Fantasy Premier League: Final Review

Given I didn't have either Aubameyang or De Bruyne I think this has to go down as a pretty decent week.

Gameweek Points: 71

Gameweek Rank: 2,138,663

Overall Rank: 80,679

I had a little manic moment before the deadline. Following the early news that Trent Alexander-Arnold wasn't starting I tried to bring in Bardsley off the bench. However, (fortunately) I was too slow and when I clicked confirm it took me straight to "game updating". So Bardsley with his huge zero stayed on my bench and I got the TAA one point. A very lucky little point. Probably worth a few thousand places :)

This brings me nicely to my final few transfers. I was more or less happy with my team, so I just made a few bench switches. This was a good decision in hindsight as I'd have made things worse by tinkering - the move I was considering was Martial to Pulisic, so again, quite lucky really.

Final Rank

My final rank of 80,679 is nice and respectable. I was very happy to finish inside the top 100k by 10 pm last night. I thought it was going to be much worse than that, especially after the first half of the games. Now I need to get cracking on next season ..though it's probably best to have a little break before then.

I can also now update my graph comparing this season to last. Definitely need a good start next time out!

Final Points: 2277

Final Rank: 80,679

Fantasy Premier League: GW37+ Review

Back to a green arrow, thank God. Now just the final round of games to worry about.

Gameweek Points: 79

Gameweek Rank: 355,790

Overall Rank: 84,880

Very lucky with the captaincy. It paid off quite nicely. The Ings penalty miss was a little bit galling, but with other players getting nice returns I really can't complain.

I'm now in a quandary over this final week now. I have two free transfers, but I'm not sure what to do with them. I may just take out my injured bench defenders to then bring in two playing ones. I'm worried about players getting rested. Will Liverpool still go full strength? So I have a gut feeling I'll end up needing my bench players. It feels like a waste though just making bench switches.

The captaincy is also troubling. Sterling on paper looks ideal, but again the rotation risk looms large. Particularly after seeing pictures of him in St Tropez ..with Piers Morgan of all people.

(Wasn't this guy calling us all murderers and demanding

an even stricter lock down not too long ago. Now he's out

and about. No mask, no social distancing. Doesn't

look overly concerned about a deadly virus ??)

Anyway lol, Piers Morgan aside, I think I'll be sticking with Sterling for captain. Barring any further updates. I'll be waiting til tomorrow to make my transfers, so I'll probably just tweet the team out rather than blog it. Again, I really have no idea what I'm doing, so I'm going to have to do some thinking tonight.

Overall Points: 2206

Overall Rank: 84,880

FPL: GW36+ Review / GW37+ Preview

Well, I'm going to do things backwards this time. GW36+ hasn't quite finished yet. So I'll share next weeks side now. The deadline ain't 'til tomorrow, but I think I'm pretty settled barring any major news.

No transfers. I've dumped the captaincy on TAA. Simply because Liverpool don't have an FA Cup game, unlike Manchester City and United. So I'm hoping they'll just go full strength. Plus, after getting beat by Arsenal this week you'd think they'd want to bounce back a bit. Ideally I'd like to stick with Sterling, even after his blank this week, but the risk of rotation or injury with the FA Cup game tomorrow puts me off. So I'm backing that Liverpool aren't on the beach already.

Also, captaining TAA should be a bit of a differential ..and I really need to claw some points back after this gameweek.

As it stands I'm on 37 points, with about 5 minutes of the West Ham v Watford game left. A really poor week. I keeping checking the fpl site in the hope that I can cadge a save point from Fabianski, but I don't think that would make too much difference really 😁😂

As of last night this week has cost me 20k* places. I'm guessing it'll be similar tonight following this game. The two points from Fabianski might just offset the percentage of people that have returning players in the fixture.

(I'll update the final points and ranking when it all updates_)

Gameweek Points: 37

Gameweek Rank: 4,587,848

Overall Rank: 110,240

...no save point :(

*make that 25k 😫 

Oh, and I forgot, my Jimenez to Ings transfer didn't quite pay off either. Both scored, but Jimenez ended up with two more points. Hopefully Ings will now outscore him this gameweek to fix that.

FPL: GW35+ Review / GW36+ Preview

Very nice GW35+ :)

Gameweek Points: 79

Gameweek Rank: 137,049

Overall Rank: 83, 471

(click to enlarge)

My De Bruyne to Sterling transfer paid of massively. So that was very satisfying. I now need him to at least match De Bruyne this week to make that count. Especially as I have him captain. Also it finally took me into the top 100k. So I'm feeling very good about that :D

I'm now struggling to decide whether to bring in Ings for Jimenez. It's less than an hour before deadline so I'll have to get a move on. I'm always a little reluctant to take out Jimenez, he's normally so reliable, but although he scored the penalty for Wolves on Sunday he didn't look especially deadly. He'd also blanked in the previous three. So Ings, playing Brighton this gameweek, then Bournemouth next, looks like an improvement.

[...]

I think I've talked myself into it. Let's do it.

There we go. All set. Hopefully it pays off.

Overall Points: 2090

Overall Rank: 83,471

FPL: GW34+ Review

I finished 7 points above the average this week, but it still resulted in a big red arrow. In my last post I was talking about rank expectations. I think now my aim firmly has to be top 100k. It's clearly a bit mental talking about anything higher than that at this point. Anyways..

Gameweek Points: 66

Gameweek Rank: 2,700,195

Overall Rank: 144,653

(not too bad ..but no Salah)

As for GW35+ I won't be sharing my finalised team in this post. I have two free transfers so I'm currently planning quite a risky move. I'm going to wait 'til later tonight, or maybe even tomorrow to hit the button though, just in case there's any further team news.

My plan is:

De Bruyne out - Sterling in.

(I'll also have to downgrade Jonny (possibly to Cresswell) just to gouge out the extra cash needed.)

Obviously this would be risky. De Bruyne is the highest scoring player in the game this season (along with Salah after his brace this week). So it feels counter-intuitive. However, De Bruyne played the full 90 minutes on Wednesday, and he seemed to pick up a little knock too towards the end. So a benching wouldn't be a surprise. Whereas Sterling seems to be due a start.

Of course, it's always dangerous second guessing Guardiola. I have two free transfers to burn though, and a lot of ground to make up, so it might be time to roll the dice. The question then comes do I captain Sterling too. Or do I stick with the safer Fernandes?

I think I'll make that decision tomorrow morning, though it's highly likely I'll stick with Fernandes. Right now however I'm going to spend some time searching around to see if I can find someone better than Cresswell.

Overall Points: 2011

Overall Rank: 144,653

GW34+ Preview / GW33+ Review

Okay let's keep this simple. GW34+. Not much time. Same team. No transfers. De Bruyne captain.

As for GW33+ it was another nice week.

Gameweek Points: 72

Gameweek Rank: 682,774

Overall Rank: 120,808

(click to enlarge)

Final Rank??

With just five weeks left I'm now wondering what my aim should be for overall rank. Normally my aim is just to get as high as possible. I'm always optimistic so the sky's the limit usually. However, with not much time left I'm now thinking I should reign my hopes in a little bit.

I'm currently 120k, so given my season so far I should really be very pleased with anything inside the top 100k. However, I want more. Ideally I'd like to beat the old PB. Which was last season's 30k. Failing that I'd quite like to get another top 50k finish. At this point last season though I was already around 30k. So getting anywhere near that from 120k now seems nigh on impossible.

I was going to check to see how many points I am off the top 50k, but as the FPL site is now offline due to the gameweek just starting I'll have to wait.

Come to think of it I might do a little graph. Plotting this season and last. That might give me something to do while I wait. Nice and geeky.

A long time later...

I've done a graph. It took me a lot longer than I anticipated.

Not the most professional looking graph, but it nevertheless highlights the difference between this season and last. It's pretty clear from the image that this year's start has badly let me down. The climb back up the ranks is quite impressive though - if I do say so myself :)

Some of the ranks earlier in the season went well over the one million mark, but I couldn't plot those accurately without completely skewing the way the graph looked. So they're beyond an event horizon. (Also I didn't have the data for the first three weeks of last season, so that year has to start at GW4).

Finally, since the FPL website is now live again I can check the rankings. My friend is currently inside the top 40k, and he's about 50 points ahead of me. So I'd have to claw back about 10 points a week on average to make up that difference. It's certainly doable. 50 points isn't an outlandish number, but it would certainly be a very big ask. Looking at the above graph though I should perhaps just be grateful that I've made up so much ground already.

Plus if I'm not careful it could start going the other way 😬

Overall Points: 1945

Overall Rank: 120,808

FPL: GW32+ Review / GW33+ Preview

Another nice week. I knew my entire gameweek would hang upon the shoulders of Aubameyang and he came good. Only three players returned for me, yet I finished with 74 points. Very lucky indeed. Now it's wildcard time for GW33+

Gameweek Points: 74

Gameweek Rank: 772,716

Overall Rank: 141,739

(a very unbalanced gameweek)

I thought I was going to get a few Sheffield United clean sheets too until that late Kane goal yesterday. That would've been a little bit greedy though so I can't complain too much. I was fortunate enough this week. With me choosing not to use the wildcard I was quite worried that GW32+ would badly damage my ranking. So to get a decent green arrow was really beyond my expectations.

I jumped 30,000 places. I'd have loved to have been in the top 100k by this point, but 141k isn't too far off. So if I can make this wildcard work there's still a chance of a decent finish.

GW33+ Wildcard...

This is how my team stands at present.

I've tinkered around quite a bit, but I think I'm settled now. Twenty minutes ago I had Pogba in, Nketiah instead of Greenwood (who would've been benched for Jonny), and Ederson in goal. However, having watched City yesterday I really want to keep three City attackers. After all, the games are superb. Plus Mahrez came on late yesterday so I fancy him for a start on Sunday.

Having Greenwood in the starting line up is a bit of a risk as he could easily be back on the bench (I've lost out on the Greenwood gamble before this season), but as with Manchester City; I really want three United attackers.

It also means I'm sticking Jonny on the bench now. If he delivers and stays there that'll be frustrating of course. I did plan on having a strong bench though for these last six games, so it adds a bit of security.

The fact that teams now have five transfers makes it more likely that players - especially attacking players - will at least get some game time off the bench. However, players will get seriously rotated now as the season winds to an end, so I'm expecting at least the odd full benching. For example, if Trent Alexander-Arnold finds himself starting on the bench on Sunday he may very well stay there and get the full rest. In fact, now Liverpool have the league in the bag it's possible players may not even travel for games. So I really want a good bench for if and when that happens.

Finally this brings me to my captain choice this week. I'm going for Trent partly due to this thinking. He's got a great fixture - you'd have to think at least a clean sheet is quite likely with them playing Villa. Then if he doesn't start there's always the potential that he may just sit the entire game out. So my vice captain will then get a shot at things. Whereas if I captain say De Bruyne and he gets benched then it's more likely he may just come on for the last 10 minutes or something.

In the image above I have the vice captaincy on Robertson. I'll no doubt change that to Fernandes before tomorrow morning however. He's probably the obvious choice for captain this week, and is pretty much guaranteed to start. So it could cost me not just sticking the captaincy straight on him. I do really fancy Liverpool to bounce back though against Villa. So captaining TAA should be a nice differential going into this gameweek.

Hopefully it pays off.

Overall Points: 1873

Overall Rank: 141,739