The Community Round Up

Christmas came early this year, as the community tampered with a rather smart online toy offering analysis of Fantasy Premier League (FPL) points won and lost. We examine this, along with an array of the week’s other hot topics and glance at the latest developments in our community leagues, whilst revealing if anyone was close to guessing Mark’s predictably doomed Gameweek 13 transfers.

The Hottest Topics

It may sound like the Transformers’ latest recruit but Gargamel’s “Gargatron” is in fact a nifty FPL analysis tool which has sent the Fantasy Football Scout community into a frenzy. It’s easy to operate but works best using Google Chrome and provides a handy summary of just how good or bad your captaincy and bench decisions have been to this point – it can, however, make grizzly reading.

As competition for our three striking berths intensifies, D1sable took over the Fantasy Football Scout Daily Hot Topic on Wednesday to ask whether an ailing Christian Benteke is enduring second season syndrome or just needs more assistance from his team-mates to shine. There was mixed reaction from the thread – Ansinthe Minded was amongst those optimistic that the Belgian will return to his 2012/13 form, while King Nil Miss felt that a lack of sharpness was in evidence following Benteke’s recent groin injury.

Among the best anaylsis of Benteke’s form came from Agbonloahorse. His research shows just how relient Benteke is on Gabby Agbonlahor and Andreas Weimann. Of the 28 games in which all three have started, Benteke has racked up 27 goals. In the 25 games in which one of them has failed to start, he has scored just seven goals. Eye-opening stuff.

Mr Smith has been taking a look at two other options, Wayne Rooney and Romelu Lukaku. His excellent post shows that the far cheaper Everton man is keeping pace with the United striker and, in the eight matches to Gameweek 12, had in fact notched more goals.

Just how much of a premium are Fantasy managers willing to pay for a few extra bonus points? This was the key issue covered in Dogba’s discussion on the merits of Everton’s two centre backs, Phil Jagielka and Sylvan Distin. With the pair fairly even in terms of starts and underlying attacking stats it appears that the key difference is Jagielka’s ability to hoover up bonus points on a more regular basis. But, Dogba asks, is that really worth the 0.7m premium Jagielka suitors face over his defensive partner?

Portsmouth Bubblejet has been looking ahead to the festive fixtures and concludes that Gameweeks 13 to 20 present plenty of opportunity to explore rotating options. If you fancy some cheap or mid-priced defensive and midfield candidates to rotate over Christmas, his analysis will prove invaluable.

Meanwhile, since Granville failed to correctly guess Mark’s three transfers during this week’s Scoutcast, we thought we’d give the community a chance to try their luck. Sarjeant was closest with his guess that Sturridge, Rooney and Nasri would make way for Aguero, Suarez and Ravel Morrison. If he had suggested Fulham midfielder Pajtim Kasami instead of the West Ham makeweight, he would have been spot on. Typically, all three of Mark’s signings earned just a couple of points each – while the ousted Wayne Rooney helped himself to a brace at the Lane. Painful.

Community Leagues

The leaders in In Tommy We Trust’s All Things leagues are La Roja, Chilin_Dude, Athletico Timbo, Crouch Potato, Chazza and Koneheads who, going into Gameweek 13, was ranked 532 in the world.

The last 32 in his cup also took  place this weekend. We’ll have the results of the ties between the likes of Greenwindmill and Copenhagen Allstars and La Roja against BlueHazard next week.

In HeelsOverHead’s Worst To First – 2 Million+ Club, for teams with an overall rank below 2,000,000 in the first five game weeks, seven teams have climbed into the top 500,000 and 14 are in the top 1,000,000. Going into Gameweek 13 YOLO Toure was in pole position after climbing to the lofty heights of 187,428^th.

Of those taking part in  TorresMagic’s Last Man Standing league, 36 managers got the chop ahead of Gameweek 13 after failing to reach the safety score of 52.

The FFS Paddy Power Cup Second Round also took place this weekend. Look out for the results and third round draw in the next 24 hours.