FPL Fortress

10 Episodes
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By: FPL Fortress

Two FPL fanatics have a chat about the weekend's action and look ahead to future gameweeks, throwing around banter and exchanging insight.

GW 30: Spider-Man, Microphones, and the Wildcard
#20
03/21/2024

In this latest episode of the FPL Fortress, many exciting things happen: Jacob gets bamboozled, Jiayang successfully lands two puns in a row on the spot, and both work together to contemplate the strategy of the Gameweek 30/31 Wildcard that many managers are considering. It’s particularly exciting because Jiayang is visiting Georgetown—so the recording is finally being done in the same room, with the same microphone (Jacob’s trusty JLab Talk Go). After the admittedly not-so-exciting Gameweek 29 Review, the episode really gets going with the nitty-gritty discussion regarding our second Wildcard. For captaincy, Jiayang and Jacob make hyper-specific predic...


GW 28: Distrusting Your Intuition
#19
03/08/2024

A common piece of advice: trust your intuition. But when your intuition tells you that transferring Haaland out for Carlton Morris is an insane thing to do, don’t trust your intuition. Seriously, there’s a larger point here—even when a certain action seems insane at first glance, it can be very useful to create some distance between yourself and the action in order to approach it from a more logical, clear-headed place. You might even be swayed! (Hint: this exact phenomenon may or not have played out in this episode…) Jacob and Jiayang also try to resolve their fi...


GW 27: Biting the Bullet
#18
03/02/2024

Now that this round of the FA Cup has finished, the Gameweek 29 fixtures are finally confirmed—and boy, they do not look particularly exciting. In this episode, we conduct a thorough investigation on what the best course of action is to prepare for the blank, covering transfer strategies both going into and coming out of the blank and the most important players to own by the time March 16th rolls around. During the captaincy segment, Jacob, as he so often does, prods Jiayang about the psychological soundness behind something he says—this time, it’s about how much Haaland’s glut...


GW 26: Like a Knife Through Hot Butter
#17
02/22/2024

FPL is a game that’s often characterized by the feeling of disappointment. Cold, hard, and unadulterated disappointment. And yet, before every seemingly juicy double gameweek, it seems like we FPL managers have a genuine reason to be hopeful. Double Gameweek 25 was one of those gameweeks—how exciting was it that Man City and Liverpool, two of the best teams in the league, would have two nice fixtures each? Alas, disappointment struck once again, especially when we realized that Darwin and Jota together played a mere quarter of the minutes that they could have played. In MJ’s words, perhap...


GW 25: City-Pool is Back?
#16
02/16/2024

In this episode, we focus exclusively on Liverpool, Manchester City, and Arsenal, the three teams that comprise the current top three of the Premier League—as such, it should come as little surprise that they also offer some of the best assets in FPL. Players from Liverpool and Man City are particularly hot property this week, given their juicy upcoming double gameweeks. Salah’s impending return and the potential resurgence of Pep Roulette (Man City’s squad is finally fully fit again), however, might just complicate matters a little … but first, we offer you a bit of roleplay involving an anima...


GW 24: A Fresh Approach to Chip Strategy
#15
02/09/2024

With GW 25 and GW 28 finally confirmed to be double gameweeks and a clearer picture emerging overall of the remainder of the season, it finally seems like there are some real choices to be made for FPL managers—choices that, with strategic planning, can result in massive rank gains. To that end, we try to approach the four available chips from a new angle—instead of looking at which gameweek would be best to use a certain chip, we consider which chip would be best to use in a certain gameweek. Though the conclusions between the two approaches are similar, the...


GW23: A Rusty Robot
#14
02/03/2024

Gameweek 22 was full of fun moments, with Haaland completely scuffing his lines (a robot will inevitably be a little rusty after a period of disuse, after all), Maupay taking the absolute mickey out of Maddison, and Elijah Anuoluwapo Oluwaferanmi Oluwatomi Oluwalana Ayomikulehin Adebayo dethroning Addji Keaninkin Marc-Israel Guéhi in his as the player with the best name in the Premier League. Looking forward, in our Dilemma Deliberations, we consider the upcoming blank and double gameweeks, outline a rough chip strategy for the remainder of the season, and debate whether or not you MUST bring in Haaland this week. O...


GW22: Animal Jam
#13
01/26/2024

The most stretched-out gameweek in recent memory has bored us to the point of making Starting XIs consisting of animals. Yes, that’s right—Jacob and Jiayang spend about 20 minutes putting together the perfect Animal XI. And to be honest, we don’t see anyone getting past this team—the footballing world should be grateful it doesn’t actually exist, because it would no doubt walk the Champions League every year. With the great white shark leading the line and the kangaroo marshaling the defense … goosebumps. Don’t worry, we do also talk about FPL-related matters: the main topics in this episod...


GW 21: Olé Olé Ol(is)é
#12
01/10/2024

Breaks in the Premier League never come to pass calmly. Our teams just always seem to get derailed—this time, it’s injuries to Bowen, Trent, and of course Charlie Taylor, coupled with the departure of Salah and Son that had been imminent—and as FPL managers, we have to navigate our way through these trainwrecks. After reviewing the key points in Gameweek 20, we spend the bulk of this episode addressing our concerns in midfield and defense by ranking the best replacement options. Given Jacob’s recent infatuation with all things Crystal Palace, there is also a hefty dose of Olise...


GW20: Hope
#11
12/29/2023

I can scarcely believe that this is our last episode in 2023, but here we are! Jiayang and Jacob conduct reviews of Chelsea and Man City respectively, with both landing on a hopeful outlook for the future (though Chelsea might be going through yet another false dawn, whereas City’s hope seems a lot more grounded). We also put Newcastle under strict scrutiny—has the Saudi money finally met its match with the mighty Wood? (There’s an environmentalism joke in there somewhere.) In our Dilemma Deliberations, we discuss four midfield options to consider buying for when Salah and Son tempor...