Here’s new FFGeek contributor Andrew Whitfield’s fantasy premier league strategy article where he talks about his concept of “controlled risk”. Andrew finished with an overall rank of 6k last season and 19k in 17/18
fantasy premier league strategy – Andrew Whitfield’s concept of “controlled risk”
Get additional content in the form of Podcasts, an interactive transfer and points prediction tool, 4 £50 prize leagues for the first 160 joiners and a Slack channel for discussion with members and contributors in our Patreon site. The first $3 monthly payment gets you in the prize leagues and Slack channel for the season.
See also an interview introducing Andrew as an FFGeek contributor and his first draft team. Andrew has also been on a podcast on our Patreon site
Are you a risk taker or a cautious FPL manager. One of the key components to my FPL strategy is what I term “controlled risk”. Here are the key components to that strategy plus how I then aim to move forward in the rankings.
The template
There seems to be a “template” developing now – 2 Liverpool defenders, a Man City defender, Digne or Coleman, Salah, Sterling or a premium striker. These template players are “ low upside but high risk downside“ players. What I mean by this is that if these template players succeed, you won’t rise far in overall rank as a high majority of active managers will own them. However if you don’t own them and they score big, the potential for a huge slide downwards in overall rank is high. Owning template players acts as a “defensive shield”. I’ve often observed managers who are struggling in FPL because they have strayed too far from the template and their alternative picks haven’t matched the templates returns.
It’s good to have differentials, they can give you high overall rank gains but FPL for me is often about controlling risk. Finding differentials is good but doing it and ignoring the template players means you end up going head to head with those popular template players. That’s a high risk way of playing and too stressful for my liking.
There are also some interesting nuances at the moment arising out of the above template. So for example, anyone owning only one Liverpool defender could potentially lose you points if they keep a clean sheet as you are playing against a high degree of managers who own 2. If Liverpool keep 20 clean sheets again, that’s potentially 80 clean sheet FPL points to make up. Same for the Man City defensive double up. Owning only single Liverpool or City defence could see people actually losing ground.
Of course it obviously depends on what you do with the saved money to offset the loss of points but it becomes one of those risky head to head template battles I talked about above. Now don’t get me wrong if you avoid the template and your alternative picks are successful then you will shoot up the rankings. I’m not saying you can’t be successful that way it’s just about the risk in following such a strategy
The captain poll favourite
Not owning the most popular captain favourite is another area of high risk that I try to avoid as an FPL manager as well. I’ve noticed that alot of top FPL managers advocate holding these as a “shield” against the risk of a rank drop. So in GW1 for example, if you don’t hold Salah and he is the overwhelming captain poll favourite and then goes on to bag a hat trick v Norwich in GW1, you could be miles behind in the rankings immediately unless your captain choice matches him. Differential captains can be unavoidable when it’s close in the polls but I prefer to keep myself in the game generally with the leader of the captain poll. The captain poll leader had “ attacking returns” on 28 weeks out of 38 last season.
A 2nd mini template emerges
So after you’ve covered the above template, the remaining 4/5 players are the ones who are “ low risk downside & high gain upside “. If they fail, it won’t cost you too much but if they fire, these are the “differentials” that can shoot you up the table as relatively few FPL managers are benefiting from their points haul. Owning these players acts as an “attacking sword”. These players then are those that arguably you should focus more on getting right than the template ones.
What’s appears to be happening at the moment is that there is almost a “second template” developing this season too with a lot of 50-50 calls to be made – Jimenez or Jota, Wilson or King, Bernardo or Siggy, Maddison or Perez or Tielemans…by the time we have covered the template players and made some of the 50-50 calls above, all that’s left are the cheap as chips fillers…
With so many similar teams this time due to the Liverpool / City dominance, if you are going to cover the risk with the template players, the fast start is possibly going to come down to the 50-50 calls in the second level of the template, or which 2nd premium player you have alongside Salah – Sterling / Aguero / Mane / Auba or Kane.. or…. finding that golden nugget low ownership player !!!
A few unexpected differentials
There are quite a few players who finished in the top 20 points scorers who have ownership below 10% – Pogba, Lacazette, Luiz, Alonso, Eriksen. Are these the differentials that can make the difference to your start this season ????
Summary
So for me I like to cover the template players as a starting point to cover my downside overall rank risk. Then it’s a case of picking 4 or 5 players as differentials to be your main vehicle for an upwards rank move. The situation is slightly complicated at the moment due to a 2nd mini template that has evolved but we will see how that plays out up to GW1.
Again I’m not saying this is the only way of playing just the strategy that suits me. I hope you found it interesting food for thought.
Get additional content in the form of Podcasts, an interactive transfer and points prediction tool, 4 £50 prize leagues for the first 160 joiners and a Slack channel for discussion with members and contributors in our Patreon site. The first $3 monthly payment gets you in the prize leagues and Slack channel for the season.
Additional articles
See also an interview introducing Andrew as an FFGeek contributor and his first draft team. Andrew has also been on a podcast on our Patreon site
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