Looking back at Gameweek 8 - Chief's "LESSLINES"

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"DUMMY" PUNCH COSTS LIVERPOOL 2 POINTS v 10-MAN TOON.

WIZARD OF OZ BRACE GIFTS GUNNERS A COMFY HOME WIN.

A STRIKER FINALLY SCORES FOR THE BLUES AS THEY DULY CRUISE!

TIGERS ARE CAUGHT STUCK AS TOFFEES BAG 3 SWEET POINTS.

MORE MISERY FOR MOYES AS SAINTS LEVEL LATE WITH LALLANA.

STOKE & BAGGIES "ENTERTAIN" US TO A BORE SCORE DRAW.

BLACK CATS JUST CAN'T HIRE A WIN EVEN WITH POYET IN CHARGE.

AGUERO & SILVA TURN THE SCREW AS CITY WHACK THE HAMMERS.

SPURS' SOLDADO & TOWNSEND FINALLY SCORE FROM OPEN PLAY!

VAN BASTEN-ESQUE FULHAM TROUNCE PALACE & EASE JOL'S WORRIES.

CLEAN SHEETS AT A PREMIUM HURT THOSE WITH 4 OR 5 AT THE BACK.

MICHU & BENT'S TEAMS SCORE 8, YET THEY FAIL TO SCORE/ASSIST!

AND FINALLY...

ALL THE BEST TO 'OLLIE AFTER HIS PALACE TENURE COMES TO AN END!

*"LESSLINES" is a portamanteou of Lessons and Headlines.  They are intended to be bite-sized summations of what we learnt during the Gameweek!

What if my FPL team was a "real" Premier League team?

Ok folks, I know it's the international break and I should be relaxing but I couldn't stop myself writing about the following...

If my FPL team was a real Premier League team during the 2011/12 season I would have finished 3rd and qualified for the Champions League.

If my FPL team was a real Premier League team during the 2012/13 season I would have finished 6th and just missed out on a Europa League spot.

What on earth am I talking about you may ask? I'm talking about an alternative scoring/ranking system for your FPL team.  It is a subjective method and requires a bit of imagination.  So here's how I worked out my "real" table positions:

First of all, I took screen shots of my GW 1-38 history for the 11/12 and 12/13 seasons.  In addition, I tallied up my scores in ranges as follows:

11/12 season

Points exclude transfer costs

0-10 points: 0

11-20 points: 0

21-30 points: 0

31-40 points:1

41-50 points: 11

51-60 points: 6

61-70 points: 10

71-80 points: 8

81 points +: 2

12/13 season

Points exclude transfer costs

0-10 points: 0

11-20 points: 0

21-30 points: 1

31-40 points: 4

41-50 points: 8

51-60 points: 7

61-70 points: 9

71-80 points: 2

81 points +: 7

To convert my scores into real life points, I had to define what each range stood for.  My definitions are as follows:

Win = Add range tallies of 61+ points

Draw = Add range tallies of 41-60 points

Loss  = Add range tallies 0-40 points

The aforementioned definitions can also be used as vague indicators for your weekly FPL performance.  To calculate goal difference I added up the tallies of the top 3 ranges and subtracted them with the tallies of the lowest 4 ranges.

With the above in mind, here's how I did over the past two seasons:

2011/12

Played: 38

Won (10+8+2): 20

Draw (11+6): 17

Lost (1): 1

Goal Difference (20 - 1) = +19

Points: 77

Premier League position: 3rd

FPL position: 110th

2012/13

Played: 38

Won (9+2+7): 18

Draw (8+7): 15

Lost (1+4): 5

Goal Difference (18 - 5) = +13

Points: 69

Premier League position: 6th

FPL position: 5,038th

With the above in mind my 13/14 FPL team would currently be rated as follows:

2013/14 (Up to GW7)

Played: 7

Won: 3

Draw: 3

Lost: 1

Goal Difference = +2

Points: 12

Premier League position: 7th

FPL position: 290,156th

What do you think? Does it makes sense? Are you able to calculate your score?

Looking back at Gameweek 5 - Chief's "LESSLINES"

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ASTON VILLA CAN KEEP A CLEAN SHEET AFTER ALL!

LIVERPOOL DEFINITELY NEED COUTINHO & SUAREZ.

THE TOON ARMY NEED TO STOP BEING COMPLACENT.

DI CANIO IS ON COURSE FOR THE SEASON'S FIRST SACK.

THE TOFFEES STILL HAVEN'T TASTED DEFEAT WITH ROB.

185 PL GAMES LATER... MIKEL CAN SCORE. ABOUT TIME!

OZIL IS AN ASSISTING MACHINE. DIDN'T REAL REALISE?

GIROUD & STURRIDGE WILL NOT SCORE IN EVERY MATCH!

EURO FOOTBALL JOY DOESN'T TIRE SWANSEA IN PL!

SPURS SHOULDN'T BE CONTENT WITH THEIR 1-0 WINS!

CITY THRASH UTD AGAIN IN ANOTHER MANCHESTER DERBY!

AND FINALLY...

IF YOU HAVE RVP, BENTEKE, WALCOTT, COUTINHO YOU MUST BE:

:(

*"LESSLINES" is a portamanteou of Lessons and Headlines.  They are intended to be bite-sized summations of what we learnt during the Gameweek!

FPL Hints - Gameweek 4

Disclaimer: *FPLH reserves the right to change this team at any time. Any changes made will most likely be confirmed on FPLH's Twitter account.

Transfers (-4 Hit):

Dzeko & Snodgrass (OUT) / Gayle & Özil (IN)

Folks, the international break is over and I'm back in #FPL mode!  The end of GW 3 coincided with the closing of the transfer window, which resulted in some last minute real-life transfers.  The most significant one being Mesut Özil moving to Arsenal for over £40 million pounds.  He is the star buy that they were looking for all summer.  He has a knack for assisting fairly regularly and isn't bad at scoring from time-to-time either.  Real's loss is truly Arsenal's gain.  He could become Arsenal's Cantona by helping them out of the wilderness.  I'm not one to join bandwagons, but I deemed it important to buy him now before his price rockets up from Saturday onward.  In the long-term it makes sense to purchase Özil and his upcoming fixtures aren't bad either.  His #FPL price is frozen at £10M right now.  However, over 200,000 have already transferred him in, which means that his price could comfortably hit £10.3 immediately after GW4.  If you want to accommodate both RVP and Özil in your team, it is best to buy the German international now.

Purchasing Özil wasn't straight forward and required me to take a -4 hit.  I funded this by selling Dzeko and Snodgrass.  Dzeko let me down with his poor home performance against Hull.  I believe he will be prone to further rotation courtesy of Negredo and Jovetic.  As for Snodgrass, he hasn't done anything so far and his price didn't warrant me to retain him.  The aforementioned changes left me with £5.0M to spend on a new striker.  The only viable one within that price range was Dwight Gayle.  He has shown glints of promise and has already scored in the Premier League this season.  It is amazing to think that he was playing non-League football as recently as 2 years ago.  He won't score week in week out, but he does play for an attacking team (Palace are one of the very few PL teams to play with 2 natural strikers up front).  In addition, I believe Gayle could be a differential of sorts.

For this GW, I have decided to captain RVP due to United's home fixture against Palace.  Ironically, I'm also starting Gayle, as I feel that Palace will lose in style at Old Trafford (i.e.  losing heavy but scoring).

GW Reject:

MAIGA (WHA)

GW Punt:

BENTEKE (AST)

GW Hot Pick:

VAN PERSIE (MNU)

Why?

Scored 56 PL goals in the last 2 seasons.

Is arguably United's most important natural striker.

Palace have conceded 4 goals in their first 3 PL matches.

FPLH's GW Star Picks:

de Gea

Hangeland

Zabaleta

Shaw

Fellaini

Ozil

Y Toure

Lallana

Benteke

Soldado

Van Persie (c)

Subs:

Boruc

Taarabt

Walker

Baines

FPLH's Projected GW Results:

On a final note:  Nominations for the Football Blogging Awards open on Monday 16th September.  

Please nominate us!

Off-season message from the Chief @FPLHints

Hi all,

It's August! The month in which the Premier League season starts.  I thought it best to muse about a few things as this blog comes near to its second birthday!

Once upon a time, this blog was simply "one man and his blog".  Bah, I suppose it still is!  But how times have changed.  In a short space of time I turned down the chance to work in football analysis, set up my own football blog, finished 110th out of 2.78 million FPL Gamers and had a roller-coaster ride while doing it!

Not bad for an amateur, right?

I have never claimed to be some sort of FPL genius.  Quite frankly, I'm not.  If I'm honest, I watched hardly any live Premier League football during the season I finished 110th.  I could have easily finished in the top 50 had my GW38 of 2011/2012 not been a mild disaster!  I simply relied on hard statistics, FPL grapevine chat, gut instinct and good old fashioned calculations.

I only blog and tweet as I enjoy the banter, stats, playing FPL and all the good associated with it.  With the ever increasing amount of traffic that FPLH receives, I could have easily upgraded to a bling pro-website by now, but I like the blog-format.  It's down to earth, not intimidating, easy to maintain and aesthetically pleasing to the eye (when formatting isn't going haywire!).

I don't charge membership fees for my FPL hints-related services.  My blog is almost ad-free.  I have no big paymaster giving me loadsamoney.  I don't get paid to blog.  I have had offers to write for others, which would have meant abandoning FPL Hints in its nascent state.  In spite of the temptations to move on from FPLH, I have posted every week during the Premier League 'in-season' since the launch of this blog (even whilst on holiday!).  During that time, I have liaised with many like-minded FPL gamers, from as far as America to Australia, who share the same passion - you know what that is... That short-term glee when your differential captain scored a hat-trick!  That grimace when sub 1 scores 15 points but can't be auto-subbed on and so forth.

I am pleasantly joyed by the fact that others have been inspired by my blog and have themselves succeeded (and exceeded!) in the seesaw world of FPL.  This gives me further reason to continue blogging.  If no one read my posts there would be no point in having FPLH.  Yet people do and it serves a basic purpose.  I'm not saying it's altruistic.  But I would hope to think that it gives you extra insight to do well in your private leagues.  In fact, if it simply enhances your perspective of FPL then that's brilliant!

Moving forwards, things are changing fast for FPLH.  As you may have noticed, this blog has had new contributors from the world of FPL.  Their voluntary yet powerful contributions will be a mainstay.  They bring new insight and enhanced rationale.  Their unique yet earthy personalities will enrich FPLH for the better.  Moreover, such is the blog's popularity, I'm happy to announce that FPLH is now in a position to sell its own merchandise.  Mind you, the shop is still in a rudimentary state so please be kind... and do buy (10% of profits go to charity)!

What will remain the same you ask?  Until further notice, my "bread and butter" weekly pre-GW posts shall continue for the 2013-2014 season.  Yes and yes... That means I will continue to reveal my team before each GW (to my detriment!) and reveal my weekly "recommended player" (cheesy YouTube videos to boot!).  However, I may get rid of the "hot picks" (I got no feedback for them... hmph!) or may designate them to another writer...

So there you have it.  Stay tuned and remember...

Form is key... Class doesn't matter!