Here’s the 2nd article on fantasy premier league rotation. Here we look art 10 possible rotation pairs for your FPL team for either your GKs, defenders or 4th and 5th midfielders
fantasy premier league rotation – 10 rotation pairs for your FPL team
My additional wording is in italics so if you’ve read the article before you don’t need to re-read the whole thing. with the FPL site opening since the article was written I’ve added player options and pricing. This is the 2nd and final article on fantasy premier league rotation after our recent article on 3 team defensive rotation
If you’re planning your team then you may find the following 2 articles Searching for Mr Consistency and the “double double” club useful for your premium players
Once the fantasy premier league site is open I will update this article with player possibilities.
The theory as to why rotation pairs
The idea with rotation pairs is to use them in various situations where 1 player will be in your team in the gameweek and the other on the bench. You plan in advance to identify the pairings that maximise the amount of good fixtures you have each gameweek. History shows that 60% of clean sheets come at home so that’s where the fixture emphasis should be.
However, there’s no need to look for a scenario where every fixture is at home. It’s a balance between home fixtures and the best fixtures overall. Also remember that you have a wildcard in the first half of the season. So there’s no need to look for a pair for longer than the first wildcard duration as an absolute maximum. Many managers will have a fixed position for using the wildcard. Many will want to use it after GW3 opens for the international break 2 weeks of price rises. If you have a fixed view then plan your team accordingly. If you don’t build in some flexibility to how long the rotation should last. Personally I think I will use my wildcard around GW10. Thats when I feel comfortable that there’s enough stat data to evaluate everyone.
The potential uses of the rotation pairs
Here’s some scenarios:
2 cheap GKs
Preferably these should be no more than £4.5m each otherwise you are over committing funds to the position. You then play the GK with the best fixture each gameweek.
Defensive rotation
- 1 premium defenders who play every week and 2 rotating pairs in a back 3
- 3 premium defenders and a rotating pair of defenders in a back 4
In both situations again you would want the rotation pairs to be no more than £4.5m to avoid too much money on your bench unnecessarily
Midfield rotation
Rotation of your 4th and 5th midfielders. Aspirationally these would be around £5m-£5.5m. This would give you more potential to come off your bench in a world of rotation and rest amongst the top sides. It does comes at the price of additional funds sitting on your bench. However, it’s possible to argue that 2 £5.5m mids would be just as effective as a £6.5m mid and a £4.5m benchwarmer on the basis of fixture maximisation. You would also argue that the additional points potential of a £5.5m player vs a £4.5m player coming off the bench when one of your attacking 7 is rested
Midfield and forward rotation
The same principal really as above except with the cheap forward and the 5th midfielder
I talk about rotation in more detail in my Ebook “a guide to the fantasy premier league season 2018/18”
How do the schedules work?
The schedules below are aimed at evaluating clean sheet potential. You can use them for the attacking players but you may need to evaluate the fixtures differently than presented which is for clean sheets
The schedules below aren’t necessarily in the order that I favour. It very much depends on your attitude to the first wildcard. They are biased to the first 3 and 6 gameweeks as it’s hard to know what will happen so best to get good points potential straight away.
To get to the 10 combinations I went through every possible combination from 10 teams where I thought there was a decent prospect of a £4.5m GK or a £4.5m defender. It was a mission and a half.
Picking them was a combination of fixtures and defensive strength. There’s a summary below of the 10 combinations I picked at various stages of the first 19 gameweeks.
The schedules track the fixtures through the first 19 gameweeks and there’s a schedule below outlining the potential clean sheets that could occur at various stages of those 19 gameweeks. The potential clean sheets are highlighted in green. The fixtures outside the potential clean sheets are in orange.
Opposition that are a potential clean sheet
A potential clean sheet is one at home to the following teams:
Watford
Swansea
Bournemouth
WBA
Stoke
C Palace
Newcastle
Brighton
Huddersfield
Burnley
The schedule is a graphic. However, here’s a link to the google spreadsheet below it so you can copy it if you want
The 10 schedules
Summary table
The players
The Gks will be the likely starting GKs and the Defs will be the cheapest likely to start focusing on £4.5m players
Burnley
GK: Heaton £5.0m
Defs: Lowton £4.5m
WBA
GK: Foster £4.5m
Defs: Dawson £5.0m. No £4.5m option
C Palace
GK: Hennessey £4.5m
Defs: Tomkins and Kelly are the £4.5m CB options. However Palace are trying to sign CB Martins Indi and Ajax CB Riedewald is on the brink of joining. RB Ward inexplicably £5.0m is the cheapest secure option
Bournemouth
GK: Begovic £4.5m
Defs: Francis is the only £4.5m option. I’m not optimistic. It will likely be between him and Cook for the CB role unless he beats A Smith to RB. Otherwise it’s the very attacking LB Daniels at £5.0m
Swansea
GK: Fabianski £4.5m
Defs: RB Naughton £4.5m and CB Fernandez £4.5m look fairly secure.
Huddersfield
GK: Lossl
Defs: Alot of changes but CB Schindler £4.5m looks the safest. Monitor £4.5m LB Lowe who could have some set piece and even penalty duties
Brighton
GK: Ryan £4.5m
Defs: £4.5m CB Dunk seems to be the obvious choice here. New £4.5m LB Suttner has come with some good attacking stats if he can get a first team place
Watford
GK: Gomes £4.5m
Defs: Again a new manager means the lineup at the moment is uncertain but for me £4.5m CB Prodl seems the most likely to start of the £4.5m players. £4.5m CB Kaboul has the better stats but has no return date from a hamstring injury at the moment. LB Holebas at £5.0m if you want to avoid any doubt.
FFGeek team thoughts
Without thinking of specific players I like the first 3 rotations and the 5th best. I could quite easily go 3 premium defenders with Ben Davies (subject to Rose injury monitor, Soares of Southampton due to their fantastic fixtures and a Man Utd defender plus a 2 player bench rotation. The rotation would be if one of the 3 players was rested by their manager or if I wanted to have a back 4 but early price indications today of attacking players aren’t helpful to that 3 premium defender cause.
Goalkeeping thoughts
Having now added the prices to me the WBA/Bournemouth option seems the best 1 with Foster and Begovic both at £4.5m. They currently sit in my team.
As I write this I’m aware that Burnley’s Heaton is £5.0m so for me that’s a bit rich for a Michael Keaneless team. That drags Foster back into it. That does take away the potential for a WBA defender but I think the goal threat defenders will be £5.0m anyway.
So Foster and Begovic/Fabianski or Begovic and Hennessey seem the starters for 10 at the moment.
Defence
So the pricing couldn’t have gone much worse with WBA having no £4.5m options. Palace and Bournemouth also look very uncertain to produce a secure £4.5m option. That leaves me with having to pay £5.0m for a defender or go for Burnley/Watford. However even that is uncertain at the moment due to a new Watford manager. Marco Silva though should improve the defence. At the moment my team is still living in hope that Kelly or Tomkins can hold their place for Palace. The odds look against that.
I’m not sure there will be a £4.5m WBA defender but if I go with Foster then that rules them out. The choice will largely depend on the GKs and prices so for the moment I’m not going to speculate for the sake of a few days.
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