Mental Health Well Being Tips for an Enjoyable FPL Season

We love FPL for many reasons right? The excitement, the goals, those monster hauls and your captain bagging a hat trick! FPL has even given us joy in games we may never have watched before in the hope our 4.5 million defender might just earn us a clean sheet.

Before going down further, here is the Link to all our 2022/23 Pre Season articles including a transfer tracker of all new signings, all team pre-season friendly updates, team previews, fixture analysis, position-wise analysis, and more. Completely free to access as well!

The last couple of seasons have been strange to say the least! Postponements, Covid ‘injuries’, last minute team changes and the countless blanks and double gameweeks. Never again do I want to be in the position of considering Burnley and Watford assets for captaincy….. Nobody mention Dennis.

This season should provide us with what we would consider a ‘standard’ Premier League season. With the only blanks and doubles being affected by cup competitions which can of course be semi planned for until the later stages. There is of course the World Cup which may affect player involvement and an extra wildcard, but let’s wait until the game is live before we consider these options. The excitement of the season as only been heightened after a recent Tweet by @OfficialFPL saying that the game will be released in July.

But as often with games that can give us those highs can often come the lows, the lows all of us FPL managers would of face throughout the season, the clean sheet wipe outs, benching’s and captain blanks, not to mention a missed penalty or a sending off and I’m sure all of us have got those 50/50 calls wrong at points in the season.

It is how we deal with those lows that can have an impact on our day to day lives and our mental health. What can make this harder is social media, watching other managers celebrate whilst you wish you chose the other option or took that hit. We can overthink, focus on the bed week and the red arrow can have far more of an impact on our lives than what it should.

This can have a knock on affect to the weeks that follow, kneejerk transfers, countless hits all powered by negative emotion in which some we later regret as the week progresses, the time passes and before you know it it’s deadline again where you second guess all those decisions you made on Monday.

More than 9 Million football fans played FPL last season, which means millions of users logging on every week to consider changes to their team in an effort to earn the most points.

Whilst there’s plenty of fun to be had with the game, and no doubt banter in the group chat, and even graphs if you take things really seriously, it can also cause problems. A new study, reported by the Guardian, has found that 24.6 of the 1995 people surveyed had seen their mental health drop due to playing the game.

Those players admitted they’d been hit by a ‘mid low mood’ at least from playing the game, and that the number had doubled for those considered ‘heavy users. ‘Mid low mood’ or greater affected 44% of people who spent 45 minutes playing, 60 minutes and 120 minutes thinking about the game per day.

Depending on how seriously you take the game, can give you those euphoric highs, is this a bad thing…no. With 38 Gameweeks, the chances of having a green arrow every week is slim to none. We have all had that haul, that captaincy shout we got right or that 1-2 week punt at the right time who hit the ground running. But I can guarantee we have all had the opposite.

Apart from Wildcards we get 1 transfer per week… unless you want to take hits which personally I think will be more difficult to get away with this season. How much time and effort should you put into that transfer??

There is no magic answer but just think how much time you would spend on it after a positive gameweek and replicate that time frame. Putting in place a routine regardless of a good or bad gameweek can help level out those mood swings. In turn it will stabilize mood swings and create behaviors which can be more manageable to cope with. So how can we improve this?

Further Read: Test your FPL Knowledge with our FPL Quiz

Some tips for having a good Mental Health while playing FPL

Manage your game time –

Once that overall rank for the week is locked in all games have finished that week, there is nothing you can do at all to affect that until the next game week starts. Yes we all like to catch a price rise from time to time but how many time do we hear that team news later in the week, the press conference, that injury… So give yourselves a couple of days off, do some research, or just enjoy some time way from FPL completely.

Do not compare –

The best advice I was given is that the FPL ranks don’t really look to make sense until gameweeks 15-20. All the players who play all their chips first few weeks, the part time accounts will always more often than not have a better start. Everybody has their own chip strategies. Your rank may not be as good as you wanted but just think how many players above you have spent more chips than you? Stick to your plan and do not make kneejerk reactions which you may later regret. Be adaptable but stick to your lane and play how you want to play, there will always be pros and cons to every style.

Play Your Own Game –

To me one of the most important. Some of us will follow content creators who do a fantastic job within the FPL Community, whether this be on Youtube, Twitter, Websites etc. It is a wonderful community to immerse yourself in. Believe it or not they also have their own styles of playing and it can be quite easy to be swept up into one of their transfers that may not fit into your team/style. This can cause a pick and mix style approach and can really affect your team in a matter of weeks. Build your teams & make your transfers accordingly, use whatever you wish to help consider, inform are maybe even spark an idea but make sure it is your decision and nobody else’s.

The game is there to be enjoyed and not have any negative impact on our lives. If it gets tough, if you are struggling, speak to someone, speak to friends, family or somebody in the community.

Your FPL community friend- @FPL_Health

Further reads from ALLABOUTFPL ahead of the 2022/23 FPL Season

2022/23 FPL Pre Season: All Clubs Friendlies Fixtures, Updates & Results
Premier League 2022/23 Transfer Updates | FPL Impact of New Signings
All Teams FPL Fixture Analysis for The 2022/23 FPL Season | PL Fixtures
FPL Rotational Pairs & Combinations For The 2022/23 FPL Season
List of Premier League Players Who’ll Not be Going to the 2022 World Cup
2022/23 FPL Season: Key Dates, Information, and Timeline

Link to all our 2022/23 Pre Season articles including a transfer tracker of all new signings, all team pre-season friendly updates, team previews, fixture analysis, position-wise analysis, and more. Completely free to access as well!

Link to all our FPL history blogs covering the highest-scoring players in a game week, all-time FPL dream team, highest-scoring players each season, highest-scoring midfielders, defenders, forwards, goalkeepers, the origin of FPL, and more. Give them all a read if you’re interested to know what happened back in the days.

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What’s next from ALLABOUTFPL ahead of FPL Gameweek 1 of the 2022/23 FPL Season?

We’ll be covering team previews for all 20 teams, FPL team structures, must-own players, player comparisons, differential picks, fixture analysis, captaincy metrics, multiple FPL drafts with pros and cons, chip strategy, rules guide, beginners guide, FPL tips, and more. Keep checking allaboutfpl.com for all our blogs and subscribe to our free newsletter through the link below. We’ll also be posting regularly about the same on our social media accounts so follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook keep our notification ON.

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