Yeah the benched scores have been extreme recently. Partly a result of the current spread of funds I think, but its pretty galling that when you have almost the same 15 players as most of your rivals, you can still end up 40 points behind them on any given week just due to a different captaincy decision or them deciding to bench different players. Any sort of points prediction model would have the difference at 5 points at most and it ends up at 40 points
Whilst we are on the subject of being driven nuts, I think my biggest personal bugbear this season is how COVID disproportionately affected my team more than most. Week 11 I lost 3 Villa players including my only playing goalkeeper due to the outbreak at Newcastle. A few days later the Blank 18 and double 19 fixtures were announced, my team was slightly better suited for 18 and I thought the fixture list better suited to playing 18 normally, and a FH in 19 (due to the fixtures GW20 and beyond, of course this plan to FH was shelved when man u and City had fixtures rearranged into 18 and 19), so managed my team fairly normally but in a way which factored in the blank, this meant more of a focus on City and Spurs players. Of course City and Spurs were 2 of the 4 clubs affected in GW16 by Covid, so I lost another 4 players there.
Then it finally gets to week 18 and Villa get Covid so lost another 3 players there, of course they got Covid in the first blank week of the season so I have no bench, so can only field 8 men.
Managed to avoid using the FH at least, which should give a big advantage later on in the season I thought....except it won't because the one fixture I really needed in GW18 (Spurs v Villa) didn't happen, and they're going to rescedule it into GW29, which is where the value of my FH would have been seen. Except it won't now as everyone can hold their Villa and Spurs players through from doubling in 26, so thats a big strategic advantage over the field lost.
If I can reach the top 100k come season end it will be an effing miracle given the amount of BS that has hit my team, and I'd regard it as one of my best ever FPL performances. Of course when you just look at my rank it will look as nondescript as ever and will be dismissed as just another average season from an average player
Watkins/Diagne would be useful this week and thereafter, while Robertson 
but it's an observation in pure footballing terms. Unfortunately we as addicts can make (and admire) these observations at peace only once we've got the bloody guy in our team. 
. However, given the chance I would do it again because the odds made sense at the time. That’s all we can do and hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20 vision.
