Sky Sports Focus

After peeling back the layers of the Fantasy Premier League community, we now switch to acknowledge the top managers in the Scout Sky Sports league, with a new leader on show. We round off by tracking the latest movements in the market place and, as always, offer a reminder to tune in to tonight’s edition of the Fantasy Football Club.

The Scout League

After weeks hovering in the top three, Simon Davies is the new leader of the Scout League with his “Nags Head Rovers” squad toppling Jonathan Lenharth’s “Better Than Last Year” lineup. There’s also movement in third, as Paul Hennessey makes a return to the upper echelons of our league – “Hennessy’s Heroes” climbing back up on 1311 points, some 16 points behind our leader.

That all means that Charles Mouzon’s “Geordie Boys” slip further down our rankings – he now sits in seventh with Lewis Nicklen, Paul McAnulty and Chris Pearce, all now ranked above him. All this crop of Fantasy managers are in the overall top 20, with the Scout community occupying four spots in the top ten overall rankings. Simon Davies is still 61 points behind the overall leader – leaving a small mountain to climb if he is to be in the reckoning for the £25,000 winners prize.

Andy, back in 63rd place in the Scout League, is still the leader amongst the site contributors, while the Scout League still leads the way in the Private League rankings, some 16 points ahead of our nearest rival.

A reminder that if you’re playing the Sky Sports game and have yet to join our league, you can sign up to the FFScout League with this Pin: 8004519. We have a home cinema system, worth £600, available to the winner.

Market Forces

Despite suffering minus points for the previous three Gameweeks, Stoke’s Asmir Begovic remains the hottest property in terms of transfers in over the past seven days. With Petr Cech dented by the fallout from his recent spell on the sidelines, the trade to the Stoke stopper has been the most popular over the past week. Begovic remains prominent in fourth in the goalkeeper rankings, despite keeping just a single shut-out in six. While the current form of the Stoke rearguard casts question marks on the merit of his acquisition, Begovic does, at least, have strong fixtures to come in the next month. It’s worth noting, however, that Sunderland’s Simon Mignolet is also amongst the top five players transferred in this week – 20% of deals have seem the Belgian acquired. Mignolet sits top in the Sky Sports keeper rankings and also betters Begovic for value, delivering 70 points for his 4.4 million price tag.

While Petr Cech has been cast aside by many, his new team-mate Demba Ba goes on attracting much interest. He was party to almost 25% of transfers made this week and, with Jermain Defoe and Robin Van Persie the top two strikers transferred out, it appears that the Senegalese has been the preferred solution to fill the gap. The trend with Defoe is perhaps understandable, given he’s returned just a single goal in seven matches but Van Persie’s sales remain a mystery – presumably managers are clearing him to free up funds elsewhere. Significantly, despite his 10 million price tag, the Dutchman sits third in the value rankings for forwards, behind Rickie Lambert and Luis Suarez.

The Fantasy Football Club – Tonight 10pm

Former Chelsea and Middlesbrough hitman, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, fills the centre forward role for the Fantasy Football Club this evening, joining Fenners and Merse to lend his insight from 10pm on Sky Sports one. Jimmy was, until last month, a coach at Forest, so I’ll be keen to see if he lifts the lid on recent goings on there. A reminder, if you miss tonight’s show, it’s repeated on Sky Sports 2 at 9am on Saturday.