What FPL and Poker have in common

Etiquette

It always makes me smile when FPL managers express the hope that others will have a good gameweek.  It reminds me of the way poker players wish each other "good luck" when strictly speaking that's the last thing they should want.  In reality, they usually don't care much whether or not your luck is good, just as long as it doesn't affect how much they win.  Similarly, when FPL managers say "may your arrows be green", they usually don't mind if they are, just so long as theirs are greener!

But that's okay because the world is a better place for such niceties.  Less friendly are the passive aggressive congratulations given to players who have clearly 'lucked out'.  So in poker, aggrieved players often say "nice hand" or "well played" to their arch-nemeses with barely suppressed sarcasm.  The same dynamic is also seen sometimes in replies to FPL tweets when screenshots of lucky autosub outcomes are posted.

One of the most obvious similarities between the two worlds is with the abundance of 'bad beat' stories.  In poker, these are told by victims of perceived misfortune.  In FPL the same kind of hardluck stories are seen all the time regarding either the big points scored by recently transferred out players, or the big points missed on a coin-flip decision.  Deep down we all know it's wrong to inflict such self-pity onto our peers, but it's a compulsion we find tough to resist.

The bête-noire of poker etiquette, however, is the 'slowroll', where someone leads you to believe that you have won a hand, but then turns over a very strong hand.  The FPL counterparts of these offenders are the grandstanders who, having amassed an impressive gameweek score, tweet to ask everyone how many points they've scored before then revealing their own better one.

Same Answers Different Questions

 

The correct answer to most questions posed by poker novices is "It depends."  The same is true in FPL.  Most "Should I transfer in Joe Bloggs for John Doe?" type questions would benefit from precautionary "It depends" first responses.  For example:

• Do you have more pressing problems elsewhere?
• Where are you in your Mini-League(s)?
• How does your squad compare to your ML rivals?
• How will future transfer plans be affected?

These are all valid questions to ask before giving yes or no answers.  In poker, this is like being asked how to play a specific hand in early position in a tournament, where the comparable "it depends" type answer might include the following preliminary questions:

• Are you nearing 'the bubble', i.e., the prizemoney?
• How many chips do you have in relation to the other players at your table?
• Will you have enough chips left to make a move later if losing the hand, e.g., stealing the blinds from passive players to your left?

Skill

One hallmark of a good poker player is discipline when it comes to bankroll management, and most good FPL managers exercise budgetary discipline also.  A bad one makes kneejerk transfers to bring in premium priced players with little regard for no longer being able to afford to replace or upgrade any of their other out-of-form squad members.

Clearly, there are aspects of both games that are beyond our control.  In poker it's the cards we are dealt, and in FPL it's events like injuries and suspensions.  All we can do is try to play optimally in the areas within our control. 

One such area is the weekly free transfer.  A FPL 'shark' knows these should always be used to increase 'expected value', primarily in terms of points, but also with regard to team value.  The 'fish', however, is more likely to make kneejerk moves that leave them wishing they'd hung fire and/or maverick moves that usually share the same fate as those made by poker players guilty of 'fancy play syndrome'.

There is a tendency in the FPL community to describe any transfer not conforming to template as maverick, but there is a distinction to be made between maverick moves and calculated risks.

Luck

Few things in poker are more maddening than being 'rivered' when 'all in' as a massive favourite to win a hand, only for the final face-up card dealt to be the one and only card that gives your opponent a better hand.

The same frustration is felt in fantasy football when head-to-head or mini-league rivals hit the FPL equivolent of such 'one outers' by having an autosub goalkeeper (Gomes, say) make two penalty saves in the same gameweek say, or an autosub outfield player score a brace on a Monday night.

Bad players of poker and FPL will frequently 'suck out' on us, and be rewarded for poor game management, but the good news is that being rewarded for playing badly only encourages them to go on playing badly!

All poker players and FPL managers will experience 'downswings'.  What seperates the wheat from the chaff is how well they cope mentally with an inevitable aspect of the game.  In poker, most players are prone to going 'on tilt' when they experience bad luck.  Such players are as a result more likely to lose money because they’ll be making decisions based on anger and frustration.  In FPL the same can be true if playing in cash prize mini-leagues.
 

Last season, for example, I was so filled with self-loathing about my failure to confirm activation of my Bench Boost chip in GW34, thereby costing me 43 points, that I self-destructively wasted my Triple Captain chip the next gameweek by gambling on serial cameo appearer Coutinho (1 point!).  

Admittedly, I was comfortably winning my main money mini-league at the time, but my fog of despair was so dense that a few weeks passed by before I realised I'd sabotaged any prospect of cashing out in any of my other money leagues.  I'd been knocking on the door of the top one thousand club for several weeks, and those 43 points would have seen me well and truly kick the door down!

Days Of Future Past

The way FPL has evolved over the past few years reminds me of the sea change that happened in the poker world after 2003.  There was a sudden growth in interest in poker after the $2.5 million first prize World Series of Poker Main Event was won that year by Chris Moneymaker, a 27-year-old accountant and amateur poker player from Tennessee, who had won his seat into the event through a $86 satellite tournament in a PokerStars online poker card room.  The 'Moneymaker Effect' would give rise to a new breed of internet poker players who honed their skills online before facing off against old-school competitors.

The poker player stereotypes that had been around for an age were transformed over the course of a decade. The old-school competitors who believed in poker being an art, not a science, based on feel, instincts and reads, were quickly overrun. A new breed of math nerd, guys using a mountain of sortable data from the millions of hands played online began to dominate the game. Math whizzes changed the game using probability theory to their advantage.

Similarly, I think the generation of fantasy football managers, who believed that football knowledge and a 'good eye' were the only requirements for success, are in the process of being overthrown by algorithm builders, probability theorists and statisticians.

Consider yourself warned if you're one of those who underestimates the relevance of maths in FPL. That geeky person who invited you to join his or her money mini-league is probably hustling you!

I think there might have been a typo in Matthew 5:5; perhaps it should have read:

 

Blessed are the Math gEEKs!

Good luck at the tables y'all!

Coley
FPL Poker Player @barCOLEYna

FPL Mangers Treating First WildCard Like A Reload In A Poker Tournament

Seems like this season's first bandwagon is the GW3 WildCard Plan.  It's catching on like wildfire, and leaving me feeling somewhat bemused by how quickly the consensus can change from preaching delayed gratification last season to advocating immediate gratification this.

Some of the data put forward to support this groupthink strikes me as manipulating stats to suit your purpose.  I think the methodology of comparing the number of price fallers versus price risers, particularly in the early weeks of a season, and the aggregate value lost against that gained is too simplistic.  Such analysis is not nuanced enough to take into account the full range of reasons behind market volatility early on.  

Consider, for example, how many casual players are caught out by their selections not getting gametime in the first couple of weeks.  My hunch is they'd account for a sizeable proportion of players dropping value.

The gung-ho attitude I'm observing towards WC1 reminds me of the only live poker tournament I played last year.  It was a reload tournament costing £30 to enter, with the option of paying another £30 for an extra starting stack worth of chips anytime during the first couple of hours.  

I found that this reload option made many players far more liberal with their gambles than they usually are in tournaments where there are no second chances.  At the end of the reload period, all players with their option still intact were invited to top up their stacks.  

Nearly all the remaining players did so, but I declined as I was happy enough with my above average stack.

And as it happened, I finished 4th out of 82, and picked up £425.  By not reloading I'd won 14 times my buy-in, instead of only 7 times had I reloaded.  Obviously, I'll never know if I'd have won more with an additional outlay, but my feeling was it made little difference.

My point here is that, in the same way people played fast and loose with their starting stacks, because they could always reload if things didn't go well in the early stages, many FPL managers are being too short-term in their thinking about playing an early WildCard.  It's like they're treating the first couple of gameweeks as a freeroll, with nothing lost if they don't get off to a good start.  

Just to be clear, I'm not against playing WC1 early.  By all means do so if circumstances dictate it.  I'd have reloaded in my poker tournament too if my stack had been decimated early on. 

As so often with FPL, the sample size in this debate is too small to be meaningful.  And stats only tell us what has happened in the past, not what will happen in the future.  It's not possible to know in advance when our WC1 will prove most useful.  

To actively plan to dispense with it less than a sixth of the way through the first half of the season, though, potentially THIRTY gameweeks before playing WC2, seems unnecessarily loose-aggressive to this poker player.

As with poker, so with FPL.

In order to win a poker tournament, you have to be prepared to lose.  Generally speaking, poker tournaments are won by the more (calculatedly) loose aggressive players, not the tight passive ones.  It is rare for careful, conservative players to plot a course to victory employing a safety first approach.

The seasoned tournament poker players know when the time is right to change gears, and how best to change them.  In poker, the critical phases are often the approach of the 'bubble' (prizemoney threshold), and when nearing 'the final table', which is when the number of players remaining can fit around one table.  This is where the lion's share of the prizemoney is distributed. 

GW32, with double gameweeks 33, 34 and 37 imminent, feels to me like a pivotal point in the FPL season, akin to the approach of the 'bubble'.  At this stage, the weak players are preoccupied with consolidating their position, with not taking any risks, and lasting longer than their mini-league rivals.



In poker, the strong players look to exploit this conservatism by ramping up the risk-taking and trying to establish themselves as one of the tournament 'chip leaders' entering the final table, thereby giving themselves a better shot at winning the tournament.  For them, the top prize is their goal, not simply 'min-cashing' as it's called when you win back what often amounts to not much more than your original stake.
 
With an overall rank of 1,478, and a commanding 175 points lead over my closest rival in my most important mini-league, I'm pretty much guaranteed at least a 'min-cash'.  Many FPL managers in the top 10K will be in a similar position.

The question is whether we settle for seeing how high up in the top 1K we can finish by adopting a cautious approach?  This is referred to as 'laddering' in poker, where players focus on moving up the prizemoney board simply by outlasting their opponents by letting them knock themselves out.  Or do we go for broke and take risks to try to make the final table?  In FPL terms, this would be to put ourselves in with a shout of winning the whole competition entering GW38!

Naturally, as a half-decent poker player, I'm going to be taking the looser, more aggressive approach.  I'd much rather take risks to give myself a shot of making the final table, but have my overall rank suffer, than just ladder my way to a very respectable top 500 finish.

While everyone else is sitting tight and wanting to only play with aces, I'm going to be getting creative.  Anyone can win with aces; the art of poker is winning with the hands that the other players would 'muck' (throw away).  So whilst they're holding onto Kane and/or Alli, and Vardy and/or Mahrez, come DGW34 I'll be trying to scoop the pot with a Martial and Townsend combo maybe.

It's my turn, and I've played my WildCard with a view to playing my Triple Captain chip in GW33 and my Bench Boost chip in GW34.  So it's your call, but I'm ALL IN!

Good luck at the tables y'all!

Coley a.k.a @barCOLEYna

Hitting My Head Against The Top 1K Ceiling

Or, how I went from this...








...to this!

Whereas some players need TLC, some respond best to what is known as 'the hairdryer treatment'.  Step forward please Mr Charlie Daniels, presciently referred to in my last blog as "the poor man's Leighton Baines".  After naming and shaming him then for his woeful 1 point return for my -4 points hit in GW21, I couldn't have hoped for a better reaction as he earned the accolade of 'top player' in the GW22 Dream Team.  In so doing, he spared me the yet more blushes threatened by his predecessor Danny Rose, who made 2 assists and scored 8 points vs SUN just 2 GWs after I'd described him as "now redundant".

We Need To Talk About Wayne.  Clearly, I shouldn't have tempted providence by daring to declare his mishap vs AVL as uncharacteristic.  Hennessey's failure to keep goal properly when faced with a speculative Delph effort will leave a lot of managers awaiting CPL's next team sheet with interest and/or anxiety.

Fortunately for me, having already parted company with Harry Kane, last gameweek's top recommendation for captaincy, I put the armband on Aguero, more as a penitent than a devout believer.  I provided the repentance and he the salvation!  Naturally, as someone who had insurance cover in the form of Eriksen, I was less than happy with the unwelcome gift of a penalty to Kane from the hapless debutant Kirchoff.

And so, I found myself sitting down to the Saturday teatime kickoff having already amassed 80 points from my first 7 players, and knocking very loudly indeed on the top 1K club door, especially as I had Mahrez, Arnautovic, Ozil (or so I believed) and Gomes still in play.

What happened next , however, was a timely reminder that we should never count our FPL chickens before they hatch!

Mahrez missed his second consecutive penalty, with an abysmal effort devoid of the confidence he'd exuded earlier in LEI's campaign; Arnie repeatedly displayed "the attitude of a child" that Mourinho once complained about; Ozil was given a sick note for a broken twinkle-toenail; and, Ashley Williams slapped me down for feeling smug about slighting him in favour of van Dijk a few gameweeks back, denying me a Gomes clean sheet in the process.  (For what it's worth, I still favour the SOT player going forward, even though he'll be on bench warming duties for the next 2 games.)

Thus, my last 4 players, featuring a 4 points cameo from Vardy, contributed a paltry 10 additional points.  So instead of getting my name on the Top 1K Club VIP guest list, I shuffled my way towards the back of the queue in around about two thousand, three hundred and sixty ninth place. 

Still, 90 points isn't too bad, so I mustn't grumble, as we British like to say.  Onto my GW23 Preview, which can hopefully continue the onwards and upwards trajectory.

Transfer Business

My pronouncements two blogs back on the end of the Ighalo party have still not been made to look as silly as those people who are always found in the kitchen hoping to greet another pretty goal.  (Please feel free to tweet me the song reference above to @barCOLEYna for your fifteen seconds of fame!)

ATTACK

LEI, MUN and SOT all reenter calculations for the next 6 GWs, with the first named expected to drop away again, due mostly to 2 tricky fixtures in GWs 25 & 26.  Thereafter though, they embark on a very tasty run of fixtures again, so there's certainly cause for optimism that they'll be back in the goals again.

'How Do You Solve A Problem Like Mahrez?'

Having been taken off penalties, the writing is on the wall for Mahrez, and a strong case can now be made for offloading him, especially as his price is probably set to plummet.  One man's poison is another man's treasure, however, and those who offloaded Vardy to bring Aguero in, may be looking back on that transfer with some regret the next time LEI are awarded a penalty.

Knowing which teams are on the up or in decline is one thing, but the tricky part is getting your timing right.  It's all very well 44,432 managers bringing Daniels in this week, but surely it's better to be ahead of the curve than behind it?  Hence, I'm introducing a new feature to my blog, which will hopefully make entry and exit points for attacking and defensive assets clearer.  Obviously, we all have differing budgetary constraints and transfer priorities, so these are purely a guide to the optimal times suggested by my spreadsheet.  Inevitably, some points will be missed, but:

"Don't waste your time on jealousy; 

Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind.  

The [FPL] race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself [and your mini-league rivals]."

(That's another fifteen seconds of fame going for a Burton Albion to whoever

tweets @barCOLEYna first with that particular song reference.)

Live Arrivals & Departures Board (ATTACK)

DEFENCE

4 new entries onto our DEF assets chart for the 6 gameweek period commencing GW23, easily the most significant of which is EVE, who mark their seasonal debut in this particular chart.  You may recall earlier in the season when GW11 was being heralded by many to be the threshold for tripling up on the blues.  My spreadsheet advised against investment in their defensive assets at that time, and I warned that the seeming turning point in their fixtures might be but a mirage, and so it proved, from a defensive point of view at least.

After touting "the poor man's Leighton Baines" to you a couple of blogs ago, however, it's nearly time to turn to the rich man's equivalent.  Namely, erm, yeah, you've got it:  Leighton Baines.  I say nearly because my new Arrivals & Departures Board (see further below) tells us that Clean Sheet (CS) points are not due until GW25.  That said, EVE's attacking prowess continues to rank highly in my scoring charts, so I wouldn't discourage you from trying to be the early bird catching some [assist/goal] worms!  I generally prefer to wait for good ATT prospects to coincide with good CS prospects though before I bring in an expensive defender.

Only AVL from the 3 teams falling down my chart drop off our radar completely for the time being.  ARS & LEI look likely to remain under the microscope when I do this again for GW24.  The former team has such heavily owned assets, that they will only be included in my Arrivals & Departures Board when significant turning points arise.  Likewise with MCI & TOT.

Live Arrivals & Departures Board (DEFENCE)

Having endorsed sales of Clyne and Moreno in my last blog, my Arrivals & Departures Board now shows GW25 to be the next disembarking point for LIV.

BOU heeded my call last time, to give us a reason to keep their DEF assets, with such aplomb, that they now top both the 6 GW charts for GW23-28, as well as the early forecast for the one spanning GW24-29.  Thus the Daniels bandwagon seems justified to me.

Excuses were made for NOR against STO, but none such could be made vs BOU.  Clearly, they are to be avoided away from Carrow Road, but they are still worthy of consideration for any budget home rotations for the time being.

O Captain! My Captain! 

Whereas most managers base their decision on who to captain purely on which players are in form, my approach is to ask which teams are likely to score the most goals that gameweek, and then see if there are any obvious candidates for the armband from those teams.  The 8 teams identified by my spreadsheet as likely to score the most goals in GW23 are shown below:

Dangerously for me, I have strong representation from both EVE & ARS in my squad, meaning I will likely be hiding behind my sofa when MCI visit the Boleyn Ground.  It's looking like there'd have to be some momentous news emerge from the pre-match press conferences to prevent me from captaining Lukaku*, who has remarkably been shipped out by some 46,427 managers this week (at the time of writing).  They are probably doing so to belatedly fund the acquisition of Aguero, and it is to be hoped that this will be a huge advantage to those of us owning both.  After all, EVE are ranked 2nd for expected goals in the next 6 gameweeks.

ARS are ranked above them, and this is the GW I've long had one eye on to dismay and dumbfound my mini-league rivals by adding one Alexis Sanchez to my squad.  I'll be monitoring the noises eminating from The Emirates Stadium closely over the next few days.

* No momentous news, but I've subsequently compared MCI's key ATT stats away with EVE's at home, together with WHM's key DEF stats at home vs SWA's away, and that has swayed me into captaining Aguero.  Remember: my spreadsheet doesn't make allowances for things like the difference that Aguero and Silva returning to full fitness and match sharpness can make!

Keeping Clean Sheets

My spreadsheet identifies the 6 teams below as likely to concede the least number of goals in GW22:

My 5 selections last week only conceded 4 legal goals (I'm NOT going to count Terry's blatantly offside last minute equaliser!) in the process of delivering 2 clean sheets.

 Predicted Scorelines

Disclaimer:  Betting on correct scores is a mug's game.  These predictions are intended only as indicative of home teams' recent home form and away teams' recent away form.

Season Ticker

Lastly, the screenshot below provides an overview of all teams' next 6 fixtures, from which all of the recommendations above are drawn:

 

Key: Dark blue is best and dark red the worst. The top table relate to expected goals scored, 
and the bottom one to expected goals conceded.


As ever, please feel free to comment or ask questions, either below or via my twitter account @barCOLEYna.

Actually, I have just been asked a very good question via a Twitter DM that I think the answer to would be useful to share here: 

In the Expected Goals Scored (next 6 games) chart in the ATTACK section under Transfer Business, LEI are predicted to average 8.3 goals, but they don't feature in the projected chart for the GW24-29 period, meaning they are expected to score less than WBA's 5.9, yet the top table in the screenshot of my season ticker directly above seems to contradict this because 8.3 less the 1.6 expected in GW23 equals 6.7!  How come?

Well, what you don't see here is next GW's projected season ticker based on the scores predicted for GW23.  Each team's last 3 scores gets altered in either the home or away columns every time they play.  Thus, it is a constantly changing, ever evolving fixture ticker!

Please refer to my 'New Year's season ticker Resolution' blog for further insights into the 'philosophy' underpinning my approach to FPL.

Coley.

Walking Off A Cliff

Post-Mortem Examination

The trouble with putting time and energy into spreadsheets is that you can easily become a slave to the algorithms you devise.  GW21 saw me ignore the disclaimer I put in my New Year's Day blog when I stressed "my tables are to be used alongside your own judgement and knowledge, NOT instead of them!"

And so, I took a hit (!) to bring in Daniels of BOU because of WHM's recent poor goalscoring record away from home, despite my advertising to others that there was a potential fly in the algorithmic ointment:

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the well known gamechanger that is Dimitri Payet. 

Going into Wednesday night's fixtures I was staring into the abyss having garnered a total of zero points (net) from my 3 Tuesday night players.  Ultimately, 33 points (after -4), and a fall of only 352 places to an overall rank of 16,270 seemed like a lucky escape.  My bench was nearly ideal, in that all 4 subs scored 2 points only, after my calculated risk to bench Ozil (my lowest scoring attacker) and Cresswell.

FPL is apt to make a fool of anyone making rash statements.  And boy, it sure made a fool out of me for some of the things I said in my last blog!

 "Nor would I be supplementing him with Giroud or Ramsey just now."

13 & 11 points respectively!

"..good news for this Hennessey and Ward holder.."

2 & 1 point(s) respectively! 

"The top budget enabler in FPL right now looks to be R Bennett.."

-1 point! 

By way of mitigation, my Ramsey sale was part of a supposedly cunning plan to bring Sanchez in for GW23.  Moreover, he'd only yielded me 7 points total in the 3 games I fielded him prior to GW21.

And it took a (dare I say uncharacteristic?) clanger from Hennessey to transform 11+ points for my double CPL DEF into 3.

On the upside, my spreadsheet was responsible for me getting some decisions right:

"a mass exodus [of Vardy] seems both likely and justifiable"

"the end of the party for Ighalo owners"

"..transferring in of van Dijk rather than a SWA DEF a couple of gameweeks ago, looks much better in this light.." 

- 8 points vs best case scenario 0 points.

"If Arnie comes through unscathed then I might well jump aboard the bandwagon.  I'll also be keeping a close eye on developments with Walters.."

- 5 points from Arnie (C) was most from my attacking players, 

and Walters scored 7.

 Coroner's Report

RULE 43:  There are many valuable lessons learned from these inquests.  The purpose of an inquest is not to apportion blame, but to answer some questions: 

•  Who is dead to us
•  When do they become dead to us

The answer to those questions, as far as I'm concerned, are our attacking assets from STO and BOU, and defensive assets from LIV and BOU.  Now I know STO ATT and BOU DEF assets were bigged up in my last blog, but at the risk of going all Kenny Rogers on you:  

"you've got to know when to hold 'em, 

know when to fold 'em, 

know when to walk away, 

know when to run.."  

I hadn't intended for Arnie to be only a two gameweek stand, but there you go.  Perhaps, at some point in the future, he'll be back.

The value of defensive assets from LIV, BOU, NOR & SOT have taken a serious knock.  Whereas there's no surprise regarding the first 3 named, given they each conceded 3 goals midweek, it might seem strange that SOT should also be included given their clean sheet last night vs WAT.  Thems the vagaries of my spreadsheet I'm afraid.  There is a rational reason for such anomalies, but time and space do not permit an explanation here.


Transfer Business

ATTACK

ARS and EVE trade places at the top of my expected goals chart, and I wouldn't presume to dissuade you from supplementing your Ozil with say a Ramsey or a Giroud!  LIV, WHM & AVL are GW22's new entries, and the likes of Firmino and Payet are going to be deservedly popular.  Especially the latter.  

I've improved this section by adding a column suggesting optimal entry and exit points for each of the teams below.  Of particular note, is the fact that AVL make it onto this list despite being deemed irrelevant for the first half of the 6 GW period under consideration.  Certainly, I'm going to be monitoring them closely in the meantime, on the look out for a killer differential.

As forewarned in my last blog, STO did indeed peak with last week's 3rd place, and not even the slight possibility of a DGW in GW25 should discourage managers inclined to sell Arnautovic, Bojan and Shaqiri. 

As can be seen above, BOU have a much longer period of grace, with which to convince us to give them a stay of execution.

The screenshot below offers a sneak preview of what the scoring chart above is projected to look like for GW23 should the unthinkable happen, and every scoreline predictions offered further below comes true.

DEFENCE

The unexpected goalfest that was GW21 has played havoc with the rankings for defences.  MCI, LEI, AVL AND WAT all enter or reenter the chart for GW22, and from these teams, Sagna and Fuchs will be understandably popular.  

As stated earlier, it's probably advisable to start drawing up plans to offload defensive assets from the four teams immediately highlighted in red above.  LIV are the biggest priority, so I'd not discourage prospective Clyne and Moreno sellers.  Excuses can be made for NOR, however, given O'Neil's moment of madness last night left them with 10 men for a whole hour vs STO.  It was still goalless at that point, and so it's quite possible that they've been prematurely written off.  They have the luxury of 5 GWs to earn a reprieve.  Similarly, SOT have 4 GWs to spare me the hassle of trading van Dijk in.  BOU have but 3 GWs to spare my blushes for my own moment of madness, my -4 points hit to bring in Daniels, the poor man's Leighton Baines.

Below is what GW23 is projected to look like should all things remain equal, which of course, they never do!

O Captain! My Captain!

Seemingly, most managers base their decision on who to captain purely on which players are in form.  My approach is to ask which teams are likely to score the most goals that gameweek, and see if there are any obvious candidates for the armband from those teams.  The 8 teams identified by my spreadsheet as likely to score the most goals in GW22 are shown below:

GW22's most popular captain pick is likely to be Harry Kane and this chart wouldn't put you off.  Payet should prove a popular differential pick, and WHM look good for at least 1 goal.  Anyone looking for a one gameweek punt could do worse than Firmino judging from the number of goals LIV are expected to score versus their arch-rivals MUN.

 

Keeping Clean Sheets

My spreadsheet identifies the 5 teams below as least likely to concede goals in GW22:

Last week, only ONE of the seven teams I nominated as least likely to concede goals kept a clean sheet.  Granted, it took a worldie from Howson to deny me (and STO) another one, but even so, it was a poor showing.  Let's see if my spreadsheet can do better when limited to five nominations.  Maybe less really will be more this GW.

 Predicted Scorelines

Disclaimer:  Betting on correct scores is a mug's game.  These predictions are intended only as indicative of home teams' recent home form and away teams' recent away form.

Lastly, the screenshot below provides an overview of all teams' next 6 fixtures, from which all of the recommendations above are drawn:

 

 

Key:  Dark blue is best and dark red the worst. The top table relate to expected number of goals scored, and the bottom one to expected goals conceded.

As ever, please feel free to comment or ask questions, either below or via my twitter account @barCOLEYna.

Please refer to my 'New Year's season ticker Resolution' blog for further insights into the 'philosophy' underpinning my approach to FPL.

Coley.

Tubthumping (I Get Knocked Down)

"Behold! My newly improved FPL Incorporated SeasonTickerSpreadSheet-inator!"

GW21 onwards

After Ozil's untimely blank as a very popular captain pick, GW20 was a horror show for the majority of managers without the services of Alderweireld and/or Koscielny to call upon.  Okay, so 33 points, red arrows and being knocked down to 15,918 in the overall rankings wasn't quite what I hoped my New Year's Resolution would herald.  "But I get up again, [FPL] never gonna keep me down."

That noise you can hear all around you is not the sound of an approaching swarm of locusts, but rather the cacophonous clicking of WildCards being activated!  With this in mind, I've given my 'Transfer Business' section top billing in this preview. 
 
Transfer Business

Personally, I'm resisting the siren call of the second wildcard.  I'm waiting to see what collateral damage occurs first in the 2 Cup games to be played in 5 days by EVE, LIV, MCI and STO.  In the meantime, I'm choosing to sit tight and suffer a fall in my team value, which recently reached a high tidemark of 108.3m.

*Potential mini-DOUBLE GAMEWEEK*  

I've not seen any reference to this elsewhere, but after studying football fixtures dates, it seems to me that GW25 could be a mini-DGW for the League Cup finalists.  The only alternative would be for either finalist to run the risk of a triple gameweek in either GW34 or GW37 if they also reach the semi-finals of the FA Cup.  For now though, we do know that two to four teams from AVL, EVE, LIV, MCI, NEW & STO will have a blank GW27, so we ought to be mindful to not overload our squad with players from the teams concerned.  Unfortunately, we won't know for sure who they are until after GW23.

ATTACK

EVE remain top of the pops when it comes to expected goals, so Lukaku wouldn't to my mind be the player to make way for Aguero.  ARS climb one place in spite of struggling to a solitary goal victory over NEW last time, and despite goals not looking easy to come by in their next 2 fixtures.  So now wouldn't be the time I'd be bringing Ozil in if I didn't already have him.  Nor would I be supplementing him with Giroud or Ramsey just now.  These two teams are expected to still be occupying the same top two berths in my GW22 preview.

As anticipated in my last blog, STO have risen quickly through the predicted goals ranks, from 8th to 3rd, which might be where they peak, but nevertheless, Arnie's burgeoning ownership have a strong chance of being rewarded handsomely for their investment.  Moreover, there is also the tantalising possibility of a DGW consisting of 2 home games vs EVE & AVL in GW25. 

BOU are the only other climber (from 7th to 5th), and as they are also a new entry (4th) in my Clean Sheets chart, their multiple 5th midfielder options look ideal for those looking to free up cash to buy a certain diminuitive Argentinian forward.  

Speaking of new entries, MCI re-enter the fray in 7th place, and are expected to rise to 5th next time around, whereas CHE make a belated seasonal bow into 8th, but are expected to leapfrog MCI by a couple of places when my GW22 preview comes around.  That said, the forecast is for about only a goal's difference between the 3rd and 10th most prolific teams, so there's unlikely to be any decisive edge.  Even so, Costa could yet prove to be a better option than Aguero for those brave (foolish?) enough to go without Kun.

LEI's descent down the scoring charts from 2nd to 6th, with a further slip to 8th expected next time around, coincides with reports of Vardy undergoing minor surgery on his groin, and a mass exodus seems both likely and justifiable.  These charts might also spell the end of the party for Ighalo owners with effect from GW24 perhaps, as WAT drop away, but maybe I'm just bitter, because I never got an invite!

DEFENCE

Yet another eureka moment this week saw me realise that rather than ranking teams with the same number of good clean sheet prospects by how many goals they were predicted to let in over the entire next 6 gameweeks fixture run, it made much more sense to do so according to how many they were expected to concede in only those GWs where the probability of clean sheets was deemed to be high.

Apologies for the greater disparity here between last gameweek's preview and this, hence 4 new entries, but the expectation is for greater consistency here on in.

CPL remain top of the crop, despite their 3-0 defeat to CHE, and are expected to be still there next time around, which is good news for this Hennessey and Ward holder, as well as for those holding Dann, currently the 5th most highly owned defender (23%+).  

The bad news for those with the 4th most highly owned defender, namely Clyne, is that LIV are set to be a 'here today, gone tomorrow' kind of team come the eve of GW21, as they are forecast to plummet from 2nd best in my rankings to a lowly 10th.  Even so, my form ticker gives them 4 good chances out of the next 5, so there's no need to panic yet.  And there's plenty of time to reassess things before the natural looking exit point of GW27.

The top budget enabler in FPL right now looks to be R Bennett as NOR have come straight in from the cold to 3rd place.  Under the old system, they'd have been rated as 9th best and flown completely under the radar.

BOU would have been slightly over-rated as 3rd best the old way, and ARS overlooked in 8th place, but they now sit rightfully in 4th and 5th.  Fortunately for me, my much lamented transferring in of van Dijk rather than a SWA DEF a couple of gameweeks ago, looks much better in this light (6th vs 8th this GW and 4th vs 8th next GW).

The competition for our defensive slots is very strong at present with plenty of good alternatives around, including from WAT, TOT and LEI, who are all expected to (re)enter the rankings for GW22, with ARS, LIV and WHM expected to make way by dropping to 9th, 10th and 11th, albeit with an equal number of favourable clean sheet prospects.

O Captain! My Captain!

Seemingly, most managers base their decision on who to captain purely on which players are in form.  My approach is to ask which teams are likely to score the most goals that gameweek, and see if there are any obvious candidates for the armband from those teams.  The 8 teams identified by my spreadsheet as likely to score the most goals in GW21 are shown below:

Encouraging news then for undoubtedly popular captain picks Aguero and Costa, but potentially even more exciting for all those new Arnautovic owners if they have the stomach for a differential captain pick.  I might yet be one of them, but I'm going to wait and see what unfolds first in the TWO Cup matches STO have to play before their next Prem League game.  If Arnie comes through unscathed then I might well jump aboard the bandwagon.  I'll also be keeping a close eye on developments with Walters though, as Jon will always have a special place in my heart after I captained him for his hattrick in GW24 last season!
 

Keeping Clean Sheets

My spreadsheet identifies the 7 teams below as least likely to concede goals in GW21:

This gameweek has plenty of potential, and I'll be surprised if there aren't at least 3 or 4 clean sheets from the 7 teams named above.  With the one match ban that BOU captain Simon Francis picked up being served in the FA Cup, I see no reason for me to not transfer in DEF Charlie Daniels for my seemingly now redundant Danny Rose.

Last week, only 2 of the 7 teams I nominated as least likely to concede goals kept clean sheets.  That said, it took a special goal from Gil to deny me (and SUN) another one, and WAT were still keeping MCI at bay with less than 10 minutes to play.
 

 Predicted Scorelines

 

Disclaimer:  Betting on correct scores IS a mug's game.  These predictions are intended only as indicative of home teams' recent home form and away teams' recent away form.

Lastly, the screenshot below provides an overview of all teams' next 6 fixtures, from which all of the recommendations above are drawn:

 

 

Key:  Dark blue is best and dark red the worst. The top table relate to expected number of goals scored, and the bottom one to expected goals conceded.

As ever, please feel free to comment or ask questions, either below or via my twitter account @barCOLEYna.

Please refer to my 'New Year's season ticker Resolution' blog for further insights into the 'philosophy' underpinning my approach to FPL.

Coley.