Most FPL managers are over-smart. They take decisions mostly on intuitions and biased love for the players that belong to their favorite team.
I can give you my own example, my team name for many years was “Ser Jaime Vardy” and Jaime Vardy was almost always my captain.
It doesn’t matter if he played a home game against Norwich or was in a tough away game of Anfield or Etihad, Jaime was the captain of my team no matter what. 😀
These are the kind of mistakes you and I need to avoid at any cost. We need to make decisions more based on data and player form.
Intuitions are right sometimes but mostly they turn out to be horrible.
In this blog, I will discuss the top 7 fantasy football mistakes that both new and experienced managers tend to make. By avoiding them, you can give your team a solid jump start.
7 Fantasy Football Mistakes To Avoid
1. You can’t have all the Superstars in your Team
The budget is limited and a manager can hardly sign 3 to 4 big-name players. If you are going for 5 or 6, there will hardly be any budget left to complete your team within the £100m budget.
The 1st fantasy football mistake to avoid is to not select too many top players.
Transfer in only 3 to 4 top players for your team. After it, buy the budget defenders (at least 2), budget midfielders (at least 2), and budget forward (at least 1).
Select 2 goalkeepers, 1 from a big team like Liverpool or Manchester City, they are the clean sheet sponge. And the 2nd choice from a strong defensive mid to bottom table team with favoring fixtures ahead.
These are the basics of team selection. You can sign the rest of the players in the mid-price range and line up a team that is already ahead of half of the managers even if you don’t make any changes for a few weeks.
2. Choose your Captain wisely
A captain in Fantasy Premier League is worth 2 players meaning whatever he scores, the points get doubled. Now the mistake here is 2 extremes.
Some managers experiment with a new captain every game week while there are others who don’t make any captain change throughout the season. Like I gave you the example of Jaime Vardy in the beginning.
Keep your choices of captain between 3 to 4 and don’t experiment with an unproven goalscorer like Chris Wood or Carlton Morris, these are the 10-15 goals a season distractions who perform in a random game week and ruin the team score for the next many game weeks when you captain them.
Also, out of the box captaincy experiments like captaining a defender can also leave a disastrous impact on your game week scores.
3. Don’t listen to your Heart
I know you have a favorite Premier League team. And it is quite possible that you want to put all your favorite players in the team. Maybe your team was a contender to play in Europe or a title contender in the past, but now is struggling to put any consistent performance.
I also know that it is very hard to not choose your own players and take the help of your rival teams to help you score big. But if you want to be in the list of top managers, you have to keep your personal biase aside and sign players that are good for the team.
If you are not signing Haaland or Watkins only because they are your rivals, you are putting 95% of managers at an advantage against you. So the fantasy football mistake to avoid here is that don’t listen to your heart, make signings on merit.
4. Stats matter
While the platform is giving you access to all sorts of stats, it is good to make use of every detail about teams and players. The OfficialFPL on Twitter is a great example of it.
Keep an eye on their insights and you will get many valuable tips that are hard to figure out on your own.
They have a team dedicated to finding the kind of stats that a manager won’t be able to find by himself.
5. Decision on Wildcard
If your team is failing to score anything significant in 1st few game weeks, don’t hold on to your wildcard. Use it early and fix your team before total damage is done.
You get 1 wildcard for half a season and another for the 2nd half of the season and the best time to use it is whenever it is needed for use especially the 1st one.
And as far as other chips are concerned, you can surely delay them for the later stages of the season when there are double game-weeks and stuff.
The important thing here is that don’t hold on to your wildcard transfers if the team is in great need of it. And use other chips when you see your team is going to score big in a game week.
6. Don’t invest too much in Defense
If you are relying on your players to get you clean sheets, it will be the worst strategy to score big in the fantasy premier league.
Invest heavily in forwards and midfielders. They are the actual points scorers and you won’t find any better fpl tip than this one.
It’s a guarantee, that in 90% of game weeks, the top scorer is a midfielder or a forward.
While transferring in defenders prioritize signing right backs and left backs, they can assist and score a lot of bonus points. Don’t sign players who stay back all the time.
7. You can still take a Risk
Calculated risks are relatively safe.
When two big teams are playing against each other, it is advisable to trust a player who is in great form and has a track record of performing well in big games.
Therefore, risking the armband on such a player is a safer option than giving it to someone like Pukki.
It’s important to carefully consider the location of the match and the opponent team’s current form.
There are always enough hints that can impact your intuition about whether a player is likely to perform well or not.
For instance, Haaland can perform equally well both in home and away matches against most teams in the league. However, when playing against Manchester United, Liverpool, and Chelsea in the away games, the situation should be evaluated more closely.
On the other hand, Muhammad Salah has a track record of performing well even when he is not playing on his home ground, especially when he is in top goal-scoring form.
So in his case, if Liverpool is doing good and Salah is in top gear, you can captain him anywhere…
That’s all in 7 common fantasy football mistakes. Do check out these fantasy premier league tips to line up a dominant team that wins the mini-leagues.
