Thought process: There are a lot of changes in FPL—how will it affect our strategy?

Are we going to play a different game?

In case you are new here, welcome! The Thought Process is a weekly series of articles where I analyse in detail every decision related to my own Fantasy Premier League team.

One part of FPL involves a traditional analysis of player performances, fixtures, and match-ups. The other crucial part is planning. And then there’s a third one, equally important, which is the decision-making process.

Also known as the good old “it’s team-dependent, bro”. You need to apply a more general analysis to your team.

There might be several great picks in isolation, but many of them might not be a viable pick in your case—your squad looks different, you plan your chip strategies differently, you have a different set of “rules” and fantasy frameworks, you assess fixture swings differently than other managers, and so on.

That’s why I see this series as a way to showcase actual gameplay and demonstrate how to incorporate data analytics into your decision-making. It’s a highly actionable application of analysis.

Everyone has their own managerial style, and there are many routes to success. However, illustrating how to put things into context is always helpful. I’m also not afraid to share my mistakes during the season or how I handle the mental side of the game.

There is clearly no team of mine to manage yet, nor one that would be sensible to present, so I will share some of my more general insights.

For the upcoming Premier League season, FPL Towers have introduced several changes to the game. Some of these have a significant impact on how we play, while others are quite marginal. We will review all of them, and I will discuss how they will affect my game as well as the general approach.

Alright, enough with the formalities: let’s get going!

Defensive contributions

You can find my initial thoughts, along with an explanation of how this works, in one of my previous articles: Defensive contributions in FPL: Which players will benefit the most?

In brief, this change expands the pool of viable defenders and offers an opportunity to identify some valuable midfield players. These midfielders should ideally possess both enough attacking potential and a high volume of defensive actions.

This change basically does not impact forwards.

❗ My general advice would be—don’t consider defensive contributions in isolation.

For defenders: Always aim to find someone who offers a good balance of all defensive pillars:

• clean sheet potential

• final product

• defensive contributions.

An archetype of a good pick is someone who is proactive, has some goal/assists threat, and plays for at least a semi-decent team. Think of players like Nikola Milenkovič, Virgil van Dijk, Nathan Collins, or James Tarkowski from last season.

During the pre-season, I will analyse defenders who might match this profile. When it comes to fullbacks, they need to deliver a significant final product. Similar to Daniel Muñoz, for instance.

Then there are unicorn fullbacks, who can both defend and attack, and that includes Antonee Robinson, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, and Neco Williams, but such players are rare. Next season, someone like Michael Kayode could fit that role.

For midfielders: While attacking contributions remain crucial, well-rounded players are also likely to become viable options. Mikkel Damsgaard, Declan Rice, Youri Tielemans, Elliot Anderson, Christian Nørgaard, and Adam Wharton have all been on the early watchlist.

❗ Many defensive contributions without any final product at all don’t seem very appealing for MIDs.

Then there’s one more thing to consider—we can generally say that players tend to contribute defensively in tougher match-ups where they spend more time out of possession, and you pick players for good stretches of the fixtures.

Therefore, you should take that into account, as it further highlights the importance of attacking potential and clean sheet odds. Don’t pick players solely based on how active they are when defending.

3 more chips to play in GWs 1 to 19

Now, this is another big one.

In the upcoming season, we will have 3 more chips, and these will be active between gameweeks 1 and 19 (we already had two wildcards in the previous season).

Generally, I see this as a benefit for engaged managers, as they will have more opportunities to use their knowledge and gain an edge over the field.

Personally, as someone with extensive DFS experience, I believe one of my key skills is the ability to accurately evaluate match-ups in terms of both teams’ and players’ strengths and weaknesses. That’s why I’m particularly happy to have another Free Hit to utilise.

❗ A key topic this pre-season, related to this change, is the use of Bench Boost in Gameweek 1.

I’m not a fan of doing that, and I’ll try to explain why.

I believe that the thinking is often flawed.