I’ve been thinking about writing this article for a couple of weeks, and now, when the dust from another season has finally settled and all of us can think clearly and impartially again, I believe it’s the right time to share my thoughts with you.
In this article I won’t write anything about football as it is, I’ll write only about Fantasy Premier League, the game we like so much. I will try to put FPL under analysis and to find some space to improve as I’m sure there are plenty of chances to do the game even better than it is now. Don’t you agree? Well, I’ll try to persuade you below.
First of all, let me say some words about myself. I’ve been playing FPL for almost ten years (yeah, really), and during this time I’ve seemingly learned everything about the game. In terms of my country I ended in top five every season but one, including two winning campaigns (2012-13 was the last one), and overall my best rank was 190th in 2009-2010, so I think my opinion can be interesting for you, even if it’s not the most influential in FPL world.
So, now it’s time to begin. Playing FPL this year I (and many of you I suppose) found one notable detail: all the teams were very similar to each other (if we’re speaking about the teams that wanted to achieve something at least). You can even now name around 10 midfielders which at some stages of the season formed the five man midfield of any team. Indeed, I’ll try to do it right now. Let it be Bale, Mata, Michu, Fellaini, Cazorla, Walcott, Hazard, Gerrard as first choice midfielders and Puncheon or, for example, Maloney as second choice. Without considering double gameweeks, injuries or suspensions, lion’s share of teams’ midfields were made of above-mentioned players, weren’t they?
And I can say nearly the same words about forward lines (almost every of you had RVP as captain and Suarez in your own team, am I right?) and something like this but on a smaller scale about defenders. Therefore, looking through my rivals’ teams after another deadline I was like: «Hmmm, I saw this somewhere before!», as every following team was like a low quality copy of the previous one. Personally, I didn’t like such a scenario, so I was gambling & taking a risk for dozens of times through those ten years of my FPL experience, and last year wasn’t an exception. For example, I remember the gameweek where Man United was playing away at DW, and almost every of those managers with RVP in their squads undoubtedly gave him the armband. I had him as well but I was thinking for hours and finally decided to captain Dempsey who hadn’t even regular starting role under AVB at that moment (though it was the same at any other moment, to be honest). Spurs are taking Reading at home and I made a decision in Clint’s favor. What was the outcome? RVP returned fabulous 16 points (32 as captain) while Dempsey didn’t even start that game. Yeah, he came on as a substitute and even scored but I lost 10 points then as a result of my risky decision. It wasn’t a single case, the same situation was when Suarez scored three times at the same stadium in Wigan whilst I captained Lampard who failed to return against West Brom. And what is the conclusion? Be boring, do what you have to do, come obvious way, and in the end you’ll be happy. But can you behave like this all the time? I can’t.
And we eventually came to an evident question: how can we change this state of things? Or, to be more precise, how can developers of Fantasy Premier League change this state of things? Maybe I won’t say something new, but I believe the time to change classification of players has finally come. Standard and familiar to all of us classification (Goalkeepers, Defenders, Midfielders & Forwards) is not enough any more, especially with the appearance of likes of Michu, Fellaini and others who play not in midfield, not in forward line but in between. So you can’t classify Michu as a midfielder any more, as he far more than once played even as a lone forward in his first season at the Liberty. But you can’t classify him as forward as well, and one of the options now is to add a new position like «in the hole».
Five midfielders we have to buy can be divided in different ways. For example, it can be two central midfielders, two wingers and one man «in the hole». And if it will be like this, you can’t have Bale, Walcott, Mata and Hazard at the same time, thereby you’ll sit and think which two of them you really need for a few upcoming gameweeks. More than that, you’ll have to bring in your teams the likes of, for example, Mikel Arteta or Mark Noble. How many of you will transfer in former Evertonian at your own request? Right, you can say that he have penalties and a share of set-pieces in his locker, but everyone (with a few exceptions) will prefer Theo or Santi, for sure.
The same thing can be referred to defenders. Maybe it’s time to have not five defenders but three center-backs and two full-backs? No more Baines, Zabaleta, Jose Enrique, Evra and Clyne in one team. Try to experiment, try to find out something new! This introduction probably won’t affect goalkeepers or forwards in significant way but nevertheless it will be great addition to the game. Addition that can change FPL and customary approaches to the game globally! In which way it will change the game… Perhaps we can’t say right now, but it’s the right time to try, I’m convinced.
Surely, there will be a lot of questions such as how to classify several players. Let’s review Chelsea as an example: only in one team problem can arise when it comes to Ivanovic who can play at central defence and as a full-back as well, Luiz, who is able to play in defence and in midfield, and Ramires, who can cope with two or three positions in blues’ midfield, no matter whether it’s with defensive or attacking priority. There will be questions, no doubt, but we faced the same questions before. I can describe Coleman’s situation as confirmation of my words. I clearly remember that some years ago Seamus was classified as a defender (very cheap defender, by the way) but Moyes for some reason utilized him at right wing of midfield. It was a middle of the season so nothing could be done to correct this mismatch. We had to wait until next August to be able to fix things up. And what did we see in the latest campaign? Coleman, classified as midfielder, in majority of games played at the back! So, can we be insured of making mistakes? Certainly, not. But we can go forward and try to improve some things, that’s for sure.
I’ve been playing FPL for nearly a decade now and will play for much more years, as I actually like this game and I can’t even imagine myself watching Premier League match without excitement for my FPL players, but developers have to consider some changes until other Fantasy games do it before. Well, aside from those points that can be improved, there are some of them that mustn’t be changed. I fully believe that existing transfer system is great and fear of losing four points for every transfer following the first one of the gameweek makes sure you’ll work out your own strategy, analyze upcoming schedule of games and seek ways to pick the best players with minimal losses as you can’t have new team every week without serious consequences (possibility some of other Fantasy games offer you kindly). In my view, FPL transfer system is excellent as it forces us to think, and the higher our aims are the more we have to think.
Of course, even with all those changes described above there will be some players that are difficult to ignore. How can you overlook Bale or RVP at the start of the next season? Maybe only tough schedule can keep Bale out of your team (oh wait, he scored against Arsenal, Liverpool, Man Utd & Man City last term) and only incredible price of 15.0 can make you leave RVP out of consideration (oh wait, at the price of 14.0 he had ownership of around 40% at some stages of the campaign). At this rate, I believe there will be not many chances to ignore these two guys in August. It’s somewhat obvious that you can’t affect popularity of some players but the structure and interest of the game itself surely can be affected.
At this moment we can only wait and wonder what people that have authority and influence will offer us in July. I’ve written all I wanted to, I’ve described my own vision of the situation, and although there certainly are some other points that are worth considering such as assists awards or bonus points system (the latter, in my mind, is completely unfair for now), let’s leave this debates for another case. Now all I want is to take a rest for a while with the hope that changes will come. Changes that will make the game we like better and fairly. It seems a quite difficult task to cope with but I believe it’s not an impossible one.
Good summertime to all of you and thanks for reading. Comments are highly appreciated. See you later!
Photo: Alex Livesey/Getty Images
Архивный материал. Текст был опубликован в блоге автора на LiveJournal.com.
