling, and there is a decent chance Chelsea buy another striker in the next few weeks. Nkunku is very versatile and more nailed on, but Jackson very good too. If Jesus does not start well I may end up with both Jackson and Nkunku for GW 3, either that or take out Eustapian after GW 3 for James and go double Chelsea defence

Team quite template

It was not a conscious decision to have such a template team, indeed I was all set to start with Chilwell and Jackson long before they suddenly became popular. I see Chelsea and Tottenham as being key this season, those that hop on the right ones at the right time, may well be able to gain an edge.
I plan to have the team set after the charity shield, and will try and refrain from last minute tinkering.

Season 23/24 Back to basics

It has been Nine years since my last post on this blog, in that time much has changed in the world of Fantasy premier league. The game has become far more popular, going from 3M to 10M players, and the amount of content and tools available has risen exponentially.

You tube, podcasts, Algorithms, apps all sit alongside thriving twitter and reddit communities, flooding the internet with information on our game. Now everyone is an expert, and finding an edge appears more difficult.

The game itself has changed, It is no longer just Two wildcards, we now have the awful chips which add another layer of luck, just what you do not need when competing against Ten Million people.

So why am I back posting after this long break? I rediscovered this blog which I had not realised was even still online until recently, and went back and re-read it, mainly to try and find what was now missing from my play. When I was writing, I was regularly finishing in the top Thousand, and wanted to tap into that mindset again.

What I realised is that I have been trying too hard in recent seasons, chasing that next top 1k finish, but have been trying to force it, rushing to differentials, taking too many hits and generally not being calm enough, probably caught up in all the twitter noise etc.

So this season I have decided to go back to basics, to start again. I will be focussing very much on the eye test backed up by a few simple stats such as shots on target, this in conjunction with fixtures and sensible team management.

I believe the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of stats, which are pushing everyone down a narrow road, the stats dictate what all the algorithms spit out, and people blindly accept their decisions, driven by a mass of content creators who in turn are led by the stats. Leading all teams to be almost identical.

I am hoping that going back to basics will cut out all the noise, I also plan to sit down each week and put my thoughts down on this blog, purely for my own benefit, which is how it started in the first place.

Writing, and contemplating what to write, is quite focussing, it cuts out noise and allows a quiet time where good logical decisions can be made. Although podcasting and creating videos is good fun, it is not contemplative.

Summary, Am going back to basics, concentrating on watching matches, and careful planning of transfers etc. I shall not be worrying too much about what other people are up to. One hour concentrating and putting the plans into writing will probably be worth more than Ten hours hanging around on twitter reading long threads. Although I will be doing that too!!