1. Trust yourself in the decisions you’ve made for your team throughout the season.

You’re going to do far more research before the season starts than at any other point. The analysis that you’re collecting from the sources that you trust over the few weeks is going to have a lot of data behind it. The week where you make a knee jerk decision to chase a suddenly scoring attacking midfielder with a poor schedule will not.

2. In the early part of the season - keep it simple, keep it boring.

Primarily, try to stick to players from the following teams: Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs, and Liverpool. Fill in the rest of your squad with what you view as value from other teams: the only scoring threat, part of a favorable run in fixtures for defenders, or a nice rotation of players that favors their strengths in schedule.

3. Know your mini-league rivals.

If you know what teams they favor, what fantasy websites they frequent, and who they liked to have on their teams in previous years will help out tremendously. If you know that your rival is someone that does whatever the trends say online, you’ll know his or her most likely move on a transfer or the probable captain, and you can plan your moves accordingly.

4. Try to avoid planning for risky behavior because you want to shoot for the moon.

Creating a very risky team with a lot of high ceiling but low floor players (star strikers from newly promoted squads, often injured players, stars from one league moving to the EPL) will lead to transfers for hits and early Wild Cards.

5. Early Wild Cards aren’t necessarily a bad thing.

If your team at the beginning of the season is completely hopeless, don’t be afraid to pull the trigger. Shoot to keep your team until gameweek 8 as a checkpoint, but if all is lost, Wild Carding earlier would not be out of the question.

6. Wait to do your transfer for the week until Friday evening or a few hours before kick-off the next day.

You want to collect as much data as you can from the previous week’s matches. You will most likely avoid any midweek training injuries or surprise benching for your transfer targets.

7. Save your chips until the last few weeks of the season.

Save your Triple Captain, Bench Boost, and Free Hit until the last few weeks of the season. Hopefully you’ll have your second Wild Card for the last few weeks of the season as well. You will want to get as much out of you can during any double gameweeks from gameweek 32 and on.

8. Play a 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 for your formation.

Per @fantasyfootballfix, these formations were used by nearly 75% of the top 50 from last season. Four defender sets can work for a few GWs at a time, but don’t plan on keeping it for too long, you’re going to get far more points from your midfielders and forwards.

-@RJambrek