About FPL Newbie (my FPL background)

 About me - FPL Newbie

Who am I?

    Firstly, welcome to my blog. I am an football loving Englishman, who has recently gained an interest in trying to succeed at FPL. Success for me this year is just completing the season with no unnecessary break - something I wouldn't consider myself to have managed before; hence the name Newbie. We all know the story, we start playing, try really hard for a couple of game weeks, before it all goes wrong and we then can't be bothered to try to make up for lost ground. For once, I intend to follow suit, and at the time of writing have made it to GW18, which is most likely a personal record. Given this new commitment, I stumbled across 'FPL Twitter'; this is a fun place to be until that differential you didn't get bags 16 points and everyone is posting about it except you. Shout out to my followers, it's the best side of Twitter I've experienced, and you can find me there @FPL_Newbie_.

Why am I writing this blog?

    There are a few reasons for this blog. Firstly, I think it is a good way to share my thoughts and ideas - I'll be aiming to do GW previews once it gets going properly. I work as a school teacher so it is in my nature to share ideas and knowledge (assuming what I know about FPL can be classed as knowledge!). By sharing my ideas, and my progress, hopefully I can share the FPL journey with some of you. I also hope it'll be an entertaining read, and educational when need be, so there should be some value to everybody for it. Finally, it is concrete proof of my genius decision making, or more likely the fact I actively disregarded the player that you all got anyway, and who scored 2 and got an assist whilst I made another tweet about 'this GW being over already' - that seems to be too common lately, hence the fact its been mentioned twice already.

What is my FPL background?

        My earliest FPL memory is sitting in my kitchen with my Dad, looking through the Sun newspaper. I can't remember the exact year, but I remember Jussi Jaaskelainen being our goalkeeper during his time at Bolton; based on Wikipedia, this could have been any time between 1997 and 2012, my hunch would be around 2008. 13 years of 'experience' wouldn't really suggest I'm a newbie, right? I think that team my Dad and I chose was certainly a set and forget team. I know you had to email the team into the newspaper, but can't remember how you make transfers, and don't really recall revisiting it in much detail other that checking how many points our players got each week in the paper. 

I played Sun Dream Team and Sky Sports Fantasy most to begin with, but have made a team on FPL since 2016/17, and if you look at the ranks, you'll believe me when I say I wasn't playing consistently - a few bad weeks and interest was lost. I tried recovering at the end of last year when Man United had a triple GW, and bought in a third United player, and Triple Captained Fernandes. I wondered why it wasn't letting me change me team considering the Friday night game still had an hour before it kicked off, but it eventually allowed me just in time. What I hadn't realised was the game was updating as the deadline had passed and I'd gone all out on Man United for the following GW instead; talk about Newbie.

My first serious and sustained Fantasy Football effort was in Euro 2020 (2021). I won my cash mini-league, and cannot remember my overall rank now but it was one I was pretty proud of. It had lead me to taking FPL seriously this year.

Previous FPL History

Which Fantasy games do I play?

    Being super keen to get involved in FPL, I am juggling far too many Fantasy games. FPL is absolutely the main game I am invested in, with my main team and creating the Community Team too, which my followers are encouraged to vote in. This is enough to make FPL fun without being over the top, however this is not all I have in FPL (I will talk about this in another blog).

Outside of FPL, I also do play Sun Dream Team and Sky Sports Fantasy this season, although have somewhat given up on Sun, but am logging in every GW to Sky, setting captains and making transfers, but not really tracking my progress (apart from how I'm doing in my club mini-league). I saw someone on Twitter share a tweet about Bundesliga fantasy at the start of the season, so had a go at that. The extent of my involvement is updating any injured players from my team, and changing subs and captains during the GW if I remember to! I am in the Hansa Rostock league as it is least populated, so hoping I can get a good position in that league. Finally, I have UCL Fantasy, which started off fun as it was similar to the Euro game, but I feel has too much time between fixtures, and works much better as a condensed tournament like Euro/World Cup. I think next season I will exclusively focus on FPL and Sky Sports, in order to keep it manageable. 

How am I getting on in FPL?

    My current rank is 135,333 going into GW18. I haven't even considered my changes for this GW yet, due to postponements etc. I will leave it as close to the deadline as possible. My rank is a little frustrating as I spent a good time in the top 100k, as high as 28k, and have had a few poor weeks now. For my first year playing, I feel I am doing well though - I just don't want to lose pace now, so need to keep invested. Below is my GW history from this season.

What are my aims for FPL?

    Being new, my aim is just to complete the season. Initially, a top 1 million spot seemed to be considered the aim, but I have now spent the season around the  100k mark, so I am hoping for top 100k now. If not, top 200k would be my minimum, I don't want to lose the good work I've done so far this year. Ultimately, the aim is to enjoy to enjoy the game and maintain the enjoyment into next season.

I'm looking forward to sharing more with you in the future.

Newbie