We are one week away from the start of Premier League and FPL 22/23 season, the preparations for the upcoming season are in full swing, with the preseason more or less concluded for all teams. As the strategising for the new season builds up, I believe a good starting point will be to review my previous season. I did something similar at the beginning of last season and I somewhat helped me gain better insights into my style as an FPL manager and hope it does the same this year as well.

I had a decent start to the season with 91 points in GW1 but that only lead to 1.08M rank. I was vary of the start I had in 20:21 season – having only managed a 3.5M rank in GW1 and was only able to crawl back the rank upto 2.5M by mid season. Thus I was focused on having a better start to the 21:22 season but I was languishing at 1.5M by the end of GW8. With a couple of decent GWs and some see-sawing of OR since then, I found myself at around 728k at the mid point of the season. The second half of the season turned out to be much better leading to a strong finish of 70k. That had a lot to do with depending on data from the ongoing season in greater depth, focusing on right mix of high ownership and differential players and also closely studying the current form and difficulty of fixtures.

Here is a breakdown of the OR and GR for the previous season:

As evidenced from above, my second half of the season played out drastically better from the first half. I had a detailed look at the previous season review, and surprisingly enough it followed a similar trend – Slow start to the season and minor gains till mid of season and then there usually an inflexion point around mid point of the season and then some more gains leading to an above average second half of the season. I am not completely sure of the reasons, but perhaps I have limited data at the beginning of the season and hence try to go with instinct, which is where I am probably not that good. Another reason is the fact that second half of the season has blank and double game weeks, for which I am usually well prepared. So a key learning is to focus on data (whatever available!) right from start of the season and maintain a decent balance between safe and differential picks.

Three seasons ago I had finished 35k, my best OR ever and since then I have had poor finishes till last season, all of them over 300k. So I am pleased with a 70k finish, finally top 100k after 3 seasons. That is my 4th top 100k finish in last 10 seasons. Nothing extra ordinary but a decent stat. I will target to beat my top finish this season again, so the target is top 30k yet again.

With this, I start planning for the 22/23 season and hope it is great one for all!

Green arrows everyone!