FPL Fortress

The Premier League may have taken last weekend off, but here at the Fortress, dilemmas have been brewing—and this is the episode where we bring them to the fore. To start, we revisit the idea of selling Haaland by exploring other permutations that the extra cash can fund. Regular listeners will know that we’re a very interdisciplinary podcast; accordingly, Jiayang references Hegel’s assertion that changes in quantity may eventually result in changes in quality as a metaphor to question how close managers are to actually committing to the act. Soon afterwards, we arrive at our first unanswerable question: How much weight should we be putting on small nuggets of information—like the fact that Haaland will likely be facing Dragusin instead of Van de Ven? Our second Dilemma Deliberation centers around a case study of Jiayang’s team: is it worth it to bring in Palmer for a -8 hit? To answer this question, we spontaneously decide to do something unprecedented: we transplant our captaincy segment right into the heart of our Dilemma Deliberations. In the process, we stumble across our second unanswerable question: What’s the tradeoff between sample accuracy and sample size, particularly at this point in the season when only 11 games have been played? After much grappling, we finally land on our third unanswerable question: Is intentionally creating sunk costs a winning strategy? Though definitive conclusions remain elusive, we hope the act of posing and confronting such questions are continually advancing the game forward. There is beauty in trying.

Today’s episode centers around a single Tweet from FPL 420 (@420fpl) at 5:45 PM on October 27, 2024: “😂Your GW10 points were mostly decided weeks ago mate.” Despite the seemingly light-hearted, jovial tone evoked by the laughing emoji, the statement struck us as being quite profound. There is genuine evidence corroborating this claim—just take the all-too-painful example of Jiayang buying Colwill instead of Aina to replace Hall in GW 6, resulting in a remarkable 20-point swing (an excellent demonstration of the macroeconomic phenomenon of the “multiplier effect”). If our past determines our present and our present determines our future, then which temporal state should we live in? We then pivot to the question of how viable it is to have three premium midfielders at the expense of Haaland—and in the process of conducting a cost-benefit analysis using the likelihood of owning the best captaincy option each gameweek, Jacob strays dangerously close to revisionism before Jiayang reels him in.

For the most part, I try to employ a well-balanced mixture of professionalism and wittiness when writing these episode blurbs. But from the bottom of my heart, that was one of the most enjoyable episodes I’ve ever had the pleasure of recording. Regular listeners will know that the Fortress enters flow state whenever we sink our teeth into a particularly juicy thought experiment—and the one explored in this episode might just be our crown jewel. It all started when Jiayang asked Jacob if he would be happy owning a player whose points were guaranteed to follow the pattern of a sinusoidal function; the odyssey that ensued (or rather, in keeping with the general principle of opting for active over passive voice, “the ensuing odyssey”) takes us on a whirlwind from the nostalgia of James Ward-Prowse’s classic 150-point seasons to the contemporary pertinence of the Palmer-Son-Saka hokey-cokey. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this timeless classic (if you know, you know)...

This week, Jiayang had to get a lot off his chest. His transfer in Solanke accumulated a grand total of 0.11 xGI in a four-goal demolition of West Ham, Calvert-Lewin and Eze continued to contend for the coveted title of Biggest Twat in his team, and his captain Haaland decided to do his best Colorado River impression by extending his dry run for yet another gameweek. Dilemma Deliberations-wise, we begin by focusing on Arsenal’s and Aston Villa’s poor upcoming fixtures (“well-endowed on the y-axis and challenged on the x-axis,” as one might say). Then, we turn our attention towards the bigger-picture question of whether or not we ought to listen to our guts—though perhaps the answer depends on whether or not our gut microbiomes are healthy and well-balanced. And finally, despite Haaland’s three successive blanks, it seems like he simply MUST be our captain for GW 9—but what if our guts are leading us towards Mbeumo against Ipswich at home? These are the questions…

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Today, Donald Trump mentioned UTDTrey in a Tweet—which can only spell disaster for Trump’s campaign, since nobody can escape the Trey jinx. It’s no surprise, then, that the team he reps has steadily been on the decline since he joined Twitter. As Jacob says, United are towing the line between being hated and being forgotten—and for a franchise like Manchester United, the latter might be worse. Gameweek 6 also saw City draw to Newcastle, Arsenal avoid dropping points at the death against Leicester, and a certain Cole Palmer become the first and only player in Premier League history to score four goals in one half of football. We start our Dilemma Deliberations with this starboy—is now the time? Should he have been included in our discussions about the trifecta of Haaland, Salah, and Saka last week? What even is the word for trifecta, but … four? Quadfecta? Superfecta? We then conjecture about whether or not the Philip Walter Foden train is fast approaching the station, and round off the segment with a theoretical lament on our abysmal team values (but seriously, it’s an important issue!). Finally, captaincy indeed seems to be a decision between our newly minted Fantastic Four—which fixture looks like the friendliest of the bunch?

Mikel Arteta almost pulled off the low block of the century against Man City, condemning City to feed their onslaught through Rúben Dias—hardly the most creative player in their team. Due to the nature of this low block (and perhaps due in part to his ghosting tendencies), Kai Havertz completed a grand total of 0 out of 5 attempted passes over the course of the 90 minutes. Nonetheless, he is a contender for the third best Arsenal asset to own, behind Saka and Gabriel, and this assessment forms the meat and potatoes of this episode of the FPL Fortress. Elsewhere, we also discuss whether the nearly 800,000 managers who have bought Luis Díaz made a good choice, as well as a grave mistake that Wildcarders and non-Wildcarders alike seem to be making. Finally, captaincy this week seems to be a relatively close call between the Trifecta—Saka at home to Leicester, Salah away to a Wolves that conceded 6 to Chelsea, or Haaland against a thoroughly unremarkable Newcastle?

The talk of the town is the Gameweek 6 Wildcard. Are Arsenal’s and City’s good fixtures enough to warrant pressing the button? Just how in the mud does your team need to be in order for the Wildcard to be worth it? In this episode, we try to work through these questions and analyze the cheap Isak replacements—though there are many options, few are all that exciting. And for once, the obvious captaincy choice doesn’t seem to be Haaland—but what do you do if you don’t have Mo?

To borrow a phrase from Noni Madueke: everything about this game is s***. Well, not really—in fact, FPL is a really compelling, well designed game, especially with this year’s pricing—but it can feel pretty awful when the team you spent the entire summer tinkering with, and one that looks quite decent on paper, just kind of flops after the first couple of weeks. Alas, it is what it is—and though that may sound defeatist, I’m using it in the defiant way here, in the sense that we’re accepting what’s transpired and blazing onwards, unfazed. The meat and potatoes of this first midweek episode are about how to deal with a bad start (which, generally speaking, both Jacob and Jiayang have suffered). Sprinkled within is a neat little debate about when the best moment to get Ollie Watkins might be, as well as a bit of light economics chitchat.

Welcome to our fifth season here at the FPL Fortress! And believe it or not, despite being in the business for so long, it’s our very first season preview. We’re very excited to share our thoughts in a couple of different areas: we’ll start with all the new rule changes, then we’ll talk about player pricing through the lens of “pricing tiers” (e.g. the list of midfielders in the £9.5 to £10.5 range), and finally we’ll discuss our first drafts. Given that not a single minute of Premier League football has actually been played yet, our chat is a little more theoretical, and you’ll get to see how the differences in Jacob and Jiayang’s FPL philosophies manifest in our team selections. Happy listening and happy tinkering!

And just like that, the 2023/24 season comes to a close. It’s been a pretty good one—both of us enjoyed our best ever finishes, and there have been a number of memorable moments, from Palmer’s 26-pointer to the mouth-watering Gameweek 34 Free Hit. In what is now customary fashion for the Fortress’s season reviews, we assign our superlatives, which include Player of the Season, Most Consistent, Purplest Patch, most maddening to own, and favorite moments. Then, it’s the classic Breakout XI (Jacob’s second-favorite segment) and Flop XI (Jacob’s favorite segment). Finally, we finish off with our reflections and lessons learned going into next season. We have greatly enjoyed keeping the Fortress going strong during our busy first year of college, and wish everyone a healthy green summer!