You may have, like me, been fairly pleased with your fantasy premier league GW2 night after watching Ibrahimovic score 2 and Luke Shaw get a clean sheet and an assist. The 2 also picked up 5 bonus points for a total of 24 points. I knew I had Aguero captain rather than Ibrahimovic but didn’t think that would be that big an effect. However waking up showed how ownership and split captain choices can really be a rank changer. Here’s just a few words about this
fantasy premier league – a few words on ownership and split captains
So my rank moved from 135k before the night down to 222k which was a bit of a surprise.
Firstly if you are thinking that Aguero hasn’t played yet and him scoring could change everything. Also being GW1 small changes in score are far more likely to affect your rank in a higher proportion than later in the season. I do know this but I’m using last night as a way of illustrating a couple of points
Ownership
It’s worth noting that according to the excellent site FPL discovery the captain split on an all manager basis was pretty even between Aguero and Ibrahimovic at 30% and 27 % respectively.
The fact is that any player getting decent points with high ownership who you don’t own will massively affect your rank in a negative way. If they are a popular captain choice even more so. Ibrahimovic with 46% ownership and a reasonable captain representation is an excellent example. I personally think that any attacking player with more than 40% ownership should be owned irrespective of whether you think he’s the best player ever or a donkey. The negative rank risk is just too big. I personally think it’s important to be conscious of moving backwards in rank as much as moving forwards.
Now things change later on when there become alot of abandoned teams and you have to use sites like FPL discovery to get a feel for what active FPL managers are doing. However the principle still applies.
Split captain choices
I’ve said previously that I use the captain choice as a shield rather than a sword. ie I pick the captain choice to avoid a rank drop rather than a rank movement forward. Therefore I normally go for the poll leader. Thats on the basis that you will get enough split captain choices that will change your rank to not need to going around seeking further opportunities.
Again it’s worth remembering that at the moment the polls are a bit early to represent what active managers will do captain wise but that does change as the season moves on.
I get alot of criticism for this conservative FPL playing style but you’ll know or see that it’s not that different to a good number of the top 10 FPL managers I’ve followed who’ve been consistently successful.
Remember there are many ways to and many motivations for playing FPL and my view is only one. I’m not trying to convince people to play in a certain way but just make points to give you some food for thought.
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