FPL Months 2 & 3: a good gameweek is all it takes

Five gameweeks have now gone since the last article. It’s the day before GW13 deadline and I’m feeling good. Finally!, I should add. October was a very – very – tough month for me, scoring always below average, except for the one time in GW8 when I managed to brilliantly match it – with a staggering score of 36 points. By then, I had played my Wildcard already (did it in GW7) and things were looking pretty nasty. At the start of that GW8 (let me stress it – one week after I wildcarded), I was without four of my players: two suspended after being sent off and two freshly injured. What have been a cloudy start of the season was now turning into a pretty stormy third month, with no signs of real hope on the horizon.

But November came. The first days of the new month saw my team beating the average (at last!) and going past the 60-points mark – which was good. Not enough to beat my mini-league competition, still, and this was while seeing a combined 7-minute duo in Otamendi (1’) and Cantwell (6’) frustratingly preventing a much needed aggregate of 19 points from coming in from the bench.

That very Saturday evening saw me confirming four changes and a -8 hit, ahead of a Sunday with two more games still to be played and ahead of a full week of european games.

Not the wisest and most sensible of decisions, but it turned out alright. My transfers paid off immediately, gained some team value in the process and got my best gameweek rank so far, which saw me climbing almost a million (!) places in the overall table. But above all, this mini-wildcard left me in a very positive position: had I made only three or even two transfers (in order to minimize or simply prevent the transfer hits), I would now be feeling as if I were one or two transfers behind and having missed already on the points of the new comers. All this got me thinking about transfer hits and about how much do we really need to avoid them. The truth is being patient can sometimes be a synonym of being passive. And, on the other hand, I associate this sort of gamble with the funnier side of the game – because, after all, this is a game and it’s a great feeling to take a punt and seeing it pay off. This isn’t to say that I’ll from now on start to take transfer hits on a regular basis, but I’ll definitely be more flexible and less cautious regarding this aspect of the game.

The Christmas period is fast approaching and it’s a quite exciting stage of the season. This year, I’ll try to guarantee a full squad of playing assets (exception being the second goalkeeper, probably), making the most out of the budget options in defense, and I’ll be targeting one or two so-called differential picks, with the likes of Doherty (who I seem to see hitting the woodwork every time I watch the gameweek highlights), Aurier (who I reckon as the type of player that might get a boost with the arrival of Mourinho), Cahill (Palace’s fixtures from GW15 to GW21 look promising), Mousset (who would allow me to spread the funds elsewhere while happily playing him from GW15 to GW19) and a couple more coming into consideration.

In the meanwhile, I’ll be giving the armband to Lacazette, himself a 1.7%-owned cheeky differential, for his once-in-a-lifetime 4-goal haul. Guaranteed.

Actually, I'll wrap this one off with a GW13 prediction. Wishful thinking.