The season’s done. Time to get out more. See the family.

But before you go, let’s have a quick recap. You know, for old times’ sake.

Not because we simply can’t move on.

No, not that at all.

Ten Things We Learned From FPL Season 21/22

1) Hitting The xG Spot

Glance at the top 10 goalscorers for the season, and you’ll find that xG did its job.

Mohamed Salah had an xG of 23.71, for instance, although his fellow 23-goal man, Heung-Min Son, outperformed his 17.13 total by some distance.

But for every Son or Jamie Vardy – the guy always feasts on scraps, so 15 goals from an xG of just 9.49 is par for his particular course – there were a number of more accurate totals.

Top of the shop has to be Sadio Mane’s 15.98, seeing as he ended up with 16 goals.

Big chances is another decent way of indicating goal threat – of the five top scorers, four of them were also in the top five for that metric as well.

But xG pinpointed the entire top five.

2) We Need To Talk About Kevin

And then we come to the ultimate outlier, the man who gave any number of xStats a right good kicking: Kevin De Bruyne.

The Ginger Prince finished sixth overall for points scored, with 196.

But nobody in the top ten played fewer minutes or started fewer matches than he did.

As an example, Harry Kane, who finished on 192 points, reached his total from 11 more starts and a staggering 1,027 more minutes on the pitch.

And back on the xG/big chances theme, De Bruyne scored a personal best 15 goals – only five players managed more – from an xG of just 7.04.

Three things that will change in FPL next season

He also had only five big chances. Sadio Mane, who scored one goal more than the Belgian, had 28 of them.

Injuries will always be a concern with De Bruyne – his last three campaigns have been compromised by them.

But take out the wrecked 2018/19 season, when he only played 968 minutes, and his last five totals are: 199, 209, 251, 142 and now 196.

And next season, his assist tally could be hugely boosted by the arrival of Erling Haaland.

3) Set, Just Never Forget

De Bruyne could well be a strong candidate for a ‘Set And Forget’ place – put him in your Gameweek 1 team and then leave him there.

Then again, this season should have reminded us as to how flawed that strategy can be.

Michail Antonio famously started the campaign like a train, averaging 13.3 points per match over the first three gameweeks.

He then spent the next 35 fixtures staggering to another 100 points.

Similarly, Bruno Fernandes’ 20-pointer in Gameweek 1 pushed his ownership close to four and a half million.

He did manage ten goals and seven assists all in, even if that wasn’t much better than what he produced from his phenomenal debut half season.

But his campaign descended into whiney irrelevance and the only two areas he led the way in were bookings (ten, among midfielders) and missed penalties (two, overall).

So set all you like, just remember to not forget.

4) Cancelo Culture

The Liverpool back line dominated the FPL defenders’ standings, with four of them in the top five.

Man City’s Joao Cancelo was the exception, finishing in second place, seven points behind Trent Alexander-Arnold.

And talking of finishing…

The City full-back had 81 shots – 30 more than any other defender – but scored only once from an xG of 5.63.

Alexander-Arnold scored twice from 51 shots at 2.87.

Cancelo’s shot total was, to use a technical term, insane.

It was the 12^th highest among all players. He even had three more attempts than Kevin De Bruyne and yet scored a 15^th of the Belgian’s goals.

The problem was he generally shot from outside the box (50 times) and he was wasteful – only 23 of his attempts were on target.

His assist history was the exact opposite.

His tally of 11 was the fourth-best in FPL (and only one off Alexander-Arnold), but from 39 key passes to the Liverpool man’s 90.

He also produced only nine big chances – half the total of his Reds rival.

Imagine if the City man can balance up his attacking output next season…

The one issue will surely be price.

No player put on more value over the season than Cancelo, who rose from £6.0m to £7.2m.

Alexander-Arnold started at £7.5m and finished at £8.4m.

It would be entirely predictable if both of them begin the next campaign at the £8.0m mark.

5) Like A Virgil

If we find ourselves being priced out of obtaining the likes of Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson, all is not lost.

Virgil van Dijk finished the season just three points behind the left-back, cost £1.6m less than the right-back and played more matches than either of them.

Liverpool generally go deep in Europe and at least one of the domestic cups, so rotation becomes an issue that especially bites the full-backs in Klopp’s 4-3-3 system.

Throw in an oft-used tactic to bring Alexander-Arnold inside so Mo Salah can stretch the pitch (and distort the defence), and it isn’t a huge surprise that the right-back’s production decreased.

He had seven double-digit hauls and two nine-pointers up to Gameweek 22 and only one (and nothing else higher than a seven-pointer) after it.

Van Dijk’s output will never be as explosive, but the money he saves you could well offset the points he misses out on compared to his fellow Reds defenders.

Joel Matip, of course, is even cheaper.

But his late-season form was freakish and he faces increasing competition from Ibrahima Konate for a starting spot.

6) A Beast Yet To Be Unleashed

The final word on the season’s best FPL defenders has to go to Chelsea’s Reece James.

He averaged 6.27 points per start – only six players who played at least 20 games could top that and they all cost more than the wing-back.

In fact, one of them was more than double James’ £6.5m value and another three were at least £4m more expensive.

Injuries kept the England man to just 22 starts and a mere 1,865 minutes of action.

Despite this, he scored more goals (five) than any other defender bar Arsenal’s Gabriel, who found the net the same amount of times but from 1,203 extra minutes of pitch-time.

And his nine assists was the third-best tally among defenders, while only Alexander-Arnold could top him for big chances.

Chelsea are a squad in flux.

Antonio Rudiger, Marcos Alonso and Andreas Christensen are all, seemingly, leaving this summer and the side’s striker issues are not exactly settled either.

So both James and Chelsea might need monitoring before we commit for next season.

But if he can stay fit and his price doesn’t leap too far upwards, he could be a beast of a buy.

7) Timing Is Everything

This year’s best bet for a set and forget (see above) was surely Mo Salah.

Until it wasn’t. Around the time he came back from the Africa Cup of Nations.

He still managed to do a madness in Double Gameweek 26, racking up 28 points (many of which were sent through the roof by the Triple Captain chip).

But if you’d binned him off after that double and tapped into Heung-Min Son instead, you’d have picked up 129 points from the Spurs man.

Over the same period, Salah managed just 56.

Effective Ownership is a new(ish) metric that people love to bandy about.

It’s a nasty one, though, as it often leaves managers in double despair – the likes of Salah were so well-owned this season that their hauls did little to boost your ranking.

But those hauls meant not owning him hurt you even more.

The trick/skill/luck was to spot the new trend (Son) early while being brave enough to ditch the old guard (Salah).

It was, arguably, the defining call of the latter part of this season.

8) Kane Still Able

Remember when Harry Kane never used to score in August?

This year, he couldn’t be bothered for nearly half the season.

Mitigating circumstances involved The Treachery Of Daniel Levy and Nuno Espirito Santo – The Wilderness Months.

And when he finally got over all that, he got on with being one of the most reliable FPL players out there.

The contrast between how Kane started and finished the season was ridiculously stark.

Up to Gameweek 15, he scored one goal, provided one assist and produced 33 points.

From Gameweek 18 (Spurs took no part in GW16 or 17) onwards, he scored 159 points.

Only Heung-Min Son managed more during that period.

Pure goalscorers have been marginalised by tactical demands in recent years.

It’s no coincidence that this was the second straight campaign in which Kane has made it into double figures for assists, having failed to do so in any of the previous eight seasons.

But he still finds a way to score as well – being on penalties helps – and he remains the only sure-fire premium striker (perhaps with Cristiano Ronaldo) worth the outlay.

9) Yep, They Were A Trap

We knew it all along, didn’t we?

Double gameweeks involving bad teams are a trap. And yet we walked straight into it anyway.

Burnley were the perfect case in point.

They had more doubles than a groom on his stag do, and many of us came out of them feeling equally queasy.

Below are the FPL top scorers for each of the Clarets’ doubles. An asterisk denotes that they had two fixtures.

DGW26 Salah 28*

DGW27 Doherty 18

DGW31 Richarlison 17*

DGW33 Guimaraes 20*

DGW37 Maddison 25*

First up, none of them are Burnley players, although to be fair, five of them appeared in FPL’s ‘Kings of the Gameweek’ for DGW26.

And that’s probably the root of the problem.

Wout Weghorst, for instance, charmed us all with his lanky 14-pointer in that first double and we collectively lost our minds every time Burnley had another one, which was far too often.

Double fixtures are all well and good, but players still need to have exhibited some vague commitment to form and excellence before we go all-in on them.

Because one good fixture can easily trump two bad ones, especially when late-season rotation means that your pick for the double might not even play twice anyway.

And especially when your double gameweek punt is called Emmanuel Dennis.

10) Please Sir, Can I Have Some More?

Personally speaking, I love the Free Hit chip.

It gives me that first-game-of-the-season unlimited tinkering vibe, with an added dose of schadenfreude when you know your mini-league rivals have already scoffed that particular chip three months ago.

So when FPL announced we were to get another one to make up for all those postponements earlier in the season, I was, well, doubly delighted.

Which is why I now ask FPL Towers…please sir/madam, can we have another Free Hit?

Why? Because halfway through next season we’re going to get royally screwed over by the International Break From Hell that FIFA insist is actually called The World Cup.

And what’s going to happen when the players lurch back from a month of physical and emotional trauma?

Half of them aren’t going to be fit for anything, and the other half don’t play in England.

So is there a case for a second Free Hit chip to be played (by most) in the first game back after the Qatar tournament?

I think so.

It’s all well and good selling your best African players for a couple of games either side of their frequent January international issues.

But when your entire team has the potential to be made up of stars ‘fresh’ from a month of hope and hurt, it’s going to be FPL carnage.

And if you think that’s a chip too far, why don’t we bin off Bench Boost for it?

I, for one, wouldn’t miss that one at all.

It can go and stand in the corner, next to All Out Attack, and have a long, hard think about what it’s done for me, which is precisely nothing.

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