Here’s another article in our fantasy premier league season analysis where FFGeek Contributor Rick Porter reviews his season. Rick’s finished with a 29k overall rank in 19/20 and his 3 seasons overall ranks before that were 1k, 30k and 2k.
Fantasy Premier League season analysis – Rick Porter reviews his 19/20 season
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Introduction
Well, that was an odd season. I imagine, and hope, that we never see the likes of it again. It may have been crowdless and with far more water drinking than usual, but we hobbled over the line safely. It’s actually difficult to remember too much about this season pre-lockdown. It was all fairly standard and I was progressing in a reasonable, if not trailblazing, manner until matches started to be cancelled and the virus took hold.
Here’s Ricks GW38 team which got 74 points:
Mistakes
There were definitely a few small missteps throughout the year, but there’s one moment that really stands out to me as an error. Against the trend, I decided to play aggressive in GW29 and used my Free Hit to take advantage of the surprise double gameweek. It made sense to me at the time. As there was next to no notice, nobody could have prepared for it properly so a big score would have really helped my rank. Of course, in the end (and here comes a line I never thought I’d be writing) the extra match was cancelled due to the global pandemic.
There were, and still are, bigger things at play and compared to the grip of COVID-19 my mild misfortune is obviously as insignificant as could possibly be, but I still felt hugely unlucky as most the players I’d removed scored big and all my ‘double game’ Free Hit players faltered in their single match. An early end to the season looked likely and I plummeted out of the top 100,000.
Luck does tend to balance out, though. The bad luck I suffered that week was easily offset by me picking the right TC in the Mane/Salah coin toss (a literal coin toss in my case) and the unexpected introduction of unlimited transfers before the restart. Even though I was actively honing my team during the break, without those extra transfers the squandering of my Free Hit Chip would have hit even harder and I’d have had a much tougher time achieving my goals.
Targets
So, I had a couple of aims this season:
• Primarily, I wanted to come first in my main cash mini league. It was looking a bit dicey at the point of lockdown but I managed to pull away towards the end for the win. While the prize money isn’t insubstantial, it’s mainly pride that drives me. After topping the table for the last few years, many are keen to tear the crown from my head so – naturally – I grow keener to deny them each season. Besides, if I can’t better my mate, Dave, who routinely burns 100+ points on extra transfers, misses deadlines, and quite possibly has the worst Triple Captain record on the planet, can I really hope to stand up to the other contributors here?
• Speaking of the Geek contributors… This was my first year writing for the site, so while I wasn’t aiming for a particular place in the Contributors League, I really didn’t want to embarrass myself. Finishing in the top half when there are so many great managers competing is more than I expected, so I think I can put that down as another objective completed. This site is packed full of clever thinking and insights from both Geek and the other contributors and I really have to thank them all for forcing me to play my best game.
• My Overall Rank target tends to be top 100,000 nowadays. I’d guess that’s probably the case for most serious managers and if I’m going to be publicly throwing around advice then I feel that’s a fair standard to aim for. Of course, the greedy me always craves another top 1% finish to further shine the old FPL CV, so I’m pretty happy with my OR of 29,003 which delivers my 4th top 1% finish on the bounce.
Next Season
My tactics for the new season will largely remain the same: get the known season keepers in early, keep an eye on team value, spot the emerging bargains, and try to have a decent mix of template players and differentials… after that it’ll be a case of watching as many matches as I can and reacting to what I see. What will change, though, is how the fairly recent introduction of reliable early team news influences me…
Early Team News
I’ve read many a hot take on the subject of ITK accounts. I could probably argue either side of this, but my general view is that it’s just a bit more information added to the copious amount that’s already out there. Is it fair that the FPL site flags injured players, saving people the effort of watching the press conferences or doing their own research? Is it fair that the official FPL Twitter account suggests potential captains and hot differentials every week?
Is it fair that people can read sites like this, collate the information and opinions from numerous top 1% managers and make transfers accordingly? The reality is it doesn’t matter whether these things are fair or not, it’s part of the game and if you’re playing seriously then it has to be taken into consideration.
If early team news becomes commonplace then it’ll certainly have an impact on my transfers. If it gets squashed – as some ITK accounts did just before the GW38 deadline – then so be it, business as usual. More likely we’ll end up with a combination of reliable and fake accounts coming and going throughout the season and it’ll occasionally blow up in our faces as a benched Mahrez screams onto the pitch at 60 mins to score a brace.
Like most things in this game, in the end, even
Other posts
Andrew Whitfield season review
Costas Chari end of season review
A deep dive on the FFGeek Contributors
Final wrap up of the 10 top FPL managers
Rob Reids overview of the Promoted Teams
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