I’m sure that we all know that things change, so, why is it that we’re resistant or even belligerently oblivious to the same? Fear? Ego? Unawareness of our propensity to lock into a “truth” and then remain blissful in our ignorance of the changeability of said “truth” is the real trap to be mindful of.
These first 5 gameweeks have reinforced one of the many preseason thoughts I had about the errs of my management last season, namely, adaptability. 🔄
This game will constantly challenge your preconceptions of teams and players. Things will change more often than remaining the same. If you are not versatile in discerning trends or at least pliable to what should be obvious, then you’ll repeatedly miss the gameweek points you could’ve gained. 📉
You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Yes, there is obviously a place for empirical data, but this must be married with the most recent trends to reveal the true current form and thus the immediate likelihood of an asset returning points, because as we know, past points will not elevate your rank, obviously.
Case in point, Crystal Palace. I don’t know how or even if they will soar, but what I do know, is that this convocation 🦅 is unlike any that went before, and so they should be re-evaluated accordingly. I should also realise that my current cognitive pathways are conditioned by the aforementioned empirical data related to this team and I must make adjustments for this until my perception realigns.
With a gameweek average of 53, this was one of those gameweeks where I feel you just have to hope that the overall spread of your team is robust enough to get you just enough points for your rank to survive. Luckily for me, my squad just about managed it, going 2 deep into my bench! Overall, my rank is 14k less than it was in GW1.
I’m good with that. Consistency.
Shout out to @FPL_Blonde for partly inspiring this blog entry.
At the very least, this season has set me on the path to managing my FPL Squad in a way which is synchronised with my own individual thought and whim. Gone are the adopted “rules” which I took on as a noob, rules which I required, at the time, as I had no idea, none whatsoever!
Where in essence, it’s simply a game of picking and then fielding the best 11 out of 15 players, the process undertaken to produce your chosen 11 will be as complex or as effortless as you make it. This was my first realisation this season.
The second was understanding that not all information and/or sources of said information and/or the format that information is presented in, is for me! You see, we’re all wired differently and I had to decipher what works with my cognition, what is easily broken down into ABCs and 123s. There is absolutely no gain in absorbing data that you cannot easily make sense of!
When it comes to management, we are all unique in ourStyle.
Your personality, in essence your mentality, the way your head works, will determine your unique process. You need to get in tune with this and feed it accordingly. This is the very basis to becoming confident in your own cognitive process which will lead to much reduced, or even the elimination of, second-guessing. From there you’ll naturally progress to process-based evaluations as opposed to results-based evaluation. The latter of these being the demon which haunts many!
My Process. This is where I found my Freedom. The freedom to unlearn the contraints I consciously, and unconsciously, had adopted. The freedom to take a suggestion onboard, or outright disregard, and still stay my course. The ability to recognise something I overlooked and adapt accordingly, The ability to evaluate all results objectively, in the knowledge that there is always an element of Chaos which I have absolutely no control over! If one or two assets don’t go as anticipated… well, that’s why I chose another 13 assets, right!
Liberation, to do what my intuition leads me to place more faith in.
I’m yet to fully understand nuances of my cognitive mindset, Convergent, Divergent or the combined two resulting in Lateral thinking, either way, this has been my journey this season, and I’m excited to see how the discovery and forging of my own path will benefit me, or not (as this is also a possibility) come next season!
A third realisation is my impatience, a common pitfall of ambition, which I’ll need to temper next season. I transferred out 5 goals this gameweek. Bale, Aguero & Foden. I would’ve capped Aguero if I had kept him (as was my original plan, purely for nostalgic purposes), but my reasoning around Bale looking abject at home with managed minutes, Kun consistently rumoured to be “unfit” and assumed rotation for Foden. Oh, and I benched a goal in Son. 6 goals. So, yeah, keeping the faith, may be something I need to practice next season. I already knew they were decent assets with that “X” factor, where they can produce moments of brilliance which cannot be accounted for in stats alone!
My main goal next season however is Captaincy. This one thing will help to mask a multitude of poor choices, if I can nail my captain choices! The correlation between the two is naturally obvious!
Season analytical data courtesy of… FPLStatistico
https://www.anewpla.net/fpl/report/index.php
So, until next season it is then! Between the above and also the ability to download your season data from LiveFPL.Net [https://www.livefpl.net/save]… I’ve got a lot to review, as well as analysing the players that helped or hurt me, how they’ve performed over the past few seasons and then add those standout options to a pool of players to pick my GW1 squad from… Oh and that I’ll indulge, for the first time, in some Euro 2021 Fantasy Football!
Gotta keep that brain sharp, right?! I’m not really one of those who needs to take a break, I find analysing anything to be therapeutic in a weird way. That said, If you are taking a break, then that’s a good thing, forget about FPL, enjoy other things and come back fresh and invigorated for the 2021/22 season!
It was some point during Tuesday morning – GW37 deadline day – that I heard the news prompting the realisation that my punt on getting Kun in BGW36 was destined to be a complete failure!
Kun would not be fit for the trip to the Brighton Amex Stadium, where City, on the back of a Cancelo red card, lost 3-2 in front of delirious Seagulls who would never have dreamt that the one match the selected few would have the pleasure of seeing this season, was their boys being the first to inflict defeat on the current Champions!! Football aye!! 😍 #moments
On the flip-side though, I also got Foden in for BGW36. 😊 I started him, again, on the assumption that he must get a run out in one of these final league games of the season. 🤔 Somehow, the little maestro – with City already down to 10 men – produces a sublime individual goal where he single-handedly took on the Brighton defence and all 3 bonus points, despite the loss! You 10pt Beauty!! 🥰 He may well be a GW1 choice for me!
So, with that Kun news, out went Aguero (to complete my GW37 -8 💉💉) for Rodrigo, who got an assist! I really expected more, but I’ll take that, his next match is at home in front of fans! Cavani!! Well, he scored an ultimate xJoy inducing cheek of a 40-yarder!! He also claimed full bonus points too! The injured Jota, replaced by Salah…. Well, he just kinda huffed and puffed his way to 3pts. Not vintage Salah at all!
I really wanted to ditch both Bale & Son, but for now, Son is benched. Foden, who I expect to be rested, leaves for Torres. Bale gets kicked out for a real punt of xJoy in Tielemans! IF I do end up ditching Son, it will be for more xJoy in Willock, what an end to the season he’s having!!
The fortune I had this gameweek were the blanks by Kane & Salah, both heavily captained this gameweek! For the final gameweek of the season, I’m betting heavily on a collection of must win games, at home, in front of their fans! Liverpool, WHU, Chelsea & Leicester have a lot to play for!
After my heady voyage through the Stars in TGW35, it’s a Crash-landing in BGW36. I was convinced that we’d see a relatively strong Manchester City side take on, and demolish, Newcastle United. So I invested accordingly. I’m of the mind that Pep will need to keep his CL starting-11 sharp? So naturally, Pep plays essentially a B Team and thus in a BGW I’m immediately down 2 players! Foden & Aguero are nowhere to be seen, and although as I anticpated, goals are put past Newcastle, 4 to be exact, I get no FPL points in this haul. 😤 Torres scores a hat-trick. He was completely off of my radar, again!
I’ve always been one for making early transfers. It’s the way to make money, especially early in the season. Which it is not now. 😁 Thing is, I know what I want. I’m a go-getter and once my mind is set, I just want to crack-on! Ok, maybe I’m just impatient. 🤣
I wanted rid of Kane, I figure Bale‘s the better pick and I simply love Son, so I needed to change my Spurs double-up. With my 1-week punt on Matheus Pereira falling flat and Michail Antonio fresh from injury, both less fatigued than others, with good fixtures…🤔 It was a no-brainer.
John Stones was languishing @ 3rd bench in what turned out to be BGW34, but only because of #PepRoulette. I cashed my chips in and bought some stability in Andy Robertson. It feels good to have both him and TAA in the back-line for the first time this season! 😊👌🏿💯
So, I had already had my double-fix 💉💉 and enabled my final chip, #BB, by the time I heard about the Triple-Gameweek! WHAAAT!!! #TGW!!! 😳
It didn’t take long to realise that I was now in a vulnerable position, I could get outflanked and wiped out by an army of Bruno Fernandes owners! Yes, he’s off form. Yet, No, I’m not gonna bet against him! The underlying stats aren’t exactly awful… 🤓😊
What about Salah, I hear you say… Well, I’m betting that the Robbo/TAA partnership will cover him off. I have Son, & Bale covering Kane, so all dangerous high-ownership assets are now covered with Lingard to Bruno, to complete the triple-hit. Yes, Lingard, I’m betting on Antonio to cover him off. You just gotta know when an asset has run it’s course. 😆 “You gotta know when to hold ’em…” #knowwhentowalkaway
Now, I’ve been playing “#fastandloose” since GW30, being all liberated an’ all. It’s a personalised brand of management that is still evolving, but god-damn is it fun! 😁
At its core, is a solid belief that un-registered thought (we’ll call this #DreadThought) garnered through daily Hangouts chats, BlackBox, The FPL Wire, FF Hub Tools & Stats, amongst other discerned sources that appeal to the way I consume The (FPL) Knowledge, is all churning around in my head and if I just play intuitively, I’ll simply make more good calls, than bad, based on all of the unknown-knowns swirling around in my head! I mean, it’s simply about making better educated guesses, right?!
It’s Chaos, but, it makes sense to me!At the end of the day, that’s all that matters. 🤓
TGW35 – Day 3
Panenka! 🤣 Kun getting me points when I’ve not even bought him yet! 😄👌🏿Full Disclosure:transfer discussions are almost complete, he could very well be my BGW36 Captain!!Iheanacho’s contract has been unceremoniously terminated! 🚫 As has Bruno’s! 😈🤣 #oneweekpunt
#DreadThought, has landed me with this Very Differentialsquad full of Stars ⭐, no intentional deliberation or scrutiny was put into creating a specifically differential squad, yet, here I am. Interesting. Like I said, I’m being more creative/intuitive here. As I write this, as far as my assets are concerned, I’m exactly at the halfway stage having played 15 out of 30.
😈 Shout out to Steve-O! TC Maguire was not a bad decision, it was just… 😈
Pereira 🔄 Bale hasn’t returned, but, the latter will outscore the former over the remaining games, I feel the same to be true for Kane 🔄 Antonio. Luckily a few decent returns from other assets has allowed me to absorb the negative return on the hit 💉 for Bale. Stones 🔄 Castagne, even though the former was rested anyway, the latter still hasn’t made the punt worth it. My gameweek score is hiding some rather disastrous hits. Lingard 🔄 Fernandes has paid off. Even though I’m hitting him out again, I’m still 11pts to the good! 😁👌🏿 So, I’m rolling the die again with a -8 💉💉 for BGW36! 😄
I really wanted to get Mahrez, I’m quite sure not having him this gameweek will come back to haunt me, Raphina will need to repay my faith, in opting for him instead, pretty promptly. I forget the reasoning that made me go for him over Riyad, but I guess that’s what happens when I base my decisions on subconscioussub-routines.
I was really kinda impressed with my Bench Boost Chip success, until I saw Pauly’s bench! RIDICULOUS!!!
This TGW will have an enduring fond memory as not only being the 2nd of 2 in FPL history, but also the first I ever managed in and it coinciding with the most points I’ve ever accumulated in a gameweek!
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