FPL is hereeee!

After a mediocre season last year, it was good break from FPL over the summer, and with a proper mid season break, it feels great to be back. As I create my FPL team for this season, I am contemplating on the lessons I learnt from last season, wherein I my OR was 4.4 lacs. I was 25 lacs at midpoint of the season, so managing to comeback to 4.4 lacs feels okay. However it is a fry cry from my initial target of a top 30k finish.

As I enter this new season and I am going with the same target of finishing inside top 30k, and one of the first things I am doing in preparation for this year’s FPL is to understand where I went wrong last season and what were the few things that I did right.

Below is the summary of my last FPL season. Poor start meant my OR was see-sawing in the 20 lacs till GW18, post which I finally got my act together and got into top 10 lacs and then plateau around 4 lacs.

My takeaways from last season

Right mix of high ownership players and differentials

I started the last season with focusing on multiple differentials and giving very high importance to fixtures, but that backfired with my starting rank after GW1 standing at 35 lacs. I did not keep the high ownership players (likes of Salah, Bruno etc.) in my squad and none of my differentials had a great GW. Since then I was always chasing and it was only in mid season around GW 18 when I found the right balance and managed to take my rank from 25 lacs to ~4 lacs by the end of the season.

Between GW 28 and GW 35 I had a decent run, wherein there were 5 instances when my GW rank was sub 300k and in most of these GWs it all came down to right balance, and it typically followed this template:

2 high ownerships premium FPL big hitters

3 – 4 mid / low priced high ownership Bandwagon picks

2 – 3 ultra differentials based on recent form and heavily focused on fixtures

2 – 3 mid price, mid / low ownership players

I intend to start with a similar pattern as above this year, in the hope that if some of my differentials click, I will be in for a good start. Even if things don’t work out hopefully I won’t be languishing at ~30 lacs by GW5, unlike previous season.

Choose the right moment to pick a differential captain

One of my best moments last season was captaining Kelechi Iheanacho in GW28 right before everyone brought him in post his heroics that GW. He was the ultimate differential for me and his hattrick that GW helped me get a sub 10k GW rank, which was insane. And it was a great lesson to learn. Here is my tweet explaining why I went for Kelechi.

Captaincy for GW28

Extremely difficult captaincy choice this, which makes it a great week to go for differential picks, not sure if I the right players in my team to go for it, some options:

– Kelechi Iheanacho : 2 goals in last 2 premier league games, and playing against

— FPL ऐनकdotes (@DotesFpl) March 12, 2021

I picked a moment to captain a differential in GW28 as there was no clear choice with many players in the mix for captaincy supremacy. This meant limited focus on 100%+ effective ownership players. Similarly in GW38, I captained Pepe who grabbed a brace, which again was an extremely satisfying moment for me.

Invest in a decent bench

Owning to Covid, last season had many unexpected turn of events, there were instances when I was without a goalkeeper because I chose to have only 1 starting GK in the team and he missed out for some reason or another.

Towards the end of the season there were GWs when my bench had very high scores and that maybe was because I was not making the right choices, but I at-least had the comfort to fall back on my bench whenever it was called upon.

As big as the temptation is to get another premium mid / forward, I believe it makes more sense to have at-least a playing GK and 2 out of 3 playing bench players. Agreed that it might lead to decision fatigue, having to choose the playing XI after great scrutiny week on week, but it is worth it.

Do not bench an in-form forward because of a difficult fixture

There have been multiple instances over last couple of seasons when I had an in-form forward in my team and although they were racking the points but they didn’t add up for my FPL team because I chose to bench them if they had a tough fixture.

In order to avoid that, I plan to mostly go for a 3 at the back formation, that allows me to go with 7 Mid + Forwards. This will be key to ensuring I don’t bench likes of Bamford, Greenwood for a defender because they seem to have a better fixture on paper.

Well, that’s it. these are pointers I intend to keep handy as I finalise my GW1 team!

Good luck, green arrows everyone!