Well, the 23/24 Fantasy Premier League season is in the books. It actually has been for a little while, at the time of writing. As an Arsenal fan… I just needed a break from all forms of football, until the dust settled.
With everything in life, we naturally like to think we’re getting better at something the more we do it. With FPL, it can be bloody hard to feel that way. Have one outstanding season – finish in the top 10k or higher, for example – and you’d like to think that’s your new level. You’ll do even better next year!
Of course, the endlessly maddening thing about FPL, and all fantasy sports, is that we have absolutely no control over the actual outcomes. We can only make our best guesses, cross our fingers, and hope. All we can really do is put ourselves in the best position to make the best possible guesses.
On top of that, with FPL specifically there are significantly more players every year. You might indeed be getting better. But hundreds of thousands of new players join each season. Even if you are improving, there’s absolutely no guarantee your average OR will improve. Obviously the best way to look at it is what percentile you’re in. But none of your friends or online rivals want to hear that. They just want your OR, damnit!
With all that said… despite not coming close to my own OR PB this season… and whether it’s logical or not… I still like to think I’m improving, just like everyone else!
It takes time to learn your lessons. We can keep getting burned by the same FPL troll (Wilf Zaha remains my all-time nemesis). We can keep getting suckered in by price rises to gambling on an early transfer, only for that player to get injured. Only after we’ve made these mistakes do we remember how many times we’ve made them before.
I’m writing this article to try and stop my own stupid brain from doing this. With that aforementioned dust settled, I want to look back on the season as a whole, and evaluate what did and didn’t work. I’ll be re-reading this list before next season, and regularly throughout. If it helps literally nobody else… I at least hope it’ll help me.
Six Pearls of… Wisdom (?)
Without further ado, here are my top six takeaways from the 23/24 FPL season.
1) Play the Long Game
This is the absolute, no-doubt, number one, top-of-the-list, indisputably most important lesson I’ve learned in FPL over the years. And I still struggle to abide by it!
Once again this season, I was absolutely languishing with less than 10 gameweeks to go. In GW 31 my OR was 1.1 million.
Once again, I was fuming.
Once again, I made a late surge after putting into action the plan which I’d had all season, i.e. using all my chips, which I’d been saving up… which I knew I was going to, and which always results in a surge… but I was still in despair!
But wait, let’s go further back.
In Gameweek 7, having carefully planned out (and written content about) the first couple of months of the FPL season… I was 1.7 million.
Did I think to myself, ‘Come on, you idiot. You’re only seven weeks in. There’s absolutely nothing to panic about yet’? Of course not. I thought I was rubbish, that all my calls were terrible, that the season was a disaster, that the game was stupid and unfair and all the rest of it.
Well, I finished at 300k (dropping from 228k in Gameweek 37… not that I’m still bitter). Certainly not amazing, not in my top three seasons, and with around 60pts fewer than last season. But hardly a disaster.
The point, as always – FPL is a long, long season. If I have one goal for next season, it’s not to panic at all, not even a teensy bit, until at least 30+ gameweeks have gone by.
You’ll have spells where every call does feel like a disaster. You’ll also have spells where you suddenly seem like a soothsayer.
It’s all part of the game, and there’s absolutely no need to, or point in, getting down until you’re very, very close to the end of the season… at which point the end will at least be in sight, and you probably won’t care as much anyway.
2) You Can Go Your Own Way
Nowadays, balancing personal and public opinion is one of the biggest challenges in FPL.
If you’re a serious player, it’s almost impossible to resist the temptation of regularly checking some combination of Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube. Do so, and – on Reddit especially – you’ll be exposed to groupthink / knee jerking / The Template. And it’s our natural tendency, as stupid humans, to think that if a lot of people are saying something… it must be true.
It is not ‘true’! Everyone is guessing, just the same as you are! None of us have any control over the actual outcome!
I don’t necessarily advocate going completely solo. But I think it’s crucial to find a middle ground. It’s not only more fun to back your own opinions, but – if you watch a lot of football, and consume a lot of football-related content – you may well make better decisions than The Community too.
What is that middle ground?
At a basic level, I’d advise simply flipping around the usual order.
Don’t go straight to Reddit, or your favourite YouTuber. You will immediately be influenced – it’s impossible to avoid.
Do your own research, and make your own calls, first. See what you think. Then, check what others are saying.
This way, you’ll be more likely to back your own opinion, which is indeed informed. And – let’s not underrate this – you’ll be able to feel really smug if your pick comes off, rather than just feeling like you copied someone online.
To clarify, I would definitely still advise checking in on Reddit at some point! This can help in a couple of key ways.
Most obviously, the player/s you’re considering might be an injury doubt, even if they weren’t flagged, or a rotation risk without you realising. As has often happened with me, you might have also completely overlooked a player who is genuinely a much better pick than whoever you were considering. In this case, you obviously shouldn’t let your ego get in the way of making the better choice.
To summarise – make your own call first, then have a check what the community is saying after.
Try this for your first couple of drafts heading into the next season, or your next wildcard draft. Make the whole thing completely on your own, then see how close it is to the consensus. You might be persuaded to join the crowd, and that’s fine. You might instead determine to back yourself after all – which, of course, is far more exciting.
3) Captaincy Balances Out (Probably)
I should get around to writing a ‘Top 10 Most Annoying Things in FPL’ article some day. Maybe I’ll do it next season, when I’m ignoring Rule #1 on this list yet again.
Regardless, right at the top of the pile would be captaincy.
I hate captaincy. It’s stupid. It’s largely random. Double-scoring is completely out of kilter with the rest of the game. FPL would be a far better game, and a far better representation of actual ‘skill’, without it.
Regardless, FPL Towers seem allergic to making any big changes to the game, so captaincy is here to stay.
One of the nice things about Haaland joining the league last year is that he basically made captaincy redundant. Everyone capped him every week.
This year that wasn’t the case, nor has it been historically. Even when Mo was Mo, there was always at least one other amazing option (usually Kane). Many, many gameweeks, in a normal season, we have at least two options who seem basically the same. They’re both amazing, both have good fixtures, are both in form… so who the hell do you pick?
You can make a compelling case for either. And you’ll use that case if you make the right choice! If you make the wrong choice, you’ll feel stupid.
In reality, it’s basically a coin-flip. And it’s silly to get upset about the result of a coin flip.
That’s very easy to say now, of course. In the moment it’s incredibly frustrating to make the ‘wrong’ call.
The good thing is, like most things which are largely luck-based, it should balance out over time. Will that happen over the course of a 38-game season? Probably, actually, but if not it almost certainly will over the long haul.
Naturally we tend to remember the massive mistakes.
I didn’t cap Watkins early on last season when he went nuclear and put up 23pts against Brighton. I forget who I did cap – probably Haaland, and if not him some other elite player – and whoever it was blanked. That’s a 44pt swing on a single coin flip.
(Again, captaincy is stupid).
We tend not to remember when we get it right.
In Gameweek 36 last season there were several good captaincy candidates. I went with the safe choice of Haaland. My Full 90 FPL colleague James backed someone else (again, I forget so, but I was also strongly considering him) who blanked. Haaland went off for 21pts – a 40pt swing back in my favour over James, who had capped Watkins in Gameweek 7.
In the moment, these felt like seismic shifts in mine and his favour. In the end they amounted to a 4pt difference. So it likely proved with all our other captaincy hits and misses over the course of the season.
In summary, assuming you’re taking the safe route (i.e. not a punt), captaincy is pretty much random. It also likely balances out over the season anyway. So, why stress about it?
4) Respect the Eye Test
I travel quite a bit. If I’m in Europe, and am on roughly the same time zone as the UK, I’ll usually still get a lot of Premier League in. If I’m on a significantly different time zone, I’m normally limited to the early game on Saturday and Sunday at best (and the early Saturday matchup is normally a bit rubbish). Apart from that, it’s Match of the Day, match reports, and podcasts.
Something I’ve noticed in the past couple of years is that the amount of close attention I pay to football, and especially the amount I watch, has a genuine impact on my FPL experience.
I say ‘experience’ because there are two factors here.
Firstly, I really do play better when I’m watching the games. Or – even if I can’t watch live – am paying very close attention from afar.
James and I certainly use plenty of stats to inform our picks. But there’s still no substitute for actually watching the games yourself.
Take Nico Jackson, or Darwin Nunez. Both started up front, for sustained periods, for – in theory (in Chelsea’s case) – good attacks. Both were affordable. Both often had good underlying stats. On paper, both would seem like solid picks.
Neither could hit a barn door for large chunks of this season (I know Nico came good in the end, but there was a lot of bad before we got to that). You only had to watch them play to see neither of them could actually finish. So what was the point in owning them? You could say you were making a smart pick, listening to the numbers, playing the probabilities… but they weren’t getting you actual points… which is the whole point of the game!
On the flip-side, take our 23/24 late-season lord and saviour, the one and only Jean-Philippe Mateta.
Palace had been pretty turgid for the first two-thirds or so of the campaign. Mateta didn’t even score until Gameweek 16. Between Gameweeks 16-25 he managed a mighty three goals. Then between Gameweeks 26-38 he scored 13.
The change of manager was oft-cited for Palace’s improved form. You know what else helped, specifically for Mateta? Having two amazing wingers fit again and dominating either side of him!
On paper, it might have looked like a flash in the pan early on. Especially since they had fairly easy fixtures to start with. In reality, as soon as Eze and Olise played together again, you only had to watch that forward line together once to know that all three were going to get returns, whoever they played. They were brilliant.
We can, and should, respect the underlying numbers. But the more actual football you watch, and the more content you consume around the game (not just FPL-related), the more informed you’ll be, and the better you’ll play.
Finally, on the aforementioned ‘better experience’ note – it’s simply more fun this way too.
When you’re just playing FPL seriously, without actually watching football, it can feel like joyless data-crunching. Actually watching the results play out makes it vastly more exciting, and – unless your team is playing – often reminds you that you love actual football, not just fantasy!
5) Price Changes are Overrated
Speaking of actually enjoying the experience!
I’ve gone through lengthy periods of checking the FPL price changes predictor every night before bed. I’ve gone through shorter periods of never, ever checking it – either through circumstances, or simply because I’m fuming at the game in general.
This season I arrived at a happy middle-ground… but one which actually leaned more towards the latter approach than the former.
Towards the end of the season, I basically stopped caring at all about price changes. I did my research towards the end of the week, saw who I wanted… saw who I could actually afford, then made my moves.
And it was fun! Much more fun than deliberating several times a week (late at night, in the UK) over whether to gamble on Player A over Player B, how injured Player C really was, was Player D’s position secure, and so on and so forth. All usually for the sake of saving 0.1m.
Is this ‘optimal play’? Nope. You may indeed have not quite enough money for the dream team you really want.
But – in addition to not suffering from early transfer-related injuries – you’re removing a lot of stress from your FPL experience. And, as all serious FPL players (definitely including me) forget – this game is supposed to be fun, after all!
6) Best-Laid Plans
Did you know that’s not the actual line? Robert Burns actually wrote ‘the best-laid schemes’. He also wrote ‘gang aft agley’, not ‘often go awry’, but that’s a more understandable change to the quote.
Whether in Scots, English, or any other language you like, the point still stands. Planning in FPL is very often a fool’s game.
Many’s the hour that James and I have spent on the phone, meticulously planning out our transfers, starting/bench rotations, and captaincies for the next 4+ gameweeks.
How many times have those plans actually played out as intended? I can comfortably say ‘almost never’. I could probably go ahead and just say ‘never’.
Making these plans is usually fun, in the nerdiest possible way. But it’s also a waste of time. There’s almost no chance that – four weeks from whenever you make that plan – you’re going to be able to execute it. Injuries, rotation, form, even fixtures being moved… one way or another, the FPL Gods will find a way to punish you for trying to take fate into your own hands.
Does that mean ‘no planning at all’?
Nope! I think having at least a short-term plan is fine – banking one transfer for a double move the next week, for example. You certainly want to be aware of upcoming blank and double gameweeks, amazing fixture runs for the best teams so that you can try to double/treble up, and so on.
But going any further than that – beyond the next four gameweeks, at most – is, again, a fool’s game. Source: I am that fool. But no longer!
The End, At Last
Well, that was a long piece. Hopefully it was helpful. If not, at least it was hopefully entertaining. If not… well, why the hell are you still reading?!
I don’t claim to have all the answers. I might not have any. I’ve never finished in the top 10k, or won one of those big public mini-leagues.
But, hopefully at least one or two of these points has prompted you to think about the game a little differently. Whether the stats bear it out or not, I do believe we can get ‘better’ at FPL. Or, at the very least – and perhaps more importantly – we can have more fun playing it.
Your feedback, as ever, is welcome. Preferably on Reddit, since James and I are useless at checking elsewhere.
Cheers for reading, everybody!
Joe