FPL Pre-season Warmup – Avoiding “Rookie Mistakes”
Maybe you’ve recently finished your first or second FPL
season or are standing at the proverbial water’s edge, staring out at the
churning waters of the FPL ocean, wondering what’s out there, contemplating
playing the game for the first time this coming season. From one rookie to another, here are a few
hard learned lessons and tips that could be the FPL life jacket you’re looking
for.
Before We Begin – Why
Are You Playing?
In my experience, those playing FPL more or less fit into one
of two different categories. First,
there are those who are fans of the sport of football in general and the
English Premier League specifically and who use FPL as a way to enhance their
weekend viewing of the games and to get to know some of the “other” players
beside the household names we see highlighted during major international
tournaments. Second, there are those who
not only play the game to enhance their viewing, but also take the FPL game
itself seriously and delve into the complexities of the game with an eye
towards scoring the most points possible and improving their mini-league and
overall ranking.
This distinction is an extremely important one as the FPL game
means something different depending on which of these groups you find yourself
in. If you’re like me, you will probably
find that playing the game for fun and to try to learn more about the Premier
League inevitably leads to you finding yourself getting further involved,
almost addicted, and focusing on points, points, points. For the purposes of this article I will
assume that you have one eye looking towards next season with a goal of playing
the game seriously. With this in mind,
following are a few tips I wish were shared with me before I locked in my first
gw1 FPL team.
Know the Rules and
Scoring System
There are many fantasy games out there based on the sport we
love. Before playing the official FPL
game I played Fantasy World Cup 2010 and 2 seasons of ESPN Fantasy Football for
Premier League. It wasn’t until the
2011-12 EPL season that I found the “official” FPL game. I remember setting up my ESPN team for my
third season when some friends invited me to join a mini-league they’d created
the prior year in FPL. I joined without
doing any homework and by gw2 I realized keeping up with 2 teams wasn’t going
to be possible. With friends in FPL and
recognizing that a) it was the official fantasy game of the EPL and b) there
were over 2.5 MILLION players, the decision was easy and quick. My ESPN team was abandoned and I was floating
in the waters of FPL with nothing but my old presumptions based on a game I no
longer played.
If you’ve played other fantasy football games in the past,
and even if you haven’t, familiarize yourself with the Rules and Scoring System
as best you can. Yes, it can get a
little tedious and there are more fun ways to spend your spare time, but
knowing the rules and scoring distinctions can really help not only when
formulating the team you’ll start the season with but with the hundreds of
decisions you’ll make throughout the season.
Distinctions are important and if you don’t recognize them early you’ll
be cursing them later.
Need a refresher or want to understand the rules and scoring
before playing this season? Follow this
link for everything you need to know: http://fantasy.premierleague.com/rules/
(This link is active as of June 9, 2013)
Do Not Pick Players
Based Solely on Team Affiliation
If for some strange reason you print this article, circle,
highlight and underline this one. As a
fan of EPL, you almost surely have a team or teams you support with wild
abandon and a team or teams that you, uh, don’t support (sometimes with equal
or more fervor and energy than you reserve for your favorite team).
Picking your team and making transfers based solely on which
teams you love and hate is a recipe for disaster. Take it from someone who has experienced it
personally; the ONLY thing worse than watching a good player on one of your
least favorite teams score goals and rack up points is not having them on your
FPL team and watching your rivals who were smart enough to pick them bury you
in FPL too. It’s enough to drive you
mad. Enough said.
Be Aware of All
Fixtures and Competitions
Closely behind the disappointment of watching your
affiliation-related stubbornness cost you valuable FPL points is the fear,
panic, and ultimate self-punishment that comes with making a transfer early
only to find out there is a mid-week Carling Cup fixture in which your newly
transferred player will feature and quite possibly either get injured or be
subsequently rested for the weekend EPL fixture.
To my knowledge, the official FPL site does not publicize or
warn you of these fixtures that you absolutely, positively need to be aware of
when formulating your strategy for a particular gameweek. Find the best source of information you can
for fixtures in all competitions that EPL teams compete in and make sure you do
not get caught unaware.
Don’t Rely on a
Single News Source
As you get further involved in your FPL addiction you will
find that there are diametrically opposed realities of wanting to know as soon
as possible what a team’s expected lineup will be for their upcoming fixture
and knowing that if there is any certainty whatsoever, it only comes after days
(often 3 or 4) of sniffing out news stories and having multiple journos help to
confirm or deny rumors and managerial leanings that are printed and theorized
early in the week.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) there are many websites and
“help” sites out there that post predicted lineups for the upcoming round of
EPL fixtures. Be careful though; I do
not know where they get their information and they are not always
accurate. I learned the hard way not to
rely on one single source of information.
If you are lucky you may find a source or two that seem to get things
right more often than not. If you find
them, please send me the info.
Otherwise, do your homework and dig around. There are all kinds of theories out there
(the Liverpool bib theory comes to mind) but I have yet to find a single,
reliable source of information for starting lineups that would give me a leg up
on transfer decisions.
A Penny Saved is a
Penny Earned
This is another tip that is high on my list of things I wish
I had learned sooner. If you’re like me,
your natural inclination as an FPL manager is to utilize every penny at your
disposal to “maximize” your squad; especially early on when you are creating
your team for gw1 and before player values have fluctuated.
I think this year will be different for me. One of the things that I learned this past
season was the value of keeping some money in the bank. As I look back on the 2012-2013 FPL season, I
remember vividly multiple, MULTIPLE game weeks where 0.1m was the difference
between making a transfer I really, really wanted and settling for one that I
could afford.
In addition to the pure economics involved, the biggest
difference for me was the breathing room afforded by having 0.2m or 0.3m
sitting in the bank. It was frequently
the difference between feeling rushed and panicked to make a transfer too early
and being able to calmly make better decisions, knowing that a 0.1m rise in
price of the guy I wanted or a 0.1m dip in price of the guy I wanted to offload
would not force me into making a hasty decision too early in the gameweek. “Panic” transfers are no fun.
I hope in this list you find something valuable that you can
use as you get ready for your second or third season of FPL. And if you are standing there wondering
whether this is the year that you play the game for the first time, I hope that
you find something here that makes it more likely that you will click “CONFIRM
TEAM” for the first time this coming August.
Over 2.5 million of us can’t be wrong.
I hope you’re enjoying your “off season”.
Walt (@EPLFanForLife)
