Leg 1 is officially over, and the first 5 Matchweeks have given us plenty of discussion points.
But what have we actually learned from Leg 1? Here are four things that could help you get the most out of your squad for the rest of the season.
Mixing Premiums and Value
Premium players are safe picks. Yes, they’re expensive, but you can be pretty sure they’re going to get you a decent haul of points. However, with a £100m budget in the game, you can’t just pick premium players; you need some cheaper players that are going to be good value.
Lauren Hemp, Ellie Carpenter, Bunny Shaw and Alexia Putellas are all examples of premium players; they’re all £7m or more, but have all returned at least 40 points in the first 5 matchweeks. It’s therefore unsurprising that all of these players are each in at least 30% of fantasy teams.
As for finding cheaper players that are good value, that’s a harder skill, and one that no fantasy manager will ever perfect. The game’s top scorer, Océane Hurtré (53), is only £6m. Even the most loyal Birmingham City supporter wouldn’t have predicted one of their players would be topping the list. And considering she’s selected in just 9% of teams, many fantasy managers still can’t quite believe it.
The best value player in the game (value = points per game / £m) so far this season has been Newcastle United’s Kaitlyn Torpey. Last season she would’ve scored just 19 points, so it was fair that she was valued as the joint-cheapest player in the game at £4m. Five matches in, Torpey has 43 points (more than double her total from last season) and is at 12% selection. If you needed value in your team in Leg 1, Torpey was the best player to pick.
But moving forward, what can we learn from that? Am I telling you to fill your MW6 team with £4m players? Absolutely not. But having a mix of premium players and cheaper points-scorers is certainly the way forward. With the unexpectedly high number of low-value players scoring a high number of points, it may sometimes be the case that you don’t even need to spend your full budget to get the best team possible.
Bompastor Bingo, Renée Roulette, Jeglertz Juggle, Ho-tation, etc.
It’s a disappointing moment when you see one of your premium players starting on the bench, but it’s unavoidable. Sometimes it’s injury, sometimes it’s just rotation.
Many of the premium players are at Man City, Chelsea and Arsenal, the teams also competing in the Champions League. And the teams not in European competition have midweek games in the Subway Players Cup. As all teams are in two competitions (plus the FA Cup, which will come later in the season), managers need to rotate their players, even the best performers. Otherwise, if a player is featuring in a lot of games, then they’re going to be liable to injury.
All this means that there will be very few players that can be relied on to consistently play. Players like Bunny Shaw, Lauren James, Kadidiatou Diani and Vivien Endemann are some of the highest scorers in the game, and all have a high selection %. However, all have missed matches and/or been benched.
Rotation-resistant players are a must if you want to succeed in fantasy. It doesn’t need to be your whole team; there’s an element of risk that needs to be taken to get the reward, but it’s always worth having a few players like Ruby Mace or Lucy Bronze who have not been rested.
Captaincy changes and Substitutions
Because we can make changes to our team after each matchday, it gives more flexibility in our selections and allows us to take a little more risk in the Friday/Sautrday fixtures.
Every matchweek, I’ve given my captaincy to a player playing on Friday/Saturday. Then, after they’ve played, I’ll decide whether to move the armband to a player from Sunday’s games or not. For example, in Matchweek 4 I started with Bunny Shaw as captain, who was playing on Saturday. She only played 30 minutes against Charlton and scored 1 point, so I decided to move the captaincy to someone else (in this case, Endemann) for Sunday’s games.
In terms of substitutions, my best piece of advice is to make sure your bench is full of players who are playing on the final matchday, usually a Sunday. This way, after the matches are completed on the Saturday, you can make a decision if you want to bring those benched players on, and which players to bring off. My Matchweek 4 is another good example; I had Lauren Hemp & Bunny Shaw in my starting XI, both against Charlton on the Saturday. However, neither player returned good points, so I could put them both on my bench while subbing on Amanda Nildén and Daniëlle van de Donk, who got 11 points between them.
I firmly believe that this is an area where you can make up a material number of points this season; if you have the time to tinker with your team mid-matchweek, you can eke out a few extra points from your squad. Personally, I’ve scored an extra 20 points in the first Leg. I’m currently ranked 198th, but would be outside the top 500 without those extra 20 points.
Howay the Lasses
The inclusion of BWSL2 in the game has given fantasy managers plenty of opportunity to get the upper hand on each other. It’s a less predictable league than BWSL and, as many of the players are less well known, there are a number of hidden gems that go under the radar.
In Leg 1, it was Newcastle United that were the team that was best to target. In the BWSL2, they are the only team to have won all five matches, are the top scorers (14), and have conceded the fewest goals (1). Of the six top-scoring BWSL2 players, five of them represent the Toon. Pick of the bunch is Beth Lumsden. She already has five goal involvements (2G 3A), which have contributed to her 45 points; enough to make her the fourth-best player in the game, and the best in BWSL2.
This isn’t something we can learn from immediately; there are no BWSL2 games in 2 of the next 3 matchweeks, so it’s probably best to prioritise BWSL in the short term. But the number of points that some BWSL2 players have scored is a strong indication that selecting players from both leagues is going to be important throughout the rest of the season.
Anyone who’s ever played a fantasy football game before will already know there is no single formula for building the perfect fantasy team. With a new game spanning two leagues, it was always going to be a challenge for fantasy managers, but Leg 1 has given us a few useful clues that we can learn from.
- You need a balance of premium players and value picks, and sometimes, spending every last pound of your budget isn’t necessary.
- Accept that rotation is part of the game, and look for players who are unlikely to miss matches.
- There’s plenty of value to be found in BWSL2, so backing the right players at the right time can yield big returns
- And, most importantly, utilise the opportunity to change your captain and make substitutions between matchdays to squeeze extra points out of your squad.
Leg 2 brings a fresh start for Fantasy managers, with all teams getting unlimited transfers for MW6. Next week’s piece will be looking forward to Leg 2 and putting some of our learnings from Leg 1 into practice.
