GW38: How to get what you want

End of 25/26.

Hi 👋

Congratulations on getting to the end of another season of this silly little game we play!

In case you missed it, I shared an article of my reflections on being one of the best FPL managers over the past few years and I released my general decision framework on my new project here.

If you appreciate any of the free content I have provided on this site over the past few years then I would be grateful if you could support the new project in any way you can.

One of the core ideas is that a decision is only “good” or “bad” relative to how likely it is to move you towards or away from your goals. Which means to even attempt to make a good decision, you actually have to think about your goals first.

I find it useful to distinguish between two kinds:

• Ultimate Goals: the end point e.g. top 10k, win your mini league, whatever it is for you.

• Enabling Goals: the smaller decisions and strategies that get you there.

A surprising amount of poor decision-making comes from confusing these two where people end up optimising for the wrong thing at the wrong time.

I see it constantly in FPL. Someone plays 80% of a season in a steady, sensible way, and then in one random game week they completely go rogue and go for a high-variance play that is entirely inconsistent with their actual goal.

Essentially, they let vibes and emotions allow the sub-decision (one gameweek, one chip, etc.) to get disconnected from the bigger picture. Then they just go back to playing steady again. Poor consistency indicates poor process.

The good news: we’re in GW38, so that particular mistake is mostly off the table now. Yay! (sorry if you've been making this mistake all season and you’re only just realising).

What this means practically is that the most useful thing you can do right now is reflect clearly on what you are actually trying to achieve e.g. what rank goal do you have? What’s your mini league status? etc. Once you know that, you can ask whether your GW38 strategy gives you the right distribution of outcomes to get there. For example, if you are 20 points off the top of your mini league and all you care about is winning that mini league, then the decision you make should be one you deem to be most likely to get that specifically.

For many people, answering your goals question is probably a better use of your time than looking at underlying stats, predictions, etc.

Final match predictions and player predictions are below.

Maybe see you for free World Cup Predictions!

Full data page here.

Much love 💜