Fantasy Premier League 2021/22: The Transition Season

3 things are gonna happen on the weekend on Aug 14/15 this year:

1. Pakistan and India will celebrate their 74th Independence Day.
2. I will go on a week-long vacation.
3. Premier League begins!!!!

And along with that, Fantasy Premier League (FPL) does too. Since the inception of my blog, I have chosen to write a blog every year at the start of the FPL season in which I share some personal thoughts/insights I have about the upcoming season. 

In my last blog, I talked about 2 dilemmas that were going to play a key role in the season - Form vs Fixture and Attacking Midfielder vs Striker. Looking back, both of them played a huge role over the course of the season. We saw a lot of unexpected results. Since games were being played behind closed doors, a lot of mid-table and low-table teams managed to grab points against top-table teams in away games. Choosing between attacking-midfielders and strikers remained a tough choice over most of the season. A couple of examples would be choosing between Son and Kane from Spurs or between Sterling and Aguero in Manchester City. 

Additionally, I try and talk about something new every year. This year, I've chosen a couple of topics that may not directly impact squad selection but would be important to keep in mind over the course of the season. I am tempted to call this season, the Transition Season. In a bigger sense, this will be a season in which we will slowly transition to normality. Games won't be played behind closed doors, the financial health of clubs will slowly begin to recover and games are going to be less likely to be rescheduled at the last moment. Additionally, a number of clubs will also go through transitions of their own this season, which I will talk more about later in the blog. I hope you will like it. 

Financial Constraints

Following the pandemic, the financial health of Premier League clubs has come under the spotlight. Clubs lost significant revenue from ticket sales. Since the whole global economy has undergone a recession, other areas of revenue like merchandise sales have also suffered. 

As a consequence of this, only a few clubs, if any, will have the appetite to go for big-money signings. In contrast, they're likely to either prioritize improving their own squad, looking to their academy players or if needed, go for players they are really sure about. 

One of the impacts of this on FPL managers is that it might just be worth it to take a punt on new signings this year early on. I've normally had the approach to wait a bit for new signings to settle into their squad or in the league in case they're coming from another league. However, in the upcoming season, it might help FPL managers to get good value for them if they take them early on since the clubs are more critical now before making a signing than they were in the past. 

Transitioning teams

Chelsea will have the first full season on Tuchel. Spurs have another manager. As a trickle-on effect, Wolves are going to be with a new manager as well. On the bottom end, one of the notable changes is Crystal Palace having moved on from Hodgson. 

There are 2 opposing effects that apply on transitioning teams and your squad selection can depend on which one you're expecting to happen overall. Impact one, optimism. Teams tend to overperform after managerial changes in the first 10 matches if there's significant optimism around the manager in the dressing room, amongst the fans, etc. Hence, it can be a good incentive to take the star performers of that team into your squad. 

At the same time, the squad hasn't yet settled into the manager's style of play, and the manager is still in that phase where he/she is testing out different formations/squad members, etc. This can also lead to underperformance. If you believe that this is going to be a strong factor going forward, then as an FPL manager, you're punting against that team. You're not going to want to take players from them unless there is a player who is consistently giving returns and you expect their individual performance to remain the same. 

As a result, keeping the general stage that a squad is in, in terms of transitioning, can help you narrow your focus towards or away from certain clubs, rather than looking at all the clubs equally. 

I hope you liked this blog. Feel free to leave your thoughts about it in the comments section below or share this with your other FPL buddies. I'm also sharing my current squad for the opening gameweek, although I might change a few things before the matches.