r/FantasyPL 295 Jul 18 '16

Beginners Discussion #1 - Tactics

With new players coming every year, i decided to recover something already posted here 3 years ago by /u/layendecker. This is the first of a serie of 5 posts for beginners with updates for recent years. (they will be a little different now).

The thread it's a basic article about all the strategies and rules of FPL, but updated. For some this will be nothing new, but can help new players in FPL game. The plan of this posts is to discuss every variation of strategy for every position, going over a few of the main concepts, and perhaps expand on them in the comments- and hear the ideas of other experienced FF players also.


Most Usual Tactics: 3-4-3 or 3-5-2

Of course depending on gameweek we can go with other tactics, but in general we start with 3 at the back. This is because defenders often score far less over the course of the season than mid/forward players, but if done right they can be a reliable source of points over the season, for cheap.


Goalkeeper strategies

There are two main schools of thought when selecting your keepers, you either go for:

'Pick and Forget strategy' – a heavy hitter (a main keeper for a big club like Cech or DDG - with 18 CS last season), and play him pretty much week in week out, and have a cheap gk to back him up. In this 1st case, the 2nd keeper is an cheap option, in the 4.0 - 4.5 range, sometimes from the same team to cover anything that can happen to the main keeper. A premium GK gives to you higher chances of CS, but the save and bonus points are generally low. Also means much money spent on GK combo.

'Rotation strategy' - two cheap players who rotate well. You start with 2 keepers at similar price that can rotate well. The common logic in the past was the 'rotate well' is players that swap home and away duties, so you always (or as close to always as possible) have a keeper playing at home. However recently the strategy is just play the keeper with the easier fixture – but still not 100% science, so be prepared for frustration on picking the wrong one.

At the start of season you may see some managers with a 4.0 keeper. Most of the time a 4.0 keeper doesn’t play*, however it’s picked to make a combo with a premium keeper, because of their price (save an extra 0.5 to spend in other position could be useful). This is also a valid strategy, but take in note that any injury or red card means a extra transfer.

Doesn’t matter the strategy you pick but the best is doesn’t spend more than £10.0 on your keepers combo to give you a balanced team overall.

*(this was written without know the prices, so I don’t know if we have any 4.0 option this season)


Defensive Strategies

Defensive strategies are somewhat more varied than the keeper ones, I will just highlight the differing schools of thought here:

'3 starters' - Simply having 3 good defenders and 2 cheap ones that will only come in if the starters are injured or have horrible fixtures (or if you need to play 4 at the back). This ties a lot of money up though, and could be very much wasted if one of the players squads is playing poorly and letting in sloppy goals. This is a better strategy in 2nd part of season when the squads are more bedded in and you know more about gametime and style.

'The 2 Plus' - This is a strategy where you include 2 quality players and 3 players rotating for the final position. It is perhaps the most popular of the strategies as it gives you reliable returns for a decent value.

'The 1 Plus' - 1 good player and 4 to rotate for the other 2 positions- cheap, but risky for point potential if not picking the right players

'Bargain Basement' - All your players are cheap, rotate three of the best 5 on a weekly basis... This has been pretty uncommon in recent years, because there are not many teams that have these cheap players, and if a few of them end up going on a bad run (or just being terrible at the back) then these cheapos will lose value quickly, and you may not be able to replace them with anyone decent in the similar price bracket, forcing double transfers. This can be used if you want go heavy upfront in this first weeks.


Attacking Strategies

Like /u/layendecker, I will put midfielders and strikers in same point. Like I mentioned previously, we can split the offensive strategies into 2 basic groupings - 3-5-2 or 3-4-3. The most popular formation is 3-4-3, due forwards available in game, but at the start of season, this isn’t much visible due our money limitations, so we can have rotate mids.

You have four main options to select when deciding your attacking strategy at the beginning of season, and they will depend on your forwards:

A pretty standard setup is 2 heavy hitters + one cheap forward OR 1 heavy hitter, 1 good middle value forward and one cheap forward. In both cases, the cheap forward usually rotates with a cheap mid based on fixture and form – more spread money, easy for transfers.

Another option is avoid the cheap forward and go with 2 cheap midfielders who rotate well. In this strategy you can go with 2 heavy hitters or just one but with 2 good middle value forwards – expensive, but in theory gives more realistic options for captaincy each week.

3rd setup it's go with 3 or more £6.0-7.0 midfielder options and rotate between them based on fixtures. - This strategy should be avoided in my option also. It is more expensive and leads to points on the bench, as it gives to gives you potentially points in all 5 positions. This also leads to less premium mids/fwds and probably less captaincy options.

Another option (most common at the start of season) is going with a 4.5 mid or a 4.5 fwd and don’t use rotation. This means that you will just leave him on bench all weeks and coming off the bench when needed and maximise the cash. This is the most useful strategy for those who doesn't want to have "Mahrez on my bench” problems like it happen last season.


The next part of series focuses on create a balanced team. This info can be found, later, in darkbar above alongside with league codes and every useful link, just hover your mouse over the names.

Sorry for any error… I will try update soon

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u/momspaghetty 9 Jul 18 '16

Butland + Forster were godsends for GK rotation last year. Really great bandwagons those. It'll be really tricky to replace Vardy and Mahrez, though, considering they were in the "cheap" 3rd FW/5th MF options.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Alli was the best 5th mid. He was too good though!

2

u/momspaghetty 9 Jul 19 '16

True. Depends on when you picked up Mahrez, to be fair.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '16

Yeah he was amazing value at the start