fplgoops: Season 18/19 Finale – Episode 38. Small recovery but barely acceptable
“What a bloody shambles. I’m totally done with fpl this year.”
“At one point mid gameweek I had 7 points from 7 players and I didn’t even have Son!”
“I can’t believe none of my moves have worked out. This is my worst FPL year in ages. “
“It’s embarrassing, I’m outside the top 50k.”
There seems to be an unprecedented level of mass hysteria in the FPL community this year bordering on hyperbole for less than adequate FPL ranks after a somewhat turbulent and unpredictable season. FPL stalwarts have come unstuck without particularly altering their normally failsafe methods. Toys have not been merely thrown out of prams but slammed against walls and shattered into irretrievable and irreconcilable pieces.
Calm down everyone. Calm down. OK first question, who the hell are you and why should I even bother reading on?
Quick intro – I’m fplGoops! I’m an FPL addict like most of you. Correction: I mean all of you. I’m not a massively active member of the community. I regularly listen to a couple of podcasts, I participate in a couple of Slack and WhatsApp groups. I’m definitely no expert on FPL stats – I haven’t got the first clue about the best XGI or NTI or some other commonplace 3 letter acronym you’d expect to hear on LoD . Bloody great TV – you must watch it. OK OK I digress.
Still how many of us refer to FPL players by business level abbreviations and expect everyone to know what we mean. Gone are the jovial references to JT, Sparky and Stevie G. We’ve now got CHO, VVD, TAA, RLC, MGW, JWP to name but a few.
I’m not positioning myself as an FPL guru whose sage advice will lead you to a guaranteed top 10k finish. I’m just Goops. A regular FPL player. An ordinary guy who love football and like you, has a penchant for FPL. A bang average player, not in the top 100k this year but with a few top 50k finishes in the past and one stellar 7k finish 2 seasons ago when I swept the boards of my MLs. Oh those were the days. And folks, this is why I encourage you to read on. For on these pages and amongst these words will resonate the views of someone who, week in, week out, shares your highs and lows, regularly ignores his family to enquire to a bunch of (mainly) blokes he’s never met an instant response to ‘who got the assist’ and sighs in disbelief as his rank takes a nose dive when the player you just sold and is heavily owned puts away a 5 minute brace. Brace. God I hate that word sometimes. So apt. Brace yourselves…
Just the other night I ‘screamed’ into a maddening void ‘Goddamnit, that’s another double figure haul for Laporte! WTF!’ And in an irrationally absurd manner announced on Slack with no real evidence “if I’d had him from the start I’d be in the top 10k”. And yes, yes, I was one of those who sold Salah immediately ahead of his hat-trick at Bournemouth. We’ve all been there. But hey I play with my gut, yes I’m swayed by echo chambers and bandwagons but ultimately I play based on my own experiences, expectations, previous history, and a sprinkling of luck.
So what’s the deal? Well it’s simple. I’m a huge FPL fan. It’s all consuming, probably my biggest vice. I also dabble in creative writing. I want to combine two hobbies into establishing something that defines how I tick, that I can be proud of that others may read, enjoy and benefit from. And frankly, as a Man United fan, I need a bloody distraction from the woeful and miserable state of my football club and what better outlet than fpl.
And what will you get from this? I’ll write a weekly blog to dissect my gameweek performance to celebrate my brilliant picks, to commiserate my disastrous hits, to scream blue murder at my wrong captain choice (AGAIN!), to empathise with the great picks on paper that just didn’t come off, to high five the differential pick that delivered a healthy return and/or rank rise. An ordinary, human response echoing how we all feel once the gameweek filled with such promise is over. I’ll probably take some time to preview the next gameweek, share hopes, fears and rationale on moves I’ll consider making. I'll include a couple of features and try and be different from the norm. Something like my 'unexpected star of the week' and 'top differential'.
Just don’t treat these streams of consciousness as gospel. I’m not trying to be a clever arse. Don’t berate me on Twitter. Don’t ridicule me when Captain Hindsight kicks in and shames the move I made for the obvious disaster it was clearly destined to be. I’m just using the same information available to you all, the huge plethora of advice shared across numerous channels but in the end I’m just me, playing on instinct.
Ultimately I hope that joining me on my individual fpl journey in 2019/20 will be fun as I attempt a more light-hearted take on life as an fpl addict. This will feel very different to the so-called expert views out there from the established FPL elite and will resonate with those of you who, like me, just love playing FPL and will have empathy with my season journey.
That in fact my journey echoes yours and hence makes this a more palatable read than those just showing off. Here’s a little taster based on GW37 and my recent FPL journey through blanks and doubles. Friday night games are exciting in fpl world. It means one extra day dedicated to following the fortunes of teams I wouldn’t ordinarily give a damn about. Personally I always like to have some representation in the game. Not the captaincy. Imagine if your captain blanks. It totally ruins your weekend before it’s started and your other half will never fully understand (unless they also love fpl!). In GW37 I had Digne. Cleanie. Assist! 3 bonus. Result! Absolute legend. Sufficient to move my life rank back above 200k. OK this is really nothing to write home about but I’ve been teetering outside the top 200k for the past 10 gameweeks or so having had a season high of 13k in GW8. I made a blinding start by my standards and thought this season would be epic. It’s been a damp squib.
Back to GW37, I had 54 pts going into the Monday night game with Sterling © to come. A great performance by my defence in particular – with Doherty and TAA adding double figure hauls to complement Digne. Already 20 pts above the average I was looking at a 50k rank rise as long as Sterling delivered, and Kun Aguero blanked. If somehow Leicester could score and take away the City cleanie I was onto a winner as other than a brief period early season owning Mendy I have madly overlooked City defensive assets all season. Especially Laporte. So when Vinny scored that screamer, my goodness I thought fair play but ownership is going to be low – but as ever my first thought was who got the assist? I’m buddies with the WGTA guys. I recruited Tom to his first full time role. And there you go – bloody Laporte! Damn it. Rank fall of 20k just there but at least a green arrow, my 6th in the last 8 gameweeks. A great deal better than my sea of red between 20 and 30. My overriding emotion is still this. fpl is so unfair.
I finished this gw on 60 points and 187k rank with that final unpredictable week to go. Respectable given I was 450k a few weeks back but so disappointing after such a promising start.
My tip for GW38? Well title race aside it’ all done and dusted so lots of teams on the beach could either lend itself to a goal fest or a drab 0-0. Hard to tell which game will deliver. A lot of excitement around Palace vs Bournemouth and much bandwagoning around Zaha captain. Not a bad shout despite his terrible home fpl form. I’m going with a Fulham player! Mitrovic stats are something else. He’s playing his last game for them (probably) and is firmly in the shop window. He’s playing against his old club who shunned him as not good enough so has a major point to prove. Last day brace incoming. Just don’t hold me to it!
That’s all for now. Look out for me in the new season @fplgoops!
“At one point mid gameweek I had 7 points from 7 players and I didn’t even have Son!”
“I can’t believe none of my moves have worked out. This is my worst FPL year in ages. “
“It’s embarrassing, I’m outside the top 50k.”
There seems to be an unprecedented level of mass hysteria in the FPL community this year bordering on hyperbole for less than adequate FPL ranks after a somewhat turbulent and unpredictable season. FPL stalwarts have come unstuck without particularly altering their normally failsafe methods. Toys have not been merely thrown out of prams but slammed against walls and shattered into irretrievable and irreconcilable pieces.
Calm down everyone. Calm down. OK first question, who the hell are you and why should I even bother reading on?
Quick intro – I’m fplGoops! I’m an FPL addict like most of you. Correction: I mean all of you. I’m not a massively active member of the community. I regularly listen to a couple of podcasts, I participate in a couple of Slack and WhatsApp groups. I’m definitely no expert on FPL stats – I haven’t got the first clue about the best XGI or NTI or some other commonplace 3 letter acronym you’d expect to hear on LoD . Bloody great TV – you must watch it. OK OK I digress.
Still how many of us refer to FPL players by business level abbreviations and expect everyone to know what we mean. Gone are the jovial references to JT, Sparky and Stevie G. We’ve now got CHO, VVD, TAA, RLC, MGW, JWP to name but a few.
I’m not positioning myself as an FPL guru whose sage advice will lead you to a guaranteed top 10k finish. I’m just Goops. A regular FPL player. An ordinary guy who love football and like you, has a penchant for FPL. A bang average player, not in the top 100k this year but with a few top 50k finishes in the past and one stellar 7k finish 2 seasons ago when I swept the boards of my MLs. Oh those were the days. And folks, this is why I encourage you to read on. For on these pages and amongst these words will resonate the views of someone who, week in, week out, shares your highs and lows, regularly ignores his family to enquire to a bunch of (mainly) blokes he’s never met an instant response to ‘who got the assist’ and sighs in disbelief as his rank takes a nose dive when the player you just sold and is heavily owned puts away a 5 minute brace. Brace. God I hate that word sometimes. So apt. Brace yourselves…
Just the other night I ‘screamed’ into a maddening void ‘Goddamnit, that’s another double figure haul for Laporte! WTF!’ And in an irrationally absurd manner announced on Slack with no real evidence “if I’d had him from the start I’d be in the top 10k”. And yes, yes, I was one of those who sold Salah immediately ahead of his hat-trick at Bournemouth. We’ve all been there. But hey I play with my gut, yes I’m swayed by echo chambers and bandwagons but ultimately I play based on my own experiences, expectations, previous history, and a sprinkling of luck.
So what’s the deal? Well it’s simple. I’m a huge FPL fan. It’s all consuming, probably my biggest vice. I also dabble in creative writing. I want to combine two hobbies into establishing something that defines how I tick, that I can be proud of that others may read, enjoy and benefit from. And frankly, as a Man United fan, I need a bloody distraction from the woeful and miserable state of my football club and what better outlet than fpl.
And what will you get from this? I’ll write a weekly blog to dissect my gameweek performance to celebrate my brilliant picks, to commiserate my disastrous hits, to scream blue murder at my wrong captain choice (AGAIN!), to empathise with the great picks on paper that just didn’t come off, to high five the differential pick that delivered a healthy return and/or rank rise. An ordinary, human response echoing how we all feel once the gameweek filled with such promise is over. I’ll probably take some time to preview the next gameweek, share hopes, fears and rationale on moves I’ll consider making. I'll include a couple of features and try and be different from the norm. Something like my 'unexpected star of the week' and 'top differential'.
Just don’t treat these streams of consciousness as gospel. I’m not trying to be a clever arse. Don’t berate me on Twitter. Don’t ridicule me when Captain Hindsight kicks in and shames the move I made for the obvious disaster it was clearly destined to be. I’m just using the same information available to you all, the huge plethora of advice shared across numerous channels but in the end I’m just me, playing on instinct.
Ultimately I hope that joining me on my individual fpl journey in 2019/20 will be fun as I attempt a more light-hearted take on life as an fpl addict. This will feel very different to the so-called expert views out there from the established FPL elite and will resonate with those of you who, like me, just love playing FPL and will have empathy with my season journey.
That in fact my journey echoes yours and hence makes this a more palatable read than those just showing off. Here’s a little taster based on GW37 and my recent FPL journey through blanks and doubles. Friday night games are exciting in fpl world. It means one extra day dedicated to following the fortunes of teams I wouldn’t ordinarily give a damn about. Personally I always like to have some representation in the game. Not the captaincy. Imagine if your captain blanks. It totally ruins your weekend before it’s started and your other half will never fully understand (unless they also love fpl!). In GW37 I had Digne. Cleanie. Assist! 3 bonus. Result! Absolute legend. Sufficient to move my life rank back above 200k. OK this is really nothing to write home about but I’ve been teetering outside the top 200k for the past 10 gameweeks or so having had a season high of 13k in GW8. I made a blinding start by my standards and thought this season would be epic. It’s been a damp squib.
Back to GW37, I had 54 pts going into the Monday night game with Sterling © to come. A great performance by my defence in particular – with Doherty and TAA adding double figure hauls to complement Digne. Already 20 pts above the average I was looking at a 50k rank rise as long as Sterling delivered, and Kun Aguero blanked. If somehow Leicester could score and take away the City cleanie I was onto a winner as other than a brief period early season owning Mendy I have madly overlooked City defensive assets all season. Especially Laporte. So when Vinny scored that screamer, my goodness I thought fair play but ownership is going to be low – but as ever my first thought was who got the assist? I’m buddies with the WGTA guys. I recruited Tom to his first full time role. And there you go – bloody Laporte! Damn it. Rank fall of 20k just there but at least a green arrow, my 6th in the last 8 gameweeks. A great deal better than my sea of red between 20 and 30. My overriding emotion is still this. fpl is so unfair.
I finished this gw on 60 points and 187k rank with that final unpredictable week to go. Respectable given I was 450k a few weeks back but so disappointing after such a promising start.
My tip for GW38? Well title race aside it’ all done and dusted so lots of teams on the beach could either lend itself to a goal fest or a drab 0-0. Hard to tell which game will deliver. A lot of excitement around Palace vs Bournemouth and much bandwagoning around Zaha captain. Not a bad shout despite his terrible home fpl form. I’m going with a Fulham player! Mitrovic stats are something else. He’s playing his last game for them (probably) and is firmly in the shop window. He’s playing against his old club who shunned him as not good enough so has a major point to prove. Last day brace incoming. Just don’t hold me to it!
That’s all for now. Look out for me in the new season @fplgoops!
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