I’ve been laid out on my back most of the week. Not due to indulgence of dopamine inducing activity 😉, but due to inadvertently straining my lower back on Bank Holiday Monday and subsequently ruining my week off of work! What you gonna do?! 😂 Not much, really! 😆 You just have to put it down to one of those things, change tact and work within the new parameters to the best of your ability! #simplez 😸

Insouciance: a relaxed and calm state : a feeling of not worrying about anything

a lack of concern shown by someone about something which they might be expected to take more seriously.

Collins Dictionary

Much like many, many other FPLers, I want to have a brilliant gameweek, EVERY week. Now, although this is possible, the probability of this happening week in, week out, is highly unlikely. I make my peace with that #acceptance. I allow, or maybe even prompt myself to recognise, reinforce, remember and accept this fact as each gameweek deadline approaches. I consciously started doing this earlier in the season, it’s now a default subconscious setting #braintraining, which attributes to my recently newfound insouciance. Way back in XII. Calm Before The Storm, I referenced the feeling of bravado that I came to recognise as a reoccurring phenomenon, going into EVERY gameweek deadline! I’d set my team, confident that it would amass >80pts, EVERY week! Really?!!! 😂 This would obviously and inevitably set me up psychologically for the “Helloooo!” of reality 😂, long before the final whistle was blown on a closing gameweek, where you enjoy the disappointment of the rapidly disappearing achievement of obtaining +100pts that gameweek! 🤣

I have pre-gameday bravado again, really optimistically caught up in my own cognitive justification.  Woe is me! 🤣

DreadFPL – XII. Calm Before The Storm

Self-punishment. Priming your psyche to be continously disappointed by setting unrealistic targets, or just simply weighting too much happiness on an expected outcome. It’s a fallacy.

What I’m saying is, you reduce your probability of doing well at this game, when you continously sabotage yourself!

There are managers out there with really good and even consistent season ranks. I hazard a guess that these managers, although not infallible (I mean, we are all human right!), most likely do not continously align and thus view the inevitable ups and downs of their FPL results through an emotional prism, but instead view their gameweek totals through a prism of logical cognition, thus providing the very basis of their continued fortune, because as everybody knows, you’re more likely to make erroneous decisions when you’re emotionally tilted! It would be like crying over spilt milk, then proceeding to spill more, right?!! 😂 #neverendingcycle

So, I put my back out, Ødegaard out and #LacaCap, out. No way I’m captaining Laca without their creative maestro on the pitch! As you can probably tell, it’s Friday, it’s roughly lunchtime, and I woke up to Ødegaard being red flagged. The sensible option would be to just bench him, but, I’ve taken leave of my senses, or have I?! I review my watchlist: Mahrez, Son, Salah & Raphina…. Then I decided on Maddison. I’ve refrained from captaining him. 😁

I’m breaking all the best practice rules as the season draws to a close. Not only is this fun, it’s an experiment on many levels. I can indulge in focused wanton lust of who I think may be the next best new thing, whilst also transitioning my squad (as I have no WC). My instinctual strategy, a thought of many gameweeks now, is that of a continual transition, like the inner workings of a timepiece, I must continously harmonise a number of moving pieces, rising or falling form, fixture swings, price swings, purple-patches… amongst other elements that do not readily come to mind. Thing is, it’s really not at all complicated. Fluidity.

I’m also adamant that I’ll get one -8 to work!! 🤣 I essentially did get one to work last gameweek, even though the arrow was red, I just want a green one! #biteme 🤣 Seriously though, I want to see if the really bold strategy can be sporadically employed, decipher when it works and in which scenarios, as I believe that there’s a time for everything! #belikewater The outside bet, like the Ødergaard punt in a sporadically performing team taken in GW29, well, I got scuppered by injury on that one. The shoots of returning form for a previously class asset in an equally previously class team now with improving stats & form… TAA? The return of a talismanic player in Maddison, right as he’s about to play his first returning match after injury in a side currently displaying good form? These and other nuances of my Endgame will form a terms of reference for more focused opening strategy of play for next season. The method in my madness, if you will. Style. There you were, thinking this was all off the cuff?! Shame on you!! 🤣

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It’s been a slow burn, but, I just might get a green arrow as long as DCL doesn’t pull a blinder tonight! Jota cap, a change on Saturday when Ødergaard was confirmed out, if I hadn’t changed, I’d be celebrating #LacaCap this Monday morning! How was I to know that Martinelli would start in place of a not even on the bench Auba?!! I assumed they’d be devoid of creativity! 👀Maddo, he broke lockdown rules, so he too didn’t even make the bench! There was no way I could account for that in my deliberations! Another #sodslaw episode this gameweek, what you gonna do huh!? 😂 #ontothenext

The one true miscalculation was not putting DCL as 1st sub?! 🤔 #captainhindsight 😒 #boreoff!! 🤣 Rüdiger had a header cleared off the line, so no, bench line up was sound (it’s ok Vince, you can come out of hiding 😂 #playyourowngame, right?!), plus, I’ve been waiting to drop DCL for weeks! Nah, my squad is ream mate!! 😈🤣

DCL & Gündogan 🔄 Iheanacho & Son©️

Only a -4 💉 hit for #DGW32, as the repositioning of my squad is complete. Back to slightly more controlled play.

Just remember, it’s never all in your control, so #DontWorryBeHappy “Dooo-do-do-d-do….” 🤣😁👌🏿