Here’s FFGeek Contributor Rob Reid with his FPL season review. He looks quickly back on GW38, his 21/22 season compared with his preseason goals and looks ahead to 22/23 FPL
FPL season review – Rob Reid looks back at his 21/22 FPL season
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GW38 review
Rob’s last 6 seasons overall ranks were 12k, 148k, 94k, 22k, 4k and 7k
GW38 points: 74 -4 Total points: 2,532, Overall Rank: 66k, green arrow 1k: Team Value: £105.0m
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A quick review of GW38 for starters!
A bit of a ‘meh’ gameweek to end the season then. I took a -4 ten minutes before the deadline when news started to break that Richarlison would be missing, having already transferred Toney in for Weghorst. I deliberated between Wilson and Jesus, and bought the latter in – another transfer which kind of summed up a recurring theme for my season really with another 50/50 call going wrong.
Otherwise, my team did ok – good returns for Captain Son and Kulusevski, smaller returns for Nketiah and Saka and a handy clean sheet and 3 bonus from Rudiger who was subbed off before Chelsea conceded. Cash was frustratingly sat in the 3rd sub position but even if I hadn’t hit Richarlison out, Gordon’s late cameo meant I’d have still missed out on his 7 points.
Indeed, with a couple of minutes left, I was looking at a final rank of around 58k but late returns for highly owned James and Robertson scuppered that and in the end I escaped with the smallest of greens. At least it wasn’t a red arrow, though I remained 18 points shy of my pre-season target of 50k. I should be positive though – I was ranked 173k in GW29 and I finished the season with 7 green arrows, 1 grey arrow and only the nasty GW37 red across the last 9 GWs. At GW29, I’d revised my overall rank target to 90k (top 1%) and I hit this. It’s also means I’ve had a 5-digit overall rank in 9 of last 10 seasons, not too bad really.
A Few Words on FPL Season 2021 / 2022
This is the 3rd consecutive ‘strange’ season and we’ll get a 4th as well with the 2022 World Cup interrupting season 2022 / 2023 from mid-November to just before Christmas. This season I think has been the strangest yet, with all the Covid call-offs across the festive season and then the added volume of blank and double gameweeks that this then triggered. Add to this a 2nd Free Hit chip being thrown into the mix and the African Cup of Nations further disrupting things in January, this made for a significant and ongoing set of challenges.
Personally, I found this season quite difficult and having spoken to the more template managers in the Contributor set such as Geek and Andrew Whitfield they seem to be in agreement. I’m definitely a manager who likes to plan quite far in advance and having to make very quick decisions in response to abrupt cancellations and fixture announcements wasn’t really in keeping with my more regimented playing style.
As per usual, I’ve used the excellent FPL Statistico tool to do a deep dive into my season stats and I’ve made a few observations on this below:
Hits
I took 15 points hits this season. This is way too many for my usual playing style and most of them didn’t pay off either in the short or long term. The period of the season where I did best was GW30-35 and I didn’t take a single hit in these 6 GWs. I must be more resolute on this next season.
Captain calls
These saved my season somewhat. Although I got a few wrong at the end of the season, I had a good hit rate of 27/38 Captain returns and a total of 722 Captain points – way more than I’ve had in previous seasons. This is an area where I fared really well.
Overall game observation
The game in general was much higher scoring this year – this isn’t surprising due to the extra chip and the sheer volume of double gameweeks.
Positional Points
Defenders (5.2) and midfielders (6.36) were the big winners this season, goalkeepers (4.16) and surprisingly forwards (3.99) were poor by comparison in PPG for my team. I shouldn’t have been afraid to play 4-5-1 or 5-4-1 this season! I was also stuck with 2 playing keepers for the latter half of the season – this was definitely a waste of funds.
Bench Points
I didn’t bench that many returns this season (unlike last.) Probably because it was rare to actually have a playing bench as such. This is also the 3rd season in a row I’ve not accrued any points from a penalty save!
Some lessons learned
Looking as to what I’m going to take into next season, in the past I’ve had a set of rules that I’ve gone by that if I’m struggling to make a decision before a deadline I revert to. I definitely threw these out the window when the cancellations were all happening and I think this was a bad idea.
I need to go back to basics a bit. The other thing I’m going to do is to try and drown out Social Media noise a bit more. I love being on Twitter and it’s a great way to meet and interact with fellow FPL players and fans, but it does lead to confirmation bias. I was much better at filtering this out in season 2020 / 21 when I finished at 12k. I’m going to be more picky when choosing my sources of information next season and revert back to just a couple of Podcasts and more trusted sources of stats.
The other thing that has stood out for me this season is how much using a Planner can help your team. I used Joe’s Transfer Planner and Points Projection Tool a lot more in the last couple of months of the season to help map my way through the numerous double gameweeks. It really helped me out and I don’t think it’s any co-incidence that my fortunes improved during this period. The success of the Planner Team this season with it’s 3k overall rank finish really speaks for itself and I’m looking forward to Joe’s updates over the summer (shout out to his girlfriend too for her help on the presentation-side of things!)
Finally – In terms of my pre-season targets, here’s how I got on:
Overall Rank 50k – missed by 18 points; OR 66k, got to 44k in GW36 but was only inside the top 50k for 2 GWs all season
Win my friends and family league – won by 51 points
Reach 3rd Round of the Cup – got to 5th Round
Finish in top half of the Contributor’s League – finished 15th out of 22; was sitting 10th in GW36
Looking ahead to FPL 2022 – 23
There’s already much to consider ahead of next season. First of all, will FPL Towers introduce any changes to the game? Will we see an overhaul of the chips and how will they deal with the 1-month hiatus in mid-November for the World Cup? Personally, I’d like to see the Bench Boost chip ditched and be replaced by something like a Limitless Free Hit like they have in Champions League Fantasy Football and I do wonder if we might see a post-Covid 2020 situation where we get unlimited transfers during the World Cup.
In terms of the league itself, Man City’s signing of Erling Haaland is really exciting. He is a prolific scorer coming into a team that create loads of chances. Yes he may take time to adapt to the Premier League, but there’s also every possibility he goes against this and hits the ground running. I’m also interested to see what the promoted teams bring. Fulham and Bournemouth are pretty experienced Premier League teams already. Will Mitrovic finally be able to carry his Championship form into the Premier League with Fulham? And how will The Cherries cope with a second crack at the top table? And finally on the promoted teams, how will the winners of Huddersfield versus Forest get on? My Mum comes from a family of Forest supporters so I’ll be cheering for them on Sunday (sorry Terriers fans!)
And will we see any players undergo positional changes? There are definitely arguments for players like Son, Mane and Jota to be reclassified as forwards and what price will they come in at? The forward category was certainly a big disappointment this season and will it pay next season to spend heavily in defence and midfield? There’s certainly no shortage of great attacking full-back options and for me it will be no surprise if their prices are elevated significantly, but part of me wants to see FPL leave them at a reachable price to keep the game interesting for as many managers as possible.
Whatever happens, what I do know is that I’m looking forward to this summer break. As someone who was heavily invested in the Euro 2020 Fantasy game, it’s been a long couple of years playing Fantasy Football and I’m ready now for a few weeks off. I’m excited to watch the Champions League Final this weekend purely as a football fan and will then have a nervous watch next week as Scotland take on Ukraine in the World Cup Play-offs. And if they win (and that’s a huge if) I’ll then have an even more nervous Sunday afterwards as they potentially face my wife’s team Wales!
However you spend the next few weeks folks, I hope you have a lovely summer and am looking forward to interacting with you all again from mid-July onwards. Thank you once again for taking the time to keep up with my ramblings with season and thanks also to Geek for providing the platform to ramble. As for me, I’m off to the Highlands for a well-earned break next week and am looking forward to spending some time in the mountains with my family and the dogs. It just remains for me to say congratulations to all of you who had success in your mini-leagues and in the overall rankings and I’ll see you next season.
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