FPL: lessons learned (I)

After the final day of last season and following what is, it seems, a regular exercise amongst the FPL content producers I usually listen to (Fantasy Football Scout and Let’s Talk FPL), I made a reflection on lessons learned. I actually pointed down some topics in a paper sheet and during my pre-season tinkering I ran it through a couple of times to try and structure my team making the most out of my experience over last year, which was, necessarily, also the result of all my precedent FPL years. Five gameweeks into the new season and I gladly see I respected the lessons learned list almost completely, the exception being when I brought Martial in in GW3. That meant I didn’t learn from one of the lessons: «avoid injury-prone players». Martial ended up playing just once for my team, as GW4 found him injured already. Complaining about the irony, injustice or sheer bad luck of this event – “Now that I got him in, he’s injured!” – seems foolish when facing the lessons learned sheet. I should have known. But there’s more to it: I actually convinced myself out of getting him in for GW1 exactly because of this precise lesson. He looked like a great bet already: out-of-position midfielder, pretty much nailed on, playing as number 9 for United and priced at 7.0. Looking back, it’s pretty clear to me that his appeal was even greater to me considering this pre-season flirtation (I then ended up picking Ayoze Perez instead. Yep, shit happens). Because the truth is, when I respected the avoid injury-prone players lesson, I had to simultaneously ignore another lesson: «look for and bet on the out-of-position players». When Martial, unsurprisingly, scored a couple of goals and, as any United player, his price began to rapidly rise, plus all the hype surrounding him in the media, my first thought was: I have to get him in, I should’ve got him in from the start. When I transferred him in, a mixed feeling of playing catch up and knee-jerking was dominating. It’s ever clear to me that I tend to be too harsh on myself because of what, in a given moment, I perceive as a bad decision – when really, sticking with this Martial example, all I should’ve done was taking a breather and reminding myself of that wise rule I wisely followed before the start of the season. His injury came just as unsurprising as his earlier returns and I saw myself in the rather annoying situation of transferring him in and out of the team from one week to another. A new lesson is now learned: «learn from the lessons learned».

It’s funny how this Martial story is recent – I ditched him in GW4 and I’m writing this ahead of GW6 – and yet it feels like it was in another life. Time perception in FPL is critical. Another of the lessons learned is: «be patient». There’s another lesson that naturally accompanies it, almost like a corollary: «stick with the big hitters». It’s like a specification of the “be patient” lesson. I call it the “Hazard syndrome” (or should I say “complex”?), because with the former Chelsea number 10, more than with any other player, I feel, you had to either stick with him the entire 38 gameweeks, or simply forget it and deal with the occasional overhaul and the guaranteed 200-plus points by the end of May you were bound to miss. But how does one define the limits and timings of this easier-said-than-done «be patient» rule? It’s a bit like in real life. When to look for a new, better, more satisfying job? When to move on from a relationship? How to distinguish a bad phase from a futureless situation? How to know if time has come to ditch Sterling without the risk of him scoring a hat-trick in the next match? It’s that last night you do extra-hours at work before absolutely making your mind up about quitting that job because you’ll never feel recognized and rewarded – and return home to simply find it empty, a silent note from your now ex-girlfriend on the kitchen desk: “I told you I wouldn’t take another night. Goodbye forever”. The thing is until you face the goodbye note, you’ll always keep the faith about returning home with that promotion and that big smile on your face and to share both your happiness and your newly-granted wealth with the woman you can finally propose to. The similarities between life and FPL are astonishing. It’s just that there’s no Saturday morning deadlines in life; other than that, it’s all very much the same.

Regarding this eminently philosophical topic, it might be interesting to bring in yet another lesson: «expect reasonably, according to budget weight». The idea is simple: don’t rely on your 6.0 Brighton midfielder to save your gameweek; don’t expect back-to-back attacking returns from your 5.5 Bournemouth striker. But what about the big guns? Should we expect weekly salvations from Salah? Should we expect weekly returns from Kane? Maybe we should. But that sort of denies, or at least limits drastically, the «be patient» and the «stick with your big hitters» lessons. Tricky. How does one balance all this lessons into a 38-to-114 good decisions/season and finish as overall #1? One doesn’t. So, yep, yet another lesson learned: «learn from the lessons learned as much as you can, but don’t expect them to win you FPL».

Having said all this, I’d like to wrap this one off with a concept I’ve been trying to adopt for myself. We should distinguish between a decision that is bad from a decision that is good but turned out being bad. I got here while reflecting on my last three captain picks. They were all good decisions. If Kane was playing a rematch against Newcastle at home this coming weekend, would I give him the armband again? I probably would. And who was to say that, in the seven goals that City scored against Brighton and Norwich, Sterling would have no participation in neither of them? All the three decisions were good. Sterling had the form behind him and Kane was facing a very poor Newcastle side. They just turned out being bad. All three. Such a sensible conclusion should make me feel a bit better with my decisions and my start of the season... shouldn’t it?