Little Pea'd off? Wes your score 'King poor or were all your wishes Grant(ed)? GW31 scores!

[TheBigLewandowski]

33 all out with the free hit. Had hoped for so much better but that's the way it pans out. Bacuna with 8 points as 1st sub too!

[sstaffsw]

32 FH

[White Tiger]

32, using FH. Only Mane delivered more than 2 points. Left Siggy 1st on bench, annoyingly.

[Spinynorman]

I ended up with a pretty naff 28 after using my free hit.

[swadd1er]

Looks like 35 using FH

Make that 38 with Mané’s bonus

[Tall Paul]

22

Worst free hit ever.

[Oxford NZ]

27 (-4) Maybe my lowest score in FPL

[sstaffsw]

My non-FH team would have scored 10, so on reflection my FH score of 32 ain't so bad I guess but could obviously have been better.

[4candles]

39 from 7 (no FH). Happy with that.

[MPTree]

Bacuna with 8 points as 1st sub too!

Same here.

Looks like it’ll be 48 with the FH for me, thanks largely to taking the risk holding Mané. Pleased enough.

[Chinese Whisperer]

63 thanks to Mane (C). No chips used this week either.

[Sutter Kane]

37 (-4). OK I guess but only because the FHs generally failed.

[snout]

52 (nh). With Salah as captain. Should have stuck with Mane but can't complain too much.

[Stemania]

Amazingly the average score of a FHer in the Top 10k was only 4.3 points more than non-chip teams, despite the normal teams averaging only 9-10 players and around 60% of them taking a hit.

Bonkers.

A bang average 36(-4) here.

[Sutter Kane]

Amazingly the average score of a FHer in the Top 10k was only 4.3 points more than non-chip teams, despite the normal teams averaging only 9-10 players and around 60% of them taking a hit.

Bonkers.

But I suspect those FHers gained more points from GW28-30. All in all, impossibly difficult permutations to fathom.

[Stu255]

Amazingly the average score of a FHer in the Top 10k was only 4.3 points more than non-chip teams, despite the normal teams averaging only 9-10 players and around 60% of them taking a hit.

Bonkers.

A bang average 36(-4) here.

This.

And before anyone jumps in with “ah but it’s more complex than that” on a sample of 10,000 or 100,000 all of those complex pro and con factors cancel each other out at the macro level.

I hypotheses that the FH’s in GW32 achieve a greater margin that +4.3pts for the FH chip.
I bet for GW32 it’s closer to +25pts on the same measure.

I bet if you do this measure on every GW this season that GW31 is the lowest delta for the FH chip (or very close to the lowest). Which is what I predicted last week and have been hammered for today.

I also predict that GW32 and GW35 are the two highest delta for the FH chip out of all 38 GW’s come the end of the season.

And I will be correct because hindsight and lucky.

[MPTree]

Amazingly the average score of a FHer in the Top 10k was only 4.3 points more than non-chip teams, despite the normal teams averaging only 9-10 players and around 60% of them taking a hit.

Bonkers.

A bang average 36(-4) here.

This.

And before anyone jumps in with “ah but it’s more complex than that” on a sample of 10,000 or 100,000 all of those complex pro and con factors cancel each other out at the macro level.

I hypotheses that the FH’s in GW32 achieve a greater margin that +4.3pts for the FH chip.
I bet it’s closer to +25pts on the same measure.

I bet if you do this measure on every GW this season that GW31 is the lowest delta for the FH chip (or very close to the lowest). Which is what I predicted last week.

I also predict that GW32 and GW35 are the two highest delta for the FH chip.

And I will be correct because hindsight and lucky.

Ah but it's more complex than that.

It doesn't make a great deal of sense analysing the FH chip in isolation, when it's actually used as part of a strategy in conjunction with other chips. For the analysis to be worthwhile, I'd want to see comparison of chip combinations, as well as a discussion about the expected number of BGW players or DGW players in a given squad for each different scenario.

Did my FH in GW31 and TC in GW32 have more points potential than a FH32 and a TC in a single GW (which is when I would have been forced to play it)? I don't know the answer, but I think it's close. It's a very easy thing to claim "the FH chip yields greater potential in a DGW than a BGW"—and that may or may not be true—but it doesn't really teach us anything about correct chip usage when there's two other chips to maximise too, along with a WC.

[Stemania]

If you ran the GW again the FH would no doubt have gained far more than 4.3 points on the non-chippers.

[dellboy30]

39 from 10 (no FH) but capt arnie over mane

[Stu255]

If you ran the GW again the FH would no doubt have gained far more than 4.3 points on the non-chippers.

Ah but how many times out of 100 reruns would the GW31 FH’s beat the GW32 FHers on that very metric?

I would say less than 20/100 probably closer to 15/100.

[cesc408]

43 (-4)

Mane and King doing the business. Take that considering it started horribly with a Maguire Red Card after 4 mins and Fail-anski conceding 3 to Hudds.

[Stu255]

but it doesn't really teach us anything about correct chip usage when there's two other chips to maximise too, along with a WC.

It does teach us something! It absolutely does.

It just doesn’t teach us everything.


But we don’t need a unified theory in one step do we?

We can learn something about the probabilistic value of a chip by isolating it and seeing how it performs probabilisticly at the macro level.

If you see that over the past X seasons that FH gives +15 in most game weeks but averages +10 in BGWs and averages +25 in DGW then that is qualitative information that informs your use of the chip.

If TC averages +4 in most GW’s and +7 in DGW’s then that helps guide your strategy v’s the FH info, does it not?

[Adelante]

30 (-4) without a free hit.

Bloody Maddison sitting in my bench - brought him in for Fraser then swapped them back again on Friday night. Sod’s law!

Hoping FH32 pays off.

[Stevieste]

29 with my FH used.

Would have been 26 if never used it and kept my orginal 6 players for the gameweek.

Im going to think of the positives and be grateful for my extra 3 points

[SteveieB123]

23 with 6 to play. Sounds half decent I suppose.... until you factor in 15 points on the bench. Poor management!!

Also took out Rondon on my free hit

47 with 16 on the bench in the end. I guess would have taken around 50 considering the lack of choice before it started....

[OIEIAO]

28(-4) with 4 to go. Salah (triple captain), 2 Liverpool defenders and Higuain.

"Stars" of this relatively good show
Rondon 8
Ogbonna 7
Lanzini 5
Yedlin 4

I had 2 atrocious weeks before this so this is a small step back in the right direction.

Performances of Salah vs Mane and Hazard is going to be the critical factor this week.

An example of the fine margins and good/bad fortune in this game - I resolved to buy Higuain and Adam Smith on Friday a week ago. I planned to discuss with a friend that night but didn't. got home at 1.30am to find I'd missed the price changes by 30 mins.... Doherty had dropped 0.1 and I was priced out of the move (I knew this was coming but late night etc etc). I settled for Ogbonna instead of Smith. They scored a point a piece last week but Smith got injured. This week Ogbonna got me a goal! So that mistake could have gained me somewhere between 4 and 11 points.

Make that 40(-4) all out.
Climbing from 299k to 294k was not clearly the plan this week having carefully assembled a starting XI of whom only Snodgrass failed to feature.
Triple captain Salah a disaster of course, I will only get myself down if I dwell on it though.
Time to look forward to free hit fun this coming week.

Mane won me £37.50 from a £5.00 free bet scoring against Bayern the other night. This somewhat softens the blow of being mugged off by him week after week in FPL.....

[Smurphy Paw]

31(-4)
As average as average can be

[Talkie Toaster]

Finished on 37 with a small green arrow after today's blankfest.

My thoughts on the FH chip are along a similar line to MPTree's, that to properly analyse it's use you have to look beyond the GW that you chose to play, or not play, it and include the GWs around it. It's not a success if you've got a good score without the FH, but damaged your team in the previous GWs preparing for it and not left your team in a good place for the next GW. Similarly, it's not a success if you've got a good score by playing FH, but will then revert to a team that isn't performing; you'd be better off making permanent changes with transfers or a WC instead. Ultimately I think it's more helpful to view the FH as a game management aid, rather than a direct source of extra points. It's best use will vary from team to team and person to person, depending on the strategy and philosophy of the manager.

[RuudTheDudeVanTheMan]

41 all out no FH. Was on 30 yesterday and the so called big hitters of Allison, Robertson, Luiz, Hazard and Salah contributed 11 points today. Frustrating.

[Pirlo's Beard]

31(-4)
As average as average can be

The same for me. Another dispiriting backwards step in a season marked by inertia.