After a tough qualification round, involving more than 2,000 managers, the time has come to reveal who has made it through to the first round  of our open-to-all Fantasy Premier League Cup competition.
A score of 60 points, with a rank of 211,070 or below for those who hit that score exactly, was needed to become one of the 512 managers to progress from Gameweek 29’s qualification draw.
Liverpool’s 2-0 victory over Newcastle United saw HC Villa become the lucky manager to just scrape through. He successfully transferred in Reds left back Andrew Robertson, captained goal scorer Mohamed Salah and also earned an assist from Roberto Firmino.
Meanwhile, there is disappointment for our moderator Pukka-Geoff, who is 11th in the Career Hall of Fame. He scored 60 but just missed the cut due to his rank of 215,338.
In our previous cup, winner TH14 joined Sleepysi, Gribude, MCH, A Manager Has No Name, Mark, TH14, Wild Rover, Gooner Dave, CMIFLFC and myself in seeing their name on the cup.
Mark was particularly fortunate – gaining his bye with a 44-point total that was woefully short of the qualifying mark. He will need to improve if he is to progress past the opening round. He faces 592,201 ranked Khumz in his first tie.
Meanwhile, the 10,138 ranked reigning champion is among the favourites to make it through to the second round after drawing DaFoe22, who is 379,523 places behind him.
Sleepysi is another former champion who will be confident of progress. He is ranked a lofty 2,579 while his opponent BowenArrow is currently placed 48,461 in the world.
Gribude is just outside the top 5,000 and squares up to 53,866 placed Kirton Hoops, MCH takes on a SADIO SANÉ steered outfit that is ranked 128,450 placed behind him and my 1,644 placed side collides with 48,922 ranked BALLDONTLIE.
A Manager Has No Name, who is at the 5,281 mark in the overall standings, has arguably the most favourable tie among our former champions when he meets dupper9, who with a placing of 2,909,460 is the lowest ranked manager in the tournament.
The first round looks far trickier to navigate for Wild Rover, who is ranked 147,484 places behind his opponent McMurphy. Goonerdave (rank 259,377) also has a tricky encounter with 73,105 placed 2 Girls 1 Shlup.
CMIFLFC is another champion that may struggle. With a 1,904,353 rank he is the fifth lowest placed manager in the competition and takes his beleaguered troops into battle with Jon Nurse’s high-flying, 7,296 placed side.
Other notable match ups include 19,728 placed TorresMagic™’s tie with mooimachicken (rank 202,903) and our 4,322 ranked tech guru matzi11a’s clash with DAZZ (rank 93,016).
There’s also an intriguing derby when greghammer95 faces MC Hammer.
The first round features four managers in the top 100 of the overall rankings, howsheref (rank 78), davidoff7 (rank 93), Leaf (rank 97) and thisisdiz (rank 98).
The unlucky managers to take on this elite quartet are respectively 27,399 placed Nani R U OK, 43,700 ranked Grock United, 981,978 placed Duffy Dunk and Hoos01, who is 105,847 overall.
The full first round draw can be found here.
Tournament schedule
Round 1 – Gameweek 30
Round 2 – Gameweek 31
Round 3 – Gameweek 32
Round 4 – Gameweek 33
Round 5 – Gameweek 34
Round 6 – Gameweek 35
Quarter-Final – Gameweek 36
Semi-Finals – Gameweek 37
Final and third place play-off – Gameweek 38
Prizes
The prizes for the cup are as follows:
1st Place: £150 Amazon voucher
2nd Place: £100 Amazon voucher
3rd Place: £50 Amazon voucher
