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            <p>In this article, FPL veteran <a href="https://twitter.com/richclarkefpl">Rich Clarke</a> shares his early thoughts and preparation techniques for the upcoming season.</p>
<p>Rich is a Fantasy Premier League legend and has one of the most enviable records out there, notching two top 500 finishes and eight top 10k finishes over a 16 year FPL career.</p>
<p>He is the only FPL manager in the world to have never finished outside the Top 50k in any season during this time.</p>
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<p>Rich will be revealing how he prepares for a new season over a series of three articles, culminating in his Gameweek 1 team reveal prior to the first round of fixtures.</p>
<div id="attachment_47341" style="width: 752px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-47341" class="wp-image-47341 size-full" src="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Screenshot-2022-07-19-at-17.09.41.png" alt="" width="742" height="634" /></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-47341" class="wp-caption-text">Rich Clarke's FPL history</p>
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<h2>FPL 2022/23 season: Opening thoughts</h2>
<h4><strong>Will we finally get a 'normal*' season?</strong></h4>
<p>Anyone who has been playing for the last three seasons may have begun to question this.</p>
<p>'Project Restart' (2019-20); the 'Pandemic Season' with no fans in stadiums (2020-21); and the Covid-disrupted schedule last season have all been incredibly challenging to navigate for fantasy managers.</p>
<p>We are now used to multiple double gameweeks, extra chips and random fixture changes at very short notice.</p>
<p>A 'normal' season (if we ever get one) may seem dull by comparison.</p>
<p>This year's 'curveball' is the first winter World Cup in Qatar. This will take place from mid-November until mid-December.</p>
<p>To help maintain FPL engagement, fantasy managers have been given unlimited transfers during this period to maintain their line-ups.</p>
<p>In effect, this has given us four Wildcards to use this season. That is one now, in pre-season, one before the World Cup, the third during it and one in the second half of the season.</p>
<p>If staggered evenly, this means a fresh team every eight to ten gameweeks or so.</p>
<p>This probably makes fixture planning a little more short-term.</p>
<p>It is comforting to know you can almost always wildcard around the corner to revamp your squad.</p>
<p>It will perhaps play out a little differently to last season, where fantasy  managers played late flurries of chips in the run-in.</p>
<p>Reward for patient play may be harder to come by in 2022/23.</p>
<h2>Fixture planning: Why is it important?</h2>
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<p>Sign up to the Hub to read more of Rich's thoughts on planning for FPL Gameweek 1!</p>
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FPL pre-season planning | Rich Clarke’s initial thoughts (part 1)

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