Having re-read my 2014/15 blog I believe I have found the source of my subsequent ranking declines. Which is good news, as should be able to rectify the issue. After Five seasons of playing good ABC fantasy I started to try and force success by trying to be too clever. Buying players that had high upside, but were not necessarily proven and solid.
Picking players
As I wrote back then, picking players was never my strong point. I am no better at picking players than anyone else, so clearly picking players was not what got me to the top. There had to be a magic ingredient, something others were not doing as well.
Someone pointed out to me the other day that if you added my finishing ranks together, during that Five year spell they add up to just 3576. Thats not an average, that is the total. Nobody else has achieved that or probably ever will. So what was this ingredient that I am now trying to rediscover?
If it is not picking better players than everyone else then it clearly has to be the way I was managing them, did I Instinctively know when to remove them, was I better than other people at selling? If I am not better at picking players then it seems unlikely I am better at selling them.
I think it is none of the above, I am decent at those things but not exceptional. Having re-read the season, One factor above all other stands out, and that was my obsession, and ruthlessness with money management.
Money management
Time and again, nearly every week I was talking about price implications, sometimes selecting players purely for financial reasons. Nobody was allowed to fall in price, I spent more time on the price change site than the FPL site, more time studying price changes than studying player statistics. Not a day went by that I missed the price change deadline
One of my hobbies has always been share trading, and I bought that financial discipline into my FPL planning. It was more a game of financial management than a point collecting exercise . By Christmas 2014 for example I had a team value of over 108M. Yet had only taken Two hits.
So although I was no better than anyone else at selecting players, I was able to build up more team value than others, so that I could bring in better quality players quicker. The financial management side sounds easy but it is actually quite complex, and requires discipline and patience, and is a part of the game that is not taken seriously by most managers, and a part of the game I excelled in.
Every purchase made was concerned as much about their future value as their points potential. We cannot control how many points a player will score, but we can control how exposed to price falls a player is that we bring in.
Others did it but not as well
I was not the only person trying to build team value, far from it, but I think I was better at it than most. Many only managed it by taking far too many hits, they were not careful enough over which players they bought it, did not see that certain players bring more future price issues with them than others. It is a difficult balancing act. Not easy.
That is the magic ingredient that powered me to those Five top finishes, that and good planning, which my chess training probably helped with, together was a very good combination.
The downfall
After those top finishes, I was in the spotlight and the pressure came on, I started to focus way too much on the players, people were constantly asking me who to bring in etc, and the problem with concentrating too much on the players was that I stopped concentrating on the most important factor, which was controlling the finances.
See, anyone can pick good players. AI can now do it in seconds, we all know who the good players are, yet we all think we have to pick better players than everyone else to win. That is just a small part of it, and that is what I forgot. I began trying to get ahead by picking what I saw as great players before others did.
I criticised others for making sheep picks etc, I thought that to win I had to be different, that picking the same as everyone else meant I could not win. My picks became more extreme, like taking out Haaland last season.
The last few seasons I have barely even looked at the price change website, I completely lost my way, lost my edge, I had lost that magic ingredient.
Will the magic ingredient still work
Now I have rediscovered what gave me an edge will it still work? The initial selection is easy enough, just pick good players that have good fixtures. We already know who they are. No more starting with differentials (boring I know)
The big unknown now is does Money management even matter now? My team at the moment has Two Million in the bank, which quite frankly for GW1 is just ridiculous. Plus if Kane leaves, and Haaland or Salah are injured then money maybe almost irrelevant.
Are my skills now redundant?
Has the dumbing down of the game turned me into a dinosaur? Is saving 0.1 whenever possible and religiously avoiding price drops actually going to make any difference to my final score? It will be a lot easier if Kane stays, without him, then at least I ŵill be able to afford a few extra luxuries than the majority of players.
However even now we can all afford teams entirely made up from players from the top sides. So I suspect the advantage of having an extra Five Million in the bank maybe a lot less than in previous years, but we shall see.
Anyway this season I am back to basics, ABC player selection and tight money management, no more anti sheep picks in a vain attempt to leapfrog over the herd.
Trigger talks FPL 