Phil Goyette breaks down the official Fantasy Premier League game, for the upcoming 2021/22 season English Premier League. He gives an overview of FPL strategy and how to join contests.

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In my previous article, I introduced you to the English Premier League’s official fantasy game, “Fantasy Premier League”. In this article, I will take you further by exploring some basic strategy considerations to have in mind while playing the game.

If you want to give FPL a shot this season, you can join my free “RotoBaller Invitational” league and see how you stack up against me and the other competition! Here’s the link to join:

Link: https://fantasy.premierleague.com/leagues/auto-join/gvpc1z

League Code: gvpc1z

Choosing your initial squad

My first piece of strategy advice is born from my personal experience. Be thoughtful when selecting your initial squad! When I selected my first-ever FPL squad last year, it did it quickly before the first week of matches. I just relied on my general knowledge of the EPL and some marquee players. This approach created several holes in my lineup that took several weeks and a few -4 hits to clean up.

So, take your time. Make a few drafts. Read some advice articles. Then select your initial squad.

Templates and differentials

Remember that in the FPL salary cap game, the same player can be rostered by every owner that wants to. Therefore, when playing FPL you need to be mindful of how many owners are selecting a particular player. The official game tracks this by the statistic “Team Selected by %” or “TSB%”.

You can look at TSB% and follow expert accounts to get a feel for the FPL “Template” team each week. A “template” team is made up of the consensus top picks by the game’s global players. There’s more than one way to arrange your template, but generally they will be selected from a small pool of players that owners are rating as good values for the upcoming season or gameweek. 

A “differential” pick is a player that runs contrary to the consensus template. You can use TSB% to find differential picks as well. Differential picks will generally have a TSB% of 10% or less. These are players that you feel better about than the general FPL public does.

A great way for new owners to select their initial squad is to generally follow the template, and then sprinkle in one or two differential picks. This should get you a balanced squad with a bit of upside.

Fixture difficulty

The official FPL game tracks the opponent strength of each player’s upcoming fixtures via the “Fixture Difficulty Rating” (FDR) measure. The FDR ranks each upcoming fixture from 1 (easy) to 5 (hard). The FDR uses a complex set of tracking data and a team’s home and away form over the last six matches. It gets updated throughout the season on a weekly basis.

When planning your initial squad and future transfers, you obviously want it to line-up with the friendliest possible fixture schedule you can. However, due to the nature of the 20-team EPL and it’s schedule, you will rarely have a team with a run of three or more appealing fixtures in a row. And over any six week rolling period, a team will generally play as many tough opponents as easy ones.

Squad rotation

“Squad rotation” refers to two separate concepts to keep in mind during the season. The first is how managers of certain teams apportion playing time among their squad. The second refers to a strategy of pairing FPL players with a secondary option that plays a favorable opponent when the primary option faces a tough opponent.

While each EPL team plays a 38-game EPL schedule, there are also other competitions for real-life managers to contend with. All EPL teams will play in separate national cup tournaments, and the best EPL teams will also play in continental cup competitions. Also, some key players will play for their national teams during International breaks or tournaments.

For top teams like Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea, or Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, their fixture schedule will be jammed. So, if you roster players from these squads, you will have to anticipate when they will be rotated out of the EPL squad for rest periods so they can be fresh for a key appearance in a separate competition. Conversely, teams like Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal who didn’t qualify for a European competition this year might be more likely to stick with the same starting lineup week-over-week.

Squad rotation for FPL players occurs when two real-life squad’s fixtures line-up in a favorable way. For example, in the upcoming season, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur will alternate home and away matches for each gameweek of the season. So you could theoretically alternate between Arsenal’s Bernd Leno and Spurs’ Hugo Lloris and have a goalkeeper playing a more favorable home game in each FPL gameweek.

Stacking

Those of you who play daily fantasy sports will be well aware of the concept of stacking. You can apply the same concept to FPL. When a real team has a matchup or string of matchups against weaker opponents, you can stack your team with a bunch of players from a single real life team.

FPL limits stacking by limiting you to rostering a maximum of three players from the same real life team. Also, player salaries will often prevent you from rostering the three ‘best’ players from a single club.

However, even with these limits, stacking is a viable strategy in FPL. One popular stacking option is to pair 2 or 3 defensive players from the same club who have a run of fixtures which are promising for clean sheets. Stacking Manchester City or Chelsea defenders in the 20/21 season was a profitable strategy.

Saving free transfers

In between each gameweek, you get one ‘free’ player transfer. However, if you choose not to use that free transfer in a particular gameweek, then you can save one free transfer for a subsequent gameweek. This means that if you plan ahead, you can have two free transfers available at a crucial time.

Believe it or not, having two free transfers during a gameweek completely changes your strategic situation. Instead of a one-for-one swap of similarly priced players who play the same position, with two free transfers you can change the whole shape of your team. Generally, you want to be cautious with your transfers so that you have a free transfer ‘banked’ whenever possible.

Taking hits

Sometimes, the situation calls you to make a transfer even when you don’t have a free transfer available. This could be because of injury, squad rotation, bad performance, or you just made a mistake in rostering a player. When this happens, you are able to take a ‘hit’ and transfer a player for a four point deduction in your overall score.

You should not take hits as part of your regular weekly tactics, as you’ll need a clean sheet or goal to justify the cost of the hit. However, you should also not fear taking a hit when needed to reshape your team. While the four point deduction will hurt in the short term, it is worth it to make a move that will net you significantly more points over a longer stretch of time.

Who to captain?

Each week you will make a vital decision that will boost your overall score; who should you captain for the chance at double points? When starting out in FPL, a good policy is to follow the herd when it comes to captaincy decisions. There is no shame in keeping your captain’s armband on a big name like Mo Salah, Burno Fernandes, or Kevin De Bruyne week in and week out.

Set pieces

“Set pieces” are situations where the offensive team earns a free kick in a promising location. They come in three flavors; corner kicks, direct free kicks, and penalty kicks. Usually, real life managers will rely on certain players who are skilled at free kicks to take most of the team’s set pieces in a particular situation.

The official FPL site tracks the projected set piece takers for each team. This is an invaluable resource, especially when you are considering who to captain or making a differential pickup for the upcoming gameweek. 

Of the three set piece situations, the most important one to keep in mind is each squad’s primary penalty taker. The fantasy returns from penalty takers can be massive. For example, Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes has scored 13 penalty kick goals on 14 attempts since joining the team in January of 2020, good for 70 additional fantasy points (outside of the bonus points his converted penalties contributed to as well!).

Price diversity

Some FPL owners believe in selecting an initial squad of players from various price points. You might see different terms thrown around for this, but generally players are classified as “premium”, “mid-tier”, and “budget” options. The idea is to have a player from each price point at each position in your squad. This allows you flexibility in making player transfers early in the season, as you can dump an under-performing or injured “premium” asset for a hot one.

If you follow the template plus one or two differentials method to building your initial squad, you will probably back into good price diversity by default. This is because the price diversity strategy has become generally accepted by FPL players.

Team value

Each FPL player’s salary will change during the course of the season “dependent on the popularity of the player in the transfer market”. FPL owners usually consider player prices in the context of their total “team value”. When you start the season, every team will have a team value of £100m. But by the end of the season, top teams will have accumulated £105m in team value or more. Just by means of example, £5m is the difference between rostering Bruno Fernandes's 244 points (£12m) or Wilfred Zaha’s 136 points (£7m).

When you sell a player for less than you paid for him, you take a full loss in team value on the sale. However, when you sell a player for more than you paid for him, you only receive 50% of the profit.

Price changes are gradual. A player’s value can only change £0.1m per day and £0.3m per week. Player price changes happen based on the aggregate behavior of all FPL owners. Therefore, keep your eye out for major events, like substantial injuries or games where a player scores double-digit fantasy points.

There are generally two transfer policies you can employ in FPL - aggressive or conservative. An aggressive policy means that you pull the trigger on selling a player immediately when the bad news happens. Say for example that you have Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk in your active lineup for Gameweek 1 at £6.5m. You are watching Liverpool’s Gameweek 1 match when van Dijk injures his knee. It looks bad. You can go into your FPL team and sell VvD for £6.5m as soon as you see it happen, even though Gameweek 1 is still ongoing.

The upside to this move is that you avoid an almost certain loss of £0.1m to £0.3m in your team value. The downside to this move is that to transfer VvD out, you’ll have to select his replacement for Gameweek 2 (and beyond) at a time when your information for Gameweek 2 is at its lowest possible point. Which brings me to my next point…

Lineup decisions and deadlines

How do you decide who to transfer in or out and start each week? You have to lock in your transfer, lineup, captaincy, and chip decisions 90 minutes before the kickoff of the first matches of the gameweek. However, the official starting lineups aren’t made available until 1 hour before kickoff. Therefore, you have to lock in your decisions before you have any confirmation as to who is playing during the week.

The best way to handle this information deficit is to follow team news during the week. In particular, each EPL manager holds press conferences during the week where he answers questions about the squad and the upcoming match. Managers answer these questions with a Belicheckian degree of truthiness.

Sometimes you get Marcelo Bielsa telling you his full planned lineup a week ahead of time. Sometimes you get Jose Mourinho feeding the press false information on the health of his players in order to gain an advantage over his opponent for the week. Either way you have to pay attention as an FPL over, but also not take any of the information gleaned from these press conferences as gospel truth.

In short, it’s going to be tough to decide what to do!

Managing blank, double, and triple gameweeks

While EPL and FPL schedule is initially set-up so that each team plays one match per gameweek, this structure will not hold up for the full season. The real-life EPL schedule gets rearranged for teams to play matches in different competitions like European and domestic cups. Also last season, a number of fixtures were postponed due to positive COVID-19 tests.

The result of these re-arranged schedules are “blank”, “double”, and even “triple” gameweeks. During a blank gameweek a player will have no match for FPL, in a “double” he will have two, and in a “triple” he will have three matches during the same gameweek.

The best way to plan for these schedule changes is to hold your chips until one of these situations arises. If you’re holding a “wildcard” or “free hit”, then you can transfer out a number of players with a cancelled game in a blank gameweek. If you’re holding your “triple captain” or “bench boost”, then you can take advantage of the enhanced scoring opportunity of a double or triple gameweek. Which brings me to my next point...

When to play your wildcard?

When you play your “wildcard” chip, you can make unlimited transfers during a gameweek without taking any hits. You get TWO wildcard chips during the season, one for the “first half” (ending on December 28), and one becoming available in the “second half”. The wildcard chips are crucial because they let you completely reconfigure your entire squad.

When should you use your wildcards? I think there are three general schools of thought.

One is to use your first wildcard early in the season if needed. This allows you to reconfigure your initial squad based on the reality on the field. Your initial guesses as to playing time, impact new players, and the impact of new managers might have been wrong. No shame in scrapping the initial plan to conform with the reality of the game that’s unfolding in front of you.

The second thought is to save your first wildcard for the Christmas season. This is because the fixture schedule gets extremely busy during that time frame, and some major injuries could have taken place since the start of the year. And if you hold on to your first wildcard until that time, it allows you to “stack” your wildcards by playing your second wildcard quickly during January and re-setting your team for the second half of the season.

The third school of thought (and the one I followed last year) is to save the wildcard and use it when it “feels right”. Instead of a knee-jerk reaction early in the year, wait and see how your team is looking a month or two in. There’s a difference between a cold start and a good player just waiting for some positive regression. When your team scoring and team value trends start going downward for multiple weeks, then make a “wildcard draft” of what your team could look like if you use the wildcard. Share that draft with some FPL experts (and also look at their drafts). This will let you reset your template team when the time feels the best for you.

When to take your free hit?

Similar to the “wildcard” chip, the “free hit” chip allows you to make free unlimited transfers to your squad. The difference is that your free hit squad changes only last for one gameweek. Then, your team reverts back to the same as it was prior to when you decided to use your free hit.

Generally speaking, you want to save your free hit for when your team faces a short-term playing time crisis. This could either be because you lost a number of key players to short-term injuries or because a blank gameweek takes out a number of your key contributors. Save your free hit until one of these conditions is true. If you’re late in the FPL season and it still hasn’t happened to you, then congratulations! You basically have a second wildcard to play in the second half of the season.

When to play triple captain?

The “triple captain” chip makes your captain earn triple points as opposed to double points in one gameweek during the season. Keep this one simple. Save your triple captain for when your best player has a double gameweek.

When to play bench boost?

The “bench boost” chip allows all of your bench players to score points for one week during the season. Similar to triple captain, just keep this one simple as well. Save your bench boost chip for a week when a number of your players have double gameweeks. If that never materializes, then you’ll have the bench boost available later in the season when your team value is bigger and when your squad will likely have more fantasy point scoring depth.

Some stats to consider

I come from the world of fantasy baseball, where statistics are king. At first glance, soccer seems like a more free-flowing game where statistical records are less able to capture the action on the pitch. And while there is probably some truth to that observation, there are still a plethora of stats you can look at to help your FPL squad.

There are four advanced statistics tracked in the FPL game that you might find helpful. You can find them all right in the FPL app or website. “Influence” measures a player’s “actions that could directly or indirectly affect the match outcome”. “Creativity” measures a player’s ability to “produce goalscoring opportunities for other players”. And “Threat” “gauges players that are most likely to score goals”. Another way to think of these three stats is 1) activity 2) assists and 3) goals.

The official FPL app gathers these three statistics together into the “ICT Index”. A player’s ICT Index is well correlated to his overall fantasy point production, so as a quick look at whether a player has been in productive recent fantasy form, the ICT Index is a good starting point. Of the three components, there’s a general feeling that the “Threat” portion is the most indicative of future fantasy performance, so comparing a player’s Threat ranking to his overall ICT ranking is another area to mine for value.

What next?

This strategic introduction is a reference material that you can come back to throughout the season. But to get prepared for FPL Gameweek 1, you’ll need some team previews highlighting key players for each squad for the upcoming season.

Well, you’re in luck! I’ve got some team previews coming your way next. Follow me here at RotoBaller and watch for them to come out between now and the first kickoff of the season on August 13.

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