The Elite XI: Team Reveal feature allows Fix Premium Plus members exclusive access to the greatest Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers. The combined Elite XI boasts an extraordinary 36 top 5k finishes and 46 top 10k finishes. Offering real-time tracking data, push notifications and detailed insight into manager’s strategies, the Elite XI is unlike any other team reveal.
This weekly article will take you deep into the mindset of the world’s best FPL managers, allowing you to match your playing style to individual members of the Elite XI and use their incredible insight to help inform your own FPL decisions.
This week we talked to Niklas Zandén (Gothenburg Saints) who not only boasts four top 5k finishes but also came 22nd in the world in the 2016/17 season. Few people can maintain such consistent results while also coming tantalisingly close to outright victory.
Niklas is a particularly unique manager as he relies on neither statistics nor closely watching football games. Instead, his strength lies in his uncanny ability to collate information from other experts to inform his decision-making processes.
I don’t watch football. I stumbled into Fantasy Premier League because one of my friends introduced me to it. I don’t have time for watching football. My eye-test is following the written updates on the live text. I don’t crunch tables and I don’t do stats; that makes me a bit different. But I listen to others that do numbers well and I listen to those who know more about football than me and I rely on their eye test instead.
As professor of Management at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, Niklas is extremely adept at selecting the right people to listen to, using reliable sources of information – such as Player Points Projections – and then pulling together all the strands to build a more cohesive picture. This enables him to act on complete information and make more informed decisions.
The Player Points Projections tool shows the Algorithm’s projected points for each player in the upcoming Gameweek.
I don’t disregard the eye test or stats; I just don’t care about my own interpretation of them. I don’t have my own models of xG, etc, but I do care that others have looked into it. So, I listen to some pods, I read some articles and then I make a couple of decisions.
Niklas describes his own playing style as fairly conservative, but adaptable to the circumstances. He aggressively chases any opportunity to increase his team value and deliberately maintains a weak bench to ensure maximum funds can be allocated to his starting XI. He believes in sensible picks and is quite happy to adhere to the template.
One of my strengths is not trying to be too clever. I have no ambition to look brilliant. I am not into trying to make this one incredible pick which will be remembered for years because, when you do that, you’ll forget about the ten others which were really dumb.
When asked about the 2016/17 campaign in which he finished 22nd globally, Niklas insists he did not deviate from his regular playing style and did not feel he had to take more risks to achieve such a high rank. Modestly, he adds:
When I finished 22 in the world, I did not do much outside the template and I got a couple of things right. When you get a couple of things right in a row, suddenly a lot of things happen and then you build team value and are able to exploit that. I wasn’t really taking many risks at all.
Niklas’ favourite Fix features are the Price Change Predictor and the Gameweek Live area.
The Price Change Predictor tool predicts when a player's price is set to change, allowing managers to retain team value.
I always use the Price Change Predictor; I find that to be easy to use. I used to make early transfers (pre-Covid) to catch price rises. I generally have a team value of £107m come the end of the season, so that tool has always been useful. Another one which I am starting to use more and more is Insight Live for live statistics, so I can see changes to my rank during games, player effective ownership and how different players affect my rank.
In keeping with his conservative playing style, Niklas has gone with popular premium picks to form the spine of his team with Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.5m), Mohamed Salah (£13.0m) and Erling Haaland (£11.5m). At this early stage, he is opting for a 4-4-2 formation with three premium defenders and a good spread of price points across each position.
Interestingly, Niklas has Gabriel Martinelli (£6m) on his bench, somewhat deviating from his usual mantra of having all of his value in the starting XI. This could be indicative of his desire to have a flexible squad for Gameweek 1. It will be interesting to see how Niklas’ squad develops as new information presents itself over pre-season.
Martinelli scored the highest Expected FPL Points per 90 (5.70) of any Arsenal player - you can compare players using the Opta Player Heatmaps tool
If you would like to keep up-to-date with Niklas’ moves, then head over to the Elite XI: Team Reveal area and sign up to his push notifications – this will ensure you can track his moves in real-time and stay one step ahead of your mini-league rivals.
Join 89% of our members who won their main mini-league last season.
TRY IT NOWAlready a Premium user? Login here
© fantasyfootballfix 2024 | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Contact Us
