For
@HampshireYellow :
1) Your captain is everything. I was one of the highest scoring captainers in the whole game last season and that’s the main reason I did so well. Make sure you look ahead in terms of fixtures and can always see a clear and obvious / favourable captain pick in your squad for every game, or make sure you have a clear path to one in terms of upcoming transfer moves that you might be planning. If in doubt, stick the armband on a Liverpool or City attacking asset, if you have one. They’re largely fixture proof.
2) Try to see your squad as a collection of price points, rather than focusing purely on individual names. That way you can move freely between multiple assets in each position, and you can nearly always get to somebody in a single move if they start to go on a hot streak. You’ll see within the first 2/3 weeks which unlikely heroes are emerging from the shadows, and if you have a good spread of price points, you’ll be able to jump on them quickly.
3) Nobody is untouchable. If someone is performing badly or is going to hit a really rough patch of fixtures, or maybe even both, don’t be afraid to move them out. Try not to romanticise a pick in your head, whether it’s a bit of a punt that isn’t paying off or whether it’s a big name player you feel you can’t ever be without. Every starting player in your squad has to be bringing in the points, and if they aren’t scoring they should always be in danger.
4) Don’t park excess cash on your bench. Try to decide on a formation you fancy pursuing, put the money into the starting lineup, and fill your bench with cheap players who you ideally won’t want to see getting much game time at all. A great way of doing this is in defence, by picking up two or three cheap 4.5m defenders and looking at how their fixtures rotate. You can find some really good combos of cheap defenders who will actually play, and rotate them based on how their fixtures correlate, while leaving one or two more premium defenders in the lineup for the long haul.
5) Don’t over invest in goalkeepers. Pick one starter to set and forget, and plonk a 4.0 no hoper on the bench because you won’t play them anyway, or get two 4.5 options who rotate similar to the defensive tactic. You shouldn’t be spending more than 9.0 on your keepers. Top end picks like Allison and Ederson are a waste of time - they might keep a good amount of clean sheets but their teams don’t concede many shots, so they will rarely get save points or bonus points. If they concede one goal their returns are shot. A cheap keeper might concede 2/3 goals and lose a point, but they might get two back for making 6 saves. Same as if they keep a clean sheet - they’ll probably get extra points for 3+ saves and that makes them more likely to get bonus as well. Nick Pope was my hero last season - 4.5 and was the best scoring keeper in the game. Regularly got 9/10 points for a clean sheet due to saves and bonus.
6) If all else fails, pick the talisman. You need goals and assists or you’re done for, so pick the players who have high goal involvements even if their team isn’t great. Set pieces can be a great source of cheap points - look at who is on penalties and free kicks. Mitrovic for Fulham is a good example. Just 6.0 and is on penalties, and scores something daft like more than 40% of Fulham’s goals himself, and gets either a goal or an assist in more than 60% of their total goals scored. If money is tight and you need someone to stick in and tick over while you deal with other things, find the talisman. Whether it’s KDB at City or someone like Pereira for West Brom, a lot of teams have one at both ends of the table.
Hope some of this helps, but don’t get
too good at the game. I would still like to have a chance of winning.
