We caught up with Dave who finished the season as World Number 16 in the 2019/20 season ahead of 7,628,950 managers out of the 7,628,967 who registered for FPL last season. Dave had an outstanding season finishing just 62 points off Alexander who won this season’s FPL. Let’s find out more about his remarkable season including his thought process and key strategies that lead him to a remarkable finish in FPL through this casual chat that we have had over @daveking in the last few days.
Q. From your point of view, What do you think was the turning point of your FPL season? Where did you actually start to believe that you can make it into World Top 100?
I got into the top 1,000 quite early (GW11) but even then never thought about top 100. Even though I was in the top 100 for most of GW’s 19 – 27 I’d thought I’d blown it as had a couple of bad GW’s right before lockdown. But then the first two GW’s after lockdown (bench boost and then free hit) put me up to 50th and then I thought it was definitely on, especially by then we’d seen a few matches and had an idea who was in form.
Q. You have been playing Official FPL for the past 7 years and it looks you have finally cracked the code to ace the game(which many of us haven’t found even after 10+ years). Does experience really help? And, what are the simple lessons you learnt in FPL over these years?
I wish I knew the code! Haha. Certainly, the last few years have been giving it more time for sure, having a bit more of a plan, doing more prep work etc. etc. Definitely think experience helps, even things like knowing when DGW’s are coming, looking at upcoming fixture ratings and checking who has been starting recently for certain clubs for example.
Q. What team do you support in Premier League? And how do your club loyalty affect your FPL team?
I don’t really support anyone specific in the Premier League (was a Wimbledon FC supporter back in the days of the crazy gang so follow the league 1 fans team AFC Wimbledon now), but am local to Brighton so go see them quite a few times. I do always enjoy having a player in my fpl team who I’m going to see live. Though that normally backfires, captained Shane Duffy for Brighton’s DGW last season when they conceded about 10 goals!! Though on the flip side have been to see Spurs a few times in the last couple of years too and Alli and Moura have normally returned for me.
Q. How seriously do you take FPL and how many hours/week you spend to make your transfers? Also tell us more about your FPL banter group and your mini-leagues?
Sure my wife would like to answer this one! Haha. Certainly since the restart and being in the position I was I spent more time on it than normal, plus with the GWs coming thick and fast. I’d say around 2 hours or so per GW, though with the caveat of sticking with your gut feeling rather than wandering too far off into limitless possibilities!
As for the mini leagues, I have probably 3 I am most focused on. A small mini league with a group of friends, my work league and league with members of my golf club. A couple in the mates mini league wanted it on record how upset they are I was so far ahead of them!! Haha. The guy who organises my golf league one started adding on a “King watch” section to his email updates to update everyone on my progress about half way through the season so that was great to read! Plus there was a bit of money on that one, so have used the winnings to treat myself to some new golf clubs!
Q. You have played your first wildcard in GW9. But that was a disaster with just 39 points. But that team paid off really well in the longer run. Just take through your chip strategy/ when do you generally prefer using the Wildcards?
Certainly no exact rule on when to use the first wildcard for me. This year I did quite well to have a lot of the good starters in my team from the off (Lord Lundstram, Salah, Sterling, Abraham etc) so no need to change too drastically. However, you need to keep yourself open to playing the wildcard early on as you don’t want to miss the boat on the guys who start the season well. When I did choose to play it there was certainly things I was after, firstly Leicester had a terrific run of fixtures coming up and I had none of their team so wanted to get some in.
Also, my double Liverpool defense wasn’t working out as they weren’t keeping many clean sheets, though still scoring plenty of goals so wanted to move my Liverpool assets to higher up the pitch. Finally like you say the first GW wasn’t great, but straight after that is when I started climbing the rankings. So important to keep the faith and remember a wildcard should not be measured on the first one or two GW’s but a longer time frame.
Q. Digging little deep into your transfers for this season, you have taken just 11 hits(all -4) and have not made a transfer for 10 Gameweeks. What is your view about taking hits in general?
Well, up until quite recently I was ok with taking hits especially only -4 as 4 points to potentially increase your return by 10-15+ is obviously worth it. Though looking back at this season I seemed to have made a lot more transfers than a lot of teams around me so perhaps I made too many. I would certainly say I wouldn’t go down the route of never taking hits, got to leave yourself open to change. A -4 hit with two free transfers could change 3 players which is a very big chunk of your starting XI.
Q. Coming to the important part, You have captained Salah- 8 times, KDB and Vardy(7), Sterling(5), Bruno(3), Aguero, Wilson, Mane, Son(Red card and -2 points when you captained him), Maddison, Auba, Doherty, Foden(all once). So you have a very good mix of captaining Premium players and give the differential ones the chance occasionally? How do you find the right mix between Premium ones and differentials while captaining?
The bulk of the time it was big name players, as I would say they are safer bets as return more regularly. The main times I changed, say the Doherty and Wilson ones recently, were down to the need to take a bit more of a risk to climb the rankings. One potential thought for next season is to perhaps rotate the captains armband less and stick to less players but still the big players. I think having the lower owned differentials just in your team is enough, no need to captain them certainly not frequently anyway.
Q. Another interesting thing I noticed after analysing your team is you have given more time for your Captains to perform and have stuck with them for successive weeks(Eg. GW24-28 Salah, GW14-17 Vardy, GW 3-5 Sterling). What’s your take on this?
Normally the big players don’t blank for that long so it is worth sticking with them. Plus there is always the fear of moving the armband and missing out as last weeks captain hauls! haha
Q. According to you, which was the best transfer/good gamble you have made this season? Also mention your worst transfer if any!
The worst is an easy one, transferred out KDB (for good reasons, was playing deeper and not getting forward that much in previous games) for before GW17…. He then proceeded to go points crazy against Arsenal! That was hard to watch!! My mates kept on reminding me for ages how if I hadn’t had done that what position in the world I would be! Haha
There were of course a few good ones, was pleased to get in ahead of Abraham’s early season form and to then swap him for Ings to coincide with his good run and Tammy’s lack of form. Probably as it happened more recently but I’d say having Mahrez and Martial in from the restart was my best choice. Both quite low in the ownership stakes but both got me big returns.
Q. On paper, your best Gameweek is GW30+ after the season restart where you have made best use of the unlimited transfers, used bench boost to get 131 points. De Bruyne(C)- 30 points, Mahrez-21 points were the difference makers. Also your entire defense returned with points. What was your thought process behind this Wildcard team?
As this was going to be the only DGW left now I wanted to go all in on the teams with two matches that GW. With my second wildcard left I knew I could effectively start again the second or third GW back so didn’t have to worry about upcoming fixtures etc. With a broad thinking of Villa/Sheff Utd defenders as those teams don’t score many goals, and Man City/Arsenal attackers as that’s where the big points could be earned.
Q.You have got 161 points totally from your keepers this season using 9 keepers(Pope, Hendo,McCarthy, Ryan, DDG, Martinez, Krul, Fabianski and Nyland). But you could have got 170 points by just sticking with your GW1 keeper Pope or 135 points putting Ryan from GW1 without wasting any transfers on keepers. How do you view the ‘Set and Forget’ strategy for Keepers?
Interesting seeing that now. I hadn’t really thought about that too much, but now seeing that there it does seem a lot of chopping and changing. Especially when there are greater rewards elsewhere up the pitch. Coupled with my plan of doing less transfers next season I certainly think a set and forget keeper is a good idea.
Q. Trent Alexander Arnold was the only player in your team for all 38 weeks. The second most is quite at a distance in the form of bench fodder Button(29 weeks). TAA has the highest points/£ ratio in the game with 27 points/£. No other midfielder or striker has even come close for that price range(7.0-7.5). What’s your take on going for Premium defenders ahead of Budget mids at the same price range?
I do like a premium defender or two for sure, specifically full backs. So many teams have their full backs as basically wingers now (TAA, Robbo, Doherty, Alonso etc. etc.) so they are in essence a midfielder, but you had the added bonus of an extra point for a goal and of course the clean sheet! Was also a bit easier this season to spend money there I think as a lot of the premium strikers weren’t quite on it at times and had a decent amount of options in cheaper brackets (Ings, Abraham, Jiminez, DCL, Greenwood etc.)….. be interesting to see prices next season.
Q. You started GW38+ at OR:26. What was your target for the final week as you didn’t have a Free Hit to play?
My big target was world top 10, but I wasn’t that confident once I saw how many teams near me having chips still left to play. The pessimist in me was just hoping I’d cling onto top 100! haha
Q. You started the last Gamweek at OR: 26. Used the two transfers to bring in Aurier and Kane for Doherty and Jimenez. What was the thought process behind it? Perhaps a Spurs rampage would have put you in single digit OR?
With a lot of teams having free hits I made the decision to go against a fair bit of the norm that I guessed a lot of teams would do (i.e. go big on Burnley defence, get David Silva in for example), I didn’t think it was worth me trying to cover that and especially being the last GW and being in the position I was thought would try something a little different. Just wish I’d picked PEA over Kane!I also wanted to get rid of the wolves assets as I was sure Chelsea, especially at home, would step up a bit. So the transfer to Kane was fairly straight forward as there wasn’t really any of forwards with the form or the fixture to move to. Plus Palace had so many defensive injuries. Likewise with Aurier, good fixture and always gets forward a lot too, I had thought about a Burnley defender but as mentioned above went against that.
Q. Do you use FPL Twitter to take tips/stats to bring in players for your team? Or you generally avoid it before deadlines to avoid overthinking/remain stress free? If yes, What are some of the Twitter accounts that you had fun interacting with this season?
It was only really after the restart, once I thought I could genuinely do well and even win the whole thing, that I really started following lots of accounts and reading a lot of tweets. Up until then it was only the official FPL twitter account I followed. I would say it has certainly been interesting to see all the posts, insights etc. but would say still to go with your own gut (as my wife told me plenty of times this season! Ha!) you can easily be overwhelmed by the number of tweets, stats, opinions etc. So I would say I’m too early in the world of fpl twitter to suggest follows, but (apart from you of course!) stating the probably obvious but Ben Crellin was great in terms of planning of future blank and double GWs.
Q. What’s your rough plan for next season? Any nailed players already for GW1?
Like a lot of people, I definitely intend to have a bit of time not thinking about FPL! With so many GW’s in recent weeks it has been a bit intense. A lot depends on players prices and positions too, I think a fair few players will move position. For example, Martial being listed as a reasonably priced midfielder was great, if he was a higher bracket forward next year not so much. In the last couple of seasons I have done some research on the promoted teams too (where Lundstram from the start came from) so would encourage that.
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Thanks to Dave for taking time off his work and agreeing for this candid fireside chat with us, we enjoyed having Dave with us and I’m sure the ones that read through the blog would have picked up something that we all can apply for the next season to finish higher up in the rankings.
You can follow Dave on twitter @daveking and get to know him better. Hopefully, Dave will be back with us soon with his next season strategies once the season is announced. Stay tuned:)
Special thanks to all of our followers who have read our content and appreciated it over the last season which has been our first year of covering FPL content. We are striving to improve and have some exciting things lined up. Stay tuned.
Srinivasan S
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