Alastair McKeever

By over here I meant Blue Sky. But yes a decent contingent of fantasy premier league players are based in the US, like me

Ha - a niche community that’s obsessive about fantasy premier league made its way over here a while back and some of us nerds are very in the weeds on strategy to hide from what’s going on in the wider world. Your funny reply earned a follow 👍🏻

thanks mate. you were always my fave fantasy champ man live watchalong host 🫶

And I like to take risk with chip strategies when the spread of possible outcomes looks like that and BB1 is going to be the most popular (I think)

I'd say there's roughly a 50/50 chance that BB1 turns out to be the hindsight optimal play, but I think the expected points gain from the best of later BB options in the worst case is ~10, and the ceiling is more like ~15-16.

But there are lots of things that will happen which will change the value of later BBs. BB booster events are e.g. an unforeseen blank/double, an amazing min price FWD emergence, cheap DEF/MID getting pens. BB killers would be an injury crisis, low-priced players being even worse than we thought.

Kind of. Models are telling us that BB1 is worth ~11-12 expected points over the best "no chip played" plans. It's saying that, with the information we have right now, that's probably a bit better than later BB plans.

It seems BB1 will be popular. Given the EV differences between any and all chip strategies in the first half look like they will be quite low, but there are (fairly remote) upside cases for later chip strategies, I think I will prefer to choose outcome polarization and take a path less traveled (🌍)

2. The value of these extra first half chips is also lower than we are used to. BB1 looks like a good strategy right now, but things will change as the season goes on which will inevitably either improve or worsen all the future GW BB opportunities.

So I think that means the number of opportunities to grab more points by chasing fixture runs, and the average magnitude of the best ones that do still exist, has gone down; and b) we have 3 more FTs! (+4 AFCON FTs less 1FT lost to an extra FH week). More supply = lower price.

Some big picture thoughts on #fpl 🧵:
1. The value of our free transfers to start the season is a bit lower than it's ever been before because a) defcon points decreases the impact that fixture difficulty has on expected points for a lot of viable picks (defenders and CMs).

The best preseason podcast is here!

I’m going to disagree here re: mins or position risk, as I think AWB was potentially West Ham’s best player and had the best season of his career, as a two way player, last season. Would be very surprised to see potter push him into a different position, or out of the team.

Pretty confident we’ll have a live relegation race in 25-26 much later than we’ve seen in recent years

I wasn't trying to refute the article at all. He's an interesting / unusual attacker, but 60m feels like too much. I was noting that the 1 yard pass that was cited as stats farming was actually an example of a LBP received and completed, which were (rightly imo) identified as his greatest strengths!

Terrific and succinct write up of Joao Pedro - a very hard player to profile! One note: that 1 yard assist in the centre circle was a delicious layoff off a long ball which put Mitoma in for a one on one vs. SOU (h) - probably one of the clips that illustrates what potential suitors love about him!

🌴🌹🌸🌻🍀

🫎

Nice work RøbT

DGW25 including AVLLIV and ARSCHE (on a contingent basis) was a surprise, but this DGW32 announcement for CRYNEW is bigger. There's been a complete change in PL rescheduling policy: no preference between rescheduling in open midweeks vs. European midweeks and prioritization of notice for fans.

This guy’s work is sooooo good

My econ 101 textbooks 20 years ago said tariffs create dead-weight loss and threaten comparative advantage. Feels bad.

Fixture info that you have to react to quickly is my favorite bit of FPL. Had 3 LIV already and decided to just play AM on moyes and roll 2 FTs. But there are lots of other cool, well figured out strategies. And there will be loads more after the CC semi results next week. Good luck all

Kluivert has scored some lovely goals recently and has pens, but he's had an extraordinary amount of those so far (pens make up a whopping 0.30 of his 0.51xg90). And as noted in the thread, I have medium term mins concerns there that may not be fully appreciated, so he's marginally my least favorite

They are all tremendous value right now! Who you might want to pick probably depends more on budget constraints (what you can do with savings of going Dango over the other two) and horizon (e.g. how likely to WC30).

Much more I could ramble on about re: my views on Bournemouth and their players (e.g. they have benefited from an evolution in PL reffing which is letting more stuff go imo), but I really enjoy watching them play, and I hope they keep it up (this weekend excepted) and make Europe next season. 🍒

It's important to note though that Tavernier CAN operate centrally - 5 of his 13 starts this season have come at 10. If all of Tav, Evanilson, Dango, Kluivert and Semenyo are simultaneously fit then (imho) the minutes that Tavernier "steals" will come fairly equally out of both Kluivert and Dango.

Dango's attacking production and the effectiveness if the press with him involved in recent weeks should have earned him more minutes though. He might well just keep a starting spot and move to the wing, or he could drop to the bench for effective relief of Evanilson (who never last 90).

Iraola has always liked Tavernier - he is a very good creative passer and the best set piece taker at the club. The below radar is the standard fbref radar for AMs/Wingers, which showcases more of what Tav does really well relative to Dango. He's not as ferocious a presser, but not bad either.

Evanilson is still the best starting option at 9 and will start once fit imo. Semenyo is nailed as the all-around attacker Iraola trusts the most, and Dango won't be used centrally further back. So his biggest competition for wing minutes will be Tavernier, who recently returned from injury.