FPL: Pre-Flop Guide.

May the cosmic blessing bestow upon you guys soon, may FPL starts very soon. And when it does, follow these fail-proved rules, you should do fine.

1. Make a Balance Squad

Don't get overwhelmed by all the big names [pic 1, 2, 3].

Example 1 includes four big hitters (all captain choices), a trio way rotation and rotating Goalkeepers. Your bench value will never be higher than 18.0 million or 18.0% of your budget.

Example 2 includes five big hitters (all captain choices), 2* rotating pairs and an attacking rotation. Your bench value will never be higher than 19.0 million or 19.0% of your budget.

2. Player Selection

Two standard rules when picking players:

2.1 Club loyalties cannot affect who you pick: if you support Arsenal, you must allow yourself to pick Spurs players otherwise you cannot win. You need all weapons available to you in the game.

2.2 The player must be nailed on at their club: You can’t make plans for the player to only be benched. Your rotations must be done with nailed on players otherwise they simply don’t rotate; a blank fixture is the worst thing you can get in a rotation.

3. Value

Once the rules are known and adhered to, the number one thing you must consider is value. Value per million against your perceived points that player will get. Is there room for growth or is the player overpriced? 

REMEMBER, Every goalkeeper or defender gets four points for a clean sheet. There is no point paying 6.0 million for a player when there is a teammate for 5.0 million.

4. Rotations

Rotations tend to happen in defence and there are two common rotation patterns. 

4.1. 2+3: You have two big hitters playing every week and three players rotating every week to make up the third spot. 

4.2. 1+2+2: You have one big hitter and two rotating pairs filling the other two spots in your defence.

5. First Stage Squad Building

Presuming you have followed me till here. Should have worked out your value players fine, have your rotations armed and be proud. This will be your goalkeepers, three or four defenders depending on your rotation tactic used and your two attacking players that are rotating. Note this covers around half of your entire squad. The reason why you put these players in first is that you should never have to make a transfer to replace them and therefore it shows you your budget to fill in the other spots within your squad, and REMEMBER to stay within the balanced squad budget.

6. Hot and Cold Prices

Prices in gathering players you might not want from GW1, but will at some point. If you have identified a hot price, picking a player valued at the same price in your initial squad will mean it will only ever take one transfer to bring any one of those other players in. Big hitters often fall into hot prices. 

There are also cold prices, prices where you only like one player at that price. You have to be careful with these prices as it will take two transfers to bring in your next player. 

The other option to try and negate these hot and cold prices is to reserve 0.5 to 1.0 million in the bank for future flexibility.

7. Fixtures Vs Form

Simple. A good run of fixtures will create the form so you will be on the form player before anyone else. There are always exceptions to the rules but take this approach and you will create the bandwagons instead of jumping on them. 

This approach will also mean that you cash in on the player’s price going up, increasing your budget quickly. Don’t be stubborn. You can't get decisions right every time. When making these decisions know how long you plan to keep this player. This way if your player had a two-point scorer in GW1 and an opposing player scored nine, but you know you are going to keep him for a further 5-8 GWs, there is no reason to jump ship just yet.

8. Look out for OOP and POO Players

OOP: out of position players can make a mockery of the points system. Just look at Joshua King's last season. 

POO (reverse OOP): no matter how much you like a player if he is out of position, don't touch him.

9. Big Hitters

Have you have your rotations plan installed and hot and cold priced players in the squad; Now it’s time to pick your big hitters. This is where your captain is going to come from, so plan for long and pick 2-3 big hitter caption option. You should aim for at least 25% of your total points to come from your captain.

10. Captian

10.1. You play 12 players each week. Captain plays twice, earns 2/12 of your points every GW, That's 16.66666% of your weekly total!

10.2. You have complete choice of your captain, this gives you options to change from gws to gws. Captian rotation option MUST contribute to the overall points, making it 25% - 30% of your total points, not the 16.66666%. Follow this calculation, your captain would be among the top 1% of FPL managers pick.

Final word, Build your squad for GW37, starting from GW1.