<p><em>FPL psychological tips from Hub contributor Woodsy as he shares his thoughts on handling the pressures of the final throws of the season and making sure we can continue to the enjoy the game it&#8217;s community as much as possible.</em></p>
<p>As the season draws ever nearer to a close, the pressure will feel like it’s on for a number of us FPL managers.</p>
<p>Whether you’re trying to win your minileagues (or perhaps not finish bottom), or just chasing whatever rank target you may have set for yourself; every point scored by you or your rivals can feel far more crucial than it did a couple of months ago.</p>
<p>So here are a few random mentality musings that may help you to take things a little less seriously and perhaps gain more enjoyment from the game:</p>
<h2></h2>
<h2><strong>Gloating Is Fine</strong></h2>
<p>FPL is a game. Its main purpose is as a strategy game, through which you can challenge your mates, have some banter and earn crucial bragging rights. Due to the nature of the game, a sizeable proportion of your time will be tinged with frustration at having missed out on certain points, or your rivals’ players performing well; so why on Earth should you not show off a bit when things are actually going well?</p>
<p>FPL Twitter, as with all social media platforms, can be a strange place. People are only represented by their online personas and can end up taking things far too seriously. Why seeing some random accounts gloating about having a successful week or making a really good pick should bother anyone is completely beyond me.</p>
<p>One small disclaimer on this: there is a difference between gloating and deliberately mocking somebody who isn’t doing well. Even this, in your WhatsApp groups or chats with mates is usually fine, but when the target of your mockery is a semi-randomer on Twitter, it is certainly possible that you could become very annoying very quickly.</p>
<h2></h2>
<h2><strong>Consider Taking a Break</strong></h2>
<p>Nobody is forcing you to play FPL. So, if it’s causing you more grief than enjoyment, consider changing the way you play the game, or take a break from it altogether.</p>
<p>I have noticed a number of well-known FPL Twitter accounts saying that the game (or their social media interactions) had got on top of them this season, forcing them into taking a break. A big part of this I think is the lockdowns and restrictions on our normal lives over the last year or so.</p>
<p>More time is spent online as a result and I think people can just get carried away.</p>
<p>So please, just assess your enjoyment levels of the game and how much stress or anger it is bringing your way. Try not to take it so seriously, but if you can’t do that, take a break.</p>
<h2></h2>
<h2><strong>Be Kind</strong></h2>
<p>Surprise surprise, this once again comes back to social media. Just because you’re hidden away being a computer or a smartphone, this doesn’t mean you can be abusive to anyone you interact with. Free speech is a fine concept, but doesn’t make it okay to go out of your way to upset anyone. You wouldn’t talk to a stranger in the street this way.</p>
<p>Being kind to people is one of the most important things you can do in any walk of life, and the FPL community is no different. So, if you’re a bit of a nasty keyboard warrior, please re-assess your life and just stop it.</p>
<h2></h2>
<h2><strong>Anti-Railing is Perfectly Normal</strong></h2>
<p>Hoping others do badly (as mean as that might initially sound) is part of the game. Again, this does not mean you should mock other managers’ decisions or try to make them feel bad about themselves or their results; but it is absolutely fine to want certain players to do badly and cheer when they miss chances or get sent off.</p>
<p>In poker, this is known as ‘anti-railing’. To rail somebody is to stand in the crowd (behind a rail) and cheer them on. Anti-railing is hoping that the players you don’t want to win do poorly.</p>
<p>Take Gameweek 36 as an example. I had no players in the first three matches of the gameweek. But having looked at my minileague rivals’ line-ups, I knew exactly which players from the likes of Man City, Southampton and Leeds, that I wanted to fail miserably.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with anti-railing as a mentality. If your own players scored 10 points each every single week, that’s very good… right? But if your rivals’ players were scoring 15 each every week, you would not win. Kudos for my maths skills, huh?</p>
<h2></h2>
<h2><strong>Don&#8217;t Look Back In Anger</strong></h2>
<p>In the desert land of FPL, getting the hang of not letting bad luck bother you can be an ‘oasis’ of comfort. See what I did there?</p>
<p>I apologise for harping on about this concept a lot, but it really is an important skill to master if you’re going to get any enjoyment out of fantasy football.</p>
<p>Judge your performance on the quality of the decisions you made, rather than on the outcome. Don’t be results-oriented. If you made your decision based on decent logic and the information you had available to you, then you can be satisfied, as the rest is out of your control. And if you didn’t, you can learn from that and try to do better next time.</p>
<p>Or do what I do and still find yourself making the same mistakes in Gameweek 36 that you were making in Gameweek 1.</p>
<p>As a great runner and military table-tennis player once said, “I’m not a smart man”.</p>
<h2></h2>
<p>Drop me a follow <a href="https://twitter.com/fplwoodsy">@FPLWoodsy</a> if you enjoyed my content!</p>
<h2></h2>
<h3><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"></span></h3>
<h3>Become a Hub member for free</h3>
<div class="freetrial-banner" style="background-image: url('https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/7-Day-blank-cropped.png'); background-size: cover; padding: 60px 0;">
<div class="large-font">Start FREE trial</div>
<div class="desktop-trial-text">
<div class="standard-font" style="margin: 20px 0px;">Join thousands of fantasy managers and start your free 7-day trial now.</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center; color: white;"><button style="border-radius: 10px; padding: 15px 15px; font-size: 14px; background-color: #303030; border: 0;"><a style="color: white; text-decoration: none;" href="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/woodsy3384/49/">START YOUR FREE TRIAL</a><br />
</button></div>
<div style="font-size: 14px; text-align: center; color: white; padding-top: 20px;">Already a member? <a style="color: white; text-decoration: none;" href="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/login/">Log in</a></div>
</div>
<h3>What do members get access to?</h3>
<div class="epyt-video-wrapper"><iframe loading="lazy"  id="_ytid_24148"  width="1080" height="608"  data-origwidth="1080" data-origheight="608"  data-relstop="1" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F8sRFjuAipE?enablejsapi=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;rel=0&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=0&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;color=red&#038;controls=1&#038;" class="__youtube_prefs__  epyt-is-override  no-lazyload" title="YouTube player"  allow="fullscreen; accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy="1" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=""></iframe></div>
<h3>New app</h3>
<p><iframe loading="lazy" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/448301084" width="640" height="640" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" data-mce-fragment="1"></iframe></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong><a href="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/woodsy3384/49">Become a member!</a></strong></p>
<p></p>
<h3><strong>Follow the Hub</strong></h3>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/FFH_HQ">Twitter</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ffootballhub/">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/FantasyFootballHub/?sub_confirmation=1">YouTube</a> | <a href="https://www.instagram.com/FFH_HQ/">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@FFH_HQ">Tiktok</a><br />
And view all our latest fantasy football tips on our <strong><a href="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/">Homepage</a></strong></p>


The FPL Run-In: Some Mentality Musings

Win at FPL

Community & tools