Our team of Hall of Famers and guest writers are offering regular contributions throughout the 2023/24 Fantasy Premier League (FPL) campaign. Here, former champion Simon March wonders whether it’s necessarily a bad thing to pit your team’s attackers and defenders against one another.

One thing that I’ve learned from almost a decade of posting my FPL team on social media and receiving ‘feedback’ on it, is that people really don’t like playing their attackers against their defenders or goalkeepers. But is avoiding this scenario actually the best policy? Or could it, in fact, result in us scoring fewer points? That question is the focus of this week’s article.

FACE-OFF

To clarify the meaning of this, I’m referring to instances where we might start both an attacker and their defensive opponent of that Gameweek. For example, if Aston Villa were playing Newcastle United and I decided to start the Magpies’ goalkeeper Martin Dubravka (£4.2m) as well as Villa’s forward Ollie Watkins (£8.7m) in my team, I’d be committing the cardinal sin of facing off against myself.

The logic is straightforward. Except for some extreme circumstances, it would be difficult for – in this situation – both Dubravka and Watkins to score significant points. Success for Dubravka essentially means preventing a Watkins goal but, should the England forward net, it ruins the stopper’s clean sheet.

Thus, pitting your attackers against your defenders means you’ll never be able to maximise returns in the way that you could if the attackers and defenders were all in separate matches. Because FPL is about scoring the most points possible, it makes sense to maximise your chances of doing this.

Indeed, many managers – myself included – will often think twice before buying players when they’re just about to face off against an already-owned asset. Adhering to this policy could have implications beyond the immediate Gameweek, also influencing future rounds.

PRIORITISING QUALITY

The problem with this perspective is that it lacks a qualitative element. At its core, FPL relies on managers picking the players with the best chance of scoring. Factors that might influence this include fixtures, form, position on the pitch, involvement in set pieces, the ability of team-mates and the general ability of the individual player. What definitely does not influence how a player might perform – even if it often feels like it does – is whether we’ve included them in our FPL teams.

So when we let our choices be dictated by avoidance of playing our attackers against our defenders, we often forgo the qualitative factors that typically influence our player choice decisions. As a result, we likely reduce our chances of scoring points too.

Returning to the earlier example of Dubravka vs Watkins, playing both isn’t ideal on the surface. But if your alternative is to play Alphonse Areola (£4.2m) away to Manchester City, then it suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. Starting Dubravka almost certainly becomes our best chance of scoring goalkeeper points.

Similarly, if our attacking alternative to Watkins is Cameron Archer (£4.3m) away to Liverpool, Watkins against Dubravka likely comes out on top in a quality-based assessment.

Of course, these are explicitly easy examples designed to illustrate the point. But the principle will apply whenever we forgo qualitative factors, such as fixture difficulty or player quality, just to avoid facing off against ourselves.

ONE IS BETTER THAN NONE

Therefore, by reducing our maximum theoretical payoff, we sometimes maximise our real-world payoff. Maybe we don’t get points from both the attacker and the defensive name. Maybe this was never on the cards in the first place, maybe we have to settle for only getting points from one.

But because we don’t know which players will score ahead of time, it makes sense to go with the ones who – based on their individual merits – are most likely to deliver, regardless of opponent ownership. Points from one of the two players is better than none from either and the latter scenario becomes more likely once we stray further from quality-based decisions.

The moment we consider anything extraneous to individual quality, we immediately weaken our FPL criteria for player inclusion. And we should logically expect weaker performance as a result.

Naturally, it makes sense to avoid pitting our attackers against our defenders at the same time, as it lowers our routes to scoring points. Yet the starting point for transfers and player selection should always be simply about which players have the best chance of bringing points. Only after we’ve determined that should we concern ourselves with such additional factors.