Hi all

So my rival is 60 points ahead of me now exactly. Is the gap too far, or can i still catch up. He has both his wildcards to use and i have none. What's the bestr strategy for chasing a substantial no. of points. Any tips from seasoned pros out there would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Pick some different players to him (or her!) and cross your fingers

60 points is nothing.

I was over 100 points behind my rivals before Christmas and now they are worried about me overtaking them.

As above, pick some different players..

You 'll need to be different and study the fixtures very carefully.

In order to make my comeback I ditched Silva, kompany and 4 weeks ago I ditched RVP. Had to go for mid price players/low ownership players with big scoring potential and it has paid off... I managed to back Yaya, Valencia, Dempsey, Sturridge, BAE even Baines (scored a penalty and got some BP's) before they hit form.

At the moment I am looking at mid price players like Cisse, Etherington, Rodellaga, Crouch, Zamora to try and make a move.

The most important thing is to study the fixtures but don't be afraid to shake things up.

You can make up 60 points in, say, three gameweeks - with some luck! - so keep fighting.

While different players is essential don't be reckless - yet!
Make sure you keep some reliable performers regardless of whether he has them or not. You shouldn't be desperate now with so many weeks left to play.

Wildcards can be two-edged swords. Many teams have suffered from over-tinkering in the past and, anyway, how he uses them is outwith your control so don't worry about them. As the season progresses if you are still behind then I'd suggest multiple transfers over the last few weeks. Unless there's a second prize involved you may as well go for glory!

Captain choice will probably be critical. If you think he has an obvious choice in any given week and you can match it, I'd do so. This will stop him leaping ahead through a fortunate hat-trick, etc.

I would tell you that 60 points are nothing, but without a few drastic differences in score action it's a big gap, that's four points a week you need to claw back to finish level. While that sounds do-able, they are bound to outscore you some of time too, meaning that you need to outscore them by even more when you outscore them.

It is certainly do-able, but you need to hit the jackpot a few times for it to happen, and just pray they don't ever hit the jackpot

I was once told a theory that if you trying to hunt a particular player down then you should "shadow" their defence (including GK) and try and play the fixtures to try and get the jump on them attacking wise. CS's are the hardest thing to predict so you eliminate any differentials by "shadowing" i.e. exacty the same players.

Good advice, i have kinda shadowed my rivals (120pts ahead) defence and in the last 2 weeks knocked his lead down to 75 points... there are some sligh differences like he has Evra and i went with J Evans (cheaper and tempoary solution)

Anyway, shadowed defence, good captain choices and strong varied mid/attack with a few differentials should see you gain on him - If i would have captained bale like i was supposed to but missed the deadline i would have caught him by another 15...

Managed to lose 100pts to a mate of mine at the start of the season, but I've worked it back and I'm now 100pts ahead of him.

It's all possible. A few good weeks and leads can be eliminated. Good captaincy choices often do the damage.

Never thought of 'shadowing' as a chasing tactic before, interesting.

It is an interesting theory that really only works if you set yourself the definitive prey to be hunted down. i.e Usually the No.1 in whichever league or a certain mate that you just have finish above in the league. I have done it and pulled back over 150pts in a Telegraph private league before. Just left it maybe 3 weeks too late before implementing to actually win but it ended up extremely close.

It certainly limits where they can outscore you. Then you're just backing yourself to pick 6 front players that will score more then their 6 front players over the forthcoming weeks. Far better odds than trying to pick 11 that will or more importantly may not. You won't make as big inroads into the lead every week but it's all about catching over numerous weeks. Slowly, slowly catchy Monkey as they say.

Thanks mate, and everyone else. Sound advice.

I think he's definitely going to captain RVP this week so i don't know whether to do the same or go with Aguero

I'd armband RVP for sure. What's your team?

Im in a similar position in my league which has £500 on offer for the winner. Im trailing by 68 pts now. Unfortunately i just cant seem to make any ground as he is getting too much luck. It seems like every week he has subs come in from the bench with points. Sadly for me this week was the same story together with him having krul in goal against my lindegaurd who got injured and my sub keeper vorm losing clean sheet with the last kick of the game. I had bale as captain but still got outpointed by the other leaders who didnt.

The problem is is that most teams seem to have the same players so its hard to make any headway. Its getting to the point now were i am trying different things by bringing in players who have the potential to score well but have low ownership such as huth, vermaelen, baines etc. Just not working at the moment though.

One of the reasons I brought in guys like McClean, Sigurðsson and Ox. Kinda sucks (understatement) that Dempsey, Sess and Valencia also got more than two points again. Ow, and I really detest the Newcastle defenders , especially this Taylor fella

Maybe I take this game with too simplistic an approach but what I tend to do is the following:

1) Don't look at the team above.
2) Only take point hits when they are definitely needed.

I think that ignoring the other teams around you and trusting your own opinions on the games being played, rather than taking into account what someone else might be doing, is the best way to play. This will mean that you will get the best points YOU think possible, and if they match those scores then fair play to them, they've had a good season!

Point hits are self explanatory, I only make them when it's doubtful I can field a starting 11, and in the very rare cases where it's almost certain another player is going to have a blinder.

totally agree. All this talk of shadowing defences etc. means nothing to me. But then this is my first year playing.

Choose the team that you think will get you the most number of points, see where that leaves you, and that's it.

I think with the simlarity of the teams now, especially the attacking midfield players and RVP, 60 points is hard to catch up unless you have a huge team value to work with. You definitely need luck if you're up against a decent player I'm afraid to say, but it can be done. I'm the one currently with a 57pt lead, and it doesn't feel good at all when they gain ground!

i think a key thing to consider when trying to catch a big lead up is captain choice. If you always go for the obvious option, you may never differentiate yourself from your opponents. If you can select another player that might prove to be a differential (think: Dempsey last week) then essentially you're getting an extra player's worth of points each week over the leader.

I realise that this involves risk, but there's been few reliable captain choices this year past an 8 week block for Van Persie and the same for Ba. If you want to win it, you've got to take a risk or two, and this way means you can keep the core team as a 'shadow' and win it on the tactical decisions (i.e. captain and bench).

Just another part of the puzzle i guess, but i've caught up 100+ points leads this season and last with just a few decent captain choices. Last season i got on RVP early as soon as he came back, and this season i've caught up 80 points in the last 2 weeks on our leader just by using the armband better than they have.

I'm in a similar situation. 60pts behind the leader in small league. I've very very roughly worked out the net likely movement in one week is 10pts, in other words if he's 50pts ahead with 5 weeks ago, he's likely got it. Anything less is still within reach. So 60pts within 14 weeks is certainly do-able.

It's very tight week to week as we have a lot of the same players, so you would imagine the captaincy, being the one discretionary input you (not luck) determine that leverages your points, becomes even more crucial. However, I'm not sure I want to be the one taking the risk by captaining differentials. I think that can become a slippery slope, ie this week RVP is an obvious choice and I would rather captain him too than risk falling behind. I'd rather be hoping my rival doesn't also captain him (however unlikely), than hoping RVP doesn't score a hatful. Cognitive dissonance. Horrible.

I too am intrigued by the shadowing the defence theory however, I may look into that.

Looking on it from a different perspective, I would consider how good is the player you are against? If he isnt very good you should be able to catch 60 points by playing optimumly and hopefully not getting unluckly. If he is decent and unlikely to make many mistakes you will just have to mix it up and hope to get a bit of luck.

Keep in mind all it takes is a couple of lucky/unlucky captain choices to make up some pretty big swings.

Word! Then again...the guy I was chasing chose Bale as captain this week while having RvP in his team as well. Lucky me, caught up with a 53 point gap in one week time and now trailing 1 point behind

Speaking from past experience I find using "differentials" and captain gambles a mistake in chasing down a leader, I adopted this strategy in previous seasons when I have been behind and it usually leads to falling further behind. 60 points is nothing at all, I would suggest sticking with proven scorers for at least another 6-8 gameweeks and hope for a bit of luck / mistake from the leader.

Also keep an eye on the cup fixtures and potential double game weeks. Also the weather forecast may play a part, big swings can happen now we are into FA Cup season, also bear in mind the implications of the European competitions.

Factor all of the above, hope your opponent doesn't. I'd rather focus on my own team than selecting different players and captains just because your main opponent has X.

I agree with the above in terms of not looking for differentials. However I disagree that 60 points is nothing. Apart from the defence with: Swansea, Newcastle, ManC dominating, we are looking basically at Dempsey, Silva, Sessegnon, Bale, Valencia, Ba, Aguero, RVP as so prevalent, it's got to be a first for this kind of ownership in FPL. So unless your opponents have a much different team to this, you have to take some risks as these players are not highly owned for nothing which indicates to me that 60 points could be enormous. I think at this stage identifying what player you are going to captain when RVP is not it could be crucial. I'm up against someone who has not used a WC at all (!!), rarely changes his team, many times doesn't make transfers and is generally in past seasons an awful player but he has 7 of that 8 I'm talking about and I'm finding it impossible to pull away.

My season is over now after trying something different last week to try and catch my leader by captaining silva instead of vp. With that and other things going against me, my deficit has gone from 53 to almost 100 in one week. Its absolutely impossible for me to overhaul that in 14 gameweeks when we have about 8 of the same players.