5 Tips To Rank Higher In FPL

Anyone can achieve a high rank in FPL. Don’t believe the people who tell you it’s all luck: there’s a reason why some managers (like our own resident expert, The Professor) always achieve a consistently high rank across 38 gameweeks.

We’re going to spill the beans on how it’s done, but first, a warning: this is highly classified stuff. Not everyone can handle such volatile FPL tips, and standard safety measures should be observed if you’re going to read the remainder of this article.

Right then. HazMats on, we’re going in.

The reason why most managers fail isn’t because they’re bad at picking good players; it’s because they don’t know what’s happening in the Premier League.

This could be anything from injury news to rescheduled fixtures to the crazy fixture calendar around Christmas. Good managers know when there’s a Double Gameweek, they know when a key player might be missing in action, and they never miss gameweek deadlines. 

If you’re going to compete with them, you need to be in the loop.

If only there were a newsletter that could help…

We get it: you’re the person people turn to when the sports questions get read out on The Chase. But FPL isn’t just a test of how much you know about football: It’s a test of your capacity to stick to your convictions, even when everything and everyone might think you’re wrong.

This requires patience. Your picks aren’t going to score hat-tricks the moment you bring them in. Mediocre managers don’t give their decision-making enough time to bear fruit, but the best managers will ride out a poor run of form in the short term for the promise of longer-term gains.

Forget NPxG/90 for a second: Teams Selected By might just be the most important stat in the whole of FPL. It shows you how many other managers own a particular player, which is golden information when it comes to building your team.

That’s because the best FPL managers are constantly thinking about risk and reward. If a player is highly owned, it’s more of a risk not to own him, because if he scores a lot of points, you’re going to be punished by a larger number of rival managers. 

Conversely, choosing a player with a low TSB% offers a greater reward for those brave enough to choose him over a more popular pick.

Finding this balance is a skill shared by every top manager. They know when to take their medicine and pick a popular player, but they’re also able to pepper their team with enough lower-owned players to climb the ranks.

It's also worth noting that as you progress through the season, Effective Ownership (EO) becomes significantly more important than TSB%.

Effective Ownership refers to the total ownership of a player and the number of teams that have said player captained in any given gameweek.

Understanding how this plays into your overall strategy can be used both defensively and offensively. If you know there is a popular captain option around your current rank, such as top 100k, captaining that player to block their Effective Ownership can help safeguard your position. On the flipside, if you can identify a differential that those around you don't own, resulting in low EO, they offer higher differential ceilings.

Very rarely do the best managers find the captaincy decision exciting. Sorry, but it’s true. For the most part, the best managers are predicting which player will be the most captained on a given gameweek and captaining him. 

That’s because of point (3) about risk vs reward. Unless you’re approaching the end of the season and you’re desperate for a dramatic climb in the ranks, you ought to be picking the same captain as everyone else. 

The wisdom of the crowd usually wins out in FPL, and the most popular captaincy picks are popular for a reason.

FPL is even more fun when you have a load of other managers to chat to about it.

You get loads of perks as a LazyFPL Premium member, including extra weekly newsletters written by The Professor, invites to exclusive prize leagues and ad-free lazy. But perhaps the most popular feature is the WhatsApp community. It’s a safe space for people who think about FPL a little too much and want a place to talk about it.

A peer-reviewed (and peer-ridiculed) FPL team is almost always better than going solo.

So now you know. It turns out, consistent FPL success isn’t a dark art. It just requires some patience, forward-planning, a bit of game theory, and, you guessed it, LazyFPL.