Hello fantasyfootballfix.com community! My name is FPL Raptor, or Ross, and I will be starting as a YouTube Content Creator for fix this season. I am beyond excited to get going. In this blog, I will give you a quick introduction to myself and what I plan to bring to fix. Let’s do this!

Who is FPL Raptor?

I am a PhD student and University Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology. I also have a very keen interest in Cognitive Psychology and finding ways to optimise our decision-making, which perfectly applies to FPL. In fact, I enjoy applying Psychology to FPL so much that I have now written a book on FPL, titled “The Mind Game: Gaining a Psychological Edge in Fantasy Premier League”. The aim of the book is to provide each manager with the tools to critically assess and improve their own decision-making in FPL and everyday life, and also equip managers to deal with negative outcomes.

Whilst writing a book has been a dream of mine for a while, I have also had the long-term goal of being involved in YouTube content creation. I love the idea of creating content for the FPL community, and whilst I have done this in the form of articles, threads and now a book, I am delighted to be creating video content for the community with fix. We have big plans for the coming season, and I think this is the start of a very exciting period for fix as there look to be even more exciting announcements coming soon.

Introduction to FPL Psychology – Two Tips for FPL

As an introduction to how Psychology applies to FPL, I would like to give you two pieces of advice that should help you in pre-season and the early parts of the season too. The first piece of advice is to acknowledge, and attempt to nullify, Plan Continuation Bias. Plan Continuation Bias is the tendency for an individual to continue with the original plan, despite this plan no longer being viable, or better alternatives since arising.

As a result, this can be an especially dangerous bias during pre-season, when we begin making hundreds of drafts and ‘locking’ certain players into our team. By saying “Shaw is a lock in my team for GW1” we risk engaging the Plan Continuation Bias, whereby we will fail to adapt and react dynamically to new information in the following weeks of pre-season and fail to consider potential alternatives at that price. What happens if Digne and Cresswell both emerge as better options during pre-season, but we already have Shaw ‘locked’ in our side? It makes it significantly harder to adapt to new information. Therefore, always try to be open-minded and avoid locking yourself into certain players early on.

The second piece of advice links to how we interpret statistics, which begins to show you why FPL Raptor and fix might be a good match! The bias I am referring to here is the Law of Instrument Bias. This is a cognitive bias involving an over-reliance on a familiar tool. In FPL, this is often the over-reliance on one specific type of statistic (e.g., expected stats). The law of instrument bias is generally attributed to Maslow, with his famous quote:

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail” (Maslow, 1966).

If you always use the same method for approaching data analysis and research, you will often miss other key pieces of data that may aid your decision-making. For example, key chances created is a great statistic for deciding whether or not to bring in a creative midfielder. However, a pass is only counted as a key chance created if the player on the other end of the pass makes contact with the football. Therefore, if Kevin de Bruyne makes a 50-yard diagonal pass onto Sterling’s foot from 6 yards out but Sterling misses the ball, the statistics will not count this as a key chance. Here, the eye test would probably aid the statistics in this scenario. Overall, my advice is to always be open-minded when researching and always be willing to consider new ways of analysing information. 

 This is just a little taste of how Psychology applies to FPL, and I plan to do a few collaborations with fix throughout the season relating Psychology to statistics and FPL, alongside the regular content on our YouTube channel. Keep your eyes peeled and subscribe to our YouTube channel ready for the videos to start flying in!

FPL Raptor (Ross)

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