Heading into Gameweek 8, former champion Simon March examines the tendency of Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers to prioritise immediate rewards over future ones.

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Humans, and FPL managers, are wired to prioritise immediate rewards over future ones. This is a background mental process that behavioural scientists call ‘temporal hyperbolic discounting’ or ‘present bias’. Present bias is considered to be a cognitive bias because, rationally speaking, future rewards should be viewed the same as immediate rewards of the same value. Future rewards of greater value should definitely be preferred to immediate rewards of a lesser value. Yet very often we don’t follow this line of thinking, in life or our FPL decision-making.

From the perspective of behavioural science, ‘present bias’ is irrational, yet it arguably brings both pros and cons. Whether this tendency may help or hinder our decision-making in FPL will be the focus of this week’s article.

Night Guy

In his stand-up routine ‘Night Guy’, comedian Jerry Seinfeld explains that he never gets enough sleep because, at night, he’s ‘night guy’, and night guy wants to stay up late. Not getting enough sleep and having to go to work is “morning guy’s problem”.

Despite only being 34 seconds long, this routine perfectly sums up the problems that present bias can cause. We make decisions in the short term that our future selves might not thank us for.

In FPL, we often find ourselves over-investing in short-term opportunities at the expense of longer-term opportunities of potentially greater value. One way this manifests itself is in how we look at fixtures and our tendency to be overly influenced by the immediate one or two matches in a fixture run. 

This bias can work in either direction. For example, we might bring a player in because they have one really good fixture, even if their following fixtures appear less inviting. Alternatively, we might ignore a player who has one tough fixture followed by a run of good ones. This is particularly the case when we’re selecting our squads in pre-season or when we’re using our Wildcards.

Equally, when it comes to using transfers, we’re aware that we can usually have a more positive effect on our teams when we use multiple transfers together rather than just one at a time. Yet when given the opportunity to bank a transfer, we often opt to use it instead, even if this means making a lower-impact change than we might have been able to make if we’d waited.

As with many things in life, patience is a virtue when it comes to FPL. Yet, our preference for short-term gains often leaves us sacrificing an opportunity for bigger gains in the long term.

The Pros of Temporal Discounting

As is often the case when it comes to discussing cognitive biases, there is a counter-perspective by which it is argued that these biases exist for a reason. Rather than fight against them, we should lean into the ways in which they might benefit us.

When it comes to present bias, this perspective can be neatly summed up by the common phrase ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’. The long-term rewards might be greater, but how much can we rely on them still being there when the time comes? If there is significant doubt here, we might be better off trying to bank the, albeit smaller, short-term opportunity.

There is a lot of sense to this perspective because, even though we usually try and plan for a stretch of Gameweeks, we all know that even a single Gameweek can be a long time in FPL. Players go in and out of form. They get injured, rested or dropped. They change position. Their FPL price changes… and so on. Football and FPL are so dynamic that any attempt at rigid, long-term planning often becomes an exercise in futility.

We could argue that the same is true of using transfers. The longer-term opportunity that comes from banking them might be greater, but it may also be less certain than the short-term opportunity. Points are points at the end of the day and, when we get a chance to score some, can we afford to let that chance pass us by?

The long and the short of it

So, which perspective is correct? Should we commit to long-term planning and the potential for greater rewards? Or should we take the short-term opportunities as they present themselves, even if the rewards are likely to be smaller?

You’ve probably already guessed that both perspectives can be correct and which one it is depends on the particular context. The key is to acknowledge and actively question our bias for the short term so that we can properly judge the size of the relative opportunities on the table, and the risks associated with each. Once we’ve done this, we can make a rational decision on whether to try and grasp the immediate opportunity in front of us or sacrifice it in favour of a bigger one down the line.

Take, for example, those who Triple Captained Manchester City’s Erling Haaland (£15.4m) for his 17-point haul against Ipswich Town in Gameweek 2. It’s very possible these managers were subconsciously influenced by their biased preference for immediate gains over potentially greater future ones, but this doesn’t mean that their decisions were wrong or without logic. Haaland had, on paper, one of the best fixtures he’ll have all season. While time will tell whether playing it then maximised the value of the Triple Captain chip or not, nobody could argue, even if it had failed, that there wasn’t logic to the decision. 

The important thing, when thinking about present bias, is to remember that it is there, working in the background. Therefore, it is to our benefit, when making an FPL decision that favours short-term interests, to sense-check whether this decision comes from a sober and rational assessment of the opportunity, or from our deep-rooted impulse to pursue immediate rewards. If it is the latter, maybe it’s worth considering the move further.

More broadly, it may also help to remind ourselves that the payoff for certain moves cannot always be properly measured by the results of a single Gameweek. We typically plan for multiple Gameweeks so it makes sense to measure success over an extended period too. By taking a longer view of success, we become less influenced by the immediate term and our decision-making may become clearer and less biased as a result.