Tinker, Tailor, Solskjær & I


With less than 2 weeks to the 2019/20 season curtain raiser at Anfield, we ask is it time to start ramping down that tinkering with your draft & ramping up your strategy tailored to your opening play and/or season long objectives? 

Ole Gunnar Solskjær (more on him later) and I have our own details to work on prior to that opening weekend of games. No disrespect meant to OGS but I believe I have the harder task at hand J, after all I am up against millions and Ole only has 19 other Managers to compete against.
These final two weeks are probably the most interesting of the season, all the permutations, the transfer additions etc but equally it is probably where the greatest level of self-doubt emerges.
So if it helps here is how I manage the doubting season and make sure my decisions are rational with a long term approach. There is nothing more frustrating than investing in all that “tinkering time” only to rip it up and start again in GW3.

⚽ RMT, hell no !! ⚽

RMT is probably one of the biggest idiosyncrasies of FPL that if deployed in the right forum yes I get it but openly on Twitter is a recipe for disaster. I was fortunate enough to get invited into a Twitter Chat group with like-minded players (Chapeau to the Twitter LOI lads) and on that podium it makes sense. On the flip side and credit to @hailcheaters for the line in their recent podcast "RMT from a stranger is like something they tell you not to do in Kindergarten" could not be more apt. Be careful who you ask for advice on your well-planned squad.

⚽ Pre-season pitfalls. ⚽

Pre-season is exactly that, its PRE season, with the purpose of getting fit, giving squad players a chance, playing teams from different leagues and varying levels, mostly below the level of Premiership teams. Don’t make emotional decisions based on who is scoring (KDB owners take note) and inversely who is not keeping clean sheets. Base your decisions on your strategy, opening fixtures and a balanced squad.

Here is a factual example to emphasise the above points. The following table show a comparison between the top goal scorers in pre-season prior to the 2018/19 season and their corresponding returns for the first 4 GWs last season.

Player
Club
Pre-Season
PL 2018/19 GW 1-4
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
Arsenal
6
1
Alexandre Lacazette
Arsenal
6
1
Daniel Sturridge
Liverpool
6
1
Josh Murphy
Cardiff
5
0
Kevin Mirallas
Everton
5
0
Oumar Niasse
Everton
5
0
Cenk Tosun
Everton
5
0
Marko Arnautovic
West Ham
5
2
Danny Ward
Cardiff
4
0
Wilfried Zaha
Crystal Palace
4
2
Kelechi Iheanacho
Leicester
4
0

⚽ % Ownership ⚽

TSB is a metric that needs watching throughout the season and there are plenty of articles written about its influence on your OR in any given GW. I pay particular importance to it for the peripheral players (refer to my 3rd pre-season post) and any of those above the 10% threshold prior to GW1. Why?

These players are deployed by a lot of FPL players to fill in the gaps which makes sense however if plans go awry in GW1 or GW2 then these are the players that get transferred most frequently and hence a potential £0.1M drop in price. Doesn’t sound like a lot, right? Wrong! Other people have pointed this out but most recently by @FPL_RubberDucky in his excellent article “The Theory of FPL” where he states “where a drop of 0.1 of a current player in your squad is in effect a drop of 0.4, as you can only purchase a player who has dropped to a similar price or has originally valued 0.5 lower.”

The best tool to check TSB for your squad is the @OfficalFPL app, navigate to Statistics and Filter for TSB, so for example if I filter again for a few clubs I get the following results (see right hand image);

So my concerns based on this exercise are Kelly, Button & Dendoncker, having said that some adversities present opportunities and in the above list one in particular stands out for me i.e. Greenwood.

I see Greenwood in a lot of teams deploying premium FWDs and I get it based on budget constraints. However if you do not plan to keep to a 4-4-2 or 5-3-2 for the long term then this is one player who I expect to drop in price quite rapidly when the start gun fires.

OGS is doing the right thing in giving youth a chance, it builds confidence it keeps them interested and it shows them that opportunities to break into the 1st team exist. Kudos to Ole. Reality and the start of the premiership are another domain and perhaps a step too far for Mason Greenwood, hence I don’t see him playing a large role for now. Picking a Premium FWD is a lottery pre-season so if you haven’t backed the right horse expect mass bandwagon movement and squad surgery in GW2-4 so for me Greenwood is someone I will be looking at if I make a move for Kane et al from my current ITB opening strategy.  

So on to the Community Shield eye-test, review some stats and take a look at those fixtures again. I will post my final opening team prior to GW1 which could contain some changes after all doubting season is in full swing.

#RogueAgainstTheMachine @FplRogue

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