telegraph fantasy football tips – top 1k finisher Stephen Troop gives his guide to TFF strategy

Telegraph fantasy football

Here’s Stephen Troop’s Telegraph Fantasy Football tips article where last seasons top 1k finisher gives his guide to strategy 

telegraph fantasy football tips – top 1k finisher Stephen Troop gives his guide to TFF strategy

Following on from the Geek’s article  welcoming Telegraph Fantasy Football back,  this is the first, of hopefully, several articles focusing on Telegraph Fantasy Football.  It’s a format I have played for a number of seasons now. It is worth noting that I have never come close to the illustrious £50k top prize but tend to achieve a decent rank and win my mini leagues. I have noticed that the Geek tends to struggle with this format more than most and suspect that others fall into the same boat.   Therefore,  this article will focus on simple strategy tips when adjusting to the Telegraph format of the game.

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Why Telegraph Fantasy Football?

I really enjoy the Telegraph game and would like to see more people playing and discussing it from this site. The reasons I enjoy it are:

1) It’s simple. No bonus points, no price rises/falls, and no price rises to worry about.

2) There is £50k top prize to the overall winner plus other cash prizes to be won for a top 20 finish, golden boot, best starting xi and manager of the month/week. There are also cash leagues you can enter with 19 other random managers at varying entry fees if you don’t have mini leagues to join. These are good opportunities as you can often win these with a top 1k rank

3) You can use team credits in the championship version of the game, as well as champions league and world cup games.

Your first team is free but you can get some early bird offers until the end of July to get additional teams which works out at a pretty low amount per team. These can be used across the different games.

What are the key differences between FPL and TFF?

1) As mentioned above, you don’t have bonus points, price rise/falls and captains to choose or chips.

2) You just pick a starting xi. There is no bench.

3) More severe deductions for goals conceded for defenders/goalkeepers however 5 points for a clean sheet as opposed to 4. No clean sheet bonus is awarded for midfielders and no save points awarded for goalkeepers.

4) Key contributions are awarded instead of assists. These are worth 3 points as well but can be awarded for up to 2 players (e.g if a cross was flicked on before being converted both the crosser and the player who flicked it on would be awarded 3 points).

5) 40 transfers for the season limit.

What are the key challenges?

The main challenge with TFF Is using transfers efficiently. You receive 40 at the start of the season to use at any point which works out at around 1 per gameweek. This is a lot fewer than you will likely use in FPL when considering hits and wildcards.

This is easily said than done. At the start you will see teams race ahead in terms of score. This is because players will be burning transfers to go for the first manager of the month (and as such will use 20 transfers over the month to help them try and achieve this). Some players will do block defences (4 + goalkeeper from same team) which short term could reward but long term is unlikely to.




Key Strategy points

So given the challenges faced for those switching to this format I have compiled some tips around the key themes. These are just my views. Like I said I am not consistently fighting for the top prizes.

Formation/Distribution of funds between players

Prices generally dictate what formation is best. Usually I stick to a 3-4-3 or 4-5-1 through the season.  However last year midfielders tended to be very overpriced and so much of last season I played with 4 defenders where there were a number of bargains. This year appears pretty flexible and it is pretty easy to get 3 strong strikers without ruining the team balance. There remains strong value in defence so 4-3-3 or 3-4-3 look strong with a cheaper midfielder or extra defender.

Despite the harsher goals conceded point deduction I tend to put the majority of spend in attack. I will always go for a keeper between £2.5m and £3.0m who I will keep for the whole season barring long term injury or mitigating circumstances with the teams form.

I will then generally pick one premium defender around £4.0m and 2 other defenders around £3.0m. Sometimes a really cheap option emerges which can help budget.  Last season Steve Cook of Bournemouth was at £2.2m as a first choice xi player and was part of my team all season. This leaves around £37m left for attack and still leaves a pretty good value defence.

The distribution between midfielder and strikers depends on player prices. This year I am focusing on 3 heavy forwards, 1 premium midfielder and some value midfielders. It is very achievable if you focus on value for defence.

Using transfers

This is something you get better the longer you play but here are my tips for dealing with the limited transfers:

1) Be very safe in your starting team.

Both in terms of premier league experience and security of starts. You don’t have an early wildcard option to quickly fix issues.   If in doubt over the cheap midfielder, then there is probably a good defensive option at that price making it an easy switch later on if needed. I don’t tend to make any transfers for 3-4 weeks barring serious injury or if a player isn’t starting. It also steers me away from people like Willian (who is a popular pick in FPL currently) because Hazard will be back within a few weeks and I don’t want to make an early transfer.

2) Think longer term.

Bringing in players for short term good fixtures can burn through transfers too quickly. Analysing fixtures still reaps rewards but look at fixtures for 6-8 weeks ahead and identify when teams have good patches in advance to optimise when you bring someone in.

3) Be patient.

If you want to transfer a player not on form for someone who is then it’s worth checking the next few gameweeks to see if there is the opportunity to swap them so that both players play that gameweek and get you points (e.g. if one plays Saturday and the other Sunday). I will almost always use transfers this way as all those 2 point minimum extras add up over the season. It also forces you to be patient with players for at least 1 more week which avoids rushing into transfers.

4) Be patient again.

You sometimes have to roll with a bit of bad form or keep players through tough fixtures or even a short term injury (1-2 weeks). Using transfers to swap a player out for a small number of games and then bring them in costs 2 transfers and would need to heavily reward you to be worth it. Point 6 brings an exception.

5) Aim to have at least 20 transfers by January 1st.

This is a very general rule but one I always aim to. Whilst you could look at 3 transfers per month it never works out like that. I always envisage not using any in August but using a few in September once some trends have emerged.




6) Daisy chain.

This is a term for getting the most number of games from players. I use this in the latter part of the season when latter stages of the FA cup are in play. You can get situations where your player plays Saturday and then another player will play 3 times before your original player plays again. Often you can spot chains where due to replays, double gameweeks etc. you can use a small number of transfers to get a lot of additional points. This comes with some risk but with increased number of games will usually follow points.  This is especially so when you are generally using this to chain premium strikers/mids together.

7) Wait for lineup news where possible.

We all have lives outside fantasy football but leave transfers until the team news has been released if you can. You can transfer right until kickoff (if you wanted to make sure the player isn’t injured in warm up)

FA Cup

My advice for the FA cup is to not take it into account until around the quarters. Most teams play second string players in the early stages and so it is a bit of luck if your players play. It is worth monitoring if any teams put a strong team out against a lower league side but unless you would want that player for future premier league fixtures as well I still wouldn’t transfer them in and out.

Once the quarters hit then the cup will influence my transfers as there will be teams with a number of additional fixtures over other teams.

Type of players

All of the usual analysis/stats help me decide on players, the same as FPL. I tend to go for roughly the same players although I do tend to have more assist type players in TFF over FPL particularly in midfield. Since bonus isn’t a feature then players like Costa, who rarely get bonus even when they score are more appealing in TFF.  Centre backs are also less appealing as they won’t get bonus for blocks/interceptions etc

If you have any feedback on the article, any questions or would like me to cover anything in future articles let me know in the comments section below.

Remember to join our free to enter the FantasyFootballGeek TFF league.  The Telegraph newspaper have promised £100 for the winner.  League PIN is 8000919  pass code 1159

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