Fantasy Premier League: Unlocking The Secrets To A Top 1% Finish

By Toby Margetts and Gianni Butticà©

Fantasy Premier League has become more than a game. It's a phenomenon. With well over 6,000,000 players signing up for the 2019/20 season and around 24 septillion possible lineups, there are untold subtleties that separate 99% of players from the elite 1% who consistently occupy the top of the overall rankings, not to mention taking home the prize pots and bragging rights at the end of each season.

This book will show you how to join that 1%. FPL veterans and perennial top 1% finishers Toby and Gianni share everything they've learned from over 10 years of FPL graft – from pre-season scouting to the final sprint, unveiling the patterns and habits that only the best exhibit. It's an invaluable manual of data, managerial nous and the all-too-familiar learnings of despair and heartbreak, neatly packaged up to power your team to the top.

Armed with this unprecedented knowledge and know-how, you'll have an enormous edge over anyone you come up against. This book is not a guide to how to play Fantasy Premier League – it's how to win.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ockley Books
• Release date: Aug 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781913227234

Book preview

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INTRODUCTION

FPL has become more than a game. It’s a phenomenon. In 2003, there were just 75,000 people playing the inaugural version. It is expected that well over 6,000,000 players will sign up for the 2019/20 season. That vastly outstrips the many newspaper alternatives – some of which offer five-figure cash prizes for winning. The question is: why has FPL become so popular?

Up and down the country, FPL has changed the way we watch football. Afternoons that were once consumed by the live action on TV are now spent refreshing Twitter feeds and demanding to know ‘who got the assist?’ in a turgid lower-mid-table clash. Arsenal fans can be heard cheering a Spurs goal because they’ve got Harry Kane as their captain. Across the table an argument breaks out over why Anthony Martial has picked up three bonus points despite only being on the pitch for 15 minutes. It’s chaos. Highly addictive, dopamine-inducing, camaraderie-building chaos. And we wouldn’t change a thing.

FPL was made for the internet age. There was a time where players had to post or telephone their teams in to The Daily Telegraph, whereas now it’s possible to overhaul your team with just a few taps of your smartphone. FPL is literally in our pockets and the temptation to tinker is powerful. In addition, the game has seen an explosion of publicly-available data that promises to help players beat the system. Websites, podcasts, TV shows, radio shows and apps that are dedicated to FPL strategy are springing up everywhere. The trick is knowing what to do with all the information.

With approximately 500 Premier League players to choose from, there are around 24 septillion (24,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) possible starting lineups. Picking the best one isn’t therefore as easy as it might sound. Part of the appeal of FPL – at least for us – is this level of depth. Seemingly endless combinations that make the game so rich, but so difficult to beat.

The FPL community are a fascinating and active bunch, made up of all ages, genders and backgrounds. Every FPL manager starts the first gameweek of the season as an equal. There is no discrimination or prejudice. Each FPL manager brings a wonderful sense of optimism that this is going to be their year. Of course, millions end up disappointed, but this only seems to make the will to win stronger and the hours invested greater. Friendships have been forged (and no doubt tested) through FPL. We are testament to that. It’s a perfect example of a game that is easy to play and almost impossible to master.

Almost.

Let us be clear: this book is not about how to play FPL, it’s about how to win. You’ll hopefully have at least a basic grasp of how FPL works, but perhaps are looking for a deeper understanding of the game’s many nuances: the subtleties that separate 99% of players from the elite 1% who consistently return huge hauls of points and occupy their mini-league summits all season long; the same 1% that take home the prize pot and bragging rights at the end of each season.

This book will show you how to join that 1%.

We’ll show you everything we’ve learned from over 10 years of FPL graft: an arsenal of data analytics; mind games with your mates; distributing spend; scouting nous; and third-party tools. Thousands of hours spent pondering the perils of the four-point hit and deliberating the double gameweek. Day after day trawling through reams of data on the world’s best FPL players to find patterns and habits that only the best exhibit. The learnings of despair and heartbreak, neatly packaged up in this book to power your team to the top. Armed with this unprecedented knowledge and know-how, you’ll have an enormous edge over anyone you come up against.

FPL is our religion and this book is our Bible. For those that are serious about joining FPL’s top 1%, read on. Others need not apply.

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Perhaps the most important part of the season isn’t during the season at all."

– FPL proverb

THE IMPORTANCE OF PRE-SEASON

F or 99% of FPL players, the season starts in early August, a couple of weeks before the actual Premier League starts. A work email with the code to join the new league does the rounds, or a group WhatsApp asking if anyone’s up for it this year? hits your phone. Sound familiar?

But the fact is, any serious FPL player begins preparations the minute players report for pre-season. Who’s been training well? What formations are managers using in friendlies? Will that Brazilian starlet make his much-anticipated transfer to the Premier League? If players are coming off the back of a major tournament, how did they do? Will they carry that form (or lack of it) into the new season? These are all legitimate questions and the answers can only be found by scouting effectively. Doing so will only have a positive impact on the decisions you’ll make in the lead-up to gameweek (GW) 1.

How to scout effectively

We live in an age of unprecedented access to data analytics and statistics. For example, a quick Google can reveal the number of dangerous attacks Ha Noi had against Dong Thap in the first half of the Under-19 Championship in Vietnam (it was 34). Pretty obscure stuff. With that in mind, pre-season friendlies are the perfect opportunity to gain some serious insight that will help you prepare for GW1. Watching the games is best, but if you can’t find a stream then simply looking at the post-game statistics will give you a good idea of what transpired.

Here’s what you should be looking out for:

Goals and assists

The FPL attacking currency is goals and assists. A player that’s regularly on the scoresheet or providing a bucket-load of assists – even in pre-season – could well take that form into the main event. Even better if the player is lesser-known, they are likely to be cheap and represent a solid ‘differential’ (a player that few others own and so add points to your total, but not theirs).

Formations and tactical tweaks

Playing three at the back in the Premier League has become more fashionable in recent years and has given rise to a number of players who are listed as defenders but, in reality, function as wingers in their respective teams. Kieran Trippier, Matt Doherty, Enda Stevens (even when playing in a back four) are good examples of these ‘out of position’ players (see below). As a result of a tactical development, the potential for these players to score goals and make assists increased. Savvy FPL managers would have noticed this formation shift during pre-season fixtures and loaded their team accordingly.

Conversely, those that noticed the shift after GW1 were forced to use transfers, suffer points deductions or even use an early Wildcard to make amends. These problems could be easily avoided with a little due diligence during pre-season.

Players playing out of position (OOP)

Many FPL managers naively assume they know what position a player plays and what their role will be. Now we’re not suggesting Sergio Agüero will play left back anytime soon, but it’s not unheard of to see high-profile players playing in unexpected positions. These kinds of players are often referred to as ‘out of position’ or ‘OOP’ for short. OOPs can be both positive and negative – for the positive, take two of Liverpool’s front three, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané, who are both listed as midfielders and so score a point more than a ‘forward’ for each goal and get one point should Liverpool keep a clean sheet.

On the negative side, take the conversion of wingers to full-backs – for example, Ashley Young has only been listed as a defender since the 2019/20 season despite playing as one for several seasons, meaning he would not have been rewarded for clean sheets during that time and was also far less of a goal and assist threat.

With new managers given free reign to implement their own styles more than ever, it’s worth keeping an eye on the role that your pre-season targets are playing for their side. And if you know a manager is going to radically overhaul the playing style of a club, then it’s definitely worth doing your homework. We’ll talk more about the OOP classification when it comes to building your team in Chapter 2.

Penalties and set pieces

Many teams have nailed-on penalty takers, but you never know when the manager might have a change of heart or when a regular penalty-taker might get injured or move to another club. An otherwise modest FPL player that now takes penalties could be quite the asset and a bargain differential. Crystal Palace’s Luka Milivojević – a defensive midfielder – is a good example of a player that becomes a viable option because of his penalty-taking exploits (he scored seven penalties in the 2017/18 season and ten in the 2018/19 season). And don’t forget that VAR technology has been confirmed for the 2019/20 season – this could have a big impact on the number of penalties awarded.

Free kicks, especially those from a goalscoring position, are often assigned to unexpected players. It’s worth noting who took them even if they didn’t score as it could be a source of unexpected points during the season. Likewise with corners: they’re sometimes taken by defenders who, consequently, are far more likely to register assists (unless you’re Phil Jones, once inexplicably given corner duty by Louis van Gaal).

Expected Goals (xG) and Expected Assists (xA)

A relatively recent addition to the FPL player’s data arsenal is xG and xA, introduced by Opta in 2016. xG and xA measure how many goals and assists a player was expected to make given the opportunities they had in the game. Each shot or assist a player attempts is assigned a value (based on the average result of a shot or attempted assist from that same position on the pitch). By adding up all the shots a player takes, we can see the number of goals we would ‘expect’ them to score from the chances they had. The bigger the xG and xA, the more likely the player is to have scored and/or assisted.

How can you use this to your advantage? Well, if a player had a large xG versus a small number of actual goals scored, it can be determined that the team is creating lots of chances, but they’re not being finished. This could be interpreted as showing that sooner or later the player will capitalise on the chances and might be worth transferring in. On the flipside, a player with a high number of actual goals scored despite a low xG could be interpreted as having been lucky or having finished unusually well – and will be unlikely to continue doing so. So perhaps don’t jump on the bandwagon just yet.

A further explanation of xG, as well as the current state of play across the major European leagues, is available on the Understat website (understat.com), which also has detailed historical xG data on every FPL player.

Assessing pre-season

Beyond the usual performance factors, there are loads of additional criteria against which you should be making decisions about who and who not to include in your squad. That want-away hot-head immersed in a contract dispute? We suggest you reconsider.

Here are some other key things to think about.

New signings

New signings are exciting unknown entities with vast FPL potential, but are they worth the gamble? Assessing their general performance in pre-season is important, but actually determining whether or not they are likely to play 90 minutes each week is essential. Your wonderkid is no use to you on the bench as they’re eased into life in the Premier League – they’ll likely be dropping in value and using up funds that could have been better spent elsewhere.

Injury-prone players

Injuries are a part of football and it’s very difficult to predict when a player will be struck down. However, certain players do seem to be more prone to injury than others. Andy Carroll, Daniel Sturridge and Charlie Austin, for example, might have a decent minutes-to-goals ratio, but that’s no help to you if they’re only playing a dozen games a season.

Discipline

You’ll no doubt have a good idea who the hot-heads and yellow card magnets are in the league, but when scouting a new or unknown squad addition it’s worth assessing their propensity for a two-footer, not only because of the minus points awarded for a yellow card (-1) and a red card (-2), but for the suspensions that follow. It’s pretty unusual to see cards dished out in pre-season, but if it does happen, that’s even more reason to give a guy that feels the need to kick an Isthmian League midfielder up in the air a wide berth.

The perils of a busy summer

International players that have played in the latter stages of a European Championship, Copa América or World Cup are likely to be given extended leave by their club, so it’s not uncommon to see these players used as substitutes for the