[FPL 90 cents] For you hopefully there are two kinds of pain

Last week, we made one move: sold Mbeumo (who got 9 points against Liverpool) for Enzo (didn't start, and the replacement blanked). Red arrow but within top 200,000 rank. We'll take it!

A large part of what protected us is the "core setup" that we think is undeniable right now; and you'd have done especially well if you took Gabriel/Saka + Mateta.

There are two kinds of pains in FPL:

• The pain that comes when your opponent is fucking unbelievably lucky. Or when anything happens against the odds, really. E.g. Grealish owners when he "scored" via Munoz clearing the ball off his back. Or when your opponent has a random player sub in and haul.
  
  This first kind of pain (outcome pain) still hurts but heals fast. We love Mbeumo but think it made sense to sell him before the Liverpool match when his chart looked like this (2 returns in 7 matches):
  

But of course things are in disarray now that he scored; his recent chart looks like this. So we're okay with the decision to sell him for Enzo, as we still think the risk premium made sense. We can control risks, but no one can control outcomes.

This is also why we're okay with owning Calafiori (6 pts) rather than Gabriel (12 pts). Calafiori did really well again against Fulham - including one disallowed goal - and the mainstream FPL community is really hyping him up now (sadly this is reducing the differential advantage).

• The second pain comes when we make an unavoidable mistake - it hurts more because we only have ourselves to blame. And that pain doesn't go away!
  
  This week, our personal disappointment was not seriously considering Reece James as a key pick when highlighting it was a good week to buy Chelsea players. We considered him a few GWs back and forgot that his stats are improved since then.
  
  We also fault ourselves for selling Cucurella rather than Pedro Porro a few weeks back despite Cucu having better fixtures - he would then have subbed in for Enzo. So things like this are decisional pain.

If you are the type of FPL player who feels the "2nd kind of pain" - congrats! We've many friends who only care about outcomes rather than the quality of decisions and they lead unhappy lives because (even if they are good players) they tend to plateau.

The silver lining about the 2nd pain (despite it being the more lasting/painful kind) is that it helps us improve - but only if we act on it. It could be via a decision journal; or simply by spending a few minutes on questions like:

• Was this preventable?
• What were the datapoints I missed?
• Or could the considerations be framed better?
• How can I apply this in future? Can I apply it for the upcoming gameweek?

And of course there are sometimes gameweeks without pain :)
Or rather (because FPL is a zero-sum setup) you are the reason for someone else's pain :) :)

Hope the recent one was like that for you of course - but if not, practising self-reviews is the best way to get such good times (:

Thanks for reading and may the FPL gods smile on you!

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