Here’s an article from regular contributor and commenter on the site Rob Reid aka Finlay81. His article is going to focus on building team value in fantasy premier league throughout the season. Why it’s important and how to achieve it plus strategy for the early part of the season
Building team value and early season strategy in fantasy premier league by Rob Reid aka Finlay81
Just for a bit of context Rob has finished with a rank of 4,701 last season 2015/16 and 7,810 the season before.
I generally adopt a fairly similar overall game strategy for FPL to the FFG team, focusing on covering high ownership players and selecting safe captain choices where possible. But one area where I have a more aggressive outlook is that of team value. The FFG team tends to follow a conservative approach on team value, whereas I am more inclined to taking risks (especially early in the season) in a bid to boost my team value. If you follow FFG’s Top 10 managers article, you will note that most of these guys like to build a high team value and will often use it to bring in differential picks in defence later in the season.
This article offers some advice and tips on how to do this and also some ideas on how you can limit any risks involved.
Why is team value important?
Increasing your team value can present you with more opportunities as the season progresses. It means you can access a wider price range of players throughout your line-up, allowing you to select players with less game-time risk and more attacking potential, especially with regards to the defensive positions. This can therefore open up more differential selections while still being able to maintain the relative security of covering the high ownership selections. It will also generally give you a stronger bench and/or a second goalkeeping option – important later in the season when squad rotation comes into play or when you are using the Bench Boost chip.
This approach is not without risk however. You will often have to gamble on making transfers quite early in the week, which does leave you open to potential injuries or force you into taking -4 point hits. And of course, you still need to get your selections right!
Tools for Assessing Value
Player values in the FPL game run on a complicated algorithm system, but there are ways in which you can predict price rises. Some knowledge of the system helps with this. In it’s most basic terms, the game increases player values as they accrue net transfers in through a gameweek and vice versa. There are a couple of exceptions to this. If a player is injured/suspended with a red flag then they need to accrue a higher number of net transfers to change their price. Also a player who has just had a red flag removed has their price frozen (protected) for a gameweek. Price changes usually happen overnight (the FPL site traditionally changes prices between 1-4am GMT) and no player can gain or lose more than £0.3m in a single gameweek.
Confused yet? Don’t worry there’s a way to make this easier! Thankfully there are some price predictor tools available that can work all this out for you and tell you when a player’s price will change. I use a combination of the Transfers In/Transfers Out statistics on the FPL homepage along with a couple of price predictor websites. I generally use fplstatistics.co.uk as a price change predictor site
Tips for Building Team Value
Bandwagons – early season bandwagons are a great way of giving your team value an initial boost. In previous seasons, players like Michu, Harry Kane, Aaron Ramsey, Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy and Delle Alli to name but a few have seen their values rocket as the season progresses. If you pick up one of these guys early, you are literally quids in. You’re not tying up funds trying to buy them later at a higher price and if they pick up a long term injury you stand to gain more if you have to sell them. They are only a problem if they pick up a short term injury – you are then left with a quandary of whether to bench them for a few weeks or sell them, lose team value and run the risk of not being able to buy them back.
Sinking Ships – similar to Bandwagons, offloading Sinking Ships as soon as their value plummets is key to maintaining value. If a player gets a long-term injury, you want to sell them at the earliest opportunity to avoid too much loss in value. Short-term injuries and suspensions are a trickier one and it depends on several factors, as I mentioned in the Bandwagon section. Similarly, poor form and to a lesser extent poor fixtures can lead to transfers out. When I look at my squad, I am always looking at players that have blanked for 3+ gameweeks as potential sales. The FFG Bandwagon/Sinking Ship article published at the start of each week is a great resource for both these areas.
The Early Wildcard – an early season Wildcard can be a great way of building team value. This is especially true if it is played in an international window. This way, you get an extra week of bargaining while also having the advantage of being able to deal with any injuries that occur in the international games. During your Wildcard, you can transfer players in and out throughout the Gameweek to take advantage of any price rises in the run-up to the deadline before settling on your final line-up. I’ve used this strategy a couple of times and it can be worth £0.4m to £0.5m through the week/fortnight if you’re prepared to monitor prices each day, although do take care when selling players so you don’t lose too much value also. The strategy became even more appealing last season when the January transfer window Wildcard was replaced by the second half of the season Wildcard.
Transfer timing – here’s where you need to be prepared to gamble! To gain most value, you need to transfer players at the start of the Gameweek before they start to accumulate significant net transfers in or out and this is where you need to spot the transfer patterns early. This way you can access the best price rises and avoid the worst drops. The risk with this that players can get injured before the next gameweek, either in training or in a midweek cup fixture. Friday evening or Saturday morning transfers (post-manager press conferences) do afford a safer option, but by this stage players may already have changed by £0.1m or £0.2m in value – miss out on a few of these and it soon adds up. A compromise is to monitor any midweek fixtures and then make your change as soon as these fixtures have ended, the risk is still there at both ends but is lessened a little. You pay your money and your take your chance!
My Early Season Strategy for 2016-17
I’ve evolved my strategy through a few seasons of playing the game and I’m likely to stick with the same one this year. My aim is for a team value of around £105 million at the halfway point in the season – this generally gives you the extra funds you need to access the more game-time secure players later in the season.
I tend to be fairly aggressive in the first 10 gameweeks and this is where I’ll tend to lean heavily towards making transfers early in the gameweek. It’s a gamble, but I have often made transfers on Sunday or Monday evenings in these first few gameweeks and taken a minus 4 on the odd occasion if I’ve run into any injury difficulties. I’ve used an international window for my first Wildcard of the season in the last 3 seasons and I’m inclined to do the same this season – I prefer the October one if possible but if I feel the core of my team is really off, there is the September window (I’ve used this once.) The only reason I wouldn’t do this is if I’m lucky enough to hit on the right formula for my team right from the off. Don’t worry if you don’t, I generally find you’ve got to be pretty fortunate to get it 100% right from the off – I don’t think I’ve ever been inside the top 25,000 in the first 10 gameweeks. It is a long season and the marathon/sprint cliche is very apt, but I’m also a believer in that if I my team is floundering in the first few weeks then it is prudent to make changes instead of continuing to miss out on potential points. A soild start is great, but if you don’t get this be open to change.
And ultimately, team value is important regarding this – if you lose too much or fail to exploit potential gains early on, it can hurt you in the last 10 gameweeks where I believe an extra £3-4million team value may be worth as much as 70 or 80 points through that period. To put things in perspective, I was sitting at around 750,000th at Gameweek 18 last season but with a high team value of £106 million. This put me in a good position in the second half of the season and I ended up with my best ever finish in the end, and team value was certainly part of this.
I hope you’ve found this interesting and is of help to you – would be keen again to hear everyone else’s comments and opinions and if people are using different strategies.
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