Hi, I am Sankalp- I go by my Twitter page “@Understanding Football” and today, I am going to look back at a game-changing 21/22 FPL season where I ended with a global overall rank of 355 & 11th in India.
We are going to look back a bit into my FPL history and analyze the season I had and better, see if there are any takeaways from this season. Also, my way of playing this game has always been “high risk”, so we will discuss the viability of such a strategy and whether we can devise some dos/ don’ts, tips which guides us even when playing such a risky game.
As someone who has registered an FPL team every season since 2011, I seriously never managed to play this game more than a few weeks till the 2019/20 season. In my first full season, I ended with a rank of around 164k full of ups and downs – with a genuine chance of ending with top 30k to throw it all away with mind-blowing hits. I look back at that season and I smile at some of the lessons I learnt. The next season was a bit different in approach but it ended with a 300kish rank with only glimmer being an Indian topper for GW-8 with a below 1000 GW rank.
Somehow coming into this season, my target was still an all illusive Top 20k. I told myself history didn’t matter and lessons learnt will only help me do better. Having watched and followed games across teams for the last 2 seasons, I thought my understanding of the game and player mentality had improved and hence, should have some correlation with overall rank.
Little did I know- this was the season that would not only help me achieve my target but one that would help me cross it beyond my imagination. Now, this is not going to be a gloating article, even though it looks like I have started writing one. Looking at some of the true legends of the FPL community, I have realized doing well for 1 season is ‘luck’– doing it consistently is ‘skill’.
Being a budding FPL manager, the purpose of this article is to primarily capture some of the things that worked for me last season and see which of them should be my focus areas for the next season. These are my own learnings & some of which may or may not sound logical to you but please give it a read perhaps to get an alternate view of playing the game.
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Before I get all philosophical about FPL, let us have a look back at key points of last season. My primary sources for these summaries are:-
- Fploptimized.com by Sertalp B.Cay (A fantastic site that I check fairly frequently)
- GetPlaymaker by Neil Murray ( A small community outside Twitter with lovely tools)
- A website called anewpla.net/fpl/report ( A site that has summarized multiple decision metrics to make things easier for us)
I use these sites from time to time to analyze my season.
- Overall, you can see I played a very risky game last season with 112 points of hits ( Top 10k average- 57.7 points) but the immediate returns from my transfers is around 600 points. If you look at the points per game- Midfielders topped it last season followed by defenders & the same is reflected in my formations with around 27 GWs- I have 8/11 players in these two positions. Looking at the chip usage, most of the chips have resulted in an immediate advantage of over 30 points which for me is a good indicator of the plans around chips- of course, the bench boost was a crucial turning point of the season but more on that later.
Deeper Analysis
While in overview, the numbers look good, of course, the question to ask is what exactly worked for me and which decisions were crucial perhaps. Let us look at overall popular picks & some differential picks who helped me wrt Top 10k managers.
(Thanks to fploptimized.com)
- If you look at the overall gain from players, Ronaldo & Son worked wonders for me especially the usage of them as differential captains. Ronaldo had an average of 19.2 & Son as 26.7 as captains which I think is now reflecting here.
- Robertson & Matip were solid double Liverpool differentials for me towards the last GWs and I am happy it reflects when compared to top 10k managers. Also, the Chilwell & James combo in my WC-1 was something that really helped.
One of the coolest features is that FPL Optimized tracks down your FPL points earned by the type of acquisition of players over its entire age. I actually put a lot of focus on my wild cards with two major parameters of focus- differentials & mid-term.
It seems it has worked with 40% of my overall points having come from 2 Wildcards. Both my wild cards were early in nature, especially the second one in GW 24, and my long-term focus really helped in getting these points. Of course, double free hits are reflected here with a total of 164 points which also gave 67 points advantage over the overall population.
Looking at Target Event Ratios – one thing that stands out is the success ratio for captains as well as the Clean sheet for GK & Defs. Last season, I wrote an article on allaboutfpl ahead of GW 7 on how Big At the Back can be a reasonable strategy and I followed the same– this also reflects in the average points I was able to garner especially from my defenders.
FPL Philosophy & Tips
- Start of the Season- I am a risk-taker and I constantly start a season with risky decisions- some workout, like not owning Werner in 20/21 or Toney in 21/22. However, many of those backfire and hence, I started last season with a conservative take. I went for 7-8 players who were popular and sensible choices but balanced it with a few non-popular ones of my choice.
- I did not take many hits in my first 7 odd GWs, a total of 2 hits, and the entire focus on saving FT every other GW. However, my start wasn’t great and till GW 7, I was languishing around 836k OR when I decided to hit the Wildcard button. My initial plan was to attack United players with GW 13 change of fixtures but plans can change when situations change. This was perhaps one of the first turning points for me.
Be Flexible early on- even huge decisions like Wildcard need not be taken as per the pre-season plan if the situation demands so.
Focus Areas
- Captaincy- I remember in the 20/21 season, I was having a huge problem with captaincy- perhaps a more common one- my vice-captain always outscored my captain. This happened for around 30 weeks & at the end of the season with a rank of 306k, I realized if I had captained my vice-captain every single time, I would have been in the top 10k. This opened my eyes to the importance of captaincy.
With an overall captaincy contribution of 830 points to my season ( 415 additional points), you can sense this one decision results in 30% of your score (15% additional score). Every week for me, I have now spent more time on captaincy than on any other decision.
A common mistake that I see is we “hope” for a differential captain to come good. More often than not, I have learnt to avoid this especially early in the season. A Salah vs Havertz GW 9 was a classic example of the same where Havertz captainers hoped for his returns whereas Salah was just an in-form choice against tricky but fundamentally weak defensive opponents- it was a huge decisive factor. The reverse also came true when Salah was off form in 2nd half of the season and managers kept putting captaincy on him hoping for a turn-around.
Whenever I went for a differential captain, it was always when I believed they were at par with popular choice at the possibility of returns. Ideally, it was someone on form with an equally good fixture as the popular choice. (Only exception was Bruno’s DGW haul which was pure punt basis and understanding Cr7 was not supposed to start one of the DGWs).
I remember KDB captaincy during GW 36 on Bench Boost- I got him on a hit and captained him, primarily because
- he was on form
- Post-UCL loss, they had a lot to prove.
Mentality can be a key factor when it comes to captains and I like to put it only on players with a known top mentality and hence, some assurance on returns or comebacks.
FPL Tips on Chips
Chips
I think it cannot be repeated enough but still- Chips are a very essential part of your FPL season and it is very much a personal strategy i.e. it depends entirely on your team.
If your team is purely one made on popular picks, I think following the crowd makes sense but where is the fun in that. For me, Chips are the ultimate tool for chasing down your targets, for cutting down gaps with your league toppers- Basically, the ability to play a differential game. That’s my chip philosophy & it is very different from my captaincy philosophy. My last year’s wildcards had 60% popular choice only as per livefpl and hence, I had picked a strong possibility of overtaking my opponents basis this decision. Let us get into a bit of detail into each of the chip usages.
Wild Cards
Coming into the wildcard 1, I was a little worried about my season. I was around 836k and I was completely unsure of meeting my season target so the thought in my mind was to attack.
Season view till GW 8(When i played WC) & a few weeks after WC1
One of the primary differences between the GW 7 to GW 8 squad was my rejig at the back & change in primary formation ( 343 to 532). I went from Tierney, Rudiger, and Veltman to Dias, Chilwell, and James while reducing that third forward spot. I also sold Antonio early, something that didn’t help me a lot with Wilson’s injury incoming but was the right attacking approach.
There were some planned moves ahead as well with Lukaku & Mahrez Swifty going for Ronaldo and Mount 2 GWs later with Ronaldo scoring a brace against Spurs in a low-scoring week that got me swiftly into 50k with third straight top 200k GW rank. But Chilwell and James were the highest scorers in that 5 GW run & I was one of the rare persons with a Chelsea double FB.
Wildcard 2
As you can see I was fairly well placed at the end of GW 23 with both punts on Bruno & Bowen captaincy having pulled me inside my season-end target of 20k, however, I was not happy with my squad. Thanks to chasing the doubles, I managed to get myself into double Watford forwards (such has been this long season, now it feels unbelievable). There were a lot of squad members I wanted to dispose of and some I had been eyeing getting (Son & Robbo).
This wild card at GW 24 also set me very well for the upcoming DGW 26 with planned moves. More importantly, it started a double Liverpool defence trend for me which soon moved to a Robbo Matip combo and the rest feels like history. At that point of time, taking double Liverpool defence felt risky but it was something that felt logical for me, similarly the move to get Son who was looking more and more potent every week. My GW 26 moves saw me move KDB to Salah for TC, Bowen to Saka, De Gea to Ramsdale, and ASM to Broja.
Overall, looking at both the wildcards, I can see errors I made especially at the front but the focus I had on other areas which were major point returns, they really helped me. Getting those big decisions right is so critical when it comes to chips.
At the end of the day, Wild Card is an essential chip to be used if & only if you want to attack and deviate from the crowd significantly in terms of strategy & formation. This was a major lesson for me last season.
Free Hits
I think a lot of my season, my squad hovered around 60% template picks but the chips I enjoyed the most was playing the Free Hit. I played my Free Hit in GW 19 & 33 which was very unconventional, especially FH1. By luck, both these GWs turned out to be extremely low-scoring GWs in the Top 10k with 48.9 (GW 19) and 77 ( GW 33) respectively. With scores of 71 & 93, I had a gap of around 40 points with both chips against the top 10k ( 65+ in overall).
- From a Rank Gain perspective, FH1 moved me from 46k to 18k ( around 60% rank gain)
- FH2 moved me from 14k to 8.8k ( around 40% rank gain)
Coincidentally, both my FH squads had Ronaldo © punts but while FH 1 had a lovely squad balance to help me offset the captaincy blank, FH2 had a Ronaldo captaincy save my FH2 especially when I look at that bench. The thing about Free Hit Chips is it is definitely a blinder that you play where you know very little about how the assets you leave out will fare but it also gives you options to try out things you generally don’t for a longer time. FH2 had double Newcastle defense and it did work well on DGW, someone like Ward Prowse who only followed up this week with a double-digit but someone I would love to punt for a match and see how it turns out.
However, like wildcards, my advice would always be to use FH when your opponents are least expecting it and not on a blank GW. With Blank GW, non-Free Hitters like me manage to cover the gap with a decent captaincy pick and move into popular choices with 2,3 hits. However, in GWs there can be a lot of diversity and picks that you generally don’t like to carry long-term. This is definitely a high-potential move.
Triple Captain
I think Triple Captain is the only chip where I am very conservative about its usage, I like to pick on someone like Salah for the last 3 seasons and definitely only on a double GW. The reason I go for Salah is I am aware, that he is one of those rare prime assets you can bank on 2 starts even in a busy double GW and I like to have a probability of getting it right in a DGW.
I think the only risks I took were associated with DGW with 4 transfers- mainly to fund KDB to Salah & Bowen to Saka. Overall, it gave me a rank change of only 28% and 16 points gain on Top 10k.
Bench Boost
This year I had 2 of my personal best scores with TC chip and GW 26 resulted in 148 (-8) and Bench Boost resulting in 183(-16). To be fair, it took me a lot of time to finally have the guts to take a risk on -16 especially since I was already at OR 2082, with 3 weeks remaining the ideal strategy should have been to hold fort and just settle with a rank around the same.
However, I think given double GW 36 & 37, I wanted to rejig my squad a bit more with a target of -12. Sadly, last min Ramsey injury meant I needed to do another -4 with Gordon. However, when we take hits of this size, I think it is very important for us to look at the individual moves.
Ronaldo to Richarlison was overall a positive move for me especially knowing how good GW 37 turned out to be, Rodriguez to Nketiah turned out way over my imagination, and Coutinho to KDB was the driver for me ( I wanted KDB really bad and wanted to captain him knowing well, City were about to bounce back in a double GW & KDB starts both), money saved set me up for Laporte as well.
While -16/-12 was a worrying factor, each of these transfers made sense to me in short term and not just for 1 GW, given the fact that each of the transfers made sense and I had DGW to try it out, I went for this. With a captaincy on KDB, I think this was the sweetest moment for my season.
The net advantage with KDB captaincy turned out to be around 70 points. It also moved me to OR 257, the highest I have been ever. A lot of this was listening to my guts and what I also thought was logical. I don’t like taking big hits, I normally take smaller ones that keep correcting the direction of my team. This Bench Boost however is something I will remember forever and has changed the way I look at Big Hits.
Final Thoughts & Tips from my 21/22 FPL Season
As you can see overall, in my playing style, I have gone for a lot of risks, something consistent top managers would rarely recommend you to do. That worked last year but I am definitely thinking on refining it to this year. A lot of how we play FPL is actually down to the kind of person we are & I would always advise you to embrace yourself- be it conservative or risk-taking. However, there can always be a balance in the way you play the game. So below are some thoughts on the macro playing style that you can think further on ( in your own style)-
- Balance is key in FPL and I define my balance in a different way. I am not an all-out risk-taker, rather I categorize my playing style into 2 types- 1. Risk Taker- Transfers, Wildcards & Free Hits 2. Risk-Averse- Captaincy ( including TC chip) & Bench Boost. Definite such a broad roadmap for yourself so that you don’t feel down when a strategy does not work in your favour and completely change your playing style only not to enjoy the season anymore.
- Hits- We will only find out whether hits will make sense the next season as well. However, as things stand now, one of the conditions in which I am ok with taking hits is it helps you move to a differential prime asset.
- A Salah to KDB/Son hit for me is fine, similarly, in the lower price bracket, we now have Sterling & Bruno around the 10m mark with Sterling expected to be at Chelsea. They are now predictable starters for a top 4 fighting side and known to give us strong returns. I think hits focused around getting yourself 1 or even 2 of these starters definitely make sense ( more so, if they have a DGW).
- This season, I will avoid getting hits for the bottom 14 sides even for their DGW, last season I did go for the likes of Burnley or Watford strikers on hits to cover the fact that I was not captaining them when most of the world was. This season I intend to avoid that FOMO a bit more and focus purely on my game.
- Captaincy- This will remain my focus the entire season again. With the possibility of giving around 30% of your total score. I think captaincy should be where we spend some time every week, more than any other decision. There will be weeks where you would like to go against the wind and that is absolutely ok but this should not be on someone you are “hoping” to deliver in an easy fixture, rather this should remain a differential prime asset, especially in cases where you feel opposition’s playing style will help your man or a bounce-back is expected. For Ex- Kane vs Son captaincy requires you to look at the spaces that the opposition leaves, how deep they sit, and the ability to counterattack by Spurs. In case of attacking weak teams, I like to captain Son whereas for teams sitting deep usually I prefer Kane.
- Formations- I think it is important for us to look at where you are getting your points per million/ points per position. Site like fploptimized.com are very important for this. I spent a lot of time researching before my wildcard article last season and used those inputs for my wildcard. While Liverpool and City’s defense look to be the obvious choices to go heavy on. It often makes sense to look at a combination of places to finalize your formation. For ex- a 442 vs 352 where you are deciding on a Perisic as your fourth defender vs Ramsey as your final midfielder might tilt you purely towards Perisic as of now, however, to fund Perisic you are going to lower Ramsey to a 4.5m mid and the reverse. It does make sense to look who can give you more returns when put into the squad- Perisic+best 4.5m mid or Ramsey+ best 4.5m def.
- World Cup Break & Extra WC– Last season we had an extra Free Hit, this season we have an extra wildcard. Check out the thread by Brett Talor who was last year’s world no. 3. He explores this concept very well on what can be the implications of this extra wildcard and how it may end up herding us into taking some particular decisions.
This also provides opportunities to plan well and not get into the herd and attack some of the mini buckets that you can find in these fixtures.
I think this has been a long look back into some of the major factors that led to a once-in-a-lifetime journey into the Top 500, however, the dream remains alive to try and repeat it and maybe better it. I hope this article also helps other FPL managers to introspect and perhaps, come onto a strategy that helps them achieve their dreams this coming season. My best wishes for the same. Do follow me on my Twitter @Understanding Football
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Sankalp Nanda
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