I can't resist...

BENCH BOOOOOST!

I've just hit the bench boost. It's not an ideal week, but I have no flags, no injuries, and my history of playing the game tells me that sooner or later they start piling up. So I might as well go now and hope for the best. Plus, it's fun isn't it.

I've made one transfer, switching Dubravka to Darlow, as Perri remains out for Leeds. In fact, that was the swinger really. With Dubravka in goal against City I'd be fearing a negative score. With Darlow at home to Bournemouth it's not quite as scary.

Darlow, Senesi, Agbadou and Foster make up the bench.

Foster against Man City is highly unlikely to get anything. Agbadou could possibly get defcon, but not much more. I'm not expecting a clean sheet from Darlow. Meaning Senesi is the only player with a bit of real potential.

You could argue that Anderson should be on the bench instead of Senesi. However, I genuinely had Senesi on the bench. I've really liked Anderson this season. So for me this is the honest bench.

The question then is, what contributes a good score for the bench boost?

If everyone plays over 60 minutes you're getting eight points. So that's the baseline. A single return then takes you past the ten point mark. Unless you've got a very good bench expecting more than that is probably a bit greedy. (With my bench expecting one is unrealistic.) Then on top of that you might get the odd defcon/save point/clean sheet point.

I'd be happy with ten points. I say happy, grateful is perhaps the better word. You probably need a bit of luck to get four playing bench players in a single gameweek. One injury or real world benching drops you down a player from the get-go. Plus, you're potentially wasting transfers and cash getting the bench right for just that one week. And it means you have to swerve players (I'm looking at you Man City) that get rotated randomly.

All this is no doubt just me justifying myself using it this week. Still, I've never been greedy in fpl, so it does feel good getting it used in a pragmatic way. I just hope everyone starts. After that I'm just going to enjoy it.

Last Week

60 points last week (avg. was 42). Another good rise in rank. Meaning I'm up to 134k as we go into GW6.

6 points on the bench last week. And they all played over 60 minutes. So perhaps I need to lower my expectations even further.