On The UP !

I've had two good gameweeks since my bench boost. The first almost entirely down to having Salah captain. The second pretty much my whole team did well.

GW8: 57 points (avg. 44)

GW9: 99 points (avg. 67)

I brought Tsimikas in this week, and Pedro Porro last, so I've strengthened that bench boost backline up. (You can see I suffered a (-1) thanks to still having Al-Dakhil in there in GW8. The keeper didn't do me too many favours either.). It meant I had to forgo bringing in Son as well, but with Mbeumo finally getting me some points it worked out okay.

I'm now probably going to bring in Saka for Mbeumo as we head into GW10. I like this period of the season: the wildcard is out of the way, and it's just a case of keeping the team in trim with a transfer here and there each week. Obviously I would like to own Son and Watkins along with Saka, but given there's little I can do about it there's little point worrying. It's just a case of keeping the good ship sailing.

I'll only really start making long term plans again once we head into double gameweek territory.

My current rank is 454,270 - so much better than where I previously was, around the 1.8m mark.

I've also built up a bit of team value thanks to that early wildcard. I'm currently at 101.6m. That might not sound spectacular to many people, but normally I always tend to have a team value that hovers around the 100m mark. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll have an extra 0.5m or so. I think it's because I'm not too good at following the template early on in the season. So weirdly that decision to wildcard and bench boost has paid off more in team value than in bench boost points.

More luck than judgement, but I'm more than happy to take it.

The BENCH BOOST: results

I got 13 points from my bench boost. So what follows is sheer cope.

56 points in all ..and I took a minus 4 too. Though, to be fair, that was primarily to bring Son in, so I would've had to do it this week anyway.

I'm actually not entirely disappointed with the 13 points, it could've been much worse with that fixture against Newcastle. In fact, the two save points I got from Trafford in that game turned out to be the high point.

Had each player picked up 2 points per game that would've made 14, so 13 is about par for expectation. I was dreaming of a clean sheet, especially in the Luton vs Burnley fixture, but it was always more hope than expectation. So I've got my par for the course and I can now look forward to the rest of the season without the hassle of worrying about when to play it. (I did say this was cope.)

Past Bench Boosts

I'm actually going to have a look back at my previous seasons to see what my usual average for the bench boost is. I'll do it on the fly. As I type now I have no idea what past seasons were like. I know last season was bad, and I have a vague recollection that the season before was something of a disaster too. I think these experiences probably colour my current feelings towards it.

Anyway, I'll go and have a look at my past blog posts..

[Some time later..]

Last season: 8 points

I captained Haaland and I'm guessing he was rested. I also received 0 points for Virgil Van Dijk and vice-captain Trent Alexander-Arnold that week. So not good. Though last season I was playing monthly, so my options for using the bench boost were somewhat limited.

Season 21/22: 3 points

Ouch. No wonder I have PTSD when it comes to bench boosting 😄. I was slightly unlucky with that one, as Konsa missed both games of a double. Though I think the other three players just had the one fixture, so it wasn't the greatest brainwave in the world to play it.

Season 20/21: 29 points

This one's a bit more like it. I had to do a bit of maths to tally it up. Antonio getting a huge 18 points alone. Making this week's tally of 13 look somewhat puny and wasteful.

Season 19/20: 22 points

Another decent use of the bench boost. This one was during the Covid restart, back in the summer of 2020, so it all just feels very weird though. It's a miracle I managed to focus on football with the Stasi breathing down my neck.

Season 18/19: 23 points

Another good haul, this time with a very Brighton-looking bench.

Seeing these 20-plus scores, along with the much older and poorer graphics, is making it dawn on me how foolish it was to play my bench boost this week. No wonder I was one of the only people going this route. I think those last two seasons really have skewered my perception of the chip. Still though, 13 points isn't too bad, and it's certainly better than 3.

..And that's as far as the blog posts go back.

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Also, as an aside, when I was searching back I did find this old fpl meme.

It's quite fitting, as my bench boost has probably put me about that much higher than the average this gameweek.