How far should the fixtures impact our choices in FPL?

The 23/24 Premier League fixtures have been released. This has triggered the Fantasy Premier League community into a frenzy of long term planning and debates. But how far should the fixtures impact our choices?

The fixtures release is one of the biggest releases in pre-season for FPL managers. The schedule is released in June every season which provides every teams fixture list for the remainder of the campaign. But why does it affect our planning and impact our choices?

Fixture ticker

Firstly, all of the fixtures have been updated on the Fantasy Football Scout season ticker below. Managers can change the match period as and when they please to suit their preference. The ticker below orders the fixtures at the top with the easiest fixtures, all the way down to the fixtures at the bottom with the toughest fixtures.

The ticker includes teams first six fixtures, but this can be changed. Another thing that can be changed is how you view the ticker.

Why are the fixtures important?

It is vital we touch upon why the fixtures are important and how they can help us with long-term planning. Some of those reasons are as follows:

Transfers – Transfers help build our squads Gameweekly. Seeing the schedule can help us map out a general transfer plan.

Captaincy – Captaincy is one of the most important features in the game. Using the fixtures to determine which premium players we have in our team and when we could captain them could also be beneficial.

Building our teams – The fixtures help us to build a team based on which teams start with good fixtures. Investing in a stronger team playing a weaker team is something that some of the most experienced managers in the world do.

Chips – The fixtures also help us to see when we could use our chips. Chips can be the most powerful contributing factor to any managers seasonal success.

Fixture swings – The schedule also allows managers to see fixtures swings. This then gives us the opportunity to move away from a teams assets who face tough fixtures ahead for example.

What the fixture do not tell us?

Prices – The schedule does not give managers the prices of players. Player prices can be detrimental to who we buy, how we shape our team as the season progresses, captaincy and more.

Form – The fixtures do not show us team or player form. Although managers have a good idea of who the best teams are, they do not know how players and teams will perform.

Transfer window – The fixtures do not show us how teams will weaken and strengthen in the transfer market. A teams success could be improved via signings.

How far should the fixtures impact our choices?

As we can see, fixtures can be extremely helpful to FPL managers for long term planning. The schedule can be used to build to a very important building block for key things like captaincy, transfer plan, chip usage and more.

Although that is the case, factors like form, pricing and if teams will weaken or strengthen in the transfer window are absolutely key towards how managers play the game. To conclude, fixtures should impact our decisions quite a lot but the things the schedule cannot tell us are also too important to ignore.