Fantasy Football 247 Site Team News Gameweek 31

No Salah, no Son, no problem

Welcome to FF247 Site Team GW31

I wasn’t going to write about which player scored us what points this week. However, somebody else beat me to the article so here it is:

It was heaven and hell at the back this week – Konsa did the heavy lifting with a mighty 15 points but Petrovic, VVD and Zabarnyi (whooo?!) all came up with just another 5 between them. Saliba smiled on from the bench with 7 of his own.

Captain Palmer was our star man with 30, with Bowen pulling in 10. Foden and Saka had a literal stalemate with just the 3 each.

Up top Solanke got us his now customary goal for 7, but Haaland and Watkins stayed quiet with 2 & 1 respectively.

We smashed the average of 47 with 76 of our own. This meant a green arrow and we effectively halved our overall rank to 1,276th. Which is actually our 4th highest one this season, since the heady days of GW when we peaked at 568th.

Inside the hive mind of an FPL team aka ‘The Site team’

So, what was I going write about this week I hear you ask? Well, I thought I’d delve into a closer look at how exactly we play the game, maybe it will help some people out there, maybe not.

First off some context, we’ve been running the site team for 10 seasons now, and whilst I haven’t personally been around for all that time (more like 5 seasons) what I will say is that our approach doesn’t really change from season to season. We play conservatively, rarely take hits and when things are not glaringly obvious or demand our attention, we try to roll our transfer whenever possible.

We’ve finished in the top 100k in all but 3 of our 9 seasons to date, we’ve also had 2 top 10k finishes, so clearly our approach works more often than not!

So, what separates a good season from a great season? Honestly not much. A good start always helps, we’ve had that this season, finding ourselves within the top 100k by GW6 and the top 10k from GW11. Since then, we’ve found ourselves as high as 538th, and have never dropped out the top 10k since.

The key thing to remember in FPL is that it’s a game of chance and luck, so sure, we’ve been lucky, but when we’re unlucky it’s a lot easier to take a bad game week when you’re not personally responsible (we share our good weeks and bad as a collective).

The biggest thing that works in our favour however is our unwavering patience and as mentioned, our reluctance to take a hit (we’ve only taken 2 this season). Of course, we’re not against a hit when it comes around to blanks and doubles, but even then, we approach with caution.

This week is a good case in point. We went into the game week without 2 of the captain favourites (Salah and Son). We could have quite easily switched Bowen to Son, but we knew we really wanted Salah in GW31. So, we did what we always do, we rolled the transfer. This meant Palmer took the armband and Bowen remained for a tricky away game to Newcastle. Bowen ended up matching Son’s return (10pts), Salah lucked out with 7pts and Palmer it turns out was the best captain (30pts). Nobody could have predicted any of those things, we certainly didn’t, but how many times is no move the best move?

So in conclusion, be patient, try to not to take the results of your actions personally and remember that in the end, a lot of what makes for a good or bad week in FPL is often beyond our control.

Our Gameweek 30 Result

We have £3.1m in the bank and 2 free transfer to use ahead of GW31. Let’s go see what was decided….

Our GW31 Transfer(s)

We know we want Salah, we know we want to captain him, we just haven’t decided how we’re going to get there.

We have a few options. Bowen would be an obvious one to lose from a money perspective, but even then, we will have to raise funds from elsewhere. With potential injuries to Watkins and even Saka (although it should be noted he seems to limp off the pitch every match), not to mention red flagged players in Botman and Hee Chan, it feels like it would be wise to wait as late as possible before making any moves.

So, we’ll be buying Salah, we’re not sure how just yet. Fear not though, once we do know, we’ll be sure to add our moves in the comments below!

To confirm then we will be buying Salah, watch this space to find out how

Captain – Mo Salah (when we buy him)

Our GW31 team for now…

*Our GW31 team updated*

As written above we knew we wanted Salah and have finally come up with the route to how exactly we will do that. It was pretty straight forward… Bowen was the sacrificial lamb in midfield but the added funds had to come from somewhere which was the only debate. Virgil was one possibility to Bradley but when the Watkins news came out of his injury we decided to keep the Liverpool captain and sell Ollie. That made our moves Bowen and Watkins to Salah and Muniz. We now have 0FTs but a nice chunk of change in the bank of £1.8m. I’m sure that will come in handy in the next while. And the armband goes on Salah

You can follow the progress of the FF247 Site Team here

Thanks for reading Fantasy Football 247 Site Team News Gameweek 31. This article was written by Fantasy Football 247

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PREDICTED LINE-UPS

Back by popular demand! Well, sort of… Drafthound have changed their line-up approach this season and what it means for us is that we are no longer able to display a live feed of it on here due to some technical difficulties. That said, what they have done looks great and is still only a click away so if you want to access those they are HERE

Both leagues will be shut to new entrants as of 01/01/24.