Thursday 16 May 2013

FPL Team of the Year


If you've not subscribed to InsideFPL's newsletter (why?!) this is another retrospective I did, lifted from it's pages a few weeks back for GW34. As it was written a few weeks ago the points and prices will have changed, as will some of the (unimportant) player picks, but not the general message. That being that a reasonably predictable starting team and one or two key transfers early on would have been enough to see you finish very high in Fantasy Premier League without any further lineup changes or transfers, or even logging in.




After last week’s review of what it takes to get to be number one in FPL from an overall team perspective (check it out here if you missed it) this week we are going to look at the players you will have needed to own to pull in a big score..

We’ve used our optimisation software to pick the best single team from this season’s current points tally (upto and including GW35) and using starting prices.  What would have the best fire-and-forget team to pick from GW1 and how well would it have done?

The following team would have cost you exactly £100m on the opening day of the season. Current points and starting prices for each player in parenthesis and best starting XI in bold.


GK:  Begovic (137pts £4.5m ), Jaaskaelainen (134pts £4.5m)

DEF: Baines (162pts £7m), Mertesaker (119pts £5m), Rangel (93pts £5m), Bassong 114pts (£4.5m), O’Brien(116pts £4.0m)

MID: Bale (225pts £9.5m), Mata (192pts£9.5m), Michu (178pts £6.5m), Fellaini (160 pts £6.5m), Maloney (111pts £5.0m)

FWD: Van Persie (C) (244pts £13m), Suarez (212pts £9.5m), Lambert (174pts £6m)

A Top 50 Team
The starting XI from this team with the armband fixed on Van Persie would have scored you 2163 points so far this season, good enough to be in the top 250 of FPL teams. This is without using any transfers or changing the team around at all. Furthermore approx. 30 games were missed this season by these eleven players so if we can assume an additional 60 points from auto-subs that would move this team up into the top 50. 

The Essentials
This is not a too unrealistic set of players to have at least considered pre-season. The truly essential players to have owned are Van Persie, Bale, Suarez, Michu and Fellaini. Players who have scored 30 points more than their peers, or scored way beyond their value. All were well known about after a few weeks.

Recognising the potential in Michu and Fellaini at £6.5m would've have been particularly valuable but the signs were there for those in the know, Michu scoring 15 goals in La Liga last season and Fellaini scoring 3 in Everton’s last 7 games of 2011/12 after shifting to his now familiar striker support role. Missing out on these two for the first three gameweeks would have cost you 54 points. Not the end of the world. 

Decent Alternatives
For the likes of Baines, Mata and Lambert and the defence there are plenty of viable alternatives. Baines could have been readily replaced in your team by other elite defenders like Ivanovic, Johnson, Vertonghen without too much of a dent to your overall points. Rafael, Zabaleta and Enrique too would have made decent alternatives and freed up money to afford price rises elsewhere if needed. At lower prices Shawcross, Gibbs (when fit) and Dawson would have been fine.  

Mata’s points are not too far from the likes of Cazorla and Hazard, and Walcott, once he got into the Arsenal team, has scored well consistently. Around Lambert there have plenty of £6-7m players to score well over the season - Ba, Fletcher and Berbatov early on, and Lukaku,  Benteke and Sturridge of late. The Southampton man’s current points total of 174 is admirable for a £6m striker. 

Food for Thought
What strikes us most at InsideFPL about all this is that an unchanged starting XI of reasonably well known players like these can even get close to the Top 100, without using complicated rotation strategies or clamouring over double gameweeks and juicy fixtures..

Of course in hindsight it’s all too easy to pick out the right playes but one thing we've found personally this season is that chopping and changing players, particular the elite ones, has frequently resulted in missing out on an unexpected points bonanza.  Perhaps it’s wiser to put faith in some players to perform well despite bad runs of form and fixtures and save those precious transfers for making sure you can get on board with the surprise packages like Michu and Fellaini as soon as.

For more like this pre-season and next season make sure to sign up for the free InsideFPL weekly newsletter here.

6 comments:

  1. i have no idea how nobody playing this , has ever read what you have to say or you have no comments !

    but you make some brilliant bloody posts , with good stats ! keep it up !

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    1. bloody GOOD* posts , forgot the 'good' bit , my bad

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  2. Agreed, fantastic work as always, deserves a larger following on twitter

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  3. Yeah top work as always :) I dont post much on the articles as I tend to post more in the forums

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  4. "but one thing we've found personally this season is that chopping and changing players, particular the elite ones, has frequently resulted in missing out on an unexpected points bonanza. Perhaps it’s wiser to put faith in some players to perform well despite bad runs of form and fixtures and save those precious transfers for making sure you can get on board with the surprise packages like Michu and Fellaini as soon as."

    I stick to this theory as much as possible. Bale/RVP/Suarez havent left my team unless injured/suspended. To a lesser extent Mata and Walcott/Cazorla as well, only times I've taken them out is to get in DGW players

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  5. bloody comments..

    I man bloody GOOD comments :) thank you!

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