How I won the FPL 2012/13

[From4corners]

I did mine in the 2008/2009 season

Good luck!

[spiderm4tt]

As someone near the end of my own course and thesis, good luck keeping a healthy "work life+fpl balance" !

Thanks - yes I know it's going to be tough to keep a balance

I did mine in the 2008/2009 season

Good luck!

Thanks!

I hope your thesis was better than your FPL score!

[From4corners]

Just set your priorities straight

Actually I was on a 'walkabout' at that time so I hardly logged into the FPL-site ( ). My master's thesis was in the 2010/2011 interval and yes, I rocked it (the thesis, not my FPL season ).

[spiderm4tt]

Well I'm glad you got your priorities straight! Goodness knows what I'm gonna do regarding my priorities - I think it's gonna have to be my thesis - cue a bad FPL season!

[SuperGrover]

Good stuff, but a little wordy. You could have summarized it by simply stating "Being damn good at FPL!"

Congrats.

[spiderm4tt]

Ha thanks

[Cliffard]

Here's to being ahead of Matt. Long may it last!

[spiderm4tt]

Ha enjoy it - while it lasts!

[dazbowski]

So happy I didn't read this before the season started.

[D'oh!]

Hey Matt, good read. I see you are doing alright this season after a bit shaky start. What happened 2008-9 and 2009-10, how come you were outside Top 100k these seasons? You weren't trying hard?

Good luck

[spiderm4tt]

Hey Matt, good read. I see you are doing alright this season after a bit shaky start. What happened 2008-9 and 2009-10, how come you were outside Top 100k these seasons? You weren't trying hard?

Good luck

Thanks

Ha yes I could give lots of excuses for why I didn't have a few good seasons then, but I won't bore anyone with them right now. Though the bottom line is I didn't really try my best - I had a lot of important things going on in my personal life then and FPL took a significant back seat. Last season season though I gave it everything I had!

[jacobbannier]

A quick question, I didn't see you mention Lukaku once in the write up. I didn't play last year, was he not on your radar at all? Did many other players have him? As a non-fpl player he seemed to score quite a few goals and I imagine he was probably quite cheap too?

[spiderm4tt]

A quick question, I didn't see you mention Lukaku once in the write up. I didn't play last year, was he not on your radar at all? Did many other players have him? As a non-fpl player he seemed to score quite a few goals and I imagine he was probably quite cheap too?

Yes Lukaku was cheap and did well FPL wise last season, but only when he played. And this was the big problem with owning him, he only played 2005 mins out of a potential 3420 mins. He was in/out of the starting line up all last season, and also he didn't complete many games. This is not good for a FPL manager.

So from FPL point of view he wasn't really an option for me last season. I was aware of him but my forwards of RvP, Ba (at Newcastle), Suarez, Lambert (2nd half of season) and Tevez were my main options over Lukaku for obvious reasons, and they all served me very well!

Nobody around me had Lukaku, then towards end of the season Berbatov got injured and Suarez got banned, so a lot of my rivals got either Lukaku or Kone for the final few games.

I actually re-bought Tevez over Lukaku with my Suarez sale as I felt that Tevez and Man City had the much greater potential to pick up FPL points. Tevez actually 'flopped' from a FPL pts scoring view for me at the end of season, but I feel I was justified in picking him as he started all of Man City's remaining PL games (including DGW36) and he was so unlucky not to score quite a few goals during this period. If he had of scored those chances, I may not have had such a nervous GW38 finale that I had

[Archy]

Congratulations Matt on following up your victory last year with another strong performance this year.

Too often you see guys at the top who have mediocre records (to say the least) and I for one end up thinking 'Bleh, they've just got lucky this year'. You've backed it up this season with another strong showing and shown it was no fluke, well done buddy

[spiderm4tt]

Thanks Archy

Yes I don't think it was a fluke last season. I put everything I had in to it prior each GW deadline and thankfully things just went my way most weeks. Though I certainly wasn't lucky for all the 38 GWs!

Yes my previous four FPL seasons weren't great, but I've said before that I genuinely wasn't interested much in FPL/Fantasy Football then due to significantly increased family and work commitments.

When I was a student at the start of my FPL career I had plenty of time to play FPL and my first two season rankings reflected this. Also I nearly won a few other major Fantasy Football comps back then, including the TFF, where I was consistently in top 100 (had my name in the paper a lot) most seasons and even reached 7th in the world with two months to go, but I gambled at the end and messed up to finish in top 70 overall.

I'm just a bit of football geek really who enjoys FPL!

[BobMem]

I've finally caught up and read the second half of the season of your article m4tt.

My heartfelt congratulations (again) but I must say, the sentence(s) which made me laugh was "Yet again Demel picked up an assist/clean sheet on my bench".

How many times?!

If you'd have played Demel every GW you might not have had such a nervous GW38

[spiderm4tt]

Thanks

Ha yes Demel was a legend last season....I just wish I'd put more trust in him!

[Robin Write]

Amateur mistake.