Seven common mistakes made by Fantasy Premier League managers

Following on from his first advice column ahead of the return of Fantasy Premier League for 2020/21, our resident expert Jake Gallagher - a top 50 finisher in the UK last season - runs through the potential pitfalls of FPL management. The following are seven common mistakes that you need to avoid in order to triumph in your mini leagues and force your way up the rankings.

1.     Using your chips by GW4

Don’t be the smart arse who is 30 points clear at the top of the office mini-league after four weeks of the season having played your Triple Captain, your Bench Boost and your Free Hit. It might sound like a cliché but it’s true; playing FPL is a marathon not a sprint and you’re going to need those chips to negotiate some pretty steep hurdles throughout the season. My advice is to keep your powder dry in the early stages of the game and save your chips for later in the season when the double game weeks come around.

2.     Lack of planning

Planning is a key part of the game in FPL. It’s about being able to look four, six or even eight game weeks into the future and selecting a group of players to handle the run of fixtures they have.

Picture this, it will definitely happen this season. It’s GW25; Sergio Aguero scores a hat-trick against Arsenal and a tidal wave of managers transfer in the Argentine only to find out he doesn’t play in GW26 due to their predictable Carabao Cup final clash against Leicester City. Don’t be that person who wastes transfers due to a lack of planning. Check the fixture list, check the injury table, check if the player you’re about to bring in isn’t one yellow card away from a two-match suspension.

3.     Loyalty to ‘your’ club

As a Manchester United fan who started playing Fantasy Premier League in 2012, I suffered from this common mistake season after season and my points were impacted immeasurably. In the difficult post-Fergie years, not only was I selecting three Man Utd players in blind faith, but I was also choosing not to pick Man City or Liverpool players!

An example of this, in the 2013/14 season, when Luis Suarez scored an at the time record-breaking 290 points in FPL, scoring 31 goals in the season, I opted for Robin van Persie who scored just 12 goals that season. I felt like I was being a true Man Utd fan, staunch to the core, for not selecting Luis Suarez. And I didn’t make the Van Persie to Suarez transfer all season because - you know - loyalty, pride, stubbornness, idiocy.

I’ll repeat it again, playing FPL and supporting your team shouldn’t go hand in hand. It's like peaches and gravy, not peaches and cream.

4.     Too many hits (-4s for transfers)

The game of FPL allows one free transfer per week. One. If you want to make two transfers it’ll cost you four points - as many as a clean sheet or a forward’s goal. Now there are loads of reasons why taking -4 points hits can be a good thing, especially long term. However, as a tactic I wouldn’t advocate taking too many unless it’s part of a clearly defined strategy that chases the upside in a risk vs. reward conundrum.

5.     You stop playing

What’s that? You’ve stopped playing by November because you didn’t remember to update your team on a Saturday morning because you were too hungover? We’ve all been there. Let’s bring back the Marathon vs. sprint analogy here – just keep playing the game and you’ll be surprised just how quickly you can climb the ranks just through gaining on the other people who’ve quit playing or fallen asleep before the finish line. A Greek fabulist once told a story about a race between an oversized rabbit and a turtle. It’s a ‘slow and steady wins the race’ tale for all the family and you could be inspired to keep plugging away.

So continue to play the game and it’ll return the faith, especially between GW25-GW38 when the amount of active managers falls to as low as 50 per cent.

6.     Making transfers too early

I can see it now, Arsenal will be 2-0 up against Fulham in the opening week of the season with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang bagging two goals inside 29 minutes. At half time the FPL app is being fired up all over the world with managers deciding to bring him in for GW2. Then, in the 72nd minute, the Gabonese scorer is brought down by Denis Odoi leaving him injured for three weeks. Nightmare! You’ve just transferred him in you fool! There’s a lesson to be learned here:

Where you can, don’t make kneejerk transfers and instead make them on the day of or the day before the deadline.

This gives you all the information available to make the right choice for your team. Making transfers too early can leave your roster stricken with injury or suspension and before you know it you’ll have a squad full of fires to put out forcing the use of the Wildcard chip when you don’t need to.

7.     Over-thinking

Trust your initial gut feeling on a player or transfer and stick to it. Just because it looks too obvious doesn’t make it the wrong choice. Often you can do your research, listen to the FPL podcasts, swot up on the statistics (you’ve come to the right place by the way) and you’ll talk yourself out of a move when your first decision was the right one. Of course, you should wait until closer to the deadline to pull the trigger on any transfer because after all, there is always a chance of a training ground injury. By and large, your first thoughts are the clearest and taken without the noise of Twitter or WhatsApp groups.