You're Not A Bad Manager, FPL Is Just Random

FPL is tough, really tough.

And it’s made worse by that one friend who’s dominating your mini-league but has forgotten all about his team.

Whilst you’re painstakingly analysing each game and checking the Premier League injury list each night, your friend’s set-and-forget team is storming up the FPL world rankings. 

It's easy to question yourself as an FPL manager when this happens.

Continuous red arrows and your laid-back friend’s teams doing well can play with your head…

Is it my luck? Is my FPL analysis a waste of time? Am I just a rubbish FPL manager?

Well, I don’t know. But I can say, you’re probably not as bad of a player as you think. 

Why? Because FPL is random. Really random. 

Don’t believe me? 

Well, check out this guy who hasn’t changed his team since Gameweek 1 this season. 

Rayyan Khan’s team Ray FC is ranked 1,472 in the world at the time of writing. His rank at GW14 is an accolade most FPL professionals would dream of.

But that’s not the impressive part…

Ray FC has used zero transfers and zero chips so far. You’d have a better chance of being struck by lightning while performing a handstand on an elephant’s back, than achieving Ray FC’s rank without any alteration. 

So how is this possible?

How can someone who probably doesn’t even play FPL anymore rank so highly?

Simple. Outcomes and decisions are distinct and separate.

A good decision can lead to a bad outcome.

The opposite is also true, where a bad decision leads to a good outcome.

The more “good decisions” you make, the more likely you are to have a good outcome. But there is no guarantee. 

A decision becomes increasingly good if it is based on reliable data which is objectively analysed.

Good decisions and outcomes are separated by one thing which is out of FPL manager's control: randomness. 

Was it right for Ray FC to make zero transfers each gameweek? Certainly not.  

So what made his seemingly bad decisions yield good outcomes? Randomness. 

And to hammer home the point that good decisions don’t always lead to good outcomes, we may have found the perfect contrasting example to Ray FC.

Ali Jahangirov is an active FPL manager who takes the opposite approach to a set-and-forget strategy. And he is not just any other player… he is the 2022-23 FPL champion.

The former FPL champ is having the complete opposite season to Ray FC despite his highly analytical and well-thought-out approach:

• He sits at 2,829,180 in the world at GW13 in the 2023-24 season.

• His GW13 team ranked 7,322,430 out of 10,341,100 players.

• He used his first Wildcard in GW9.

• He has taken three hits - a four-point penalty when transferring out a player beyond the given transfers - so far in 2023-24. What’s more, he only took three hits in total in the first 16 gameweeks of the year he won FPL.

Ali is one of the best FPL players in the world. He has won the god-damn thing. And probably made better “decisions” than Ray FC. Yet those well-thought-out, analytical decisions have not translated into FPL points.

He probably uses the same formula for decisions as he did the season he won FPL. We know this because he wrote a book on how he won and how he made decisions. 

As the best poker players say, decisions are all about “process, process, process.” And clearly, Ali has a good system to fall back on given his strong track record. 

But once again, this is not the first time FPL’s randomness has come between decisions and outcomes…

Bulgarian, Bozhidar Gospodinov's 'Pirin SS' was 10,392 in the world after 16 gameweeks, beating 99.87% of all other teams.

Like Ray, he has used zero transfers and zero chips. 

These examples can serve as a reminder that you’re not as bad as you might think.

Your set-and-forget friend is not a genius.

And the game isn’t pure luck.

But, boy oh boy can randomness make a good decision look bad. 

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