MLS Fantasy Boss A Fantasy MLS Community
With four game weeks gone, how are you feeling? The last couple of weeks have been a little… wild, to say the least. FMLS has thrown just about every crazy thing that could happen in fantasy at us, sometimes all at once – missed penalties, freak injuries, wacky own goals, disastrous reffing decisions, boneheaded plays – we’ve had it all. And in Week 3, almost all of those things happened to my team. It was the perfect storm of terrible luck: I lost Ryan Gauld to injury in the 23rd minute; Oscar Ustari, my fallback keeper, got red-carded in the 38th minute; Hany Mukhtar had a penalty saved; and my captain, Petar Musa, had a goal called back for offside and then had a penalty saved in the dying moments of his match, so he literally blanked. Thankfully, I actually had a few defenders hit, preventing utter collapse, but I still ended on 49 points for the week. Not great! My feelings about my FMLS skills were dropping faster than my OR. Luckily, I’ve been playing this game long enough that I have some strategies in place to implement a recovery plan.
My Bad Week Recovery Plan
Everybody has bad weeks. Even the manager who ends the season at OR1 has a week or two where they dip and make a mistake that stays with them. Feeling like all your choices are wrong, wanting to “ban” certain players from your team (looking at you, Musa), toss your laptop out the window and quit FMLS are completely normal, but you don’t want to spend too long dwelling on a tough week. Take Ted Lasso’s advice and “Be a goldfish.” How you respond to a week like this can go a long way towards determining how the rest of your season turns out. Here’s a step-by-step guide for how I like to deal:
- Don’t panic. When you’re in the moment on Saturday, watching it all come crashing down, there will be a strong temptation to make some last-minute tinkers to try to “save” your week. Don‘t give in! There’s nothing worse than looking back on a week and thinking, I would‘ve been fine if I had just stuck with my original lineup, why did I tinker those late guys out? Take a deep breath and make sure you’re making decisions from a good headspace, not one where you‘re scrambling to try to chase big points with a player you didn‘t really believe in.
- Wallow. Once it’s all said and done, it’s ok to feel bad. Deal with it in whatever way is best for you. Go for a run. Indulge in a drink of your choice. Take it out on those chumps in your Sunday league. Or commiserate with others who understand your pain. The MLS Fantasy Boss Discord is a great space for this, during games or immediately following, on Saturday night/Sunday morning. We sometimes refer to Discord chat as a therapy room – you will find someone else there who gets what you’re going through. But don’t spend too long on your wallow, because there’s another week right around the corner and you’ve got another team to build. So get it all out of your system and move on, because dwelling too long on one week’s mistakes is a surefire way to torpedo the next few weeks to come.
- Trust the process. When playing any fantasy sport, we’re attempting the impossible task of predicting hard-to-predict events. Everything that happens in a gameweek is completely out of our control (no matter how much we like to pretend otherwise). So instead of blaming yourself or your process for those things beyond your control, step back and take an analytical look at the players that “failed” your team. Did they really fail, or was it just bad luck? If you did make a bad decision, what lesson can you take away? For example, in week 4 the NYCFC defense was a very chalky (aka a popular choice). New England had (and still has) a terrible attack, so a lot of us stacked Freese and a defender, and then promptly groaned when a rain-soaked, skidding cross rocketed off Thiago Martins’ shin into the net. Does this mean NYC was a bad choice? Of course not. NE had the lowest xG of the week at 0.5, and they still have yet to score a goal themselves. Sometimes crazy own-goals happen. They just hurt a lot worse when they tank a popular CS chance like that.
- Filter out the noise. When you’re doubting yourself, it’s easy to want to let other opinions carry the weight. Podcasts, YouTube videos, articles, and the MLSFB Discord can be great forums for advice, but there can also be a lot of conflicting ideas. Learning to identify bad chalk and groupthink can go a long way in situations like this. I also find it helpful to have a buddy or two to bounce lineup ideas off of in DMs when I’m feeling stuck or come up with a really crazy differential. These are people whose advice I know, I trust (like The Fantasy Physician) and who can usually talk me out of my worst ideas.
- Get back to basics. Sadly, I’ve had to recover from terrible weeks in past seasons. The first thing I like to do, before moving on to the next week, is reset and refocus. I keep a running note on my phone called “FMLS Lessons” that I’m constantly adding to and updating throughout each season. It contains a lot of basic, evergreen advice – “Never choose a player because they’re ‘due’”, “If a team is missing their starting d-mid, don’t pick them for a CS”, “If you’re asking yourself ‘Should I cap Messi?’ the answer is always YES” – and some that are thankfully now out of date, like “Friends don’t let friends pick Vancouver defenders.” (Still carrying emotional scars from the Vanni era …) The purpose of this document is that when I need to reset, there are core values contained within that I use to build my team every week. When I’m doubting myself after a bad score, stopping to re-read these bits of wisdom I’ve gathered over the years of playing is an effective tactic before resetting with a fresh lineup in a new week. But as the Vancouver note shows, be open to revising your list, because you don’t want to stick with outdated advice just because it was true once.
- Trust yourself. Hindsight is always 20/20. It’s hard to avoid comparisons, especially in a game like this where you’re literally going head-to-head with other managers. It’s easy to look at other teams at the end of a game week and think, “Espi was so obvious” or “I never even considered St. Louis defenders” and beat yourself up about it. It’s ok, and often important, to examine why you missed a player with a big score, but that’s as far as you need to take it. Again, we’re trying to predict hard-to-predict events. Thanks to stats, we can make some educated guesses about outcomes, but no one will be perfect at predicting fantasy results (except probably AI, someday, and then fantasy sports will be ruined forever). For now, though, you know yourself best. You know the best way to prepare to choose your team. Get back to doing what got you here.
How Does this Apply for Week 5?
When you’re trying to bounce back, start by shaking it off. Take the lessons you learned from any mistakes you made and apply them going forward. Even after a week where crazy things happen, the same basic rules apply: Target good players in good matchups. Favor home players. Look for price rises. Work within your budget. A bad week doesn’t change the rules of the game, and it shouldn’t change your approach, either.
One thing we know is that crazy things will always happen in sports, and maybe next week, they’ll work in your favor! For what it’s worth, I followed all of this advice for week 4 and got back on track – 66 points, good for WR 478. That feels like a huge W after almost being at WR 5000 for week 3’s disaster.
I’ll end with a final piece of advice from my “FMLS Lessons” file, and the one I always keep at the end of my list so it’s the last thing I read: “Ultimately, you’re here to have fun. If it stops being fun, hit reset.”
The “Fantasy Physician” is Ron Birnbaum, @Half Century City on Discord
The “Fantasy Therapist” is Mike Leister, @Kenobi on Discord
