Late-January / early-February is a key point in the FPL season. Depending on your ambitions and frame of mind, now's the time to either throw in the towel or redouble your efforts. Most years when I've played FPL I've had a Stoke City type of season. My perennial pre-season optimism evaporates in August, but by Christmas some careful homework and astute budget signings have yielded a useful team value and a respectable if unspectacular position. So I qualify effortlessly for the cup, which fleetingly offers me hopes of glory. Then I get knocked out, and That's Pretty Much It for me. I might still login from time to time, maybe even make the occasional team change or transfers, and the strength of my squad probably ensures I finish up in the top 500k or so. But basically my season's already over by February.

Last year, and again this one by the look of things, I've been more like Spurs. (There, I said it. Vile and disgusting, huh? What I mean is I've been much the same as Stoke City, but doing well enough in the league to keep trying right the way up to the end of the season. Hang on, so where was I going with this? Oh yeah.) This amazing transformation in my team's performance is mainly thanks to the fine folks who run, or otherwise post on, this website and FF247. More about them later.

We're now well into the second half of the season, when building team value is less important than it was earlier. Building up team value isn't everyone's cup of tea but personally I pay a lot of attention to it early in the season, because a squad that's only worth say 98m in January is going to struggle over the rest of the season compared with one that's worth 106m. Or, to put it another way, that 8m value is the difference between an Aguero and a Duff. But, as the season draws to its close, it'll be more important simply to have as many (high-scoring) players playing in DGWs etc. as there won't be so much to gain from accumulating more value. At this stage of the season I'm relaxed enough about team value to wait and see whether Aguero is definitely back to his best before deciding whether to sign him. That wait could cost me 0.5m if I do eventually sign him, but I can afford that - and waiting will be worthwhile if it turns out he's not back to his best.

If you've still got your January WC, then of course that's nice. If you've already used it don't despair, at least not till you get to the end of this paragraph. In my book, the January WC is worth about 20 points which is how many hit points it saves if you want to make half a dozen changes to your squad. But if at this point in the season you want/need to make more than half a dozen changes to your squad then, whether or not you've already played your January WC, you've either been doing something seriously wrong with your transfers or you're so very unlucky that perhaps you should just throw in the towel anyway for the season. Sorry, only joking. Whilst it's always good to have an extra 20 points, it's not that big a deal over the course of a season.

So, what should your squad look like at this stage of the season? I reckon it should be much the same as that of the top-ranked teams in the world - and if you look at them, you'll see that they look much the same as many other people's including possibly yours. Sanchez, Hazard, Silva, Kane, Austin, maybe Terry, a Soton defender. That's because, surprising though it may seem, there are no secret-weapon "differential" players which only the top 100 managers know about. So, if you wanted to play things safe, you could just take the "template" approach of copying the highest-ranked teams: actually, if you want to do that literally then I think FFF has a function which can do it all for you. Or you could go to your Transfers page of the official site and rank the players by Points Per Game which (once you've ignored those few who rank highly but have only played a game or two) will display much the same bunch of names from which to choose. Either way, I reckon if you base your squad on this "template" you'll finish respectably even if you hardly look at your team for the rest of the season - like me in my "Stoke City" years. And you'll probably do even better if you can still be bothered to continue with the basics of following all the team news, shipping out players who are injured/dropped/off-form and replacing them with the latest must-haves.

What more advice is there for the more ambitious? Be prepared for some fiendishly complicated scenario-planning in the next couple of months, but only once matches start being postponed. In the meantime, just keep an eye open for potential new hot properties. There may be more Harry Kane’s out there waiting to be discovered. But, before snapping up any potential new hot property, ask people on here & over on FF247 what they think. For every Harry Kane there are many Abel Taarabt’s to avoid, and the fine folks on this website will be able to warn you about players' flaws. (Word is, at least one Premiership manager now checks regularly on FF247 before deciding about potential loan signings.) As in other games which mix luck and judgement, success in FPL is only partly about taking clever risks: it's also a lot about avoiding unwise ones.

That bit about there being no secret-weapon player? Well, here's a player who even the top 100 folks haven't heard of yet! So far this season he's scored 5 goals, supplied 4 assists, got 20 BPs, and kept 22 clean sheets. And, as you might expect from a record like that, he's started every PL match this season and never yet been subbed. At a hefty 13.9m he's more than most people like to invest in their defence, but you can't ignore the 220 points he's accumulated so far which is more than twice as many as Aguero. At only at 0.3 percent ownership he's also a great differential. Having him saves you at least 3.8m because you don't need to spunk cash on an extra defender who never plays, and he scores you 8 extra points for every Chelsea clean sheet even if you don't make him captain (which, err, you can't cos you can captain only one bit of him). His name? John Terrivanovic. You read it here first.

So, for everybody who hasn't thrown in the towel :) it's time to take stock of news over the past couple of weeks or so since the above was originally written. The biggest news is that it'll be Chelsea vs Spurs in the non-FA cup final, which means favoured players such as Terrivanovic, Hazard, Austin, Kane and Eriksen have a blank in GW27 followed by a DGW (in GW28 for Austin, Kane and Eriksen and at an unknown date for the Chelsea players, which AFAIK could also be GW28 if Leicester get knocked out of the FA Cup but otherwise will be later). Without that news, 5 or 6 of those players would be in many WC teams. Instead, only 2 or 3 should be: the plan should be to bring back two more of them using 2FT in time for the DGW in GW28. Chelsea have the easier fixtures before then, but Kane is in such good form that he looks worth keeping along with just two of the Chelsea players. Terrivanovic is almost irreplaceable in defence, but now might be a good time to bring in YYT in place of Hazard. In other news, Alexis Sanchez's hamstrings are apparently showing signs of wear and tear, but Arsenal are managing OK without him - at least against the weaker teams such as Villa. So even if he's back in GW24 against Spurs there's a risk Sanchez will be rested in some of the easier fixtures. After all, Wenger is an economist so he won't want to risk damaging his greatest asset when he doesn't need to. Selling Sanchez opens up the 3rd Arsenal berth (you do already have two other Arsenal players, right?) which can be filled by, umm, another Arsenal player whom you've already got your eye on. Bellerin, probably. It also frees up cash, which can usefully be invested in Silva and/or Aguero if you don't already have them. So there's what I guess is the new template: either Ospina or Pants in goal with Krul as back-up; Terrivanovic, Bellerin and a Soton defender; YYT (if affordable, otherwise Bony maybe), Cazorla and Silva; Aguero, Kane and (if you don't have Ospina or Bony) Giroud. Plus whichever other players you can afford who have decent fixtures in GW27. Sorted.

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