Top 5 Career Hall of Fame – Gameweek 16 Review

Current Live Hall of Fame leader Jay Egersdorff made it 11 green arrows in a row as he entered the FPL top 50 for the first time ever.

His gameweek score of 56 included 24 points from his captain Tottenham’s Harry Kane and 11 points from Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah. Together they helped make up for his three Chelsea players contributing a meagre four points between them.

The Gameweek’s highest scoring manager was career number four Matthew Jones (aka Numb) with 71. He was the least exposed of our top five to the surprise Chelsea defeat with only Alvaro Morata in his team. 

However, he did find himself caught out by his decision to triple up on Liverpool attackers, by bringing in Philippe Coutinho for City midfielder David Silva, to sit alongside Roberto Firmino and Salah.

Disappointingly, Coutinho and Firmino failed to make the Reds starting XI, while Silva punished Matthew further by scoring in the Manchester derby.

Nevertheless, with three of Liverpool’s fab four already in his side for their home clash with West Brom he looks well prepared for Gameweek 17.

Matthew has moved from 764,492 to 176,331 spot in the past four Gameweeks, overtaking both career Hall of Fame number one Peter Kouwenberg (aka My Pretty Pony), and number two Graeme Sumner (aka Gregor) in the process.

Peter has had a torrid past few Gameweeks.

Has the fame and fortune that comes with the coveted title of HoF number one got the better of Fantasy Football’s very own George Best? Too many booze fuelled late night parties perhaps? Will a bellboy remark, when delivering a bottle of vintage champagne to Peter’s hotel room and finding him with a Miss World surrounded by a sea of money – “Where did it all go wrong?”

His recent transfer escapades suggest he is heading that way, with the Career number one admitting that his transfer out of the scoring Palace defender Scott Dann for Watford’s Marvin Zeegelaar, who saw red,  was carried out at 1am after a party.  He also transferred in Coutinho to finish the Gameweek on just 37 points as he tighten’s his grip on the top five Wooden Spoon.

Over the last three weeks Peter’s points from immediate transfers are -11, -7, and -12. Add in the hits taken and his total is a scarcely believable -42 points since Gameweek 14. This unenviable run has seen him slump from 290,391 to 623,391 in the overall rankings.

This article focuses on the moves and strategies employed by the five elite managers who grace the upper echelons of this site’s Career Hall of Fame. Between them these managers have achieved nine top 1,000 finishes in the past three seasons and have ended up in the top 10,000 a whopping 37 times over the course of their FPL careers.

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

POINTS & RANK

The graph below shows the ranks of the Top Five managers so far. The vertical scale is from rank 1 to 3m. The distance between the ranks corresponds to the number of points separating them. For instance there are 190pts between rank 1 and rank 100k but only 78pts between 100k and 1m. The graph gives an idea of how difficult it is to move up the ranks as you near the summit

CAPTAIN

After his captain blanked for five gameweeks in a row Graeme breathed a sigh of relief this week as Mohamed Salah broke that sequence with a goal and three bonus points in the Merseyside derby.

Elsewhere Kane for once rewarded the faith placed in him by Jay, Matthew, and Mark.

So far this season nine different players have been handed the armband by our Top Five. Kane is the most popular having been chosen 50% of the time followed by Lukaku on 28%. Lukaku has proved the more reliable choice averaging a 14.2 point return when chosen as captain compared to Kane’s 10 points.

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

Salah, Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero and Arsenal’s Alexandre Lacazette complete the most popular captain picks so far. Salah has been chosen 8% of the time and averages 13 points as captain, Aguero and Lacazette have both been chosen 4% of the time, averaging 22 and 12 points respectively.

TRANSFERS

TRANSFER SUCCESS

Coutinho was the popular transfer in Gameweek 16, no doubt Peter and Matthew will both be hoping for more than a solitary point should the mercurial Brazilian start against West Brom as expected.

Caveats to this table:

• It doesn’t reflect that Transfers aren’t made with only one fixture in mind
• It doesn’t reflect when Patience in an underperforming player finally pays off
• Points from newly transferred in players left on the bench are included.

Graeme might be the worst top five manager at picking captains but he is the best at making successful immediate transfers. His total of 65 in immediate transfer points after hits is 26 points ahead of Jay.

Matthew must wonder how high in the table he would be had he been better at timing his transfers, with his early move for Coutinho and sale of Silva pushing him further behind the rest of this elite in terms of immediate points from transfers.  

TEMPLATE – Gameweek 16

Players in Bold are in 3 teams or more

Elliot, Speroni/Hennessey

Christensen, Naughton, Mee, Dunk, Daniels

Salah, Sterling, Hazard, Richarlison, Loftus-Cheek

Kane, Morata, Calvert-Lewin

PLAYERS – Gameweek 16

AVERAGE COST PER PLAYER

*based on GW1 prices

Goalkeeper – £4.2m

Defender – £5.0m

Midfielder – £7.6m

Forward – £9.4m

In The Bank (ITB) – £0.2

No change to top five template this week. There remain 13 players in three or more teams, with only the goalkeeper and third striker positions where our managers don’t see eye to eye.

FORMATION

A 3-5-2 formation was the most popular  this week. It becomes the second more popular formation this season on 16%, overtaking 4-3-3 which has been selected 15% of the time. 4-3-3 was the canny early season choice as managers looked to take advantage of real world formations favouring wing-backs. Although it hasn’t been used by our Top Five since Graeme played it in Gameweek 9. Managers are now shifting their attention to the value to be found in midfield as choices emerge across a range of price brackets.

GAMEWEEK 17 – FORECAST

The burning question seems to be what to do with Morata? The Chelsea player has been confirmed out for Gameweek 17.

Matthew has made his feelings clear in a couple of recent comments here and here, and it seems likely he has already sold the Spaniard. Matthew already owns Firmino but doesn’t own Hazard and may well  have used the money saved to buy the Belgian.

In this Gameweek 17 preview video, released before the news about Morata, Jay said he liked the look of Firmino and is tipping Liverpool for a good win, even suggesting that Salah is the best captain pick for those brave enough to second guess Jurgen Klopp’s team selection.

In a subsequent tweet he said regarding Morata;

Unless you have wider issues I think it’s a sell. Off form/uncertainty over when he returns/four yellow cards. You can’t carry passengers especially when rotation in other areas a threat. Problem is limited replacements.

He is yet to make a transfer, however, at the time of writing.

Mark has so far made two transfers, both carried out before the news about Morata. He’s sold Bournemouth’s Charlie Daniels and Swansea’s Tammy Abraham for Everton’s budget  defender Jonjoe Kenny and Southampton’s in-form striker Charlie Austin.

Peter and Graeme have both made two transfers each, although I’m not sure what they are.