It’s been a successful couple of Gameweeks for our elite quintet, with green arrows all round. Wildcards have been played, and strategies devised to navigate the upcoming double Gameweeks.

The highest scoring manager in our Top Five over each of the past two sets of fixtures has been Mark Sutherns (aka Mark), who has netted  176 points over this period. His stand out purchase over the fortnight is without doubt West Ham’s Marko Arnautovic, the Austrian contributing an impressive 16 points to his Wildcard total. Mark moves up to 18,986 as he pursues his ninth top 10,000 finish in 12 seasons.

Matthew Jones (aka Numb) is now 15 points behind Mark and was only manager in our Top Five to opt for a 3-4-3 formation on his Wildcard; Matthew has not selected a cheap third striker. By investing less money in defence he’s been able to afford an expensive frontline of Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Manchester United’s Romelu Lukaku, and Leicester’s Jamie Vardy. Between them the trio managed four goals in Gameweek 32, as Matthew moved up to 30,266 overall. 

Elsewhere, Live Hall of Fame leader Jay Egersdorff, remains the outstanding manager in this year’s Top Five. The Blackburn Rovers fan moved back into the top 2,000 as his points total increased to an impressive 1,986. His is a balanced Wildcard selection with value found in Newcastle midfielder Kenedy (£4.7m), who looks set to alternate with a cheap third striker – Burnley’s Ashley Barnes (£5.3m). He’s also kept his options open about when he will use his Bench Boost chip – either Gameweek 34 or 37.

Bottom of the Top Five pile is career Hall of Fame number one Peter Kouwenberg (aka My Pretty Pony). Like Jay, Peter has also opted for Barnes as his cheap third forward, however, he’s invested a little more in his fifth midfielder by selecting Brighton number ten Pascal Groß (£6.0m). The German has an enticing must-win home fixture coming up against relegation threatened Huddersfield, followed by a double Gameweek. Will the extra spend finally help Peter to move into the top 100k? He’s currently 319,864 overall, and hasn’t been higher than his Gameweek 1 rank of 283,827 all season.

A mere four points ahead of Peter with 1,804 points, is career HoF number two Graeme Sumner (aka Gregor). As with all our Top Five, Graeme’s Wildcard selection suggests he will use his Free Hit chip in Gameweek 35, with most of his players enjoying double Gameweeks in 34 and 37.

However, along with Mark, he’s invested in two Arsenal attackers – a team with only a single fixture in Gameweek 34. In addition to Aubameyang, who is not eligible to play in the Europa League matches, he’s selected Henrikh Mkhitaryan. It was not altogether surprising to see the Armenian start on the bench for the Gunners against Stoke given that he played 180 minutes for his country over the international break. Both Mark and Graeme will hope this means he starts the attractive home encounter against Southampton in Gameweek 33, should he emerge from Thursday’s match against CSKA Moscow unscathed.

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 season so far. The vertical scale is from rank one to 3m. The distance between the ranks corresponds to the number of points separating them. For instance there are 286pts between rank one and rank 100k but only 151pts between 100k and 1m. The graph gives an idea of how difficult it is to move up the ranks as you near the summit.

Overall 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 17 to 30 to have seen the biggest improvements. That ranks have either decreased or slowed their rate of improvement over the latter period, perhaps tells us something about how tricky this season has been.

However the pattern is at last showing signs of breaking. After the group managed ten green arrows out of ten in the past two gameweeks, we could be witnessing the start of a belated surge up the rankings. Will the group’s collective FPL experience see them finish the season with a flourish?

CAPTAIN

The armband hasn’t left Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah over the past two Gameweeks, with spectacular results – a total of 72 points gained.

So far this season ten different players have been handed the armband by our Top Five.

Tottenham’s Harry Kane is the most popular having been chosen 44% of the time followed by Salah on 23%. However it is the Egyptian who has proven a more reliable captain choice than the erratic Englishman – his average 25 point return compares very favourably to Kane’s 11.1 points.

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

Manchester United’s Romelu Lukaku, Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling and Chelsea’s Eden Hazard complete the most popular captain picks. Lukaku has been chosen 14% of the time and averages 14.2 points as captain, Sterling and Hazard have both been chosen 5% of the time. Hazard averages 14.5 points, while Sterling averages an impressive 24.9 points.

WILDCARD TEMPLATE

Players in Bold are in three teams or more

De Gea, Ryan

Lowton, Alonso, Tarkowski, Morgan, Dunk

Salah, Mahrez, Willian, Son, Groß / Mkhitaryan

Aubameyang, Lukaku, Vardy / Barnes

AVERAGE COST PER PLAYER

*based on GW32 wildcard prices (except for Salah!)

Goalkeeper – £5.2m

Defender – £5.1m

Midfielder – £7.7m

Forward – £9.0m

In The Bank (ITB) – £0.3m

WILDCARD BREAKDOWN

Players in Bold are Magic Beans – Attacking players £6m and under.

The Wildcard teams of our Top Five bear many similarities with ten players featuring in 80% of the squads including six players in all five. Given the players selected – many without a match in Gameweek 35 – the chip strategy would appear to be to deploy the Free Hit that gameweek. The Bench Boost chip looks likely in either Gameweek 34 or 37 as a number of players enjoy two double gameweeks.

Jay is the only manager not to double up on Burnley defenders, investing instead in Southampton’s Cedric Soares. Jay admits in his Gameweek 33 preview video that he is hoping the Saints turn a corner under new manager Mark Hughes, and that Cedric will generate points.

Jay is also the only manager to risk selecting an Arsenal defender, opting for Nacho Monreal over Shkodran Mustafi on account of his attacking potential and his versatility.

Matthew is the only manager not to select Chelsea’s Marcos Alonso. After Chelsea’s home defeat to Spurs he will no doubt be feeling justified – the Champions League places are now seemingly out of reach – how will Chelsea’s motivation be affected? No doubt we will also see manager Antonio Conte rotate his players to keep them fresh ahead of the FA Cup semi-final.

The rest of the Top Five will be hoping the World Cup serves as an incentive for Alonso. The Spaniard has just earned his first international cap coming on as a substitute in Spain’s 6-1 victory over Argentina. He follows in the footsteps of both his father and grandfather in representing his country. Surely the opportunity to be part of Spain’s World Cup squad is a massive carrot.

Leicester and Brighton players feature heavily; Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy, and Wes Morgan are the popular Foxes trio; Mathew Ryan, Pascal Groß, and Lewis Dunk the three Seagulls players.

Manchester United’s David de Gea, and Romelu Lukaku are near omnipresent, with defenders Eric Bailly and Chris Smalling featuring in Peter’s and Mark’s teams respectively.

There are no City players selected in any of the Top Five squads. Jay feels this decision is vindicated by Pep’s recent comment about resting players against Manchester United, if the Champions League tie against Liverpool hangs in the balance. A similar sentiment applies for our Top Five when considering Liverpool players, with only the undroppable Salah making the cut.

TRANSFER SUCCESS – WILDCARDS

The immediate transfer points gained on their Wildcards depended not only on the players bought but also on the players sold.

So for Peter the success of bringing in Aubameyang, Vardy, and De Gea – who managed 25 points between them – was offset by the sales of Leicester’s Ben Chilwell, Tottenham’s Christian Eriksen, and Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling, who scored a combined 27 points in Gameweek 32.

It was a similar story for Graeme as Chilwell, Sterling and Liverpool’s Andrew Robertson left his side.

For Mark, none of the players he sold scored more than six points individually, meaning his successful purchases of Aubameyang and Arnautovic made a greater impact on his immediate transfer points total.

TRANSFERS – GAMEWEEK 31

In Gameweek 31 Mark, Graeme, and Peter did well to buy Bournemouth’s Junior Stanislas, who scored and returned all three bonus points against bottom of the table West Brom.  By and large though the gameweek was dominated by Salah’s sensational four-goal haul against Watford.

TRANSFER SUCCESS – GAMEWEEK 31

Including the period leading up to and including blank Gameweek 31, Matthew was the most successful manager. His early purchase of Stoke’s Xherdan Shaqiri in Gameweek 25, and his decision to hold onto some players without a fixture in Gameweek 31 – such as Tottenham’s Heung-min Son – proved profitable.

Although over the seven gameweek period Matthew only managed 15 points more than Jay, who was the least successful of our Top Five. Hardly a significant gain.

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.

The big news here is that after 32 gameweeks, Matthew has at last moved into positive immediate transfer points for the season. He jumps from -9 to 19 points.

Mark’s recent success in the transfer market sees his total of 87 points push him to the top of the transfer success table. Jay, despite being the highest ranked manager, only has 50 immediate transfer points after hits.

COMPARING LAST SEASON TO THIS SEASON – SALAH MAKING IT BORING?

Comparing last season’s Top Five to this season’s Top Five reveals some interesting trends.

The average total points for this season is 60 points up. Yet the higher points total has not translated into better ranks, in fact the average rank is more than four times worse than it was at the same stage last year (133,951 vs 29,309).

In recent gameweeks the improved points total is largely down to one man – Mohamed Salah. It’s no coincidence that we have also seen captain points increase significantly over last year’s total (484 vs 450).

Given that Salah’s phenomenal season shows no sign of derailing, it would seem likely that our Top Five are going to keep getting more points than last year. But so is pretty much every serious FPL manager, and a large number of casual FPL managers too. Does this make the game dull?

Are we now locked into our positions? Will it prove difficult to make much headway up the leaderboard?

Yet Salah’s captain points alone does not explain the increased points total overall this year.

There is an indication of what might be happening when we look at immediate transfer points. Even after the boost normally associated with Wildcarding, our Top Five still average nearly four times fewer immediate transfer points compared to last season – 57 vs 203.

To my mind this shows that high point scores are being spread across a number of players, and the unpredictability of when players will score well continues to hinder serious progress up the rankings.

FPL & LIVE HOF BATTLES

As it stands Jay’s form since his season high of 48th overall in Gameweek 16 means we can safely say he is not going to make up the 160 point gap to first place.

At the top, overall leader Bharat Dhody maintained his 30-point gap over second place. He gained an impressive 72 points this week from his Wildcard.

His team features largely double double Gameweek players, the three main exceptions being Salah, Mané, and Barnes, who only has a Gameweek 34 double. This would indicate he is keeping his options open over when he will use his Bench Boost chip. Free Hit in Gameweek 35, however, appears certain.

While double Chelsea defence seems a little surprising on his Wildcard, the selection of West Brom forward Rayhaan Tulloch seems downright bizarre. He obviously doesn’t think the Bench Boost chip is worth much as the West Brom youngster is yet to play this season. Costing £4.5m he is one of four forwards at this price – the cheapest in the game. Clearly Bharat is favouring midfielders and defenders for the season run-in.

At the moment he has £2.0m in the bank, which would allow him to transfer Kane in for Aubameyan should prices remain as they are.

Matt Kearney (aka Bøwstring the Carp) slipped to 15th overall. Yet to play his Wildcard, Free Hit and Bench Boost chips, Matt will need to maximise their use if he is to stand any chance of bridging the 60-point gap to first place. At least he now has some idea of how Bharat will approach the end of the season, however doing something about it is an entirely different matter.

Both of Jay’s closest rivals in the Live Hall of Fame suffered back-to-back red arrows in the two recent gameweeks. Number two Grant Barclay (aka Jake Donahue), dropped to 1,599 overall, and former Hall of Fame number one Ville Ronka is now down to 8,540. Intriguingly, like Matt, both are yet to Wildcard.

FORMATION

There were no automatic substitutions that caused formation changes over the past two gameweeks. 3-5-2 proved the most popular formation, and over the season it has been chosen or defaulted to 30% of the time.

However, 3-4-3 remains the most frequently used FPL set-up, having been chosen 45% of the time.

KANE TO THROW A SPANNER IN THE WORKS?

Exceeding even my optimistic suggestion in my last article that he would be back for Gameweek 33, will Kane’s faster than expected recovery be an opportunity or a hindrance to our Elite Quintet?

I imagine Mark is already making a trip to DFS to find the biggest sofa possible. Having captained Kane 19 times this season – the most any single player has been captained by our Top Five – the Stoke fixture presents another stand-out opportunity for Kane to haul. My bet is Mark probably won’t get a new sofa, and will instead likely take a hit and upgrade Lukaku.  

Jay, however, feels that Kane may not even start the match against Stoke, reasoning; why change a winning line-up?

While possible, this appears wishful thinking on Jay’s part, Kane will doubtless still have ambitions of retaining the golden boot, and it would be a surprise if he’s left out of the starting line-up.

Aubameyang is Jay’s pick of the captain choices for the week ahead. The Gabon international has the week off before that appealing home match against the Saints.