FPL: An Un-expected Journey
During this past year, my friends and I were constantly looking for something to entertain ourselves with as a group. Since we were all football fans, I suggested trying out the Fantasy Football game Fantasy Premier League (FPL henceforth). FPL is a game where we try to predict specific outcomes in a football match, like which player is most likely to score/assist or which team is least likely to concede goals. We select a team of 15 players from the English Premier League within a fixed budget, and they accrue points based on their performances in the actual matches happening every week. I had played this game earlier with my friend HP and thoroughly enjoyed the experience as it was intellectually stimulating and thrilling at the same time. So it was easy for me and HP to convince my other friends to try it out. My goal was to make this game as enjoyable as possible for everyone and get them engaged in something fun during this tough pandemic year. Little did I know that this would evolve into a highly competitive affair for my friends and me.
A lot of the top FPL players use statistics and probability to gain an advantage over casual players. Given our engineering backgrounds, I thought that this would be right up our alley. And as it turned out, we got hooked. The feeling you get when a player you brought in scores is amazing. On the other side of the spectrum, it stings when a player you brought in blanks or gets sends off. One time I brought in Ruben Dias from Manchester City, who was in a good run of form and had some great fixtures coming up, but immediately he scored an own goal the next week and returned negative points. It was so sad and hilarious at the same time that I ended up laughing too hard. Ruben went to win the Premier League with Manchester City and win the Premier League player of the year whilst returning many FPL points for my team, so it kind of worked out in the end. This is something to remember while playing FPL. We have to judge the correctness of our decisions based on long-term results rather than immediate outcomes or hindsight.
This was one of the toughest seasons of FPL as matches kept getting rescheduled due to covid outbreaks, and we had to keep adjusting accordingly. As a result, my friends HP, Sree, and I were always debating about players, teams, form, fixtures, expected Goal (xG) statistics, and everything else that would give us a slight advantage in the game. It was amazing how we would go on about lesser-known teams and their players for hours based on our research, trying to piece together which one of them could fit in our teams. One time, we were discussing which Burnley defender was the best option for their double fixture. This was surprising to me as neither were we fans of Burnley nor watched them playing regularly. Yet here we were arguing about which Burnley defender to pick. I went with Nick Pope whereas HP went with Ben Mee. I got lucky as Pope accrued a clean sheet and few bonus points, but HP got unlucky as Ben Mee got injured in the first fixture. When the pandemic lockdown restrictions were relaxed, my friend K and I parked our bikes in a street corner and started plotting a way to gain points over other FPL managers. We discussed players who would serve as good differentials. Some of the names that came up were Wilfred Zaha of Crystal Palace and Raul Jimenez of Wolverhampton, as both those teams had an upcoming run of good fixtures. Again, these were lesser-known teams that we never followed seriously until we started playing FPL. As you get more invested in FPL, you start getting familiar with all the teams and players in the premier league, even those at the bottom of the league table. Unfortunately, neither proved a great option as Zaha underperformed, and Jimenez got injured during this run. During these conversations, K also revealed that he was maintaining a document helping him plan his transfers. It made me happy to see that he was taking this game seriously. He went a step further by setting up a second team to test out some risky strategies. Taking a leaf out of my friend K’s book, I started documenting my transfer plan and studying the long-term outcomes of my transfer decisions to identify some good transfer strategies and avoid bad transfer strategies. This proved invaluable to me during the final stretch of fixtures.
Towards the end of January, there was a mini-respite from the otherwise unrelenting Covid pandemic. A few of us were able to travel to Kerala for our friend Al’s wedding. My friend Su and I had a rousing discussion on the merits and demerits of playing FPL passively on the bus journey. Su had decided to set his team up initially by picking the best players in the league that fit within the budget. He hypothesized that if he left his team unchanged for the rest of the season, he would still do better than most FPL managers as the best players will perform well, thereby accruing points for him throughout the year. It worked out well for him initially, and during those first 5–6 weeks, he was doing well above average. On the other hand, I had a rough start to the season. The transfer decisions I made were not paying off. I slipped down to the bottom of the mini-league ranking. So, I decided to plan my transfers a bit better, focus on long-term moves based on the fixture schedule. This strategy finally paid off as I slowly went up the rankings overtaking Su after about 10 weeks. As the game went on, we had to be mindful of fixture re-arrangement and chip strategies. Combined with our meticulous strategizing, these factors helped us gain a sizeable lead over Su’s fixed team. By the end, even a friend who started playing a few weeks later was able to overtake Su’s team with some careful planning, thus proving that we stand to gain more points and achieve a better rank in this game by making active decisions. Of course, you can’t predict every possible occurrence in a match correctly. FPL is indeed a game of chance where luck plays a huge role. But you play the odds to give yourself the best possible chance at scoring points. Just like how you evaluate stocks before purchasing them, you evaluate a player’s stats before you transfer them into your team. It's not guaranteed that they will perform, but they have a good chance of scoring points based on their past performances and future fixture schedule.
Some good plays that I made this season were identifying good defensive options early on like Ben Chilwell from Chelsea, Ruben Dias, and Stuart Dallas from Leeds, taking a lot of risks with some low-owned and lesser-known (differential) players like Vladimir Coufal from West Ham, Ola Aina from Fulham and Joe Willock from Newcastle. A few things that I would like to improve next season are using my chips (Free Hit, Bench Boost, and Triple Captain) better, reducing the number of impulsive transfers, and jumping on player band-wagons a bit earlier. You have to eliminate player biases in the game and go purely by statistics and performances. I learned that lesson the hard way this season. I am a Manchester United fan, and I loathed Jesse Lingard (a Manchester United player) as he was always an underperformer at United. When Lingard moved to West Ham, he became a good transfer option as he scored lots of goals. Although his numbers were good, my inherent bias against him put me in denial. Sree, who didn’t have any such biases, took advantage by transferring him in and gaining many points. I will definitely remember this for next season.
The goal I had set for myself this season was to finish in the top 100K rank since it was my first full season playing. Winning my mini-league would be a bonus, but some of my friends, like HP and Sree, were doing really well, so I didn’t think that was possible. I placed my bets on Fulham players during a crucial fixture run as I believed that they would do well based on their recent performances and would give me a huge differential advantage over others. That turned out to be my undoing as Fulham performed poorly and was relegated from the premier league. With only four game-weeks to go, I was hovering around the 250k rank and third in my mini-league, some forty points behind the leader (Sree). During those four weeks, I brought in many differential players and captained Sadio Mane from Liverpool for the final game week as my friends captained Mohammed Salah from Liverpool. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain from these final decisions. But still, I was nervously staring at the television throughout the final Liverpool game, and when Mane scored those two goals, a mix of relief and satisfaction swept through me. It was rewarding. I ended up finishing second with HP (who also made an excellent comeback in those game-weeks), topping the league. I finished with an overall rank in the region of 118K, so painfully close to that 100K finish. But I am looking forward to finishing even higher next season. If you are someone who loves watching the premier league, you should definitely try playing FPL. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to updating my Uefa Euro Fantasy team.
PS: I appreciate all my friends who participated in the mini-league, especially Sree, HP, and K, who made this a fun and competitive season.
