‘I am inclined to think the index cannot do worse than last week’. Seriously, Marr, what on earth were you thinking when you wrote that last time out? After just the two and a half decades playing this game, you would imagine it would be abundantly clear to me that fantasy football always has the capacity to take you lower – and especially when you provoke the FPL gods by writing stupid, stupid lines like that.
And so, after 32 points in Gameweek 12 and a rank just inside the nine-million mark, Gameweek 13 duly yielded 19 points for the MeanReversionMachine index and a rank of 11,685,406th out of 12,578,526 players. This in the week, lest we forget, that we placed the Triple-Captain chip on Haaland at home to Leeds and the Norwegian goal machine promptly racked up, by a distance, his lowest ‘expected goals’ number of the season.
Not that the portfolio was alone here, with more than a million players making the same chip decision – though our lowly rank would suggest few of them could also boast the -2 that resulted from Caicedo’s red card, in addition to a couple of zeroes and three one-pointers. I keep having to remind myself I should be actively willing this bloodless representation of groupthink to fail – yet, instinctively, such a poor week still smarts.
Mind you, the sheer volume of Premier League matches played around the Christmas period does mean a bad round of FPL can quickly be relaced with a half-decent one – and so it proved as Gameweek 14 brought a more second-quartile 67 points, built on yet another good performance from Crystal Palace defender Guehi and our perma-captain remembering, just the three days too late, where the opposition goal was. Compare and contrast:
“I keep having to remind myself I should be actively willing this bloodless representation of groupthink to fail – yet, instinctively, such a poor week still smarts.
In doing so, you may have spotted a change of index components, which resulted from three considerations: first, suspensions for not just Caicedo but also Senesi; second, Gabriel’s injury; and third, and more positively, my feeling that if a player is 30%-owned by the market, he really deserves inclusion in MeanReversionMachine. So in came Palace striker Mateta (for Marc Guiu); while Gabriel gave way to fellow Arsenal defender Timber:
Source: Fantasy Premier League
Not that it resulted in much in the way of points but, again – and note to self – the main purpose of the Mean Reversion Machine project is not points but as accurate a reflection of the wider FPL market as we can manage. Given the current market indecision resulting from recent injuries, suspensions and hauls, this is proving trickier than at any point in the season thus far, although the impending top-up to five free transfers should help.
It would certainly be a shame to use them all up at once but, for the sake of index integrity, present buying patterns suggest Senesi will probably lose his place to Munoz while the AFCON-bound Mbeumo will be replaced by United midfield colleague Fernandes. At the same time, Mateta’s presence in the index seems likely to be short-lived given the growing popularity of Thiago ahead of Brentford’s great fixture run.
Phil yer boots?
Furthermore, given his ownership has more than tripled in the last two weeks off the back of two massive hauls and 32 points, City midfielder Phil Foden may also be pushing for inclusion by this time next week. As our Herd-watch analysis of the biggest transfers of recent weeks, both in and out of FPL teams, below shows, he reaped immediate dividends for his 300,000-odd new owners.
Annoyingly – for I was not one of them – lightning occasionally does strike twice, although mean-reversion order was restored for the other highly-bought haulers from the previous week, Thiago and Fernandes. More gratifying still – at least, for those who want nothing more from this column than a weekly fix of Schadenfreude – are the contrasting fortunes of the heavily-bought Caicedo and much-sold Kudus since Gameweek 11, as set out in the bottom-most chart below. A nice reminder too that FPL has as much power to boost as humble you.
Source: Fantasy Premier League
