The principal raison d’être of this column is as a regular excuse to use fantasy football as a metaphor for portfolio management. Running it a close second, though – and I have been just as upfront about this, even if I have stopped short of declaring it in the strapline above – is to be able to laugh at the madness of the fantasy football crowd and enjoy a little weekly schadenfreude at their expense.
Clearly the quickest route to that fix is when the major bandwagon ‘buy’ of the previous week fails to meet up to the hopes and dreams of the hundreds of thousands of FPL managers who brought them into their teams – whether that was down to a cunning plan or chronic FOMO. And for the first chunk of the season it was all working out very nicely for Team Schadenfreude.
As you can see from my handy chart below, which shows the most-bought player ahead of each FPL round, from Gameweeks 2 to 12, the move earned their buyers an average return of just 4.2 points – with only the latecomers to the scary early-season form of Erling Haaland really having anything to shout about. From Gameweeks 13 to 27, however, the average has been a much more respectable 6.4 points.
“For the first chunk of the season it was all working out very nicely for Team Schadenfreude.
Source: Fantasy Premier League
What is more, the proportion of ‘green weeks’ – those yielding at least six points – has all but tripled from 18.2% in that first period to 53.3% in the second. This should not come as too much a surprise, of course – for one thing, each passing week offers more data to go on; for a second, those still playing will be more committed and more able to make good use of that data; for another, there will always be more punts in the early weeks.
So does that mean the table contains no useful information for anyone trying to look ahead? Well, not quite. I appreciate this relies on my remaining consistent in my labelling and qualitative judgement but take a look at what I have taken to be the reasons for the buyers’ interest. All but one of the first seven green weeks stemmed from buyers benefitting from the latter part of purple patches for Haaland, Foden and Gabriel.
In contrast, over the last four gameweeks, the three green weeks of Bruno Fernandes and Joao Pedro (twice) were – at least to my eyes – attributable to buyers being attracted by that attractive combination of form and fixture. Given I had already attributed that same ‘Form/Opp’ rating to this week’s most popular transfer-in, Liverpool captain Virgil, it will be interesting to see how he does against West Ham on Saturday.
And it will not just be academic interest for us either, that buying surge has seen Virgil reinstated to the portfolio – once again switching places with Chelsea’s Trevor Chalobah, as you can see below. As it happens, during his three-week absence, Virgil has amassed 28 points versus Chalobah’s 9. With this project, you just have to accept schadenfreude is a two-way street.
Source: Fantasy Premier League
Certainly the portfolio could have done with Virgil’s 11 points rather than Chalobah’s two last week – well, it would at least have been enough to turn a deeply underwhelming week into a slightly above-average one. Instead we were left to scrabble by on the ongoing form-and-fixture bounty of Joao Pedro and some more meagre scraps from Haaland, Semenyo and Rice:
Turning to the broader Herdwatch tables, which show the half-dozen buys and sells of the last four gameweeks, alongside the resulting points gained or missed, it is always worth reminding ourselves of the whimsical nature of the FPL gods – and what better way to do so than with the performances of the most bought and sold Arsenal players ahead of their two matches in Gameweek 26.
While Rice repaid his buyers’ faith with 14 points that gameweek, backed up with 4 the next, his 18 points are matched by the 13-plus-five of Saka, who was sold by a quarter of a million players before his ‘double’. And while Timber and Zubimendi managed just 14 point between them over the three matches, Gyokeres followed his three points in the ‘double’ with a 13-point haul against Spurs – after being transferred out by a net 200,000 frustrated FPL managers. Weekly schadenfreude fix achieved.
Source: Fantasy Premier League
