Top 5 Hall of Fame Review – Gameweek 20

Live Hall of Fame leader Jay Egersdorff was the only top five manager to earn a red arrow this week as the fallout from ‘Kanexit’ continues. Jay has dropped from 230th to 722nd since he sold Tottenham’s Harry Kane in Gameweek 18.

The highest points scorer this week was career Hall of Fame number four, Matthew Jones (aka Numb). He followed his impressive 98 score of last week with a tally of 97 this time around, thanks to double digit returns from Liverpool pair Roberto Firmino and Philippe Coutinho, Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling, and 34 points from his captain Harry Kane. Matthew has moved up from 180,371 to 43,390 in the last two Gameweeks.

Mark Sutherns (aka Mark) moved into the top 20,000 for the first time this season on the back of his 12th green arrow in the last 13 gameweeks. His new signing – Chelsea’s Marcos Alonso – delivered an immediate return with a goal, clean sheet, and two bonus points as Mark notched up a very decent 92. Mark was another to captain Harry Kane.

Graeme Sumner (aka Gregor) was the third of our elite quintet to captain the Spurs frontman. However, with his only other double digit return coming from Sterling, Graeme had to settle for 83 points. It was still enough to see him move up to 144,508th overall. Graeme is now only 11 points outside the top 100k.

Career Hall of Fame number one Peter Kouwenberg (aka My Pretty Pony) joined Jay in bidding bon voyage to Harry Kane just in time for his hat-trick last week. However, despite missing out on another Kane hat-trick this week, Peter managed a not-too-shabby score of 86. This arrived thanks to 35 points from his Liverpool trio of Firmino, Coutinho, and Mohamed Salah as well as 22 points from captain Sterling.

Peter moved up to 607,928th overall but is still the holder of the wooden spoon,  58 points behind Graeme. Heading into Gameweek 21, a blank for Spurs and West Ham, Peter will consider himself well placed to take advantage with his Chelsea pair Eden Hazard and Alvaro Morata enjoying an enticing home fixture against an out-of-sorts Stoke City.

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 over the season 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 216pts between rank 1 and rank 100k but only 98pts 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

So far this season nine different players have been handed the armband by our Top Five. Kane is the most popular having been chosen 48% of the time, followed by Manchester United’s Romelu Lukaku on 22%. Lukaku has proved the more reliable choice averaging a 14.2 point return when chosen as captain compared to Kane’s 10.9 points.

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

Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah, Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling and Chelsea’s Eden Hazard complete the most popular captain picks. Salah has been chosen 8% of the time and averages 14.2 points as captain, Sterling has been chosen 7% of the time and Hazard 6%. Hazard averages 14.8 points, while Sterling averages an impressive 24.9 points.

Despite back-to-back hat-tricks, Kane’s low average points is down to him being an unreliable captain for much of this season. Too often he has left managers frustrated by blanking in supposedly easier home fixtures. This is no doubt part of the reason behind Jay’s controversial Kanexit move.

TRANSFERS

TRANSFER SUCCESS – GAMEWEEK 20

Graeme’s transfer of Bournemouth’s Charlie Daniels to Liverpoool’s Andrew Robertson added a further six points to his lead in the Transfer Success table so far this season.

Mark increased his immediate transfer points total after hits by 14, as both his new signings delivered returns. Huddersfield’s Collin Quaner could be set to emerge as the first choice budget enabler for a “power five” midfield. At £4.6m this Terrier already has three assists to his name this season – not a bad return for a player who should spend most of his time benched.

TRANSFER SUCCESS – SEASON SO FAR

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.
• Players transferred in and captained have their points counted double.

KANEXIT EXAMINED

In Gameweek 20 Jay’s pre-Kanexit players once again out scored his post-Kanexit troops as the Live Hall of Fame number one had to suffer watching the Spurs striker score his second hat trick in a row. However, with a blank in Gameweek 21, we could finally see Jay’s bold move return positive numbers. 

Surprisingly, for the third week running, Crystal Palace’s Julian Speroni out pointed David de Gea. Speroni would have played had Jay not sold his teammate Wayne Hennessey.

Despite concerns about his fatigue levels Watford’s Richarlison outscored Crystal Palace’s Ruben Loftus-Cheek. Should the Brazilian play this weekend you would fancy him to do well against Swansea, he certainly has the more favourable fixture as Loftus-Cheek will be up against Manchester City.

Sky Blues maestro Kevin de Bruyne at last outscored Brighton’s Pascal Groß. That it took three Gameweeks is not a pre-Kanexit scenario many would have envisaged. Despite a low scoring week from the Brighton player, over the three Gameweeks he is still five points better off than the Belgian.

Kane managed 15 points more than Everton’s Dominic Calvert-Lewin this week, who was always in Jay’s plans to start Gameweek 20 ahead of Swansea’s Wilfried Bony even before the Ivorian’s injury. It’s not an unreasonable assumption that there’s a very good chance Jay would have captained Kane after his Gameweek 19 hat-trick, if so this would give a 23 point difference.

To put it bluntly, Kanexit has not worked out for Jay so far. He’s still in the top 1,000 but, hypothetically, with the extra 60 points if Kanexit hadn’t happened he would have 1,322 points and be 12th overall. The extra eight points if he had captained Kane this week would have bumped him up to 8th overall with 1,330 points.

Gameweek 21 is finally the week Kanexit should make a difference, as Spurs don’t have a fixture. It’s fairly doubtful, however, that Jay will make up the 60+ points he has lost so far.

JAY’S COMPETITION

Did Jay need to take the risk of a -12 hit? Let’s assess the competition.

Using Premier Fantasy Tools to take a look at the 721 managers currently above Jay in the overall FPL standings, we find that 297 of them have used at least one of their chips – 118 managers have played their Bench Boost chip; 162 have played their Free Hit chip; 164 have played their Triple Captain chip. In addition, 40 managers have played all three chips.

Of the managers ahead of Jay only 16 have finished inside the top 1,000 in the past five seasons and have all their chips intact. So in terms of experience and points potential Jay remains in a strong position.

Compared to those 16 managers Jay has the best average rank over recent seasons (4,607).

The highest ranked manager of the 16 is Matt Kearney (aka Bøwstring the Carp), currently 66th overall and 37 points ahead of Jay. Matt has a best ever finish of 754, which came in the 2015/16 season, and is currently 1,314th in the Live HoF.

Another stand out manager of those 16 is Barney Le Fevre currently 67th overall and also 37 points ahead of Jay. Barney is not in a Fantasy Football Scout league and therefore does not feature in the Hall of Fame. He finished in 274th position last season, his best ever finish, and has two further top 10,000 ranks in the past five seasons.

Expanding our analysis to the current top 5,000, there are two more managers who could emerge as rivals to Jay. Both have a better average rank than him over the past five seasons.

The first of these is current Live Hall of Fame number three, Grant Barclay. Grant has finished in the top 10,000 in each of the last five seasons. His best ever rank is 629, which he managed last year. Grant is currently just 20 points behind Jay.

The second is Stuart Wright, another manager who is not in a Fantasy Football Scout league and therefore doesn’t feature in the Hall of Fame. This is Stuart’s fourth season playing Fantasy Football, his worst finish was two seasons ago when he came 6,109th, his best is a remarkable 7th, which he achieved in 2014/15. Stuart is 23 points behind Jay.

Finally there’s one name familiar to you all who has just entered the top 5,000 – Ville Ronka. Ville, who had been number one in the Career Hall of Fame for a number of years, is currently 34 points behind Jay. Could the Finnish enigma be poised to reclaim his crown?

It promises to be an exciting race to be crowned this year’s FPL champion. Will Jay regret Kanexit or is the move part of a winning playing style that will eventually see him land his first ever FPL title?

TEMPLATE – Gameweek 20 

Players in Bold are in 3 teams or more

Speroni, AN Other

Christensen, Otamendi, Ogbonna, Mee, Dunk

Salah, Hazard, Richarlison, Sterling, Loftus-Cheek

Kane, Firmino, Calvert-Lewin

PLAYERS – Gameweek 20

AVERAGE COST PER PLAYER

*based on GW1 prices

Goalkeeper – £4.3m

Defender – £5.0m

Midfielder – £8.3m

Forward – £7.9m

In The Bank (ITB) – £0.8

FORMATION

A 3-5-2 formation was the most popular choice this week with managers banking on returns from their midfield assets. It has been chosen 22% of the time, although 3-4-3 is the most popular by some margin on 56%.

Mark went with a 4-5-1 formation for the second time this season. In his Gameweek 20 Preamble he noted:

I’m firmly in the “power five” midfield camp, though my chosen strategy has also warped to consider a 4-5-1 as another effective solution.

While I wait for the forward options to be revived, I could end up relying solely on Kane as my spearhead, while shifting funds to other areas to maximise value.

GAMEWEEK 21 – FORECAST

At the time of writing Mark is the only manager to have made a transfer. In fact he’s taken a hit and made two transfers. This is his third hit over the festive schedule with at least another one possible during Tottenham and West Ham’s Double Gameweek 22.  Has Kane gone? Or perhaps Leroy Sane has been deemed surplus to requirements?

The captaincy decision is set to be a tricky one among our elite quintet with players from Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City, and even Manchester United offering attractive options.

Salah’s huge ownership will no doubt play a factor, and he presents an easy option for managers looking to play safe. However those in the top five hoping to make gains could well be tempted by Hazard, Morata or Sterling. Hazard in particular, with 12.1% ownership, could provide an opportunity for a rankings boost should Leicester prove a stiff test for Liverpool.