Top 5 Career Hall of Fame – Gameweek 36 Review

To help with those last minute transfer dilemmas this week’s article on the Top Five career Hall of Fame (HoF) managers takes a look at FPL legend Ville Ronka’s wildcard moves.

Green arrows all round for our elite managers in Double Gameweek 36. Both Peter Kouwenberg and Steve Poulsom achieved season high FPL ranks of 273 and 25,126 respectively.

This article focuses on the moves and strategies employed by the five elite managers who grace the upper echelons of the career Hall of Fame. Members can see the latest top five via our Live Hall of Fame update.

To help out I have also deployed Fusen’s FPL Statistico tool to gain an extra insight into their thinking.

Before we look at their teams in more detail, here’s why they are the best FPL managers:

DOUBLE v SINGLE GAMEWEEK PLAYERS

At a glance – how many Double and Single Gameweek players do our Top Five managers have?

Both Ville and Peter have Arsenal’s Gabriel, who must be considered a doubt after being demoted to the bench for both his team’s matches in Gameweek 36.

Steve and Marlen Rattiner have already taken hits ahead of the final Double Gameweek of the season.

TEMPLATE – GAMEWEEK 36

Double Gameweek Players in Bold

All Managers have Bench Boost available

Cech, Pickford / Caballero

Yoshida, Stephens, Holgate, (Alonso, Koné)

Sanchez, Eriksen, Alli, Hazard, (Sané)

Kane, Costa, (Jesus / Gabbiadini / Lukaku)

PLAYERS – GAMEWEEK 36

With twelve players now in over 50% of the teams there is a consistency to the template.

We find general agreement over the Double Gameweek players. Everton’s Romelu Lukaku and Mason Holgate are the popular Single Gameweek choices. The defender is considered good value and resides in three teams.

In the sub 6.0 category Bournemouth’s Josh King continues to offer good value for Peter, purchased for £5.4 back in Gameweek 28. However Wilfried Zaha’s stock is in decline.

There has been a significant shift of funds from Defenders to Attackers in recent weeks. The once universally popular Marcos Alonso is now found in only two teams.

POINTS & RANK

*from GW6 onwards

Only David of this quintet qualified for the cup and he went out in Gameweek 19. All have played their final Wildcards and Triple Captain chips, and three have also played their AOA chip.

David Meechan used his Triple Captain chip on Arsenal’s Alexis Sanchez to help him to a gameweek high score of 92. He gained more from using his chip on the Chilean than the other managers gained from Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero back in Double Gameweek 27.

The graph above shows the ranks of the Top Five managers over the 36 Gameweeks so far. The vertical scale is from rank 1 to 1M. The distance between the ranks corresponds to the number of points separating them. For instance there are 221pts between rank 1 and rank 10,000, and 298pts between 10,000 and 1M. The graph gives an idea of how difficult it is to move up the ranks as you near the summit.

CAPTAIN

The answer to last week’s captain dilemma was to play it safe and captain Sanchez. David using his triple captain chip on the Chilean. With more choice this week will the armband remain on Arsenal’s talisman?

Over the season Sanchez has been picked as captain or triple captain 30% of the time, his 28 point return this week boosting his season average to 15.8pts when chosen. Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero follows in popularity having been handed the armband 22% of the time, averaging 15.9pts as captain or triple captain, with Everton’s Romelu Lukaku chosen 12% of the time averaging a mighty 20.7pts.

In the graphic below I’ve displayed this information for the five most popular captain picks.

Overall the Top Five have known when to put the armband on Lukaku, he has handsomely repaid the faith placed in him when chosen as captain. You could argue that the trolls in this graphic are Tottenham’s Harry Kane and United’s Ibrahimovic. They have not been explosive choices on the few occasions that they have been trusted with the armband, averaging 11.2 and 13.2 points respectively.

CAPTAIN POINTS

Peter remains the best performing manager out of the Top Five in his ability to select the right captain. His 569 points is the top score in this metric by more than 50 points. It is no surprise that he is also the highest ranked FPL manager of the five.

To help you make your crucial captain decision be sure to read YMA’s Form and Fixture analysis together with the Captain Sensible articles.

TRANSFERS – GAMEWEEK 36

VILLE’S WILDCARD

Ville originally had Nacho Monreal in his wildcard team before changing late on to teammate Gabriel. It looks like he saved money in order to upgrade Defoe to Jesus. He will be hoping for more than a solitary assist from Manchester City’s returning starlet over the double gameweek.

TRANSFER SUCCESS

Despite selling Chelsea’s Marcos Alonso, who scored and earned a clean sheet on his way to 14 points, Ville’s new charges bettered his old players by 29 points.

A bold 8 point hit paid off for Marlen who gained 23 points on immediate transfers minus the cost of the hits. Under performing Palace players and rotation threatened United players left his team.

Over the course of the season Steve has mustered more immediate transfer points minus hits than any of his fellow bosses at the HoF’s top table. His surge up the FPL standings helped by some shrewd moves in the transfer market. Another 18 points gained this week as Petr Cech and Jack Stephens out performed Ben Gibson and David de Gea.

Immediate transfer success is not in itself proof of overall success but simply one part of a complex picture. Steve for instance is 35 points ahead of Peter in this metric, however he is 146 points behind overall.

One obvious result of making more transfers is an increase in Team Value. Not surprising that Peter has the most valuable squad.

FORMATION

The standard 3-4-3 was again popular this week with even David deviating from his normal 3-5-2 formation.

Over the season Ville and Marlen have been strong advocates of 3-4-3, Marlen opting for the formation 30 times.

Peter, favouring 3-4-3, has the highest average points with 61.5. He narrowly pips David by 0.1 points, David averages 61.4 points with his favoured 3-5-2.

However 3-5-2 has been the most successful formation for Peter, the seven times he has chosen or defaulted to 3-5-2 he has average 69 points.

3-4-3 has been favoured 59% of the time by the career HoF Top Five, with 3-5-2 second with 23%. 4-4-2 is the third most popular on 9%.

BENCH BOOST DOUBLE GAMEWEEK

This is it, the final big push of the season for our Top Five. The planning and strategising is nearly at an end, a couple more rolls of the dice to secure green arrows. By saving their Bench Boost chip they have given themselves every chance of a strong finish.

Perhaps wary of the unpredictable nature of football Ville, with 14 Double Gameweekers, is backing players with an extra match to ride out any shock results. However, after being let down by Alvaro Negredo and Manolo Gabbiadini in recent Double Gameweeks, will ignoring the likes of Lukaku, King, Sigurdsson and co prove costly?

A first ever season outside the top 10,000 is at stake for FPL’s favourite Finn.