We’re all a few days into our well-earned break from Fantasy Premier League. Fantasy World Cup is just around the corner, of course, and our resident mad scientist James is cooking up a full guide on who to get in for your team.
For now though, it’s time to sit back, celebrate our performance/lick our wounds, and reflect on the FPL first half* that was. What better way to do so than with a completely text-based, glitz-and-glamour-free awards show?
(Yes, to the know-it-all at the back – I know it’s not technically the halfway point of the season!)
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We’ll almost certainly have another group of FPL awards at the end of the 22/23 season. Don’t count on it, however, as there’s every chance I’ll forget between now and then, so let’s churn out hand out some prizes while I remember.
Read on to celebrate/commiserate the best and worst of the first 16 gameweeks in Fantasy Premier League 2022/23.
FPL Hero of the Season
These awards won’t all be sunshine-and-rainbows – that’d be much too nice (eugh) – but let’s start off on a sweet and positive note.
It’s been a weird FPL season so far, in that quite a few of the big names have underperformed, based on their own prior production and our expectations (see below). On the flip-side, however, there have been plenty of bright spots, many of them equally unexpected.
The Contenders
Haaland has obviously been dominant. He’s scored the most points, and finally showed us a future in which captaincy. Unfortunately, everyone and their dog owns him and caps him, so… basically nobody actually benefits from all those goals he’s scoring!
Trippier always looked a smart signing for Newcastle in real life, but none of us saw this coming in FPL. He started the 22/23 season at a mere 5.0. He’s now the top defender in the game… by a ridiculous 22pts over 2nd-placed Saliba. The problem, as with Haaland, is that he’s been owned and started by everyone for a long time now.
And the Winner Is…
I can’t remember a more improbable breakout from the past couple of years than that of Miguel Almiron this season.
His previous returns since arriving 3.5 years ago:
He carried on being his usual smiling, hard-working, but completely ineffective self in the first half of this season. Then, he suddenly decided to lay waste to the league.
(Yes, I do my own graphics. Why do people keep asking?)
He’s played nine games since making that decision, and returned in eight of them. He’s scored seven goals in that span, and notched two assists. He still only costs 5.8, and has outscored the likes of De Bruyne (12.6) and Salah (12.8).
Will this continue after the World Cup break? I hope so, but I’m not particularly confident. Either way, it’s been a hell of a ride, and he’s an easy, feelgood pick for my first-half MVP.
FPL Zero of the Season
That’s more than enough positivity for now. Time to whale on some players!
There’s been an absolute litany of high-priced, previously-trusted, now-apparently-rubbish FPL players this season. Bruno, Ronaldo, Robertson, Van Dijk, Sterling, Vardy… the list goes on.
I actually found it harder to narrow down the options here than for my MVP award. But perhaps that just tells you something about my negative, negative mindset…
Let’s not worry about that for now, though. On with the award!
The Contenders
All Chelsea players have been crap. They burned through one world class manager, are onto another clearly-talented one, and are still doing nothing. The defenders are either injured or constantly rotated, Sterling is ice-cold, nobody ever scores, Mount’s previous consistency has disappeared without a trace… Considering how many good players they have, it’s actually shocking how FPL-irrelevant they are.
I have no idea why Son has suddenly fallen off a cliff. Perhaps it was the pressure of his big price rise in FPL. Whatever happened, he’s gone from 20+ goal involvements every season to looking completely ineffective. Leave out his one half-hour hat-trick against Leicester, and he’s got 0 goals and 2 assists all season.
And the Winner Is…
Take a bow, Trent Alexander-Arnold. You’ve pulled off an unprecedented double, being named my Biggest Disappointment of the Season and – now – my LVP.
You used to be great. There had been signs of decline, but we trusted you anyway, even when you cost a massive 7.5. We stuck with you, because… you were Trent! You kept on letting people score on you IRL, and putting up blanks in FPL. The OR of the true believers (myself included) suffered accordingly. Some people even brought you back in for a GW16 punt home to Southampton… and you blanked again!
1 goal. 1 assist. 2nd most expensive FPL defender… and 27th highest scoring. It’s been one hell of a first half.
Wilf Zaha Troll of the Year
Perhaps it’s just because I’ve been personally burned by so many of them, but it feels as if we’ve had more FPL trolls than ever so far this year.
Obviously, no FPL player returns every game. The true troll, however, has a clear pattern of attack. He puts in steady performances for weeks, or one massive performance. Either way, he suddenly seems must-own. You jump on the bandwagon, afraid to be left behind… and he immediately blanks. To be a true troll, he’ll then wait for you to bin him before suddenly returning to form again.
This is the way of the FPL troll. It is known.
The Contenders
Rashford can’t quite qualify as a full troll. He’s had one good game all season (naturally against my team, Arsenal). He wasn’t tricking you; wasn’t pretending to be good. If you brought him in at any point, he’ll certainly have let you down… but it was probably your own fault.
I’ve got two other clear standout trolls for this award.
Picking between them is proving tricky, but I’ve got to give the silver medal to…
Leandro Trollard.
He’s technically the fourth-highest scoring midfielder in the game, but – unfortunately – very few people actually owned him for his best performances. The first was against Leicester in GW6, before which he only had a mediocre 1 goal, 1 assist. We didn’t get him, because he had Liverpool next, and we still thought Liverpool were good. Big Tross punished us all by bagging a hat-trick, good for a 20pt performance.
We all rushed to get him in (he had a massive +868k net transfer that week). Naturally, he then went and blanked three weeks in a row.
We all rushed to get him out (-490k net transfer) before the City game. Naturally, he scored, then did so again in a supposedly-tough matchup against Chelsea.
He’s a really good player, and he’s had a great season. But from an FPL perspective, Trollard has been a massive pain in the backside.
And the Winner Is…
Wilf Zaha!
Awards are normally named for retired greats of the game. Zaha has been trolling for so long now, and doing it so well, that he was already well-deserving of this honour.
I made a sombre promise to myself some time ago that I’d never get Zaha again in FPL. I’d simply been hurt too many times before. On my wildcard this season, I finally broke that vow… and naturally ended up regretting it. Never again, Wilf – that’s the last time you get me!
We should all know the score with Zaha by now. He’ll end the season with decent stats. He’s great to watch, and will look unplayable on his day. But if you ever, ever own him in FPL, he will immediately start blanking.
He scored in GW5, then blanked in his next two. He assisted against Leeds… then blanked in a must-start game against Leicester (when they were still rubbish). He scored against Wolves… then blanked in nice fixtures against Everton and Southampton. His net transfers after that were -359k… so of course he scored and assisted against West Ham.
The piece de resistance to this most Zaha-ish of campaigns was Gameweek 16 against Forest. You had to start him, if you had him. A decent number of people brought him in. In Wilf fashion, he blanked and missed a penalty, for a 0pt final score.
I have no idea why we keep trusting him. He will never change. Wilf Zaha is the Master Troll of FPL, and probably always will be.
Best to Own
Ah, that’s better. After all that venting, I’m ready to say some nice things again now.
It hasn’t all been doom and gloom in FPL, of course. The game feels frustrating more often than not, but there are still players out there who treat us right.
I’ve already crowned my overall MVP, of course, and both Miggy and runners-up Trippier and Haaland are out of contention here. Instead, I want to specifically reward the players who are simply pleasant to own. The ones who – for the most part – give us some relief from the neverending, maddening rollercoaster of inconsistency which is Fantasy Premier League.
The Contenders
Mitrovic would have been a shoe-in here, but he’s been injured too much.
Elsewhere, in a season in which clean sheets have been incredibly hard to come by, the Arsenal defenders have been a breath of fresh air.
White and Saliba were both only 4.5 to start the year. They’ve both started every gameweek, and have picked up cleans in almost half of those games. It feels like a pleasant, old-fashioned throwback to start a defender not just desperately hoping for an assist, but with reasonable expectations of a clean sheet.
Speaking of Arsenal, my (close) runner-up for this award is Saka. While he’s tied on points with Foden, but has been vastly less of a headache. He starts every single game, and has only blanked in 5/16 gameweeks.
And the Winner Is…
Harry Kane.
Yeah, yeah, I know it’s boring… but Kane is boring! That boringness is what makes him great!
The true set-and-forget player is rare in FPL. It’s gotten rarer still with the likes of Salah, Trent and Robertson losing that status. Kane is the definition of S&F. It doesn’t matter who he’s playing, because he’s on pens (and gets plenty of them). It doesn’t matter if he played midweek, because you know Conte’s going to cattle-prod him out there anyway at the weekend.
Since he stopped sulking about losing out on his move to City, and his last chance to ever win silverware, Kane has been great. He was in the second half of last season, and has been again this year, with 12 goals and 3 assists in 15 games (all of them starts). He never goes big (11pts is his highest return so far), but he returns basically every week (only 3 blanks so far).
I don’t care that he’s pricey, nor that he’s boring, nor that he plays for a boring, boring team. Kane is a joy to own in FPL.
Worst to Own
There are two sides to every coin, and – for every nice award I dish out – I must balance it out with a mean one. That brings us neatly to the yang to my previous prize’s yin – in this case, the worst players to have owned so far this season.
To qualify, players had to actually have been owned by a decent number of people. Yes, Ronaldo’s been rubbish, but nobody trusted him in the first place. Here are the players we did indeed believe in, and who threw it all back in our face…
The Contenders
The hard-and-fast rule (that I just made up) says that nobody can win more than one prize in a single FPL Awards show. That rules Zaha out of convention, unfortunately.
Perisic certainly does qualify here, and pushed hard for the number one spot. I keep banging on about this, but I’m just completely and utterly baffled that his ownership is still over 20%.
I’m happy to say I haven’t owned him once this season, but – if you have – you’ve had to suffer through constant rotation and many-a-blank even when he does start. When he doesn’t, he always gets subbed on to screw you with a one-pointer. In his last five games leading up to the break, Ivan the not-so-Terrible got 1pt four times, and managed one solitary assist for 4pts in his other game. Thankfully, you’ve only had to pay a mere 5.5 for the privilege of all this wonderful production!
And the Winner Is…
Phil Foden
You can get a full recap of my terrible Foden experience here. The two-part TLDR is that:
- It wasn’t his fault
- You can never, ever predict Pep’s rotations
The latter point is important to remember. Every time somebody gets in-form for City, we fall for them. Almost every time, we only get hurt when they’re suddenly benched for no reason. The only players we can 100% trust are Ederson and Haaland. Everyone else – even Kev and Cancelo – has been rotated in the past.
Foden is great, and has delivered big returns for FPL owners when he’s played. Unfortunately, he’s also served us with a whole lot of one-pointers, which has been particularly frustrating when there were so many other good midfield options this year, at almost exactly the same price.
Trent has been ‘worse’ this year, by miles. But nobody has been more downright frustrating to own than Foden.
Final Thoughts
Writing this article has only served to remind me what a rollercoaster ride this FPL season has been so far. I’ve spent most of it wallowing in frustration, convinced that my picks were fine while my OR very much suggested they weren’t. Then, after one decent score in Gameweek 16, I suddenly shot up around 700k places.
What does it all mean? That I was doing all right after all? That it’s all just ridiculously close? That FPL – like all fantasy sports – is largely random? Nah, definitely not the last one.
Anyway, with this awards show wrapped up, that’s the first half (kinda) of the 2022/23 Fantasy Premier League season in the books. We’ll now be turning our incredibly expert eye to the upcoming celebration of all that’s great about Football TM and how it brings the whole world together.
“It’s coming home, it’s coming home, it’s coming home” 🏴🎶 pic.twitter.com/S3kK8imQRa
— World Cup (@worIdcupHQ) November 16, 2022
Head over here to get a full breakdown of the Fantasy World Cup rules and our basic tips on Fantasy World Cup strategy. Follow us on Twitter (@Full90FPL) to get all the latest articles as soon as they’re posted, and – for actual Fantasy Premier League stuff – we’ll see you on the other side!