FPL is Hard

Imagine that you could time travel and so you knew what was going to happen in every Premier League match. You know who's going to start, who will score, assist, miss a pen, everything.

Betting on football would be easy. Playing a one off gameweek in FPL would be easy - you'd be that person with the crazy high score. Winning FPL should be easy too, right?

Now imagine that I've got the same time travelling abilities and knowledge. How are you going to beat me? We both know what's going to happen every week.

It's not about high scoring individual gameweeks any more but about how you transition from one high scoring gameweek to the next. How do you plot that smooth course from gameweek to gameweek picking the right players and scoring the maximum points? Not easy.

It makes sense to get the highest scoring captain so that's a transfer locked in for some weeks.

Would you take any hits? I guess you'd know when they'd pay off so could keep your squad well optimised. More to think about though.

Now think about the chips. When is the optimum time to play them? And if you set up for one week to score the maximum possible, how does this impact on other weeks around it?

Would you have most of your funds in a first 11 or use more of a full squad to make the moves smoother?

I guess my point here is that FPL is not just about predicting outcomes but also about planning how we move between the opportunities and predicted outcomes. When's the best time to bring a player in; when's the best time to move a player out? What moves should be done this week and which can wait until next?

Try it

If you look back at the first 4 weeks from the current (or previous) season, as if you've travelled back in time with future knowledge, how many points can you score? We'll assume no chips to keep it simple. It's mind-bendingly difficult, right? Can you be confident your score can't be beaten? And this is with knowing the outcomes.

FPL is hard.