The Vincibles Season Review 2021/2022

I thought I'd write a review of my season, mainly for myself to look back on in future seasons and learn from.

My final overall rank was 64,982. My aim at the start of the season was to finish in the top 100k as a minimum but hopefully push on and get a rank around or better than the previous season's 35k.

While 65k is a perfectly respectable finish, it's felt a very frustrating season. I moved into the top 100k in gameweek 20, meaning I spent half the season just moving between 50k and 100k.

What went well?

I dodged almost all the fixture postponements by keeping up with the news, only suffering where everyone else suffered with me, so little impact.

I maintained a strong bench all season, which got me through postponements, rotation and gave me increased choice of who to play each week. I'm not sure if that was peculiar to this season and Covid or if it's a sound approach generally.

Chips. For maybe the first time ever, I nailed all of them. And my wildcards. Got a decent positive boost from everything.

Hits. I took a lot, by my standards, 50 transfers in all. When you deduct gameweek 1, 2 wildcards and 2 free hits, 33 would be one per week so that 17 extra. I took a lot of -4 hits, only taking a -8 once, and it really helped keep my squad healthy. It also meant that I could postpone playing the wildcard and use it to actively attack the fixtures rather than to repair damage to my squad.

I changed the way I used data this season, tending to look backwards at form and forwards at fixtures over a 6 week period, rather than 4 weeks, which I've used in previous seasons. I feel this led to smoother transitions in my squad and I possibly fell into fewer traps.

What went badly?

In a word, captaincy. Every time I tried to be different I got heavily punished. This may be recency bias based on my bad experiences this season but I'm tempted to almost pretend that captaincy isn't a thing and just pick the most popular captain every week, play very defensively.

I was too slow to move for Son. He scored well all season, even when Kane was quiet, and I only owned him for 2 gameweeks. Given his historical performances this feels like a mistake.

I didn't have much luck with goalkeepers. Started with Meslier, who I thought would get a lot of save points. Never expected many clean sheets but expected the odd massive haul, like we sometimes get from Nick Pope. I held him for too long and got nothing. Ramsdale did ok for a while but held him to long too. I think goalkeeper transfers are more worthwhile than people think, easily worth a -4 to play favourable fixtures.

Gameweek History 2021/2022