fantasy premier league teams GW17 – some early thoughts on the FFGeek team

Here’s our fantasy premier league teams GW17 article where we give our early thoughts on the FFGeek team for GW17. We look back at gameweek 16 and give our thoughts on the gameweek ahead including potential transfers and captain choice.

fantasy premier league teams GW17 – some early thoughts on the FFGeek team

Firstly if you’re new to the site my last 3 seasons overall ranks are 36k, 17k and 21k.

Gameweek 16 review

GW6 points: 51 (FPL average 54) Total points 886 , Gameweek rank 4,397k, Overall Rank: 579k, red arrow 145k, Team Value: £102.6m

Here’s the points:

51 points and a huge 145k red arrow to 579k overall.  2 massive red arrows have pretty much undone the 4 consecutive green arrows before them

This was totally self inflicted and I have no one else to blame, not even a 50/50 justification.  I have a rule of not transferring out players before a good fixture and yet I justified breaking it by saying Alli plus Abraham was better than Mount plus Aubameyang.  I like to think I would have used my free transfer for Guaita as an alternative and that really puts me down the points list.  Here is where I could give you a points comparison but not only could I not watch the Arsenal game live last night but I couldn’t even get myself to watch the you tube highlights this morning.  I also can’t even look at what Aubameyangs points tally is I’m so annoyed with myself for reasoning myself out of one of my basic rules.  Nothing good has ever come out of breaking my rules and after doing it last season repeatedly I thought I would avoid it this season.

And before you say it, I do know it’s only a game and there are more important things in life than FPL but it’s still really annoying.  Having got it all out and bored you, it’s done and time to move on.

Not much to talk about for the rest of the gameweek.  Alli performed well as did Vardy.  The rest were disappointing.

My FPL team structure

Here seems a good points for a team structure pit stop.

I thought it was worth putting my team into the categories that I like to classify them as

Template player:  7 of the 10 top 10 FPL managers have him in their team.  I use the 10 managers as a proxy for serious FPL managers who will finish in the top 100k or so.  People have different interpretations of template.  Andrew Whitfield tends to do it on overall ownership.  There’s no true definition and it’s an interpretive word.

Template replacement player:  the player you choose to go head to head against a template player with.

Bench player:  A player who will for the most part be on your bench.  Sometimes there are bench rotaters but I won’t muddy the waters

Difference maker:  these are the rest and the players who can move you forward or back.  I don’t call them differentials as this implies an ownership threshold which I don’t use

Here’s my squad using these categories

So as you can see in GW16 my difference makers all blanked or in Tomori’s case didn’t play and my template replacement player in Alli got less points than Son.

My question now is do I have a squad strong enough to claw back the points to get me to a respectable rank.  On the one hand the template is defined by 10 very successful managers so you could argue that if you don’t get into unnecessary head to heads with the template you should end up in a respectable position as all the managers who define the template definitely will.  Aside from that though,  my difference makers are looking very thin and the bench certainly doesn’t look like it can step in and solve any blanks.

I certainly come up against FPL managers who just say why don’t you just pick the players you think will score the most points.  Unfortunately football is a low event game and unpredictable which is why it’s worth hedging yourself against popular players in my view.  However, certainly players like FFGeek contributor Keith Spencer has been very successful by not playing a style anything like mine and he plays a very fixture based style.  His ride is often a bit roller coastery but he’s now top of the contributors league with it.

However I think the worst thing you can do is suddenly change everything you do in a panic (often disguised by managers as being “flexible” or “adaptable”) and comfortable with as you’re suddenly not doing well.  Keith is a great example actually as he was struggling a bit early on but kept with his methodology.   I’m going to stick by the way I play until the end of the season and if I have to change it for next season I will.  I have got reasonably good results with it as the basis of my playing style previously and I intend to go down with the ship this season rather than drastically change everything I’ve done previously.

I think this is a good thing about the FFGeek contributors there’s loads of different playing styles and you should be able to find someone who’s style resonates with you.

Anyway this week sounded like a good point to take stock.  Hope it helps you.

Transfer thoughts

1 free transfer and £1.5m in the bank.

I’m probably going to carry over the free transfer this week so I can have 2 going into GW18 when Liverpool and West Ham have no game.  That will give me maximum flexibility going into GW18.  I’ll probably bench Alexander Arnold and Mane and hopefully repair the other situations as much as possible.

If Tomori is definitely ruled out I may replace him as otherwise the replacements aren’t great from the bench.

Captain thoughts

I’m going to put up a captain poll tomorrow but hard to see it being anyone other than Vardy home to Norwich

Lineup

It’s only about the bench and whether I play Hayden or Cantwell.

Here’s the team pre any transfers

That’s it.  Hope you had a better gameweek than me

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