For the second Gameweek in a row there were green arrows for all the Top Five as this elite group find their collective feet. However, some did their best to sabotage this through some poor transfers.

Mark Sutherns (aka Mark) made his first foray into the top 100k moving up in the overall rankings to 92,272 with a gameweek score of 62. It could have been 71 had he not transferred out Swansea’s Kyle Naughton for Manchester City’s Nicolas Otamendi. The former collecting a clean sheet and all three bonus points, the later managing no clean sheet and an own goal. His decision to bench Crystal Palace ‘magic bean’ Reuben Loftus-Cheek, who he has championed on the Scoutcast, was another mis-step in an otherwise strong week. 

Gameweeks 13’s highest scorer in the Top Five was the lowest ranked manager Matthew Jones (aka Numb) who jumped from just inside the top 1m to 572,079. He benefitted from a double digit points return courtesy of Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling and a 16 point haul from his captain Tottenham’s Harry Kane.

Interestingly Matthew benched Liverpool forward Roberto Firmino, who he has been slow to ditch, having kept him throughout a barren run of just one goal and an assist since drafting him in on his Gameweek 4 wildcard. 

After the Brazilian was rested against Chelsea, and with a decent run of fixtures for Liverpool, Matthew may feel he has a potential differential on his hands as he looks to avoid hanging onto the wooden spoon among this elite group. 

One manager he won’t be catching any time soon though is current Live Hall of Fame leader Jay Egersdorff. Jay moved up to 331 overall with a decent 61 points, which was not helped by selling Swansea ‘keeper Lucasz Fabianski, another player to score 9 points, and replacing him with Crystal Palace’s Julian Speroni, who was surprisingly dropped to the bench for the home match against Stoke.

Explaining his moves for Gameweek 13, he reasoned that by selling Fabianski for Speroni he was adding precious funds to his transfer kitty.

This season’s career HoF number one Peter Kouwenberg (aka My Pretty Pony) was another to fall victim to Roy Hodgson’s surprising team selection. Peter transferred in defender Scott Dann for Manchester United’s injured defender Phil Jones, yet he still mustered a very decent 58 points.

The headline in Gameweek 13 for Peter is that he broke his awful run of luck when captaining Kane – the Spurs man finally scored at home against a supposedly weaker team set up to defend.

Career number two Graeme Sumner (aka Gregor) was the only manager not to captain the England frontman this week. He instead went for Manchester United’s Romelu Lukaku, who failed to score against a resolute Brighton defence. Graeme still managed a score of 62, thanks to points returns from all but three of his players.

Graeme re-invested the £4.5m he had in the bank (ITB) heading into Gameweek 13 by upgrading Swansea’s Chelsea loanee Tammy Abraham to Chelsea’s current centre forward Alvaro Morata. Even though the Spaniard was taking on a resolute Liverpool home defence I suspect that move was made to catch his price rise, as Graeme now has no funds left in the bank. 

This is a reduced article this week due to the quick turnaround, jump to the end for thoughts on Chelsea players and who to captain this week.

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 eleven 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 187pts between rank 1 and rank 100k but only 67pts 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 seven 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 Lukaku on 35%. So far Lukaku has proved the more reliable choice averaging a 14.2 point return when chosen as captain compared to Kane’s 9.7 points.

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

The other three most popular players who have been chosen as captains by our Top Five this season are Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah, Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero and Arsenal’s Alexandre Lacazette. Salah has been chosen 6% of the time and averages eight points as captain, while Aguero and Lacazette have both been chosen 5% of the time, averaging 22 and 12 points respectively.

TRANSFERS

TRANSFER SUCCESS

Caveats to this table – It doesn’t reflect that:

• Transfers aren’t made with only one fixture in mind
• When Patience in an underperforming player finally pays off is rewarded
• Points from newly transferred in players left on the bench are included.

TEMPLATE – Gmeweek 13

Players in Bold are in 3 teams or more

Elliot, Speroni

Naughton, Mee, Dunk, Daniels, Dann/Otamendi

Sterling, Salah, Richarlison, David Silva, Loftus-Cheek

Kane, Lukaku, Morata

PLAYERS – Gameweek 13

AVERAGE COST PER PLAYER

*based on GW1 prices

Goalkeeper – £4.1m

Defender – £4.9m

Midfielder – £7.2m

Forward – £10.1m

In The Bank (ITB) – £0.9

FORMATION

A 3-5-2 set up continues to prove a popular choice since first being used in Gameweek 10. So far this season 3-4-3 has been chosen 63% of the time with 4-3-3 second most popular on 18%. 4-3-3 was the canny early season choice as managers looked to take advantage of real world formations favouring wing-backs, but 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 14 Preview

With a strong run of games throughout December and well into 2018 Chelsea assets look set to dominate the top five’s thoughts. So far ahead of this week’s deadline Jay, Graeme and Mark are ahead of the game, with Peter and Matthew forced to play catch up.

Chelsea players in the Top Five’s teams before transfers ahead of this week’s deadline:

• 0 Chelsea defenders
• Hazard is only owned by Mark
• Morata owned just by Jay and Graeme.

Peter has made three transfers so far this gameweek taking an eight point hit and it seems likely that either Morata or Hazard, or both, have joined his team?

Former career HoF number one Ville Ronka has I’m fairly certain brought in both Morata and Hazard with his two free transfers.

Mark and Matthew have also made moves this week, with a strong likelihood that both have swapped Lukaku for Morata.

In Mark’s case this would mean doubling up on Chelsea with Hazard and Morata.

Despite eulogising about Hazard after being in the crowd for the Liverpool v Chelsea match last week, Jay is yet to make a move.

It looks like the captaincy choice could also be split, and I think we will definitely see either Hazard or Morata handed the armband this week, with some possibly opting for Kane. 

Here’s Jay’s comments on this week’s captaincy pasted from his YouTube page:

1) Morata/Hazard – both on form, decent fixture on paper. Downside is Swansea don’t let in many. Hazard has the slight advantage of an extra point for a goal (vs Morata) and an extra point if Chelsea don’t concede. A Chelsea (C) would be the sensible choice.

2) Kane – away form stronger than home form. Spurs’ overall form isn’t great and they haven’t scored more than one goal in a league game since October. Spurs need to win to stay in touch with the chasing pack.

3) Salah – great form, Liverpool’s best player. Worth a look if you need to gamble to climb the rankings.