Football Hero wrote:But when you captain a premium player, all you're really getting from them is their 6ish ppg in the long run, you aren't targeting more than this because you can't do much about that particular player's inherent ppg average.
Sorry, this does not make sense at all.
I do NOT captain ONE premium player in the long run
Each GW, I captain ONE
OF my premium player
S THAT GW.
Football Hero wrote:I think what you're saying is that you're hoping to get lucky by captaining them when they score 13 points instead of 2 points, but you can't actually do anything about this and in the long run you will be getting their average score, (slightly fixture adjusted of course if you captain them in an easy game).
This is why a return of 5 or 6 points is around their average score and so isn't anything to be disappointed by or to label it as a 'blank'.
you think wrong
I'm saying that every reasonable fpl manager here, is trying EACH SINGLE GW to make the best possbile informed decision to pick AMONGST THEIR TWO, THREE OR FOUR premiums, the one with the best probability to get a high score THAT SPECIFIC GW.
Of course there's a factor of luck involved, that's called variance
Of course a striker can blank when the conditions looked favorable, e.g. Kane v BUR & HUL
Of course a strike can unexpectedly get a haul when playing away at a strong defence, e.g. @CHE or TOT
But STILL the potential score for the same player is not the same in every GW. The tools we have available to make such choice are far from being completely reliable and accurate, but STILL they should give us the means to choose the player with the best Expected Return, or odds if you prefer, in each gw
you talk as if you always Captain the same player the whole season long
or as if you'd choose amnogst your best players completely at random and blindly each gw
only in that case I can't do anything to navigate thru his hauls and blanks, I'll get them all, and in the long run I'll of course get his season average, by definition
Let's stick by your example
"
you're hoping to get lucky by captaining them when they score 13 points instead of 2 points,
but you can't actually do anything about this and in the long run you will be getting their average score"
Imagine a player misses 2 games in the season, thus he plays 36
he scores 13p in 12 games = 156p
he scores 2p in 24 games = 48p
his season total is 204p over 36 games, which makes a 5.67ppg
we could otherwise say that on average that player scores 13p once every 3 games
Let's also say you have 4 such players in your team
Assuming for simplicity they all have the same average strength and behavior, they'll all have the same scoring distribution over the season, only in different gws
Again for simplicity, let's say you will Captain each different player 9 times out of the 36 games he plays (and the remaining 2 GWs to 38 you just captain someone else)
I hope you won't deny that not all games will be played in the same conditions: the player form and fitness will vary, so will the opponent's strength, their team conditions (e.g. sometimes weakened by injury/ban absent players, managerial/system changes), motivation, tight schedule fatigue/rotation, etc.
Different conditions DO influece a player's probability to obtain a better score or not
This all will be assessed with the tools you have available, and summarised in the player Expected Score. For simplicity let's call it "odds", even if you don't actually recur to bookies but to some other analysis tool instead.
So, you don't choose a player's 9 Captancies "at random", but you give him the band on the 9 games where he hase the best odds
This doesn't mean that he'll alway score 13p in those 9 games,
But if the "odds" can be considered at least a bit significant and effective in describing when the conditions are favorable, then the player is expected to obtain
more than just 3 games with 13p out of those 9 (i.e. 1 in 3 according to his long-run avg)
It depends of course on how much favorable are the "odds", so it's not granted that he'd get 5 or 6 hauls out of 9
But if those 9 games have above average favorable conditions, this means that the player is
significantly likelier to get his best scores in these 9 games, rather than in the oterh 27 .
Let's assume, for simplicity in our already simplified model, that he only gets one more, that is 4 "hauls" and 5 blanks instead of 3 and 6.
And thus 8 hauls and 19 blanks in the remaining 27 games.
The corresponding figures are 6.89
expected ppg in the 9 selected games with favorable odds, and 5.26 ppg over the rest of the season in the less favorable games.
Of course I'll still get some 2p even in the selected Captain games. But if the "odds" are significant, and I have been able to read them correctly, I expect to obtain a higher ppg in the selected favorable games, than the long-run season ppg.
Combine 9 games with higher ppg from your 4 players, and you'll obtain 36 games with higher ppg than each player's long-run ppg
I would not call this "hoping to get lucky"
I'd hope to get lucky if I picked at random. I'd hope to get lucky if I played the lottery.
I'd call it hoping to be able to take the correct decisions with the information tools available, to select the games when a player has above average favorable conditions, or to select the player in each given GW who has the most favorable conditions and potential, amongst all those I have available.
If I succeed in making such informed choice most of the times, I am
expected to obtain a return
above their average in the long run from the different Captains I'll come to select GW by GW
Going now back to your initial statement where more realistically a premium has a 6-ish ppg in the long run, I hope to be able to make the highest possible number of correct decisions over the gws, and combine a series of favorable players/games whose expected ppg is higer than 6. At least 7ppg, but possibly 8ppg, and hopefully more.
If my selected Captain then gets 2p in a gw, I know this can happen and it can't be always avoided, But it will mean that either I took a poor decision, and/or I got (very) unlucky. I can't do anything about the latter, so I'd focus on how I can improve the former. I.e. how to reasonably pick, and not "guess", a player with an
above his average expected ppg
in a specific gw
If my selected Captain gets 13p in a gw, then I made the correct decision. I won't consider myself "lucky" in that case. I'd be lucky if I took a wrong decision, a gamble, a blind random pick, and then I'd get the same 13p despite my mistake. I'm lucky (and poor) if I call on the river, find out I only have 2 outs, and I get one.
But as the expected ppg in a given gw is (almost) never 13p, it's expected he gets enough 13p to raise the ppg over the average, in the selected games.
Finally, if my selected Captain gets his season-average 6p, the I
am a bit disappointed, because that score will not help to
raise the selections return above a single player's season avg, which is ultimately the purpose of picking each gw a different Captain who you think best in that gw.
"
This is why a return of 5 or 6 points is around their average score and so isn't anything to be disappointed by"
I AM
a bit disappointed exactly
because that's
just around their average, and not at least a bit more!
Otherwise, really, just pick a top player who you think can grant you 200+p over the season, stick with him and always Captain him, regardless your other starting X.
You won't be disappinted by getting his average, because your
strategy would be to get from it nothing more than a premium player average season ppg.
Which is the behavior your "reasoning" actually suggests.
________
My, I'm embarassed that you wound me up in making me waste my time to state and post the utter obvious.
Was it that hard for you to get in the first place?
I'm sorry for the others, I apologise
TLDR:
Captaincy 101
