Fantasy Premier League 20/21 | GW4 Retro & GW5 Memo

Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 4 Retro, Gameweek 5 Memo, Team Yin AubameYang

It’s Saturday morning, and I’m walking to the couch to flip open my computer after a morning playing soccer. I’m nervous with excitement, and I can’t wait to watch my active fantasy players earn some points.

I navigate to watch.sling.com to pull up the Everton vs. Brighton match.

As soon as my screen loads, I witness Everton’s Jordan Pickford — who I own — drop a ball in front of Brighton’s Neil Maupay — who I don’t own. Maupay reacts firsts and pokes the ball over the line for a goal.

I surprise myself by yelling “F%%K” as loud as I’ve ever yelled anything.

This single mistake gave away the only Brighton goal of the day, robbing both Pickford and Digne of cleansheet points.

This moment defines my GW4 and gives me the word of the season so far: “frustrating.”

The international break came at a good time. It’s given my a moment to chill out, and stop thinking so much about FPL.

Something about my approach this year is broken. And I think it’s a variety of different factors:

1. Decisions are being fueled by a type of data analysis done for the sake of being data-driven.
2. Writing about my decisions, and then re-writing about my decisions is causing me to other-think and invest too much in my decisions
3. I’m investing too much emotionally in my success, which is robbing me of the enjoyment of the game and creating an anxiety that is counterproductive to performance.

In the future weeks, I plan to fall back into patterns that have served me well in the past — letting the eye-test, gut and intuition play into my decision making just as much as the data.

I plan to spend much less time fussing over data-driven justifications for my selections, and much more time enjoying the game.

With that being said, time to post the results of GW4 and review the team for GW5

GW 4 Review

I’d cry if it wasn’t so funny.

A paltry 20 points on the day. The highest scoring member of the team: Fernandes with 6 points.

A gameweek rank of 6,714,448 against 7,178,754 total players. The same team the earned a gameweek rank of 819,598 the week before…

This is hilariously bad.

All in, I’ve scored a total of 151 points and have a rank of 5,365,404.

Looking forward, I’m worried about Alisson’s injury and what that means for TAA and Robertson’s cleansheet potential.

I’m also concerned about the stretch of play Everton have in front of them. Offensively, they are producing. But defensively? Pickford doesn’t give me confidence.

KDB hasn’t produced a return in his last two gameweeks. And as my captain, that has hurt quite a bit.

I’m considering a KDB transfer out next week, in favor of bringing in Son or another similarly priced midfield asset, and moving the remaining funds to upgrade a forward or midfielder.

For now, I’m keeping him in the team despite the knock and concern about his fitness for gameweek 5. I’ve already burned two transfers to bring in Greenwood and Barnes for Rashford and Elneny, and I’m not interested in taking another hit this week. Better to wait and take 2 transfers next week for another -4 hit, than take a -8 hit and let money sit in the bank, or a -12 hit for two more changes this week.

GW5 Memo (UPDATED)

I’m putting my faith in Bruno this week.

KDB was just confirmed to be out for at least one gameweek, perhaps more. So I’ve brought Son in to replace him. Even without the injury, I was considering the move as Man City are a different team than the one that saw KDB earn 23 assists in 2019/20.

Barnes and Greenwood are in for Rashford and Elneny. I’ve moved from a 442 to a 343.

Podence will be off the Bench first for any attacker that doesn’t feature, followed by Mitchell and then Ake.