Top 5 Career Hall of Fame – Gameweek 38 Review

We were promised a goal fest in Gameweek 38 and it did not disappoint. Our career Top Five Hall of Fame (HoF) managers rode the wave with varying degrees of success – only Marlen Rattiner and David Meechan ended the season with green arrows.

Peter Kouwenberg (aka My Pretty Pony) and Steve Poulsom narrowly missed out on the top 100 and top 10,000 respectively. While former career number-one and FPL legend Ville Ronka tumbled to his lowest ever rank.

This site’s favourite Finn suffered at the hands of mid-priced strikers throughout the season. First Crystal Palace’s Christian Benteke, then Double Gameweek 34 hope Alvaro Negredo, before finally Double Double Gameweek disappointment Manolo Gabbiadini twisted the knife.

The King is dead. Long live the King.

As we say goodbye (hopefully temporarily) to Ville, former career number-three Peter is in the running to succeed him. A close end of season battle between him, Jay Egersdorff – moving up from 15th in the career HoF – and new entrant Graeme Sumner leaves us eagerly anticipating the updated career Hall of Fame.

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, which is updated at the end of each season. Members can see the latest top five via our Live Hall of Fame update. Once updated the Career Hall of Fame and Live Hall of Fame will be the same.

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 were the best FPL managers heading into the 2016/17 season:

POINTS & RANK

David employed his All Out Attack (AOA) chip to help him to an impressive 96 points. Although the chip wasn’t a huge benefit as the extra midfielder, Crystal Palace’s Wilfried Zaha, out scored his highest scoring defender by two points to one.

*from GW6 onwards

Only David of this quintet qualified for the cup and he went out in Gameweek 19. All played their final Wildcards, Triple Captain and Bench Boost chips. Only Ville didn’t play his AOA chip.

The graph below shows the ranks of the Top Five managers over the 38 Gameweeks. 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 258pts between rank 1 and rank 10,000, and 379pts 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.

A remarkably consistent season for Marlen – he only dropped out of the top 100K once. He finished Gameweek 1 ahead in the Top Five and yet ends up with the wooden spoon. Perhaps a little early season adversity is beneficial to having a good season overall?

Although perhaps a little less adversity than Steve suffered! There have been a few success stories of managers turning their seasons around – Jonty’s millionaires club can testify to that (no, Philip Green was not a member) – and Steve’s was one of them. He claimed the title of Top Five phoenix as he rose from the depths of 845,911 in Gameweek 17 to 12,274. Tantalisingly close to a place in the top 10,000.

Peter achieved a hat-trick of three digit ranks. His final position of 138 follows finishes of 129 and 289 in the previous two seasons.

CHIP SUCCESS

Extra points gained from using Bench Boost and Triple Captain Chips.

Combining the points gained from the Bench Boost and Triple Captain chips both Marlen and David top-scored with 31. David earned 14 points extra from his triple captain chip by choosing Arsenal’s Alexis Sanchez in Double Gameweek 36 compared to the extra 9 points Marlen received from Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero back in Double Gameweek 27. All employed their Bench Boost in Gameweek 37.

CAPTAIN

Tottenham’s Harry Kane joined Alexis Sanchez for top billing in the captain selection. Liverpool’s Philippe Coutinho persuading Marlen to hand him the armband for the home encounter with Middlesbrough.

Over the season Sanchez has been picked as captain or triple captain 32% of the time, his 54 point return in Double Gameweek 37 boosting his season average to 19.3pts when chosen. Sergio Aguero follows in popularity having been handed the armband 21% of the time, averaging 15.9pts as captain or triple captain, with Everton’s Romelu Lukaku chosen 11% of the time averaging a mighty 20.7pts. Lukaku’s average is even more impressive because it isn’t enhanced by a triple captain chip or double gameweek.

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. Overall they have not been explosive choices on the few occasions that they have been trusted with the armband, averaging 13 and 13.2 points respectively. Kane redeemed himself somewhat this week with a 34 point haul as he chased the golden boot. Will he be more predictable next season?

A reliable captain contender is preferable to one who is hard to predict. Disappointing returns away to Sunderland and then at home to Middlesbrough in Gameweeks 23 and 24 dented confidence in Kane, while the Top Five found comfort in Lukaku’s fine home form.

CAPTAIN POINTS

For the final week I’ve added in the captain scores from the overall top two in this season’s FPL – Ben Crabtree and Uwais Ahmed.

Peter was the best performing manager out of the Top Five in his ability to select the right captain. His 657 points is the top score in this metric by more than 70 points.

As impressive as Peter’s total is it pales in comparison to this season’s FPL winner Ben, his total of 755 is scarcely believable. Accounting for over 29% of his total score.

David’s 558 points and 23.63% are the lowest among the Top Five. With some better captain picks he no doubt would have joined Peter in the top 1,000.

Below is a table showing the base points for each manager (no captain doubling/trebling), as well as the extra points the managers could have gained had they captained the highest points scorer in their team each week.

This again highlights the importance of the captain decision. Uwais would have won FPL had it not been for Ben’s captain success. Also look how much closer Peter and David are too.

TRANSFERS – GAMEWEEK 38

TRANSFER SUCCESS

Sadly, it would appear Ville rather gave up ahead of the final gameweek. His team remained untouched from Gameweek 37. Despite wildcarding last out of our elite quintet and having more Double Gameweek players than his rivals, Ville overlooked Golden Boot winner Kane and paid a heavy price.

His patient approach is legendary and we can only hope he will bounce back next season to challenge once again.

Over the course of the season Steve 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.

Immediate transfer success is not in itself proof of overall success but simply one part of a complex picture. Steve ended the year 33 points ahead of Peter in this metric, however he was 152 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. You could argue that this season, with so many expensive assets performing well, it proved crucial. Ville was perhaps hindered by a lack of purchasing power.

FORMATION

3-4-3 was the most popular formation this week as it has been throughout the season. Marlen opting for the formation 30 times.

Peter, favouring 3-4-3, has the highest average points with 62.9. 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 averaged 69 points.

3-4-3 has been favoured 57% of the time by the career HoF Top Five, with 3-5-2 second with 22%. 4-4-2 is the third most popular on 9%.

TEMPLATE – GAMEWEEK 38

Players in Bold were in three teams or more

Cech, Pickford / Caballero

Yoshida, Stephens, Holgate, (Alonso, Koné)

Sanchez, Coutinho, Eriksen, Alli, (Sané / Zaha)

Jesus, Kane, Costa

PLAYERS – GAMEWEEK 38

The season ended with thirteen players in over 50% of the teams. Much less variance than we saw in the rest of the season. No doubt down to certain teams being favoured due to double gameweeks and having something to play for as the season drew to a close.

As can be seen from the budget defence, there was a significant shift of funds from Defenders to Attackers in the final weeks. The once universally popular Marcos Alonso ended up in only two teams. The excellent value offered by Yoshida, Stephens and Holgate helped fuel that shift.

Price was no barrier when it came to attacking players. The template features seven midfielders and forwards costing over 8.7. With only Costa disappointing slightly in the final round of fixtures with a 4 point return.

The sub 6.0 category should really contain Bournemouth’s Josh King. However an hour before the deadline, the altruistic Norwegian told us of his absence via Instagram, paving the way for his last minute exit. The Cherries’ marksman had been a mainstay since Peter purchased him for his Gameweek 28 hat-trick when he cost a mere 5.4.

FINAL WORD

Overall Peter and David are the two managers who maintained their extremely high performance level, with Steve contributing some impressive damage limitation.

David finished in the top 10,000 for the seventh season in a row. As mentioned, Peter finished in the top 1,000 for the third season in a row. These are remarkable feats.

Even Ville and Marlen, who will no doubt feel hugely disappointed with their seasons, still achieved ranks of 21,905 and 32,340 respectively. Ranks most mortals would be very proud of.

I hope these articles have helped you with your season, they’ve certainly helped me with mine – having never previously finished higher than 50,833 I’m over the moon with my top 5,000 rank of 4,043. As Oprah Winfrey said “Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.” So it has proved true for me.