The Slow Build: How Much is Your FPL Team Worth?

The Official Fantasy Premier League platform does not have extreme fluctuations like Wall Street (or Fantrax). Instead, it is designed to keep things going slow and steady. You may not notice much of a difference in the value of your team game to game, but after 10 weeks, it is definitely time to evaluate how things stand. So, how much value have you built so far this season? Are you ahead of the pace, or lagging behind?

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The Benefits of Having a Valuable Team

Why do you want a valuable team? Well, why does anybody want anything worth more now than the original price paid? Because it is always good to grab a bargain that turns out to be worth more! It’s also nice to boast a portfolio of players that your mini-league opponents can’t afford to duplicate, while also offering a chance to afford high caliber players when you choose to sell price risers from your team who get injured or otherwise fall on tough times.

In the case of your FPL team, if you’ve gone from £100 up to £105, that means that for the rest of the season, you’re getting £5 extra per week. With 28 games left, you will get £140 extra of value (on top of the extra you have already gleaned this season, and not counting any future gains over £105 the rest of the way). That’s basically like having 15 extra weeks of Kevin De Bruyne, since he costs £9.8. Not too shabby, eh?

Of course, you also have to account for inflation. In this case, the baseline would be how much everybody else has seen their team’s value rise. If your total team value is more than the average, then that extra value is indeed a benefit. If you are below the average, though, then the added money is not actually working for you as much as you would like.

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How Might You Have Accumulated (or Lost) Wealth So Far?

There are several ways that you may have built up your coffers, or alternately watched them deplete. Let’s look into some of them.

WERE YOU ABLE TO GET IN EARLY ON PLAYERS WHOSE PRICES HAVE RISEN?

It’s not just about buying good players, it’s also about buying them early, before everybody else does. Eden Hazard’s price has risen from £10.5 all the way up to £11.4. If you have the Chelsea superstar, did you grab him at or around £10.5? Did you wait until he was up to £11.0? Or even worse, did you just now buy him at £11.4 and suffer through seeing him waste an expensive spot on your bench as he missed out through injury this week?

HAVE YOU SOLD ANY PLAYERS AT A GAIN (OR LOSS)?

It’s always nice to sell players for a profit, but FPL only allows you to bank up to half of that difference, which is an incentive to keep those players. More importantly, it’s vital not to sell too many players for big losses. That can really add up, and in the worst case scenario, it can actually leave you with a team worth less than the £100 you started with.

For instance, if you were big on Wolverhampton’s Diogo Jota at the start of the season before later souring on him, how long did you wait? Did you dump him when his price slipped from £6.5 to 6.4? Or worse, when it was down to £6.2? Or just recently after it had fallen to £6.0?

DID YOU RE-PURCHASE ANY PLAYERS YOU SOLD?

Benjamin Mendy stands out as an example of a player you may have sold, and then re-purchased. (As for me, guilty as charged!) He had a brilliant start to the season, scoring 32 points in the first four games, but then was out through injury (and extracurricular controversy) for the next three contests. If you bought him after his price was high in Week 4, sold him after Week 7 following a price fall, and then grabbed him after Week 9 when his cost had jumped again, you actually would have lost money on him.

IF YOU PUT YOUR WILDCARD INTO PLAY, WAS IT EARLY OR ONLY RECENTLY?

You don’t really want to think about team value too much when using your first half unlimited transfer wildcard chip. You should really just play your wildcard whenever it makes sense (and you will certainly want to think about when that is, rather than using it on impulse). However, when looking at your team value at any given moment, whether you used your wildcard recently or long ago will have an impact.

If you played your wildcard chip in the first five weeks, that likely allowed you to pick up several players as their prices were on the rise, and hopefully those values have kept ticking up. Instead, if you only used it in the past couple/few weeks, your player values have not had as much time to grow.

If you have not yet used your wildcard, your team’s value should be sitting pretty. Naturally, if you haven’t been tempted to use it, that should mean that your team is chock full of players who are performing very well and whose values have consequently risen. On top of that, whenever you sell a lot of players, you lose a good portion of any extra value you have amassed, since you lose at least half of the difference between purchase price and current value at the time of sale. Holding onto — or in other words, not selling — a significant number of your price jumpers is a big boon to your bottom line.

HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU HAVE IN THE BANK?

If you are sitting on a big pile of unused money in the bank, sure that leaves you some freedom to make future moves. But that actually could leave you with a negative total value, or at least a lower value than you would optimally boast. However, if you are close to £0.0 in the bank, then you are maximizing your overall value.

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WHICH PLAYERS’ VALUES HAVE RISEN AND FALLEN THE MOST?

Even though there have only been 10 games, there have been some significant price rises and falls. Let’s take a gander at the biggest movers.

Photo by Jan Kruger/Getty Images

PRICE RISERS

Five players have seen their prices rise by at least £0.5 so far this season, with Eden Hazard leading the way with a jump of £0.8. Another four have risen by £0.4, plus 10 more have crept up by £0.3. Every one of those players is owned by at least 9% of fantasy managers, so chances are you have a few of them. Hopefully you grabbed them early!

PRICE FALLERS

The price falls have not been quite as drastic, with nobody dipping by more than £0.5. But they have been considerably more widespread, as five players have dropped by £0.5, and a whopping 27 players have slipped by £0.4 (as such, the chart below stops with the five players at -£0.5). Not surprisingly, though, with pink slips from so many fantasy managers, only one whose value has dropped by at least £0.3 is owned by at least 5% of FPL gaffers, Leroy Sane at 5.1%.

Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

Of course, such a price drop can offer an interesting opportunity for speculative investment in the right case(s). For instance, Chelsea midfielder Ross Barkley and Everton defender Seamus Coleman have each fallen by £0.3. However, with Barkley earning more playing time in the Blues’ potent midfield thanks to some stellar performances, and with the historically productive Coleman returning recently to the XI following injury, they could both see their ownership levels (and prices) rebound thanks to cut rate costs. With any luck for the more than 5% of managers holding Sane, the same will be the case for him.

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MY TEAM AS AN EXAMPLE

Right now my team is worth £103.6. My savvy value-building moves included starting the season with Manchester City forward Sergio Aguero, Bournemouth midfielder Ryan Fraser, Fulham striker Aleksandar Mitrovic and Liverpool defender Andrew Robertson, buying Hazard in Week 2, adding Chelsea defender Marcos Alonso in Week 3, nabbing Tottenham defender Kieran Trippier in Week 4, and grabbing Wolves’ defender Matt Doherty in Week 8.

I have not used my first half wildcard chip yet. However, I also have £1.5 sitting around in the bank following my Sunday sale of Leicester midfielder James Maddison in favor of the considerably cheaper Barkley. I plan to upgrade when I have more free transfers available in the near future, so my team’s value could rise to around £105, but for now I’ve got an awful lot of moolah languishing in wait.

Naturally, many other managers have been even more adept than me at value-building. And of course, total team value is not in itself a guarantee of success. (If your team is overstocked with players whose values have remained at a higher level than you paid but have fallen out of form recently such as Maddison, Mitrovic, Watford’s Jose Holebas, Liverpool’s James Milner, Tottenham’s Lucas Moura, and Crystal Palace’s Aaron Wan-Bissaka, you surely have observed that lesson first-hand.) It is merely one factor to take into consideration when strategizing adds and drops regarding your FPL squads.

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Be sure to take the poll below and let us know what good moves you have made this season contributing toward your fantasy team’s value-adding process in the comments section!

(Note: Statistics utilized above came via the Official FPL website.)

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