Here’s my fantasy premier league disasters article when I look back at GW28 through to GW31 when I went from 71k to 208k. Was I alone in this or did many managers suffer the same fate in preparing for the blank GW31 and if so do I need to change strategy in a similar situation next season?
fantasy premier league disasters – my GW28 to GW31
Why am I putting myself through this?
The reason I’m looking at this is I wanted to get a feel for whether that run which took me from 71k OR to 208k OR was the result of my plan for the blank GW31 or was just the result of my own incompetence.
If it was the former then maybe I need to think about how I approach blank weeks when there is a decent lead in time. The narrative with GW31 was why prepare early and load yourself with mainly poor quality teams that didn’t blank. I didn’t buy that narrative and the majority of serious FPL managers also prepared for GW31 through free transfers in advance rather than a wildcard close to GW31. I’m checking this theory out by seeing how other FFGeek contributors and the 10 top FPL managers I follow dealt with that same period of gameweeks. Did they have the same issues with me and suffer rank falls due to the preparation for the blank GW31 or was I an incompetent manager for 4 gameweeks.
If it was incompetence then I don’t need to radically rethink my pre blank gameweek strategies again I just need to execute them ALOT better.
By the way if you didn’t seem my end of season FFGeek team review the season had a happy ending and I recovered to finish a respectable 36k OR.
How did the FFGeek contributors and 10 top FPL managers get through GW28 -GW31?
Here’s a table where I analysed each of the contributors and 10 top FPL managers that prepared for the blank GW31 through free transfers and hadn’t used their 2nd wildcard before it. There were a few contributors and 1 of the 10 top FPL managers who didn’t follow that strategy and they have been excluded. BTW Keith and Paul are contributors and within the 10 top FPL managers.
Here’s a table which is ordered by FPL points gained in GW28 to GW31. I’ve also shown the rank movement. You can see I finished bottom in both ☹
So I am rock bottom 17 points behind the next worst score of 162 and lost 47k in OR more than any other manager. Joseph Crilley who got 227 points over those 4 gameweeks got an incredible 82 points more than me over the 4 weeks and gained 83k in OR compared to me losing 137k in OR.
What on earth was I doing?
Here was my GW28 team.
So out of the template I’m missing Liverpool defence and Pogba and Jimenez from the maybes. How I didn’t have a member of the Liverpool defence for GW28 when they beat Watford 5-0 is beyond me.
Anyway lets see manager 1’s team in GW28 where he got 59 points. He finished with an incredible OR in the top 100.
So the players who I didn’t pick that scored big were the Liverpool defence (TAA 31 points), Mane (43 points), Vardy (33 points), Jimenez (23 points) and Sterling (25 points). Only the Liverpool defence and Jimenez were in the template as of GW28 but Mane and Vardy had fixtures in GW31 and had some popularity. I somehow managed to have none of the above 5 players. That was the key to my failure. While I can understand not having Jimenez and Sterling with them not having fixtures in GW31. The Liverpool defence and Mane were the real mistakes.
Manager 1 had Robertson as his Liverpool defender plus Mane and Vardy so he cleaned up.
At the risk of repeating myself, how I got myself in a position where I did’t have Mane and the Liverpool defence especially is galling. Going for Pogba in GW29 for his minus 1 missed penalty instead of Mane was a crucial inexplicable error.
So in the end it was crucial that you had some of those 5 players above and I somehow managed to get none whereas manager 1 had 3. Those 3 players were worth 107 points over those 4 gameweeks. Everybody except me had some combination of those 5. Hence why I finished bottom of that table. As I said not getting Mane and the Liverpool defence was the real crime on my part.
So what have I learnt?
That my problems over GW28-31 were of my own making and not some system failure of preparing for a blank gameweek over a number of weeks with free transfers alone. So next season with the same situation I would do the same just hope I wouldn’t make the same basic player selection errors.
That’s it hope you found it interesting
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