Fantasy Football FPL 2018/19 review – and a look back at previous seasons

So the Premier League season finished just over a week ago with Manchester City retained the title. In the end they beat Liverpool by just the 1 point. As a United fan I “preferred” City winning – or rather, Liverpool NOT winning. But we have more things to worry about with United a mess at the moment both on and off the pitch. We had honeymoon period for couple months but then it was rubbish again. Made worse that our 2 main rivals were fighting for the title and were MILES better than us – and everyone else.

Thankfully my FPL season was mostly better.

In fact, I was on track to have my best ever finish – in overall ranking – but then a few rubbish gameweeks towards the end, meant dropping from 33k to a finish just under 85k.

As you can see it was gameweek 34 and 37 which really hit me, especially GW37. The 16 point hit in Gameweek 35 looks “bad” – and I suppose it is in a way but the reason for so many hits was because it was a double gameweek and I played the bench boost so I thought with 15 players playing, good chance of getting more points back.

Although my final score of 2279 is easily my highest ever score, my ranking is not my highest ever. Just shows that its much tougher now FPL than it was even just a few years ago. When the season ended, there were 6,324,237 teams in total – so in the top 1.4% which can’t complain at. But what could have been! Looking back at the season, there were highs and lows. Looking at the use of the chips, I didn’t really get any of them “right”. Looking into them more closely:

First Wildcard (GW5) – just 55 points that gameweek. And although its not just for one gameweek, following gameweek scores were pretty average – except GW7/8:

Freehit (GW32 – double gameweek) – I got 98 points which was a gameweek ranking of 416k so not exactly rubbish. It was looking really good after first set of games – I think I had about 75 points. But once again things didn’t work out. Sterling, Aguero, Rashford, Bernardo Silva played just 1 game – actually my captain Aguero only played 56 minutes! This was one of those weeks where many people got more than 100 points – didn’t manage it all season! Highest score was 174!

2nd Wildcard – gameweek 34 – I used the wildcard in this gameweek in preparation for the 2 blank gameweeks. If it wasn’t for blank gameweeks, I probably would not have used wildcard. My team I think was pretty good. In the end, I got 41 points (average was 54 points). Gameweek was saved only by Son and KDB.

Bench boost – gameweek 35 – now although I got 90 points and 499k gameweek rank, lots of people were getting over 100 points. But lots of the big players didn’t do much – Son blanked, Mane just 3pts, Aguero didn’t do much, KDB got injured 37 minutes into first game of the week. And Valery played just 1 game. Thank goodness for Gray and Ryan!

Triple captain – gameweek 36 – 92 points. Now 92 points is nothing to be complained about but when 92 points gets gameweek rank of 825k, you know there were big scores. It was another week where lots got more than 100 points. This was the week where Liverpool played Huddersfield and won 5-0. Everyone in FPL had a good score. I triple captained Mane so got 39 points but the winners were people were Salah who scored 19 (would have been 57 if triple captained him). But after just one game I had 59 so I thought I could finally get 100+ points. Unfortunately the rest of the team didn’t do much. Aguero and Jimenez were OK but no double digit points.

With my dip in form towards the end of the season, it did mean some of my mini-leagues ended up much closer than ideal! It was a bit similar to United. Looking at one of my mini-leagues and score per month, I had a good January – like United, and then May was awful:

At one point in my league with friends and family, I was about 100 points clear at one point. Going into final gameweek I was about 35 points clear. I could have made transfers to try and get big points but made a couple transfers to cover the person in 2nd place. Worked out as I got in Laporte who again returned. I had no had Laporte all season and I just wish I got him in at least 5 weeks before! Ended up winning the “friends and family” mini-league by 18 points.

Well time for a summer off from FPL. Before you know it, the game will be launched – in July I think. Will be interesting to see the price of certain players. But thought I would look back at my previous seasons. Although I didn’t play it as serious – or take as many screenshots.

I have played FPL since 2006/07 season so played for a long time. My rank is all over the place but its interesting to see how many points gets you a certain rank.

I have seen screenshots from first season I played and looks like there was only about 472,000 teams (so my rank of 79k was pretty rubbish!)!

In 2007/08, there were 1.7m teams at the end of the season:

Unfortunately don’t have screenshots for any other older season. In 2011/12 season, around gameweek 4 there were 2.4m teams. And I started well as my rank was about 5k!

Looking at more recent seasons and the number of teams in FPL keeps growing. In 2015/16 season, so not that long ago, there were 3,734,001 teams. Its probably going to be double that next season!

In 2016/17, in the end there was 4,503,345 teams. At end of 2017/18, there was 5,910,135 teams. As mentioned earlier, this season ended up 6,324,237 teams. Will next season break the 7 million barrier?