FPL season preview, tips and hints with the highest-ranking Spurs fan of 2019/20

Just hours remain until the new Fantasy Premier League (FPL) season kicks-off, so as players put the final touches to their squads, we reached out to last year’s highest-ranking Spurs fan in the tournament for his tips and hints ahead of the new campaign.

Attracting millions of competitors each year, the FPL is a game of strategy. With a virtual budget of £100million, challengers assemble a squad of 15 Premier League players before being ranked on a leaderboard with points earned through their team's real-world performances.

And last season, one Spurs fan in particular enjoyed a spectacularly high finish in the league as Kristoffur Sørensen, based in Manila, Philippines, came an impressive 31st overall out of 7.6million players across the world - that’s a place in the top 0.0005 per cent of global competitors.

So, with the first game week of the new campaign quickly approaching, we asked the seasoned FPL player 'how did you manage that?'

“By trying to learn from previous mistakes and not playing too much from the heart, and by recognising when your players or your team is not in good form, maybe getting rid of a few," Kristoffur explained as he reflected on his outstanding year. "It helps following some Youtubers or bloggers who are making good content and giving good advice. But, I think the difference last season was I started to make the decisions by myself. Going with my own convictions really helped a lot.

“There are a couple of strategies I use. I like to keep my bench as cheap as possible. For example, if you can find a defender for £4million, you can have one of those and a £4/4.5million midfielder as well. You also want to make sure that they are playing, so sometimes you have to go with a lower-finishing team - just to make sure they have playing time so that, if one of your starting players doesn’t play then, for sure, those on the bench will come in. It might just give you two or three points but that’s enough.

“You also have to be careful with your transfers. You want to pick as secure a team as possible so you can be flexible with your transfers. As I learned in my previous seasons, you can pick up too many minus points through doing too many transfers. At the start of the season, I like to go with a 4-4-2 formation, because you don’t have a lot of money to start with and maybe one of your strikers won’t be playing at all, so you can save some money there. When the game progresses, your team's value will go up so you can then switch to having some more expensive midfielders and three forwards.”

A devoted Spurs fan, Kristoffur wakes up at 3am in Manila to watch our games, and that commitment is there to see in his FPL strategy as he has already four of our players in his squad.

Normally, competition rules allow players to pick a maximum of three representatives from each Club to be in their squad however, having selected Matt Doherty for his team prior to the defender's August move to north London, Kristoffur now has Harry Kane, Eric Dier, Heung-Min Son and new recruit Matt in his XI. Although the 29-year-old admits, with the ups and downs of football, sentimentality isn’t always the best method for this game.

Talking about his love for the Club, Kristoffur said: “When I started to watch the Premier League, my heart was for Spurs. I started watching every game - even with living in the Philippines, the games are on at 3am but I still get up to watch. I just liked the team and the players, and everyone seemed to have a good heart for Tottenham. I just started watching them and supporting them.

“My heart is always with Spurs so I’m always quick to put Sonny or Kane in my FPL team when they get into form. I have to choose to go against my heart sometimes and get rid of some of the players, but I think I kept Son for the longest time.”