Hi everyone and welcome to my fantasy premier league season review. The dust has settled on the 2017-18 FPL season and after having some time to reflect on the campaign just gone, I’ve decided once again to collate some thoughts. First up I’ll be looking at some of the key areas that have influenced the game this season. I’ll then have a look at my own team, revisiting my GW1 aims with some thoughts on what went well and what didn’t. Finally I’ll make my end of season awards.
fantasy premier league season review by Rob Reid (the FPL Vet)
The 2017-18 Season
When thinking about the season just gone, my first thought was that to me it seemed a slightly bizarre campaign, somewhat anti-climatic in a way. The EPL itself was over as a contest very early, indeed Mourinho and co. seemed to have conceded the title to Man City by Christmas. The battle for survival was also pretty much done and dusted before GW37, the promoted teams in particular belying the combination of their Premier League virginity and tough run-ins to have their top flight status safely secured well before the final day of the season.
From an FPL perspective, there were a number of ongoing challenges faced through the campaign. Man City may have been the form team; they had potential to blow any team away with the resultant FPL implications being goals and assists galore. But could we trust Pep’s rotation policy? Every week was a nervous wait to see just who was on The Citizens team sheet. Next up was Mo Salah. Nobody could have predicted how explosive his first season at Anfield was going to be. He had a decent Serie A pedigree with Roma and a failed spell at Chelsea as our form guide. Entering GW1, it was simply unthinkable that he’d become the first player to breach the 300 FPL point mark. Finally there was the new Free Hit chip. When should we play this? Was it worth waiting for a blank gameweek or did we look for a gameweek with a number of one-sided fixtures to roll the dice?
The Salah Effect
303 points. 32 goals and 12 assists. Returns in 27 matches. Choose your superlative to describe 2017-18 for Salah. The Egyptian’s impact on this season had a number of effects on FPL managers. First of all, if you didn’t have him in your team you had to be prepared to have a very large sofa to hide behind. Second up, if you did have him in your team but you didn’t captain him guess what? You needed a very large sofa to hide behind! It’s rare that you could have a player in your squad and not want him to return but if you captained someone else that was the case.
The result of this was a couple of things. His persistently high captaincy stats meant that the points ceiling for the game as a whole was raised. It also removed a differential from the game as well as it was more difficult to use a differential captain pick to gain rank. As such, managers therefore had to get more creative if they wanted to gain ground in mini-leagues and overall rank.
Chips and Blank Gameweeks
The Free Hit chip replaced the rather useless All Out Attack chip this season and proved a welcome boon for managers. If used effectiely in one of the blank gameweeks, it certainly led to substantial overall ranking gains. The 2 blank gameweeks in general were good differentials for managers who had planned effectively and were able to get 11 or close to 11 players out in these.
As for the other chips, the Triple Captain chip was popular in the double gameweeks, but proved most effective when placed on a premium player in a single. Using the Bench Boost in the double was once again reckoned to be the best strategy, but a combination of rotation amongst the bigger teams and thin returns amongst those that did play both somewhat dampened the effectiveness of this strategy. There were 3 figure gamweek scores possible, but nothing like the near 200 scores we’ve seen in previous seasons. Looking at next season, the fixtures are certainly key for these doubles as is the competiveness of the league.
Rotation Headaches
Rotation was a massive challenge for FPL managers this season, especially among the top 6 teams. Even the usual steady defensive players were targets for rest periods, meaning that managers could only really look forward to a top 6 team keeper playing every week in many cases. The exceptions to this were Salah, Kane and for most of the season rather surprisingly considering Pep’s penchant for rotation, Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne. Funnily enough these 4 ended up being the highest scorers in the game, though to be fair this wasn’t simply down to minutes played as they all rated highly on the points per match scale.
The lesson on this was to have starting players on the bench ready to come in, but also to be prepared to take the rough with the smooth somewhat. A player sold for simply being rested could come back to hurt you the following week, but points hits well played could also prove very profitable if a player was going to be given some downtime for easier games.
Budget Options
The other thing that stood out for me this season was the lack of a consistent all-season budget option. There were players that had 8-12 week spells. Richarlison and Gross at the start of the season, Milivojevic later on but there was no one budget option that sustained this all the way through like Kane, Mahrez, Ramsey or Michu have done in previous years. This placed a strain on mangers budget but also needed some shrewd decision making regarding when to buy and sell. It was all too tempting to give a budget option just one more week simply because there wasn’t an obvious player in that price bracket to replace them.
Managing Team Value
Overall Team Value has traditionally been difficult to manage, especially in the 16-17 season where player price changes seemed highly volatile. This season, FPL seemed to relax it’s price change algorithm somewhat. Price rises to me seemed to be easier to predict with most changes occurring later in the week and only moderate changes happening before the midweek games. This favoured the more conservative managers in this regard when it came to building team value. Price falls however seemed to be more unpredictable. Salah’s January injury was an example of this where scores of managers sold him (15% of his total ownership in the end) for what looked like it was going to be 2 gameweeks and yet his price only dropped by £0.1m. Figure that one out!
My FPL team – Chaos Theory
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly!
Ok, so how did I get on this season? In the end it was sadly a pretty underwhelming campaign for my team as I finished at 94k with a total score of 2216 points. This is my lowest final overall rank since 2013/14 so it was a disappointing finish for me.
What went well?
The big standout for my team was the 2 blank gameweeks – GW31 and 35. I finished with 5 figure gameweek ranks in both, very pleasing. GW31 was amazingly a 100 point score, helped greatly by a big haul from captain Salah – my only 100+ score of the season. I think this proves the point above about planning for these weeks being very important. Dead-ending my team in GW31 was a good strategy in this regard as was saving my Free Hit chip for GW35 when many managers had squandered it early in the season.
The second positive was my 1st Wildcard. I blew my 1st Wildcard too early in season 16-17 and it cost me early on as I made a succession of hits between GW6 and 16 to rebuild my team. This season I waited until GW8 and it proved profitable as I saw green arrows in 5 of the next 6 weeks – I’m pleased I did better with this than last year
Where did it all go wrong?
Now the neagtives…and there’s a fair few sadly. The main negative for me was my performance in the double gameweeks. If I got my first Wildcard right then it’s fair to say I got my second Wildcard completely wrong! There was a bit of bad luck in there as well with injuries, rotation and suspensions but my GW32 Wildcard, turned very sour in GW33 and left me in a situation where I had to alter my strategy across the doubles.
Ultimately, I gambled on Sanchez as my Triple Captain in GW34 and this was a terrible decision – the take home message I think is that there’s rarely a Magic Bullet in this game and so it proved. The knock-on effect was that I then had to take a big points hit in GW37 to give my Bench Boost Chip a sporting chance. Sadly this was also a failure and I lost 5k of rank rather than pushing onwards and upwards.
Next up my mid-season. I’d put myself in a good position in GW23 at 85k and this was certainly a platform where I could push on from. Sadly, my team floundered and I was down at 249k by GW29. I mentioned GW31 planning earlier on and how this was important. Well here’s the caveat to that statement – when you’re planning don’t hold onto deadwood, Callum Wilson and Richarlison being the cases in point here. What I should have done is taken points hits to remove them for GW31 players in better form. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but it’s something I must bear in mind for next season.
Finally and strangely for me, it a lack of aggression with transfers cost me this season. FFG’s Top 10 contributors article was very interesting in this regard as the performance of the FFG contributors outperformed the Top 10k managers. One thing I noticed in this was the number of hits the FFG contributors took and that I was very conservative on this list! This is odd for me as I’m usually quite aggressive with hits where I can see long terms gains. I definitely got this side of my strategy wrong this year when compared with managers like Keith, Joe and Alex who used hits in abundance and to great long term effect. As I mentioned earlier, well played hits worked wonders this season especially when it came to counter-acting rotation.
So how did I do with my GW1 targets?
It’s not pretty reading again sadly!
1) Win my main mini-league – failed, finished 3rd
2) Top 40k finish – failed
3) Top 10k finish – failed
4) Survive 4 rounds of the cup – failed, survived 3 rounds though so an improvement on last year when I didn’t even qualify
5) Top 500 finish in FFG league – failed
Finishing up on my analysis, one interesting thing I’ve noted is how my Overall Score compared with previous seasons. My score of 2216 would have been good enough for a top 10k finish in season 14-15 but wouldn’t have even got me in the top 150k in season 13-14. The factor involved here in my opinion? A very high scoring individual player in season 13-14 and 17-18 who became the dominant captain choice each week. In 13-14 it was Luis Suarez, who was pretty much blanket captained by everyone in the second half of the season and this season of course Mo Salah took on the same role.
I mentioned earlier the impact The Salah Effect had on the game and I think this emphasises it somewhat – the points ceiling of the game is raised and a potential differential for gaining rank is taken away by neutering the effect of low ownership captains.
2017-18 Awards
On to my my final section now and it’s my awards for the season. This season I’ll do player of the season and flop of the season in each position as well as awarding an EPL club of the season.
Goalkeepers
Player of the season – Nick Pope – A fabulous breakthrough season, coming into the Burnley team in GW4 then keeping his place for the rest of the season. He racked up 11 clean sheets and led the way for goals prevented. De Gea may have won the Golden Globe and been the top scoring keeper, but because of value for money and sheer quality in a non-premium defence, Pope is my FPL keeper of the year.
Honourable mentions – David De Gea, Lukas Fabianski.
Flop of the season – Joe Hart – some clean sheets early on were a false dawn and the former England keeper lost his place after a succession of errors. Sadly when he got another opportunity later in the season, it was the same error strewn story. Maybe a summer off will do him some good.
Defenders
Player of the season – Nicolas Otamendi – Amongst the recurrent rotation at the Ethiad, Otamendi was a steady hand who guaranteed a way into a title winning defence, picking up attacking returns and bonus points along the way. By the time rotation struck him late in the season, we were all prepared for this and add to this his relatively low start price when compared with options at other premium clubs and he’s my FPL defender of the season.
Honourable mentions – Cesar Azpilicueta, Andy Robertson.
Flop of the season – Sead Kolasinac – it all started so well and looked so promising. A defender effectively playing in midfield and early season attacking returns. Unfortunately that was where the optimism ended. Minutes were as sporadic as Gunners clean sheets and we were left wondering what could have been.
Midfielders
Player of the season – Mo Salah – I’ve already talked about Salah in some detail, but after that season I just have to talk about him some more! The first player to break 300 FPL points and the most amazingly consistent record of returns, what a season for the Egyptian. Looking forward, how will he fare next season? He’s likely to be priced around £14m, will likely have some post-World Cup fatigue and will he suffer some second season syndrome? Despite this, is anyone considering not picking him for GW1 next season?!
Honourable mentions – Raheem Sterling, Luka Milivojevic
Flop of the season – Henrikh Mkhitaryan – another who promised much at the start with 5 assists in the first 3 games. Was he finally going to bring his form from Dortmund to the Premier League? Sadly it all went pear-shaped with injury and then falling out of favour with Mourinho. Will he fare better with Arsenal next season?
Forwards
Player of the season – Roberto Firmino – this may seem an odd choice when Kane finished as the highest scoring forward but for me Firmino wins this award. At £8.5m starting price he was a handy mid-range option who could get goal and assists, delivering 15 and 8 of each respectively in a potent Liverpool attack. The difference with Kane was his price tag and not being tempted to captain him! Kane did have another fine season, but he let us down with armband too many times to be this season’s winner for me.
Honourable mentions – Harry Kane, Jamie Vardy
Flop of the season – Christian Benteke – it’s been a sorry tale the last couple of seasons and 3 goals and 7 assists is just terrible from a formerly prolific player. He looks unhappy at Palace and I think his only shot at kick-starting his flailing career will be a move away.
FPL Club of the season – Burnley
Man City were the obvious choice here but rotation always left you twitchy when the team sheets appeared, not to mention the premium prices attached to their assets. Burnley for me were the club of the season full stop. A 7th placed finish on a shoestring is simply incredible, Sean Dyche and his players should be immensely proud. From an FPL point of view they were great budget players – a keeper and cheap defenders who regularly got clean sheet points and 2 cheap strikers who could get a goal against anyone. What’s not to like? Just don’t expect such easy price tags next season!
Congratulations and Thank Yous
So that’s it from me for this season, but before I sign off a few shout-outs to finish up.
First up, congratulations to overall winner Yusuf Shiekh – a great final week and a well played GW38 Triple Captain chip. Very well done.
Next, congratulations to Contributors league winner Keith, pipping Joe in the last week after a ding dong battle at the end. I always look forward to seeing Keith’s team each week, his cavalier FPL style is unique and brilliant. Great work Keith.
Next it’s congratulations to Doug Bryce, the winner of my main mini league. Doug played a great campaign, a genius 51 point Triple Captain chip being a major part in a season where he finished 2227th overall. Brilliant Doug!
Finally it’s a big thank you to Fantasy Football Geek for publishing my articles, to my fellow contributors for all the great banter thus season and to all the kind readers who take the time to follow my ramblings. I hope you’ve all enjoyed them and I hope to be back again next season. For now, enjoy the World Cup and the rest of the summer break, cheers to you all
