Surely it's perfect timing. There's still a week to go. Plus, I've at least got my badge sorted..
A smug little fox. I had my best season last year. I won my mini league. I'm the golden one. So I'm turning up confident.
[..hold on, I'll go and make another cup of tea, then I'll get to my actual plans. I was out last night, so I'm having a lazy Sunday morning. I'm listening to The Beekeeper by Tori Amos - an underrated album, ideal for such circumstances]
Haaland???
My plan is to go without Haaland. I won't share my actual team just yet as it's liable to change over the coming days. (Today's Community Shield should help to enlighten things.)
There are two reasons I'm planning on going without Haaland. Firstly, it's just my natural style. How can I resist being the black sheep? It's my natural tendency.
Secondly, that price difference! I can save 6.5m by going with Isak. Someone with near-Haaland like potential. Though, admittedly, much less likelihood of delivering that. He could do well. He (and Liverpool) could be unimpressive. Whereas Haaland kind of has a track record when it comes to these things.
Nevertheless, it's a gamble I like.
(No) Chip Strategy
I've been watching a bit of FPL content over the last week or so and it seems to be all about the chips. Early bench boosts, questions over when to wildcard, possible free hits.
Needless to say, I'm not thinking about any of these things. I discussed this at the start of last season and my thoughts remain similar.
Veteran FPL players are very used to planning chip use. It's ingrained. You saved your chips for the second half of the season (forward planning in of itself), then planned their use to navigate the blanks and doubles. Something with MASSIVE upside. Especially over casually players who either didn't know or didn't care about double gameweeks.
Now we have chips for the first half of the season as well, and that desire to plan remains. Yet the blanks and doubles aren't there to necessitate that.
So my question is: where's the upside?
And I actually think the upside comes in not planning. In using these chips as problem solvers or afterburners that you can turn on when an opportunity presents itself.
For example, let's say you have Gabriel, but he gets suspended for one game. You can use your free hit that week to navigate that problem. Instead of using one transfer to take him out and another to bring him back.
In turn, saving those two frees means you have more leeway to use the bench boost if you still have it. (I think if you have three or four transfers rolled you can bench boost whenever you fancy it - this is a big challenge for me, as I do find it hard to roll them.)
Enjoy The Bench Boost!
I totally understand how much of a headache the bench boost can be, but the whole point of the chips is that they add a bit of fun. I'm determined to just enjoy it. How many times did I say, "Wow, this would be a great bench boost!" in the days before we had two of them. Now I get to indulge that urge at some point during the first half of the season. I just need to be a bit chill about it and not be too much of a perfectionist. Just vibe it out.
Similar with the triple captain. In a way this is how the chips are supposed to be used. The blanks and doubles are an aberration of fixture pile ups, and it's almost a form of cheating to use these chips as get out of jail free cards. In an ideal season, with no out of place fixtures, the chips would just be fun things to use any particular week you felt an instinctive urge to use them. Like instinctively hitting the afterburner in a race around a Mario Kart track.
At the start of the season my instincts haven't fully kicked in yet. I've literally never seen a lot of these cheapie bench options play. So it feels like forcing things to even think along these lines.
Though, saying this, if Haaland scores a hattrick and the people bench boosting smash it, I'll find myself 50 points down after GW1. Therefore, take my opinions with a pinch of salt it you happen to be reading this. My badge should've definitely been a black sheep. Not a haloed fox with a golden crown.
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