How to stop sucking at Fantasy Premier League

I am a bad Fantasy Premier League player. It may surprise you given how analytics-focused this newsletter is, and how often we disagree with conventional wisdom about player quality due to the metrics we value, but I have historically been a vibes-based manager who does not dig into the numbers. I also miss the lineup deadline a lot.

This year, I’m going to try to be better. And given how much crossover audience this newsletter seems to have with the FPL community, I thought you’d appreciate an FPL-focused post. We’ll include some FPL bits in the Friday grab bag newsletters going forward.

(In case anyone is unfamiliar with the game, you can play Fantasy Premier League for free here.)

As you may have gathered from the above, I am in no way qualified to give you FPL advice. However, I have rounded up some excellent sources from people who are. First up is friend of the newsletter Elevenify, who has a newsletter you can subscribe to here and a Twitter account you can follow here.

He does a lot of projections of both team results and individual player production, like this one which you might find extremely helpful:

The rest of his first roundup of Premier League data with projections for the first 6 matchweeks is here, and it should be extremely helpful in guiding you towards picking a good team.

Second, I really liked this video from FPL Mate, who asked 100 players with verified top 1% finishes to submit their teams. He broke down their player selections and compared them to the most picked players in the game, figuring out who FPL experts think are the most over and under-valued players in the game right now.

And finally, I’ve gone through a lot of the websites that round up injury news, and I’ve found that Premier Injuries is the best one. They’re really good about updating the site regularly and linking the most up to date manager press conference quotes about player injuries. Jarrad Branthwaite is out this weekend with a thigh injury, by the way, so don’t pick him!

If anyone else has favorite sources of FPL information, please let me know and I’d love to check them out. —KM

One last time, a plug for our Premier League preview. Liverpool vs. Bournemouth kicks off the season tomorrow (!!!), and we’ve got a season preview looking at all 20 teams in detail. It has contributions from Ted and I, plus a slew of other brilliant people. We wanted to be able to pay those other people fairly, so it’s £10, and you can get it here. Click the far right option on PC/bottom option on mobile, and make sure the button at the bottom says £10. This sub will get you access to the whole thing: All 30,000+ words, with stats and data viz you won’t get anywhere else.

Once you’ve bought it, all of the previews live here. Links to each team’s preview are in the predicted table. You’ll need to be signed into the website with the email address you subscribed with to access them.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.”