Top 5 Career Hall of Fame – Gameweek 25/26 Review

There are two distinct battles shaping up in the Top Five career Hall of Fame.

Firstly, there is the tussle to avoid the wooden spoon, currently being fought by career HoF number one Peter Kouwenberg (aka My Pretty Pony) and number two Graeme Sumner (aka Gregor).

The other is the clash between number four Matthew Jones (aka Numb) and fifth placed Mark Sutherns (aka Mark) for runner’s up spot.

The contest for top billing is all but over, with current Live Hall of Fame leader Jay Egersdorff out on his own in the lead, as he has been for most of the season.

That this season should have turned out so badly for our two career HoF leaders, Peter and Graeme, is surprising to say the least. Later in this article I make some comparisons between this season and last to find out if there are any clues as to why this might be.

Graeme did his best to hold onto the wooden spoon dropping nearly 30,000 places over Gameweeks 25 and 26 to 407,085 in the overall FPL standings. However Peter plummeted past him as he dropped nearly 150k places to 499,135 to regain possession of this unwanted utensil. 

It’s been a poor couple of Gameweeks all round for this elite bunch, but Peter has been particularly poor with a combined score over the two Gameweeks of just 83 points after hits. A points chasing move to transfer in Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero a week after the Argentine’s hat trick against Newcastle has not paid off so far. Since drafting him in the Sky Blues striker has scored just once. 

Peter will be hoping City boss Pep Guardiola does not reduce Aguero’s pitch time today against Leicester as he prepares his team for a congested February schedule, that include Champions League, FA Cup and League Cup encounters. The Career Hall of Fame number one will also be hoping Harry Kane, the player he ditched in favour of the City man, stays quiet in today’s North London derby.

One manager who understands the dangers of selling Kane all too well is Jay. So when Jay decided to bring Aguero in for Gameweek 25 it wasn’t the Spurs Ace who made way. Instead Jay opted for a switch in formation from his favoured 3-5-2 to 3-4-3 as he lines up with a front three of Aguero, Kane, and Liverpool’s Roberto Firmino

Of course Sod’s law dictated that, having reorganised his team to keep Kane, another Spurs player – Christian Eriksen, downgraded as part of Jay’s move to bring in Aguero – immediately scored one of the fastest goals in Premier League history.

Jay was in sanguine mood as he reflected on his worst gameweek score since the week before Kanexit (Gameweek 17). He cautioned viewers of his Gameweek 27 preview video against the ‘rage transfer’; immediately selling a player who has let you down just to feel better or to chase points.

The time to worry, according to Jay, is when you get a red arrow when predictable things happen, not when unpredictable things happen. Therefore Gameweek 26’s events should be taken with a pinch of salt; well done if you happened to captain Arsenal’s hat trick hero Aaron Ramsey but this was a risky move, says Jay, similar to putting all your money on one number on the roulette wheel.

Extending the analogy to FPL, Jay would always favour captaining someone like Kane or Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah over a player like Ramsey. Given the high ownership of both Kane and Salah, if they perform well the gains are not going to be as big as picking a differential such as Ramsey. However, both Kane and Salah are much more likely to perform well over the season than Ramsey, and are therefore more predictable armband picks.

One manager who has performed above average over the last two gameweeks is Matthew. Shockingly, given the pedigree of this elite bunch, he is the only Top Five manager to improve his FPL rank since Gameweek 24. His 110 tally since then has seen him rise to 35,392 overall. Central to this success has been captaining Mohamed Salah in both Gameweeks, which earned him 46 points alone. At least one of this group has been following Jay’s advice. 

Mark didn’t fare too badly either and remains 13 points ahead of Matthew in the battle for bronze and silver. A Gameweek high 60 points in Gameweek 26  helped Mark his recover from an awful Gameweek 25 score of just 46. Returns from Salah, Cheslea’s Eden Hazard, Stoke’s Xherdan Shaqiri, and Leicester’s Jamie Vardy contributed to his high score.

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 26 gameweeks 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 252pts between rank 1 and rank 100k but only 118pts between 100k and 1m. The graph gives an idea of how difficult it is to move up the ranks as you near the summit

Looking at the graph it’s interesting that the biggest gains were made from Gameweeks 6 to 16. Logic would normally tell us that the more information you have the better decisions you make, therefore you might expect Gameweeks 16 to 26 to have seen the biggest improvements. That ranks have either decreased or plateaued over the latter period, perhaps tells us something about how tricky this season has been.

CAPTAIN

Graeme boldly picked Chelsea’s Marcos Alonso as his Gameweek 25 captain. A tasty home encounter against Bournemouth could have provided the marauding defender with a decent chance of a clean sheet and goalscoring opportunities. However, it didn’t go to plan as Chelsea conceded three goals without reply.

Mohamed Salah redressed the balance as Graeme’s captain in Gameweek 26 with a welcome 30 points.

Alonso brings the number of different players to have been handed the armband by our Top Five this season to ten. Kane is the most popular having been chosen 47% of the time followed by Lukaku on 17%. Lukaku hasn’t been chosen as captain since Graeme picked him in Gameweek 13. However, his impressive early season form means he has proven a more reliable captain choice than the erratic Kane – the Belgian averages a 14.2 point return compared to Kane’s 11.9 points.

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

Salah, Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling and Chelsea’s Eden Hazard complete the most popular captain picks so far. Salah has been chosen 12% of the time and averages 18 points as captain, Hazard has been chosen 6% of the time and Sterling 5%. Hazard averages 14.5 points, while Sterling averages an impressive 24.9 points.

TRANSFERS GAMEWEEKS 25 & 26

Peter’s former pupil, Leicester’s Ben Chilwell, was a popular choice joining both Peter’s and Graeme’s teams. Both will have been frustrated as the Milton Keynes born player then dropped to the bench for the home match against Swansea.

Chelsea’s Andreas Christensen was the most popular transfer out, having been in four teams prior to Gameweek 25 the Dane is now not owned by a single manager. In most cases funds have been shifted out of defence to allow for upgrades in midfield and attack.

TRANSFER SUCCESS – GAMEWEEKS 25 & 26

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.

After 26 Gameweeks of the season, Matthew is still in negative immediate transfer points after hits. If he’d been better at timing his transfers he would surely find himself closer to challenging Jay at the top.

COMPARING LAST SEASON TO THIS SEASON

At the same stage last season the average points gained from immediate transfers after hits was 148, compared to 28 this season. The difference is stark yet the average number of transfers (33) made by our Top Five is the same for both this year and last. For some reason it is proving much harder to time transfers correctly this year.

For an FPL manager like Peter, who had made 153 points after hits at the same stage last season compared to 17 this year, is this simply a sign that he’s lost his magic touch when it comes to transfers? or is it proving strangely difficult to pick the right players at the right time this season?

Perhaps Peter’s hit happy style – 64 points in hits by Gameweek 26 last year, 72 this year – is simply not suited to how this season has unfolded?

The captain points average for the Top Five is slightly up from 344 points last season to 356 this.

The average total points for our Top Five, despite two low scoring Gameweeks in 25 and 26, is up by nearly 50 points from 1,453 last season to 1,501 this season. Clearly the low immediate transfer points average is not affecting overall performance, if anything it’s the opposite.

Despite a higher points average, the ranking average for the Top Five is much lower – 193,167 this season compared to 60,500 last season. At the same stage last year Peter was the highest ranked manager at 8,093 while Steve Poulsom was the lowest at 168,328. Peter eventually finished 138th with Steve surging to 12,274 overall.

So total points are higher, ranks are lower, immediate transfer points are much lower – is there something in this that might be psychologically affecting how our elite FPL managers play the game? With players returning more points than last season, is this somehow making it harder to buy and sell players at the correct time?

JAY’S COMPETITION

In recent articles I singled out a few players that I thought presented Jay with his stiffest competition for the actual FPL crown. They have generally fared rather better than Jay over the last two Gameweeks, who has dropped from 686th place to 1,383th.

David Isaac moved up to 63rd overall and is 53 points ahead of Jay.

Despite dropping two places to eleventh Matt Kearney (aka Bøwstring the Carp) is now 88 points ahead of Jay. Matt has reduced the gap to the overall leader Bharat Dhody to 52 points, however, his faith in Aguero proved costly in Gameweek 26. His decision to captain the Argentine instead of Salah cost him dearly and only netted him 43 points that week. 

Jay’s closest rivals in the Live Hall of Fame both suffered drops over the last two Gameweeks. Current Live Hall of Fame number two Grant Barclay (aka Jake Donahue) dropped from 512th to 956th but remains 7 points ahead of Jay. While Ville Ronka, currently third in the Live HoF, dropped to 3,525 and is now just 20 points behind Jay in FPL.

TEMPLATE – Gameweek 26

Players in Bold are in 3 teams or more

Speroni, AN Other

Alonso, Ogbonna, Otamendi, Mee, Dunk

Salah, Sterling, Lingard, Hazard, Shaqiri

Kane, Firmino, Wilson

PLAYERS – Gameweek 26

AVERAGE COST PER PLAYER

*based on GW1 prices

Goalkeeper – £4.4m

Defender – £5.2m

Midfielder – £7.5m

Forward – £9.2m

In The Bank (ITB) – £0.4

FORMATION

The most popular formation over the two Gameweeks was 3-4-3. This is the most frequently used FPL set-up this season and has been chosen 48% of the time with 3-5-2 second most popular on 28%.

GAMEWEEK 27 FORECAST

At the time of writing Graeme is the only manager to have made a transfer. His money in the bank has increased from nothing to 0.7, while his squad value has decreased from £104.6 to £103.6, suggesting he’s sold a player he had some price gains on.

Graeme has been talking up players with a guaranteed Gameweek 31 fixture in the FFS comments sections, so perhaps Everton winger Theo Walcott or Stoke full back Moritz Bauer has joined his team.

Peter tells me he is not going to make any transfers and is likely to captain Salah. Jay appears to think the same way citing Liverpool’s exit from the FA Cup as a possible reason for Salah to get more pitch time than Aguero this week. Compared to Liverpool, Manchester City have the final of the League Cup and the FA Cup to add to their fixture schedule. This, reasons Jay, will likely increase their player rotation.

On the Scoutcast this week Mark revealed that he would hand the armband to either Kane or Salah.