A promising little run at the start of the year has dissolved into an upsy-downsy period that has left the MeanReversionMachine portfolio becalmed in the mid-two-millions for a fifth week in a row. So still upper-quartile but, you know – all a bit ‘meh’. Which of course, as I keep having to remind myself every few weeks, is just about the perfect pitch for a project that is trying to track the wider FPL fantasy league market.
For now, then, let’s turn our attention to an issue we have not covered this season but I think may make the portfolio adviser’s life more difficult that it ought to be over the coming month – our abysmal total ‘squad value’. Again, given what this portfolio sets out to do, it should come as no surprise we tend to be late to the party – and thus buy players after they have already risen in value – but, nevertheless, £100.9m is pathetic.
For context, the portfolio adviser’s own squad value is £105.3m – respectable enough but nothing to shout about in a year when player’s values have been especially volatile. Should you play the game solely to build up squad value rather than gain points – and it would appear some people actually do – then this is your season, with the current most valuable squad, Gone-Bissaka £££, weighing in at a hefty, if largely pointless, £115.2m.
I say ‘largely pointless’ because, in a season when most of the ‘premium’ players – Salah, Palmer, Saka, even Haaland – are struggling for the consistent high performance their £10m-plus price tags demand, you would be hard-pressed to make use of that much cash. Indeed, with the Gone-Bissaka mob currently sitting on £19.9m while more than 600 points behind MeanReversionMachine, I rest my case. On a number of levels.
Still, as we reach the business end of the season, the portfolio’s meagre squad value is going to make the job of accurately tracking the market ever harder. On the bright side, we have now built up the maximum possible five transfers but that is balanced out by having precisely zero in the bank and, as you can see below, a bench made up of two non-playing attackers, plus Dubravka and Esteve from a less-than-watertight Burnley defence.
“Given what this portfolio sets out to do, it should come as no surprise we tend to be late to the party – and thus buy players after they have already risen in value – but, nevertheless, a squad value of £100.9m is pathetic.
Making matters worse, the suspension of Van der Ven seems likely to lead to his dropping out of the index and, given he is one of the cheaper assets in the portfolio, funding his replacement is going to take fancier footwork than the Spurs defender showed when upending Crystal Palace’s Sarr in the penalty area on Thursday night. One way or another, cut-price gem James Hill of Bournemouth looks set to feature in our index rebalancing.
If this is to be Van der Ven’s last week in the portfolio, his farewell gift was a negative three-pointer that pulled off the neat trick of making the single-point contributions from Rogers and Virgil seem marginally less awful. You would think Rogers has at least one decent haul in him before the end of the season but it does seem likely the wider market’s patience will run out first and, by extension, MeanReversionMachine will fail to benefit.
More positively, as you can see below, over both Gameweeks 28 and 29, which fell in quick succession, there were good returns from Gabriel, Semenyo and Bruno Fernandes – while the portfolio’s star asset for the latter gameweek was Joao Pedro and his 19 points. We will look at the Herdwatch tables more closely next week but it is worth musing on the Chelsea striker being the third-most sold player ahead of Gameweek 28.
To be fair, Chelsea’s fixture schedule did look to be taking a significant turn for the worse – but, after racking up 55 points in six matches, there was a decent argument for giving Joao Pedro the benefit of the doubt. Certainly he is now the poster boy for Team Form-Over-Fixtures while, in the other corner, as it were, Ekitiké – bought by 700,000 ahead of Liverpool’s game against lowly Wolves – blanked. Still, it’s Spurs up next …
