For those who don’t know me, my name is Tim (<a href="https://twitter.com/FPL_Tim">@FPL_Tim</a>) and I recently joined the FFHub team. I’m relatively new to the FPL world with four seasons under my belt, but have worked hard to try to understand how game functions at a fundamental level – perhaps I’ve been a bit lucky, but my last two seasons reflect this (238 and 247 ranks respectively). I’m by no means a complete player &#8211; FPL is a constant journey that us addicts are all stuck on! That said, I want to drill home some fundamental truths about the game and explore some ideas that aren’t talked about elsewhere in great detail.
Some topics will be simple, some will be a bit more complicated, but ultimately, the aim is to provide some thought-provoking topics and perspectives to challenge the reader to think about their own approach to the game. Initially, we’ll discuss a few topics that I think are necessary for any FPL player, that would be good to cover before the 2019/2020 season begins.
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<h3>It’s about the Decision, Not the Outcome</h3>
Why is FPL such a tricky game? Every player knows that there are a myriad of reasons. Improving our skill in any decision-making game where multiple future outcomes exist (such as FPL and poker) is notoriously difficult. FPL scoring is incredibly volatile, where the short term week to week outcomes can be the difference between agony or ecstasy, between halving your rank or doubling it. We see this many times over a season when faced with (perceived) 50/50 decisions, where one player goes on to blank and the other scores two goals and picks up all the bonus.
While it’s not a new idea to always focus on the decision, it’s something that we need to constantly remind ourselves. If we always look at a player haul as a “success” and a player blank as a “failure”, we’re not being critical enough to ensure we achieve more of these successful outcomes in the future.
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<h3>Short Term Outcomes Cloud our Judgement</h3>
In any given week, the short term performance of a player in said week is not necessarily indicative of a good or bad decision. Football is a highly volatile game, which is part of its charm but also a major source of frustration, especially for us as FPL managers.
It’s all too easy to judge everything on the latest thing that has happened. This is human psychology, where we attach our own meaning to the most recent information we have and use that as evidence of our brilliance or misfortune. We have to remember that these short term outcomes are not predetermined, and it’s about the quality of the decision at the time it was made. Beyond that, we have no control of the outcome.
When our player scores a hattrick, we feel like a genius, and when our player gets sent off or misses a penalty, we feel crushed. Either way, these are low probability scenarios and in an ideal world, our emotions wouldn’t be involved. Perhaps it was the best decision at the time to include a certain player, who unfortunately went on to receive a red card. Meanwhile, another group of managers may have been rewarded with a goal for making a “worse” decision instead.
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<h3>Situations Repeat Themselves Over and Over</h3>
You can argue that every situation in FPL is unique, in the sense that that exact situation at that particular point in time will never occur again. While this is true, in the same way, that every poker hand will be dealt from a uniquely ordered deck of cards, very similar situations continue to present themselves to us over time. The scoring system hasn’t changed and we’re still going to be choosing the likes of Salah, Sterling and Kane as our captains. We might have a season where there is slightly more value to be had in one position, or overall, but these are small changes that still leave us in very similar scenarios to those we’ve encountered in the past.
Bearing this in mind, we need to understand that in order to be “right” more often in the future, we have to always aim to make the best decision.
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<h3>A Biased Coin</h3>
Imagine I have a biased coin that lands heads 60% of the time and tails the other 40%. If I know this and have to call heads or tails, I’m going to call heads every single time. I’ll still be “wrong” 40% of the time, but with these static odds, there is no reason not to choose the higher probability option.
If a decision is truly 50/50, then it shouldn’t matter which option you choose. True 50/50s rarely exist, however. Instead, we have to strive to find the subtleties in the game that break that deadlock, to find which decision is the best option. This might only be slight, and even if you choose the first option in a 60/40, you’ll still be “wrong” a large proportion of the time.
What does this mean?
&#8211; If your player scores well, it doesn’t necessarily mean you made the “correct” decision. 
&#8211; If your player scores badly, it doesn’t necessarily mean you made the “wrong” decision.
That is why, regardless of the outcome, we always need to analyse the value of the decision at the time it was made.
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<h3>Asking the Right Questions</h3>
It’s easy to say to focus on the decisions and not the outcomes, but how do we begin to drill that discipline into ourselves?
Take Lucas Moura’s hattrick vs Huddersfield last season. When it happened, initially I was kicking myself. How could I have overlooked a player capable of scoring a hattrick? I hadn’t even considered Moura ahead of the week, so I went straight to the <a href="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/opta/" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c="1" title="FPL Stats by OPTA - Player and Team Stats">stats</a> to check what had happened.
Four shots, relatively low-quality shots at that; an expected goals scored of 0.41 but a hattrick as a result. I felt vindicated upon seeing this.
The question was, Could I have found a reason to include Moura? No, was my conclusion, after looking at the <a href="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/opta/" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c="1" title="FPL Stats by OPTA - Player and Team Stats">stats</a>, my team overall and my plans at the time. Therefore, I didn’t consider it points that I missed. If I couldn’t find a good reason why I might have included Moura, then I doubt many others would have been able to. Therefore, if a situation like this repeated itself, I don’t think I’d lose out.
Conversely, if I include a player who does terribly, I have to ask myself, Did everything point towards this player continuing to do well compared to the alternatives? It’s a broad question, but these situations are well worth exploring in detail to determine whether we made a poor decision or simply got unlucky. Inevitably this will happen at some point this season, in which case we have an opportunity to explore this question.
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<h3>Conclusion</h3>
In a perfect world, we’d be indifferent to the short term outcomes. If we happen to own a player who scores a rare hattrick, we should, by all means, be happy about it. But, we always need to look to see if our decision was the correct one at the time. All we can do is strive to always put the odds in our favour.
FPL is a game of the long run. Sure, over a season you can still experience more than your fair share of good/bad luck, but outside of these extremes, your final rank will at least indicate the cumulative quality of your decisions. We aren’t robots, but striving to always look at the quality of the decision at the time it was made will benefit you enormously in the long run.
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© Timothy Shelbourne
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