Community Musings – A Horse and a Tiger!

Community Musings – A Horse and a Tiger!

The 2016/17 pre-season will go down as the summer of musings. We had Cookie musing on the FPL release day over a plate of sardines, we had Mito musing over a plate of sardines and salmons, trying his best to distinguish between the two, we had GP musing over an entire shoal. The whole thing was beginning to feel a bit fishy. We aren’t quite sure why so many FPL’ers gravitate towards animals to complete their identity but a simple twitter search on the phenomenon reveals all manner from the FPLTortoise straight through to the FPLGreyhound. What we needed for some clarity were some horses and some tigers…. shazan, we got 2 e-mails, one from a horse and one from a tiger! Both offering up some musings on how they usually approach FPL and how they will be doing so this season. And just a bit of general natter in between about themselves, which is exactly what we like!

We get approached almost daily with people offering up FPL articles that they’d like posted but in all honesty our answer is usually ‘do you use the site, will people recognise you?’. We’re nothing if we’re not a community site so when the community ask it’s almost always a yes. And so witout further ado, over to the lads…

Horse
I am just starting my 6th season of FPL! I can’t believe where the time has gone. The first season I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I kept captaining Kompany as he was a good captain at his club! In January of that year, sat with an overall rank of 2m, I had the good fortune to encounter Fantasy Football Cheat with their great weekly articles and a very helpful and active community chat. With that help I made it to round 6 of the FPL cup and finished at a relatively respectable 627,000. At the end of that 1st season I sat down and did some thinking and wrote down a list of things to try out in the next season. I have put these guidelines into practice since and followed the site and it’s eventual transition into FF247 and since then I have finished each season in the top 30K, winning the Chedsoga league (remember that), FFC manager of the month and the Banterbury Cup along the way.

One of the turning points along my road to fantasy football addiction was watching my team Portsmouth play at home in a must win relegation battle against Burnley in the Championship during out melt down period. We were destroyed 1-5 by a Charlie Austin hat trick and in the pub afterwards we could not bear to talk about real football and instead discussed about the merits of captaining Van Persie.

Anyway, I would like to share some thoughts to help newbies and veterans alike get started in setting up their team for the upcoming season. It is not the only way to set a team up but it works for me.

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A Guide to setting up your team
Fantasy football is a simple game really. Each game week you choose a captain, stick 4 players on the bench and usually make one transfer.
So what does mean for setting up an initial team?

Captain
Personally, I like to have a good selection of potential captains. So, I set up with 4 premium players (£9m+): 2 forwards and 2 midfield. Ideally, these should rotate to give strong armband options for the first few GWs.
However, as last season showed, cheaper players such as Mahrez and Payet can be good captains too.

When possible I like to plan ahead and make sure I have a decent captain option for the next 6 GWs or so. Each GW I usually read TGP’s excellent captain tips article (other writers are available!), have a look at the captain’s poll and go with my gut feeling.

My worst captain choice was when Man City were home bankers against a poor Blackburn team. I went for Kun (c) and Silva (v). Mancini left them both on the bench for the whole match. (Note to self: captain and vice captain should play in different matches.)

My favourite one was Charlie Austin making amends by getting a hat trick for QPR propelling me up my local ML.

Bench
£100m does not go far these days so it’s best to leave as little as possible on the bench. Playing a 3-4-3, the most popular formation, this means having a second goalie, fourth and fifth defender and fifth midfield all nailed on and costing a maximum of £4.5m each to leave a mere £18m on the bench.

Transfers
Flexibility is the name of the game. I find it best to have players of a popular price so they can be transferred easily to better performing players of the same price. The first few game weeks of the season will be manic with players we discarded clocking up the points, whilst expensive players who we thought would set the game alight can’t even play for 90mins. Last season Theo Walcott looked a bargain if he could just replicate his pre injury form of old but it soon became painfully clear than he wouldn’t get a whole game.

Having a premium defender around £5.5m and a mid price forward and two midfielders each around £7-8m provides a flexible structure and lots of options in the transfer market.

I generally avoid getting players new to the premier league in my team as they can struggle to adapt and there are already too many transfers to make. The only time I have tried was with FPL legend Michu. Maybe I will try it again.

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Where to spend the money
Defence (Inc GKs)
Over the last few seasons Southampton and other small clubs J such as Watford, Stoke (twice), Swansea, WBA, Sunderland and Newcastle have provided us with great defences which have racked the points for low outlay.
Goalies at the big clubs don’t pick up the save points that busier goalies will.
So, for me a pair of cheap rotating goalies is better than having an elite goalie.
Each season throws up cheap defensive gems.
I go for a scatter gun approach of either 2 pairs of cheap rotating defenders or if funds allow a 3 way rotation and a couple of medium priced defenders. Hopefully, I will get lucky with one or two of the cheaper teams. The plan is to set and forget the defence for the first 6GWs or so and use the time to get front 7 into shape.

The Front 7
For me, getting the right midprice forward and midfielders is one of the keys to FPL. These have the potential for the biggest price rises as no one can ignore them. Both Vardy and Mahrez went up by nearly £2m each last season. So if you can find the right players in early doors, the rest of the team fits together much more easily. The must have premium midfielders and forwards will become very apparent.

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Other Things to Bear in Mind
Points Hits
Ideally I like to make one transfer a week. This really focuses the mind into making hopefully better and longer term decisions. However, taking a hit can pay off sometimes to catch a bandwagon and increase team value, to field 11 players if short or to hit a DGW. If a cheap gem becomes apparent like Alli last season or Sterling when he played for Liverpool, it’s definitely worth the four points.

Price Rises/Falls
My favourite site to follow price change predictions is fplstatistics.co.uk

Early in the season I like to chase the dollar and make early transfers to build team value. This makes it easier to strengthen the team especially after playing the WC.

By GW8 I tend to calm down and start making my transfer(s) at the end of the GW. This lets me wait to see if players pick up injuries but also gives me more time to read through the week’s articles.
I like to follow the articles pre season and get up to speed with all the new players and then I can jump on any early bandwagons. Someone mentioned Mahrez preseason last year so he was in my team by GW2 after his electric start.

Bonus Points
It really boosts your overall ranking if you can work out and pick the better teams’ ‘star’ players who hoover up the bonus points. Those 3 points soon add up. By GW8, it usually quite clear who gets the bonus points and by then you should have extra cash to splash out on them.

Knowledge of Premier League
So do I have an in depth knowledge of the premier league?
No, not really. My team got relegated from the Prem in 2010 and are currently languishing in the fourth tier of English football. A lot of the players I watched in the Premier League don’t play there anymore.
But there are a lot of people who know their football on FF247 and I take my time to read the articles and read what people post to hear of players that I might have missed –

Cookie and NIN know a lot about Man Utd
Kop and Elle know a lot about Liverpool
Init knows a lot about Everton
Mitro knows a lot about Arsenal
TGP knows a lot about Rangers. Oh wait…

Anyway, they are a great bunch on here so feel free to ask questions and post your successes, frustrations and general banter.

Have a great season
Horse

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Takasaki Tiger
I took up FPL after trying to out ‘Cruyff turn’ my 3rd lot of U8s which eventually put me on crutches and halted the coaching.

Firstly a few fun facts about me –

– My Grandad actually played for the Hammers before the war (WW1 100+ years ago, that is) but no-one thought to mention it until my youngest kid decided to be a footballer.

– I took up coaching to help him.

– I met Geoff Hurst on a course.

– I cheered my kids national team Japan to be Womens world champions.

– This summer I cunningly booked the family holiday to be in France for the Euro final. I looked a bit daft driving a car decked in red dragons as the team flew the opposite way, worse still I went down the village pub for the final and the pub was SHUT, so in France for France in the French Euro final, SHUT. And to think I voted Remain, C’est la merde.

– Ground my way to the top 10% despite believing in the value of defenders, then last season went TV chasing and bounced around ending top 5%. Is it just me who always picks the wrong captain and the GK who gets a red card, or am I simply crap, time will tell.

– Target this year top 2%.

– Unashamed engineer geek who always wants to know how exactly E=Mc2+a bit, when I saw Mito’s chart of top mids with points as if they had played every game I couldn’t rest until I found what that might mean across the entire game.

Knowing WHY certain tactics work lets us know we are not just chasing rainbows….

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Chasing Rainbows
The perceived wisdom of the old sweats (my team) is that you play 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 spending high at the front and low at the back.

~5m at the back, ~65m up front; 5m per player versus 8m.
Yet one brief glance at value to points suggest this is completely wrong. The best points per million are GK’s and DEF’s.

It also easy to find defenders who scored similar total points as up front players at a 5m+ discount, in Aguero’s case you could buy two premium defenders total less than him and get 80% more points.

Don’t chase rainbows, spend on defence and don’t skimp on it to buy anyone over 7.5 up front. 40m back, 50m front ; 5.5m versus 6m.

I did this first my season and despite poring over charts every week finished at 270k, not bad but nowhere near great.

So what explains why the old sweats chasing rainbows win & common sense doesn’t?

The 1st thing is game time.
Average game time of the top 5 goalkeepers was 10% higher than average game time of top 5 front players.
If we drop down the points to sub 150 the gap widens to 25%, and at the cheap end sub 100 rockets to 50% less game time for the front players.
The back get dropped/injured/rested far less, which if we are not making transfers is a big plus. But since we do have transfers we should NOT be looking at total points per million but points per game per million.
Example-: McAuley 4.5m 100 points 100% play stays 100, Benteke 7.5m 100 points 50% play becomes 200 points at full gametime, so actually Benteke was best value – just not all season.
There is a wide choice of front players to buy & sell regularly to improve your team with success, it is far rarer with defence.
Buying on recent form not the points total.

The 2nd,3rd,… everything else is points.
To be near the top the season target is 2200+, that’s 200 points per player on the pitch.
We cannot accept keeping many players all season who earn less than this.
120+ is heavy rotate needed, 150+ is rotate needed , 200+ is an all season banker

Our table of players who achieved this last season is -:
120+ 150+ 200+
GK 7 2 0
DEF 14 4 0
MID 13 13 2
FWD 2 7 2

At the back there is no way to find 200+ points each without heavy rotation, so heavy that transfers will not cut it.
Simply the less defence you field the less you have to make up for elsewhere.
Up front there were 4 season bankers, and there is plenty of choice at 150+ to be able to rotate by transfer with success.
Even better with our forwards is that choosing anyone who scores above average is most likely a big hitter.
So with forwards its relatively easy to pick 3 top ones; mids 4 maybe 5 good ones.
Though sometimes 3 top forwards does just cost too much.

So here’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
3-4-3 or 3-5-2 it is, the rest is up to you.

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Fixture Tracker – the first 6 games

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We are running the main public FF247 League which anyone is welcome to join by using the following code 1147-701 (auto-link below). This one has a prize pool of £250 which is sponsored by @FootballFanager and will be paid into your account on their website. The top 5 places are paid out.

Join Our League – Quick Link
League Code: 1147-701
View league standings – COMING SOON

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New for the 2016/17 we are delighted to announce we are running a Regulars League which has a cash prize pool of £300 paid directly to the winners from the FF247 management team.

To enter this one you need to be an active and recognised site member and you need to e-mail us for the league code – Elleffcee@fantasyfootball247.co.uk *terms and conditions apply and are available upon request. Management reserve the right to review membership of this league on an ongoing basis.

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Thanks for reading Community Musings – A Horse and a Tiger!. This article was written by Horse and Takasaki Tiger

Follow @FantasyFooty247

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FF247 League
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League Code: 1147-701
View league standings

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