FPL rankings for Gameweek 3...
...and why Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger can help with FPL
"It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent."
That’s Charlie Munger, half of arguably the greatest business partnership in history with Warren Buffett. Munger and Buffett (pictured above) have worked together since 1978 in the small city of Omaha in the United States. From there they have built Berkshire Hathaway into a company that is worth $670 billion today through buying stakes in other businesses, making them two of the richest people on the planet.
That quote is Munger explaining their approach. He and Buffett have said similar things many times over the decades. This is Buffett on why people make bad decisions:
“It’s ego. It’s greed. It’s envy. It’s fear. It’s mindless imitation of other people...And I would say if Charlie and I have any advantage it’s not because we’re so smart, it is because we’re rational and we very seldom let extraneous factors interfere with our thoughts.”
Of course, Munger and Buffett do a detailed analysis about which companies they invest in. But the point they are making here is that they stick to their principles, their strategy and don’t overcomplicate it. They try to think rationally at all times.
The wisdom of Munger and Buffett came to my mind when I was compiling the FGPE 100 index for this week. The ranking of top Fantasy Premier League players so far is dominated by those who delivered a big haul of points in one week and blanked in the other. These include Jesus, Mitrovic, Gross, Henderson, Sa and many others. Anyone who transferred out Jesus after he failed to score or assist in Gameweek 1 (and more than 250,000 people did) was badly hurt in Gameweek 2.
Munger and Buffett’s “don’t do anything stupid and don’t try to be too clever” strategy applies to FPL. Stick to your strategy, don’t overcomplicate it, don’t make hasty transfers. Your players are going to get no points sometimes, accept it.
To illustrate the power of Munger and Buffett’s point in FPL, consider this. The “team of the week” in Gameweek 2 (i.e. the collection of players that would have got the maximum points possible) scored 143 points. No captain or other chips are included in that. However, the most points any real FPL team scored in Gameweek 2 was 139, and they triple-captained Jesus. In other words, there is a big gap between what you can theoretically score and what teams actually score. There is room for manoeuvre, there is room for blanks, there is room for patience.
For those interested, here is the theoretical team of the week for Gameweek 2 and the team of the actual stop scorer. The theoretical team is first…
With that, let’s get into the actual rankings. For those who missed last week’s newsletter, you can find an explainer of what the FGPE 100 (the Fantasy Gameweek Player Evaluator) shows and why it matters here. Munger and Buffett would approve of us trying to be so rational about our FPL investments…
A quick summary - the FGPE 100 tracks which players are delivering the best return on your investment, which is key to doing well in FPL. A player’s FGPE score reflects their points per £million but also how many points a player has scored relative to the best in their position. This allows us to compare what value players are offering across different positions and their potential upside. A player gets an FGPE score for each week and their total is the average of their weekly score. The index will get more and more useful as the weeks go by and the amount of data we have for each player expands. If a player didn’t play at all then they register a DNP and their FGPE score stays the same. If a player scores minus points (hello Mitrovic and Darwin) then they register a 0. Prices are based on what they were for the Gameweek 2 match.
With that, here is the FGPE 100, our ranking of the top 100 players in FPL so far. Like last week, I have included it as a pdf file too for those who want to view it in a different format. Some thoughts on the rankings and the prospects of these players are below…
-It’s still early in the season so treat the rankings with some caution. Big weekly points hauls are having a big impact - just look at Henderson for Forest and Sa for Wolves, who racked up extraordinary scores for goalkeepers after keeping clean sheets, saving a penalty, making other saves and getting three bonus points. Goalkeepers and defenders for teams who have yet to concede a goal also rank highly. Ederson is above De Bruyne and Haaland, for instance. This may seem surprising but City have a 100 per cent clean sheet record so far. If they keep that up for the season (which they won’t - I think…) then Ederson would be the perfect goalkeeper and almost certainly more valuable than De Bruyne and Haaland.
-Schar retains his position at the top after backing up last week’s screamer, clean sheet and three bonus points with another clean sheet for Newcastle at Brighton. However, we said he was unlikely to repeat his Gameweek 1 performance and he didn’t. His xG and xA for the season (expected goals and assists) is just 0.1, according to data from FBref and Statsbomb. At Brighton on Saturday it was zero. I was at the Brighton v Newcastle game and can confirm Schar barely crossed the halfway line. That said, Newcastle look solid at the back and difficult to beat. Schar will probably drop down the FGPE 100 over time but still offers value with Newcastle keeping clean sheets. Just don’t expect those clean sheets to come immediately. Newcastle’s next three matches are tough - Man City at home, Wolves away and Liverpool away. If you don’t own Schar, I would suggest holding off from bringing him in.
-Brentford’s extraordinary 4-0 win over Man United sees Mee (goal, clean sheet, two bonus points), Jensen (goal, assist, three bonus points), Dasilva (goal) and Toney (two assists and one bonus point) all high up the rankings. Unlike Newcastle, their forthcoming fixtures are worth targeting: Fulham away, Everton home, Palace away, Leeds home, Southampton away. Of the players mentioned above, Toney has by far the best underlying stats (there is also the risk that Dasilva loses his place in the team to new signing Damsgaard). Toney ranks sixth overall for npXG and xA (non-penalty expected goals and expected assists) with 1.5, including 0.2 xG and 1.3 xA. This is behind only Darwin, Jesus, Rodrigo, Salah and Gross.
-Talking of Rodrigo and Gross, their position in the FGPE rankings is backed up by their underlying stats, as you can see. Rodrigo has an npXG+ xA of 2 (1.3 xG and 0.7 xA ) while Gross is 1.6 (1.2 xG and 0.4 xA). However, a word of caution on both. Leeds’ next two fixtures are tricky - Chelsea at home and Brighton away, both of whom have strong defences - so you might want to wait on Rodrigo until Gameweek 5 when Leeds play Everton at home. Brighton, by contrast, have attractive fixtures. They play West Ham away, which is tricky, but then Leeds at home, Fulham away, Leicester at home, Bournemouth away and then Palace at home. However, although Gross’s underlying stats look good, I watched him spend a lot of his time wide right and deep at the AmEx on Saturday. Lallana was the Brighton midfielder who got closest to Welbeck. Gross did have a late chance, which gave him an xG of 0.2 for the match, but this was when Brighton were piling on the pressure and had Newcastle pressed deep in their own penalty area.
-Finally, on the premium options, Haaland (31st), Salah (60th) and Son (out of the top 100, 126th overall) have all fallen down the FGPE 100, a reflection of what happens when high-price attacking players don’t register a goal or assist (although Haaland did get an assist). All three of these players have decent underlying stats (Haaland is 8th for npxG + xA, Salah is fourth and Son 12th) so don’t give up hope…
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading. Please get in touch if you have any thoughts or questions about the FGPE 100 or anything else. If you enjoy Fantasy Gameweek please help us to expand it by spreading the word. If you missed it, I have attached Tom’s great piece on what we learned from Gameweek 2, which summarises the key talking points in FPL right now…