Sky Sports Focus

With Monday bringing the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) game into focus, it’s now time to assess how our community is faring in the Sky Sports Fantasy Football game. We also take a gander at the trends in the transfer market, assess the points per million statistics and look forward to tonight’s session with the Fantasy Football Club – with a very special guest in attendance…

Scout League Standings

As we mentioned in this week’s ScoutCast, Paul Hennessy continues to reign supreme in the Scout League, retaining his top spot for a third week running with a points tally of 396. That’s just a single point ahead of second ranked Ben Salter and the duo sit third and fifth in the game’s overall rankings. Hennessy is just four points shy of top spot in the race for the top prize of £25,000.

Lower down the Scout League, Jonathan Lenharth and Mark Hayles remain in our top five but they are joined by none other than Scout contributor Andy, who climbs into fifth. His points tally of 361 is shared with Niels Koopman – both sit in 57th place in the overall rankings.

The Scout League as a whole remains at the top of the league of leagues but the gap has now been narrowed to just six points.

A reminder that if you’re playing the Sky Sports game and have yet to join our league, you can sign up to the FFScout League with this Pin: 8004519.

Market Forces

With five goals to his name so far, Robin Van Persie continues to earn the top Fantasy interest in the Sky Sports game and has been subject of over 7% of the transfers made this week. Mirroring the trends in the FPL game, Marouane Fellaini’s stock has enjoyed a rapid rise and he ranks second for transfers over the last seven days – he’s been party to over 5% of trades made, with Arsenal’s Santi Cazorla also in demand with a similar stat ahead of the Emirates clash against Chelsea.

At the other end of the scale, it’s been Eden Hazard and Carlos Tevez who have taken a tumble. Both were so prolific for returns in the early Gameweeks but a couple of blanks for Hazard and the threat of rotation for Tevez has severely dented confidence. In the Sky Sports game we’ve seen Hazard transferred out by 5% of his ownership this week – only Fernando Torres has suffered more. As for Tevez, his decline is more gradual but almost 4% of his owners have traded in this week.

Interestingly, Hazard still ranks very highly for value based on his returns in the opening Gameweeks. Only Michu can offer better returns per pound than the Belgian amongst the midfielders with Cazorla and Fellaini currently ranking behind the Chelsea man for points per million.

The value stats are even more interesting when you move up front where we find Norwich City’s Robert Snodgrass – perhaps wrongly classified as a forward – heading up the value list. He’s returned 32 points thus far – that’s 5.08 points per million, putting him ahead of Jermain Defoe (4.74) and Rickie Lambert (4.71). At the back, it’s Carl Jenkinson heading the list with a strong 7.63 points per million. He’s ahead of the West Ham pair – Winston Reid (6.50) and Guy Demel (5.83). The Hammers defensive form has also seen Jussi Jaaskelainen top the goalkeeper value rankings with a points per million tally of 5.26.

The Fantasy Football Club – 10pm Tonight

West Ham’s Matt Taylor will be the guest in the studio for tonight’s episode of the Fantasy Football Club. This offers me a special opportunity as Granville and I will also be in the studio lurking about (but not on screen thankfully) – I might just get to shake the hand of one of my Fantasy football and Scout Pick fixations. As Scout player legends go, Taylor is probably up there with Victor Moses and Aleks Kolarov – although my faith in Taylor was at least repaid on several occasions. You can join Fenners and Merse from 10pm tonight.