Some general FPL tips...

How to play and win at Fantasy Premier League

There are no Premier League matches this weekend because of the FA Cup. As a result, Fantasy Premier League is taking a breather. But Fantasy Gameweek is not. We thought this would be an opportunity to share some general tips on how to play FPL.

The next Gameweek - Gameweek 22 - starts on Friday February 3 with a deadline for transfers and changes of 18.30 UK time on Friday. Manchester United and Leeds have a double gameweek so their players are of particular interest. There will be more on Gameweek 22 in our next edition.

Interestingly, the Manchester United v Leeds game would not have happened if either team had drawn their FA Cup match on Saturday. This is because they would have been playing an FA Cup replay instead. Understanding quirks of the fixture list like this is one obvious tip for FPL. Try to plan ahead. Know when teams will play twice in a week - and therefore have a double gameweek - or when they don’t play at all. This means you can target players in advance who have the double gameweek (and therefore double the chance to score points). Ben Crellin on Twitter is useful to follow for the Premier League fixture schedule. You can find him here. The official schedule is here. We will also help you.

There is a range of FPL experience among Fantasy Gameweek subscribers - from seasoned winners to beginners. We write on the basis that you all understand the rules, including the points-scoring system and chips. However, for those who want a refresher, or have questions, you can get a full run-through of the rules and answers to common questions here. If your question isn’t answered by that page, or you have a more specific question, please do get in touch with Tom or me by replying to this email.

Ok, now let’s get into some deeper tips. The list below is made up of lessons that have been learned by studying the game in detail this season and playing it over the last decade. But they also come from working in finance and markets and speaking to brilliant decision-makers in other fields. There are lots of lessons and ideas that you can bring from other fields into FPL to give you an edge. And football for that matter. Arsenal, for instance, are using tactics inspired by basketball this season. Check out this Twitter thread.

Anyway, into the tips:

This is a season-long game, not a weekly game
A simple point, but an important one, and one that will give you an advantage over other players. Everything about FPL tries to get you to think about it as a week-by-week game - the scoring system, all the weekly coverage by the likes of Fantasy Gameweek (!), and the opportunity to make one free transfer a week. But you can’t win FPL or your mini-league in a week. You win it over 38. So think more long-term with your team, decisions and transfers. Judge a player over a month, rather than a week, and try to avoid just bringing in a player just because they have a nice fixture this week. Sport and football is riddled with uncertainty and luck. Betting that a player will succeed one week and then fail the next is foolhardy. Who could have predicted Manchester City 6 Manchester United 3? Or Manchester City 0 Brentford 2? Don’t be one of those players who regrets taking Ivan Toney out or not captaining Erling Haaland because Man City’s fixture wasn’t great. Instead, make your decisions by looking at long-term trends.

Not doing anything is often the hardest but wisest decision to make
Not making a transfer in a week can feel wrong, but it is a decision in itself and often the right decision. Annie Duke, the former professional poker player and now author, says that the skill that really splits professional poker players from amateurs is knowing when to fold. She has written a whole book on quitting called Quit: The power of knowing when to walk away. The team of the season so far in FPL - the 11 players who have scored the most points overall and could form an eligible team - has 1,297 points. That is a team with no transfers, no captains and no chips. The team would have 1,466 points if it had captained Haaland every week. The overall global leader has 1,471 points, just five points more, but has made 25 transfers, picked a captain every week and used chips. Another point to add to this tip - taking a 4-point hit by using more than your one or two free transfers in a week is rarely worth it. It is usually only worth taking the hit if you are bringing in someone who has two fixtures in the same gameweek - a double gameweek - or covering for an injured player. In these situations you know that 2 of the 4 points you have lost with the transfer should be automatically recovered by appearance points.

Use your chips when it is best for your team, not when people say you should
The conventional wisdom about using your chips is this: use your free-hit when some Premier League teams don’t have matches in a gameweek or a large number of teams have two; use your bench-boost in a week when a large number of teams have two matches or just after you have used your wildcard because you have a strong team; use your triple captain in a gameweek when one of the top players has two matches; and try to use your wildcards around the middle of the period they are available - wildcard one is from August to December and wildcard two is January to May. However, each FPL team is different. You should use a chip if you think it is the right moment for your team. For instance, if you have made a judgement on the quality of a certain team that turns out to be wrong and you need to get all those players out - it could be time for your wildcard. What really matters when deciding to use a chip is establishing if this is the optimum moment in the season when the points difference between using it or not using is largest for your team. That is different for everyone. As a general rule, consider your wildcard the most valuable chip and bench boost the least.

Betting on goals over clean sheets this season has been a winner
At the start of the season we outlined our ZeroForward strategy. This was the idea that you could build a strong team by minimising your spending on forwards to around £20 million or less and spending more on defenders and midfielders. This was because the points-scoring system in FPL heavily favours defenders and midfielders over forwards, and therefore they offer better value. For the most recent example of this, look at Fulham v Tottenham last week. Harry Kane got the only goal and the plaudits, including Sky’s man-of-the-match award. But he only got six points. In contrast, Hugo Lloris got nine points, Emerson Royal nine points, Ben Davies seven points and Eric Dier and Ivan Perisic also got six points. This is because they got clean-sheet and bonus points. None of those players cost more than £5.5 million. Harry Kane costs £11.7 million. The ZeroForward strategy has worked this season, but it has faced unusual pressure because of two key trends - fewer clean sheets and goals being concentrated among a smaller collection of top players, especially forwards. Liverpool, for instance have already conceded 27 goals. Last season they conceded 26 in the entire year. Meanwhile, Erling Haaland has scored 25 goals so far. The joint-top scorers in the league for all of last season - Mo Salah and Son Heung-Min - got 23 each. Haaland accounts for 47 per cent of Man City’s goals. A player who accounted for 47 per cent of Man City’s goals last season would have ended up with an absurd 47 Premier League goals. It’s not just Haaland either. Harry Kane already has 16 goals this season when he scored 17 in all of last year. He has accounted for 40 per cent of Tottenham’s goals, last season he accounted for just 25 per cent. Salah and Son, last season’s top scorers, accounted for just 25 per cent and 33.3 per cent of their team’s goals. There are other examples too - Ivan Toney has 13 goals already this season compared to 12 in all of last year. This is a remarkable swing. Overall there have been 2.77 goals per game so far this season, just below the 2.82 of last season, but that does not tell the full story of what has happened in FPL. The wave of goals makes me think about the “antifragile” theory created by the writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This theory is that in all walks of life you should value things that get stronger amid chaos, not weaker. Betting on goals over clean sheets fits this idea. For a defence to get a clean sheet, a lot has to go right. A defender can play well for 89 minutes and then concede a late consolation goal. The team wins 5-1 but you lose your clean sheet points. The flipside is also true - a forward can play badly for 89 minutes and then get a goal. That is why defenders who offer the potential for goals and assists alongside clean sheets are so valuable, and worth paying for. But also why, especially this season, you should try to get as many attacking players on the pitch as possible.

The key to judging a player is talent + opportunity…
This principle gets a lot of attention in fantasy NFL, where stats like target share for wide receivers and touches for running backs really matter. This is because it doesn’t necessarily matter if a player is talented or not. What matters is if they are talented and get the opportunity to show it by getting the ball. On the flipside, a player may not be talented, but if they are getting opportunities and getting the ball then they may be an interesting fantasy option. The same principle applies in FPL, albeit with some tweaks. It doesn’t matter if a player is talented if they are not getting on the pitch. And it doesn’t matter if they are talented if they are playing in a defensive role and not getting any opportunities to score or assist goals. And it doesn’t matter if they are talented if they are playing in a poor team that doesn’t create many chances. So when judging a player think about not only whether you rate them, but whether they are getting on the pitch and will have opportunities to score or assist goals. Likewise, you may think a player is not very good, but if they are getting opportunities to score then they could be an option in FPL. This is where xG (expected goals) is a useful stat. It helps you make a call on the opportunity side of this equation

…and value also matters in FPL
If talent + opportunity allows you to understand which players are interesting in FPL then the ultimate formula to decide whether to bring them into your team is talent + opportunity + value. An interesting example in FPL this season is Martin Odegaard v Kevin De Bruyne. You don’t need to argue about who is the better attacking midfielder to say that the better of the two in FPL this season has been Odegaard. This is because he costs £6.9 million and has 117 points while De Bruyne costs £12.5 million, nearly twice as much, and has 107 points.

Understand how risky your team is
You can get a general sense of this by looking at the statistics page of the FPL website. That is here. On this page you can arrange players in order of how many FPL teams they are in and how many times they have been transferred-in and transferred-out of teams during a gameweek. For instance, Erling Haaland is in 85 per cent of teams, meaning those teams who do not have him are at significant risk of falling down the overall rankings if he has a strong week. Players who are owned by fewer than 10 per cent of teams are generally regarded as “differentials” in the world of FPL - they can help you rise up the rankings if you make the right call. The same principle applies to your own mini-league. Who are the different players you have who can help you catch-up with the leader? Or, if you are the leader, who can hurt you? If your team has 11 completely different players compared to your rivals in your mini-league then the risk level is high - on the upside and downside. Just make sure you understand the level of risk and are comfortable with your decision.

You can catch-up quickly
Similar to the above, and something I sadly first learned from Tom, who once wiped out a big lead I had at the top of our mini-league over the final couple of months of the season. We did not have radically different teams, but he had a couple of differentials and made a couple of captaincy decisions that turned out better than mine. So don’t feel you have to make drastic moves to catch-up. And don’t feel settled at the top just because you have a lead now. This is particularly relevant this season given Erling Haaland’s performance. Do you risk swapping Haaland for someone else to try to make up a gap to the leader? Not yet.

Triple-up on teams you believe in
Back the best teams, particularly if they have an attractive run of fixtures over the next month, and pick three players from them, the maximum you are allowed per team. Of the top 25 point scorers in FPL this season only one - Rodrigo of Leeds United - plays for a team not in the top-half of the Premier League. In contrast, there are seven Arsenal players and six Newcastle players.

Bonus points are more predictable than you think
Goals, assists and clean sheets lead to bonus points, but so does overall influence on a game. Impect’s Offensive Impect metric looks at a player’s effectiveness in a game - how many players they take out of play, how much they increase a team’s chances of a goal when they have the ball - and there is a correlation between this and who is getting bonus points in FPL. In general, full-backs do well in the bonus point system because they contribute defensively and in attack, plus because they are coming from deep they can take a lot of opposition players out of the game with long passes and crosses. The top bonus point scorer in FPL this season? Kieran Trippier with 31, ahead of Erling Haaland, who has 26…

Ok, hopefully that was all useful. Please hit me or Tom with any questions - and your own tips - by replying to this edition or emailing us. Fantasy Gameweek will be back next week

Graham