Open Thread: Game Week 15

Where's the Guide Gone?

A couple of you have asked which caused me to go back and look and yeah, I forgot to mention - Mike and I are currently in the middle of 24 podcast in 24 days. The Bang Average Advent Calendar this year is a 20-team homage to the 2002 World Cup advert series by Nike. Scorpion KO was originally contested by 24 of the world’s finest footballers (under contract to Nike). You can see most of it here:

As we’re releasing one a day for 24 consecutive days it’s left precious little time for writing. This is actually something I’ve done for the last five? six? years or more, but I always remember to write in advance and let people know there’s a slow down before the inevitable flood of writing I do around the Christmas to New Years period when the mid-season ranks publish.

My apologies for the oversight! This will then double as a full post AND an Open Thread so get your questions in! I'll be back with another post and Open Thread next week with the Mid-Season Ranks posting the final week of the year to the Shared Doc (I’ll include the link again when they do).

FPL Bonus Points

The disbursement of Bonus Points in the Official Game this season has been a bit hit or miss for me this season, with many of the players we covet so highly in draft scoring formats not being among the biggest bonus earners.

A full 20 goalkeepers have earned at least one point (including USMNT and Manchester City shot-stopper Zack Steffen who has one) but the bonus points aren’t tracking as closely. There are, of course, few bonus points awarded to ‘keepers generally but it’s still worth spending two seconds here.

There are seven (7) No. 1 who currently have at least 100 points in Togga base scoring headlined by Wolves stalwart Jose Sa, followed by Edouard Menday (134.75) and Aaron Ramsdale (130.5). Of those three, Sa does sit atop the OFPL bonus points at the position (7), Ramsdale not far behind (5) while Mendy is level-8th with three (3) BPS. The award of bonus points also isn’t tracking too saves this season.

The current leaders in saves very slightly depending on the site you use for the stat but are in some order Kasper Schmiechel (53 saves, 2 bonus points), Tim Krul (50, 4), De Gea (48, 2) Fabianski (47, 2) and Meslier (46, 3). There are of course many additional factors which weight the award of bonus points - which are not awarded based on overall performance but on single-game performance contrasted against other performances and weighted heavily for clean sheets, and for defenders and midfielder contributing goals and assists.

These track much more closely at the top end of defenders, where the attacking returns for Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joao Cancelo and Reece James have them 1st, 2nd and 4th in both the official scoring AND Togga scoring and 1-3-2 (James over Cancelo) in OFPL bonus points. Once you move outside of the scoring trio, there are a more even mix of fullbacks and centerbacks with Liverpools Virgil van Dijk and the Chelsea’s duo of Antonio Rudiger and Thiago Silva among the names who have high scores in both formats. I want to highlight Rudiger (4 bonus points) and Ethan Pinnock (4) who are both within the top seven in scoring at their position based on the strength of clean sheets but without the attacking value-add. For OFPL they are priced below the attacking options but I’m hard pressed to see the value in saving £0.1 to hold Rudiger (£6.1) over Reece James (£6.2). With the notable exception of heavily discounted CB and bottom-half defenders generally, OFPL makes no case for avoiding owning all of the top of attacking defenders who are doubly rewarded for their scoring exploits with high BPS.

I’m not going to carry this through to midfielder and forward ranks because there is not enough cross-over in the position classifications but I want to call out three massive under-performers.

Bruno Fernandes has scored bonus points in just three matches this season and has six total, this coming a year after he posted 36! The 18 goals and 14 assists certainly helped (this year he’s on five and three) but that is a significant issue and undermines any chance he returns value on the £11.6 current price. For context: those 36 BPS represent 15% of his total scoring last year. Further, he has picked up 0 BPS in the three matches where he’s recorded an assist. Cristiano Ronaldo may have collected 9 BPS but does have a match with a goal and another with an assist in which he collected 0; his overall game does not put him in a position to earn the bonus without big offensive contributions.

In a similar vein, Harry Kane’s GW8 remains the only match in which he’s scored a goal, assisted a goal, or earned a bonus point. He notched one of each and got the 3pt bonus bag against the Magpies, but playing in the Roberto Firmino role (and doing it about 5% as well as Bobby does) isn’t going to net any additional scoring. 40 of Kane’s 242 points last season came from bonus; his price is entirely unsustainable and at £12.2 I am struggling to see how he’s owned by anyone, let alone 8.5% of all managers.

Onto your questions and I’ll also use the thread to post QnA I get in the Slack, on Twitter, etc.

Finally, in a totally different light is the absurd season being had by Mo Salah (game high 19 bonus points, five times collecting the max 3) on his teammates production. Diogo Jota has only two (2) bonus points all season which is level with Sadio Mane (7g 2a) and Nabi Keita (uhhh 2g 1a). Really both Jota and Mane have valid grievances here - as do their FPL owners - with scoring records which would command significant bonus payments on any other team. Add to that the two matches where Jordan Henderson has scored in which he collected max BPS both times (and had 2 BPS in GW6, as well) and the 2nd/3rd fiddles in Liverpool’s “All Fiddlers” ensemble are being give short shrift. Only worth mentioning here because bonus points can account for a significant portion of total points so someone like Conor Gallagher (4g 5a) can collecting 9 BPS for similar g+a production to Jota/Mane but is the leading producer for his side.

Oh, and people can knock Neal Maupay all they want but in games where he scores, he collects the bonus. This season he’s on six goals and never more than one in a match; he collected BPS in five (!) of them including maximum three times.