GW28 - Bench Boost Disaster !

Good week, bad bench boost.

Gameweek Points: 104

Gameweek Rank: 778,011

Overall Rank: 101,137

3 points for the bench boost ..that's quite bad isn't it.

😅

To be fair in some ways I actually got quite lucky again too, so it wasn't all bad. My original plan on the Friday was to bring in Reece James and captain him. With that plan I wasn't going to bench boost at all. However, when I saw later in the day that Dias was definitely out for Manchester City that all changed. Suddenly Laporte and Cancelo seemed almost nailed on, so the bench boost became an option.

I then brought in Coutinho instead of James, captained him instead, and hit the BB button.

Meaning I got better captain returns and missed out on the Reece James injury.

Still though, the bench boost failure was a little annoying.

Instincts

I didn't feel instinctively good about using the bench boost. I wasn't focused on fpl last week, and I think I used it lazily, feeling that sooner or later I had to use it.

"I guess it makes sense to use it now."

Looking back though there simply wasn't enough upside on that bench. I was a little unlucky that Konsa missed both games, though in my original line-up it was Bowen on the bench and not him. Bowen against Liverpool was never a great fixture. Likewise the Pope fixture against Chelsea wasn't ideal.

I rarely feel bad about making mistakes, but when I go against my instinct that's when it gets me. I like my logic and my instincts to be synchronised. People often view 'instinct' as something wishy-washy or illogical. However, I believe our instincts are responses to the information that our bodies are receiving - i.e. they're a way of processing information. Albeit a way that's quite different to the logical, chain-of-thought, monologue way our brains work through information.

Our senses receive a constant flow of sensory information, and our bodies respond with a feeling that this flow is good/bad/normal/weird/etc. Our instincts aren't always right of course, but they can act as a good guide, and are definitely worth paying attention to.

So my gut was telling me "This doesn't look and feel quite right," but my brain was too lazy to take the time to think about why that was.

Anyway, still, I got very lucky and had another green arrow. Pushing me to just outside the top 100k - I'm literally teetering over the edge of a decent rank now.

GW29.

As for this week I'm currently planning a minus 4. To take out Raphinha and the injured Bowen, and bring in both Saka and Kulusevski. Currently there's talk that van Dijk might miss out because of Covid, so that's giving me a little pause for thought. However, my instinct is I'll just leave him in there whatever the case is. I don't think it's worth moving my team around and taking hits to bring in someone else.

I'll also still be without Salah (I plan on doing Son to Salah in GW31 - GW30 being free hit time). It's a concern, but again I don't think Son to Salah this week is necessarily worth a minus 4.

Trent Alexander-Arnold will be my captain. So I'm hoping for a bit more luck this week too.

Overall Points: 1817

Overall Rank: 101,137