MJ’s column | FPL 2019/20 Season Review & Lessons Learnt

This blog is written by MJ aka @fplfanatix, MJ had a stellar 2019/20 FPL season that saw him finish as world number 148 and India Number 5. MJ has done a complete analysis of his season in this blog.
Follow him on Twitter at @fplfanatix

Hi folks, I have done a detailed season review of my own FPL team for the 2019/20 season across captaincy, hits taken, formations in this blog. The outcomes expected to be key lessons learnt in each section and what did and did not work well for me. This can then be used as a benchmark or a reference point for the upcoming seasons.

The aim of this exercise is to understand in detail my team stats, use it comparatively and make a note of the key lessons arising out of it. I believe that whilst the exercise in its entirety might not be very helpful but there are parts of it that I feel will be helpful to at least some of you.

This might be a little lengthy but I’d urge you to give it a try as I feel it can turn out to be genuinely helpful and something that you can refer back to for future seasons.

I have used anwelpa.net, premierfantasytools, and the Official FPL website for the below analysis.

Let us dive straight in!

First, I will just list down the key FPL season stats for me and some basic insights from there.

Overall Rank: 148

Overall Points: 2468

Weekly average: 63.3 (56.4 without captaincy)

WC1: GW 10

WC2: GW31+

TC: GW 24

BB: GW30+

FH: GW38+

Transfers: 50

Hits taken: 6 (-24 pts)

Overall FPL 2019/20 Season Thoughts:

My aim at the beginning of the season was hitting a 60 average GW score, minimizing hits, and utilizing the first WC as late as possible. Looking back, I can safely say I achieved all 3 of my main pre-season objectives. As you can see that I had only 3 GWs where I scored below average and hence the overall positive outcome.

Achieved an incredible rank, OR 148 (my best by a huge margin), and feel that the season overall was a resounding success. Obviously, there are learnings from good and bad seasons so that is what my aim from this exercise will be.

Without further ado, I will delve deeper into each of the main sections or pillars of my 2019/20 FPL season.

1. Point hits and transfers

First up, This is the most popular and widely discussed topic i.e. hits and transfers. The aim for a lot of FPL managers is to minimize hits and optimize the use of free transfers and WC to the best possible and then use hits if absolutely required.

It sounds simple and it is, I followed a very simple strategy of minimizing hits as much as I can and it comes as no surprise that my two significantly best seasons (2.2k and 148 OR) have come when I took fewer hits. Of course, different strategies work for different managers but for me personally being hit averse has worked wonders.

The average number of hits taken by top 10k managers was 5.79 as per Myfplanalysis so I feel I took an adequate number of hits (6). My three-pronged rule for taking hits are as follows which I implemented for each of the hits that I took:

1. Is the player I am taking out injured or at a serious risk of losing game time?
2. Is the player I am bringing in a regular starter and an important player for the team he plays for?
3. Does the player I am bringing in have significantly higher explosive potential than the player I am taking out?

I brought in players like Martial, KDB, Jimenez, Ings, Son, Pukki etc. when taking hits and took out players like C. Wilson, Perez, Moura, and other injured or woefully out of form players. I applied the above points to each transfer I made as part of a hit.

Took back to back hits in FPL GW3 and FPL GW4 to delay the use of my 1^st WC as long as possible and I feel that worked spot on for me.

Overall FPL 2019/20 Season transfer highlights

As you can see, I averaged +3.18 pts (per GW) as net gain from my transfers which I feel was decent business and good use of the transfers.

Key learnings from my FPL 2019/20 Season

• Consider the important comparative factors highlighted above while taking hits
• Delay use of the first WC as much as you can
• Hits on random weekly punts are less likely to pay off
• FTs are extremely valuable, save and use each one with the utmost optimization. Rolling FT and using mini WC (3 transfers for a -4) is a good strategy to adopt to make significant changes in your team

2. Formations and points by position

Another important factor for us FPL managers is what formation to pick for your starting XI and that also influences how you pick your squad 15. See below some key stats regarding formations used and points I gained by formation/position in my season.

As you can see above, I have favored the 3-5-2 and 3-4-3 formation for 26 of my 38 GWs and these were also my highest scoring formations on an average per GW basis thus showing the importance of attackers for my FPL side in the BATB scenario these days.

On a per GW basis, 3-5-2 scored 70 pts per GW on average for me which is resounding and makes a very strong case for the formation. It was also used 13 times so the sample size is not small.

First four formations that have scored higher points consist of either 4 or 5 midfielders which reiterate the importance of a strong midfield yet again. I started with 3 premium defenders (+ Lundstram and Guilbert) and believe I will do something similar in most seasons.

The simple reason being you will find better 4.0-4.5m def options than in midfield and forward and the above highlights how high my team has scored when playing with 7 attackers instead of 6.

The above chart again stresses the importance of midfielders in FPL and with the current scoring system midfielders will always be the best source of points.

Surprisingly my forward line has offered more than defenders and hence the 3-4-3 formation has also done well for me. The defense lacking a bit this season would be contributed by Liverpool’s lack of clean sheets I believe as a lot had doubled up on their defense including me.

I will also cover the bench importance on here. See below the bench analysis for my season.

As you can see above, I had 175 pts on the bench (4.61 per GW) which was a direct result of a conscious effort of not leaving too many funds on the bench. The strategy was 4.5, 4.5, and 4.0 on the bench and Lundstram and Cantwell were extremely good enablers for this strategy. I had aimed to not have an unnecessarily strong bench and having 1 good sub paid off.

I had 11 auto-subs which gave 62 pts which is a pretty decent return and it helped to identify the aforementioned options who were incredible value and needed more than 1 sub coming on only twice the entire season. I will be adopting a similar bench strategy for upcoming seasons as well.

Key learnings from my 2019/20 FPL Season:

• 3-5-2 and 3-4-3 are still the best formations to use given the points scoring system and options available. Going below 4 strong mids is not something I would recommend
• You can start the season with 4 premium defenders but look to shift those funds to attack as soon as you start seeing some trends regarding those
• Midfielders still the best captaincy option in the game
• You need a good sub1 (at most sub2) but should look at cheaper gems most likely defenders and / or midfielder from promoted sides

3. Captaincy analysis from my FPL 2019/20 Season

Next topic for me is one that is given a lot of importance by all FPL managers but is one that I feel is incredibly ridden by luck and is not a lot in our control.

See below my 2019/20 FPL season captaincy stats

The ‘luck’ factor when it comes to captaincy is that my highest captain score all season came when Sterling © didn’t play and KDB VC got activated. I was also amazed at the fact that if I had captained my vice-captain every GW I would have had 570 pts instead and a place in the top 100 overall.

Despite a 72% success rate shown above, I hit 20+ pts after captaincy only 10 times with most of the returns lying between 12-18 pts. This shows that I didn’t get enough explosive captaincy hauls.

As you can see the two City and two Liverpool mids dominate my captaincy with each team having 14 GWs of captaincy. I captained explosive players in the form of Sterling, Salah but didn’t catch Sterling’s hauls due to his woeful early season form and the constant hokey cokey between captaincy options.

This is one thing that I will be looking at correcting in the upcoming season. I will rely on a maximum of 2 main captaincy options with a 3rd one potentially coming in depending on performance. This season my captaincy was spread out amongst 5 premium options which is not a good way of playing IMO.

As expected KDB and Salah were the standout captaincy pick with KDB doing the best for me. Mane and Sterling were a bit average especially considering my TC on Mane. Vardy and Son did well in the limited chances they got.

My captaincy points contributed to 22% of my overall points total which is not too bad but is not too good either. Amongst the top 10k managers, the highest captaincy points for a manager were 737 which contributed to 31.2% of his total points.

This shows a clear scope of improvement but a key message here is that captaincy is not the be-all and end-all as even with average captaincy returns for me and not a lot of explosive hauls, I still finished in the top 150 globally.

Key lessons from my 2019/20 FPL season captaincy decisions:

• Do not keep switching captaincy between premium option. Stick with a proven player or one who is doing well consistently both in terms of returns and underlying returns
• Pick a strong VC. This is obvious but is often overlooked. I needed my VC just 2 teams but they returned 50 pts so you can see the importance of a strong VC
• Pick captaincy options based on explosive potential and from a team that scores loads of goals

4. Chip Usage

Last but not the least I will just quickly analyze the usage of chips and how it fared for me. Let me just mention below the points I gained from each of the chips

TC (GW 24) – Mane 3 pts

BB (GW30+) – 21 pts from a bench of Leno, Targett, Boly and Pukki

FH (GW38+) – 67 pts (GW37+ team would have had 66 pts with Sterling for Salah FT and captain)

Fair to say that my chips usage was absolutely horrendous with 2 out of 3 chips gaining me 1 additional point and BB being average. However, finishing at a rank of 148 despite such poor use of the chips just highlights the importance of these chips.

The aim is still to use them in DGWs and BGWs but using them in SGWs can work equally well.

Key lessons from my 2019/20 FPL season chip decisions:

• Do not stress a lot of importance on the chips
• Try to use the chips in a DGW to maximize the potential but they can work well in SGWs too
• Don’t make your FPL strategy revolve only around the chips

5. Team Value

I had a TV of 104.9m come GW38+ vs average TV of 105.6 for top 1k. I have never ever focused on making transfers to build TV and will continue to do. I will always wait till I gather as much as information every week and then make my transfers unless I have exact funds for a player I really want.

I feel making early transfers every GW to build TV can backfire badly with midweek games and injuries and no press conferences but using an early WC to build TV is not a bad idea as it can help in the last few GWs of the season.

Summary of the lessons learned from my 2019/20 FPL season

• Minimize hits to the best extent possible. Consider mini WC (3 transfers for -4) as much as possible and treat FTs as gold.
• Analyze in detail the players you are bringing in / taking out for a hit and bring in players with explosive potential and who will stay in your squad for a decent number of weeks.
• Value is in midfield, 3-5-2 and 3-4-3 still the best formations for me with 4-4-2 a good option too.
• Do not spend a lot on your bench. Have a good sub 1 and probably sub 2 but try to keep subs at less than 5m. You will always uncover some decent options.
• Trust your premium assets with captaincy and not do a weekly hokey cokey between them. Premium attackers from a high scoring team will always do well when trusted over a larger period.
• Chips are important but not too significant in the overall season. Plan to optimize them but do not make your entire FPL strategy around them.

I will be referring to these for the upcoming season and will serve as a good reference point when you have a bad GW or feel like knee-jerking. Hope you all have a wonderful FPL 2020/21 season and get loads of green arrows.

Further, Read ahead of 2020/21 Season: 

The game for next season has launched so does our content, check out some of our best so far, and stay tuned for more.

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Meet World.No. 16- Dave King Discussing About His Remarkable FPL Season

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