Top 5 Career Hall of Fame – Gameweek 36 Review

It was very much after the Lord Mayors show in Gameweek 36 following on from the highs of Gameweek 35. Our Top Five’s Free Hit teams reverted back to their Gameweek 34 line-ups, as Manchester City’s free scoring duo Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus, were replaced by Chelsea’s Willian and Manchester United’s Romelu Lukaku. It meant only one thing – red arrows all round.

Career Hall of Fame number one Peter Kouwenberg (aka My Pretty Pony) was the highest scoring manager of the week with 53 points. This included an eight point hit, with new recruits Sterling, Tottenham’s Harry Kane, and Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold out scoring the players they replaced by 21 points. It was clearly a hit worth taking.

But despite his success in the transfer market, Peter slipped back to 205,757 overall. This looks like being his worst ever FPL season, beating the 92,126 rank he suffered ten years ago. This year, having used all his chips, he faces a battle to make the top 100k. Peter needs to bridge a 41 point gap in the final two Gameweeks to avoid his first six-digit finish.

Career HoF number two Graeme Sumner (aka Gregor) is the only other Top Five manager to have used all his chips. A Gameweek score of 45 pushed Graeme back to 129,819 overall, 14 points behind the top 100k. Graeme has only twice finished outside the top 10,000 and the last time this happened was in the 2011/12 season.

It’s staggering that these two colossi of FPL management have struggled so much this season, with neither coming close to emulating the highs of last year. Their management styles aren’t particularly similar; Peter makes a higher than average number of transfers, Graeme makes a normal amount; Graeme favours a 3-4-3 formation, Peter has more of an even split between 3-4-3 and 3-5-2. So it’s hard to single out what’s gone wrong particularly.

Their captain scores haven’t been great this season (523 points and 503 points) but a poor captain score hasn’t prevented career HoF number five Mark Sutherns (aka Mark) from managing a top 10,000 rank. Mark has 520 captain points so far and is yet to play his triple captain chip.

His run of five green arrows in a row came to an end in Gameweek 36 with a meagre 38 point return, the lowest weekly score out of our Top Five, as he slipped back to 7,922. Mark is only eight points inside the top 10,000 but having saved a transfer in Gameweek 36 he is well placed to attack the final two Gameweeks with a mini Wildcard – making three transfers at the cost of four points.

Mark’s FPL record perhaps offers some encouragement to Peter and Graeme. Despite boasting eight top 10,000 ranks in his eleven-year FPL career, in 2013/14 he finished 192,837. The following season he came roaring back, managing his first top 100 finish as he ended the 2014/15 season in 42nd place. Peter and Graeme will no doubt be hoping to emulate his bouncebackability next season.

The manager with the most top 10,000 finishes out of our Top Five is Live Hall of Fame leader Jay Egersdorff. Jay has managed nine so far and ‘La Decima’ is almost certain to arrive at the end of the season. Jay has a 57 point cushion to 10,000 overall.

Yet in Gameweek 36 he only managed 42 points, and this included a four point hit to bring back Liverpool’s goalscoring sensation Mohamed Salah. After losing an estimated 62 points over the ‘Kanexit’ debacle, Jay was determined not to miss out again with ‘No Salah’. Yet, miraculously, Salah blanked for only the third time since Gameweek 18.

Jay now faces a dilemma on whether to retain the Egyptian in his side – a tricky match away to Chelsea on Sunday follows the high of last Wednesday’s exhausting Champions League semi-final. The Blues are Liverpool’s only fixture in what is a double Gameweek for many teams.

Finally, career HoF number four Matthew Jones (aka Numb) – a manager who has only once finished outside the top 10,000 – dropped back to 14,363 overall. Matthew is only 13 points away from a remarkable eighth successive five-digit finish.

Like Mark, Matthew also saved his transfer in Gameweek 36 to give him two free transfers going into Double Gameweek 37. With Kane’s goal against Watford providing Matthew his only attacking returns of the week, it would appear a shake-up in his front seven is on the cards. Two or three Manchester City players would seem certain to make his starting eleven.

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 1 to 3m. The distance between the ranks corresponds to the number of points separating them. For instance there are 295pts between rank 1 and rank 100k, and 175pts 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, since the blank gameweek in Gameweek 31 – a week our managers all planned for – there has been a steady improvement. No doubt this is partly the result of our Top Five saving their chips for the blank and double gameweeks at the end of the season to gain maximum effect.

The average rank for the Top Five tumbled from 174,846 in Gameweek 30 to 65,042 in Gameweek 35.

With three of our elite quintet still having their Triple Captain chip, Gameweek 36 would appear to be only a minor interruption to their final push up the rankings.

CAPTAIN

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

Kane is the most popular having been chosen 42% of the time followed by Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah on 24%. However it is the Egyptian who has proven a more reliable captain choice than the erratic Englishman – his average 22 point return is just under double Kane’s 11.5 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 13% of the time and averages 14.3 points as captain, Sterling and Hazard have both been chosen 4% of the time. Hazard averages 14.5 points, while Sterling averages an impressive 24.5 points.

TRANSFERS – GAMEWEEK 36

Leicester City’s Riyad Mahrez was the popular transfer out in Gameweek 36, wisely as it turned out given the 5-0 humbling the Foxes suffered at the hands of Crystal Palace. Jamie Vardy, a player owned by three of our Top Five managers, took to Instagram to post an apology:

“I would personally like to apologise for yesterday’s shambolic performance! It wasn’t and isn’t acceptable for us to lose in that way EVER! Thank you to all the travelling fans who supported us. You deserved better”

Should they cling onto their Foxes Peter, Matthew and Mark will be hoping Leicester bounce back in their final two home matches over Double Gameweek 37, against West Ham and Arsenal.

TRANSFER SUCCESS – GAMEWEEK 36

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.
• I’ve subtracted the points gained on the Free Hit chip from the total

The Free Hit chip rather skews the figures in Fusen’s FPL Statistico tool, so I’ve subtracted the points gained from the Total Immediate Points Gained from Transfers after Hits. This gives a more accurate reflection of the type of season it has been. After 36 gameweeks Mark is the only manager to break the 100 points barrier.

COMPARING LAST SEASON TO THIS SEASON

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

The average total points for this season is 52 points up. Yet the higher points total has not translated into better ranks. In fact the average rank is nearly four times worse than it was at the same stage last year (71,863 v 18,235)

The higher overall points total makes the low immediate transfer points even harder to fathom. 74 points is way below last season’s average of 233 points.

Mark wrote in his Preamble article last Saturday that “it feels like I’ve been treading water.” I wonder if the low immediate transfer points this season is indicative of that?

We like to feel we make decisions that will positively affect the outcome of our fantasy fortunes each week, that we somehow exert control over our fantasy football destinies.

In general this season, our Top Five have been starved of transfer success, and this feeling was no doubt amplified by the success of their Free Hit chip – played to maximum effect in a blank gameweek.

In a season when so many players have been scoring well, when the players transferred out have often scored as well as the players transferred in, it’s no wonder Mark feels like he has been treading water.

Last season was completely different; managers made attacking transfers that had an immediate impact on their transfer points totals. The likes of Romelu Lukaku, then of Everton, and Josh King of Bournemouth spring to mind.

Perhaps because of the ability to make successful immediate transfers, last year’s Top Five were able to exert control over their FPL destinies, and, crucially, feel like they deserved their higher ranks as a result.

TEMPLATE

Players in Bold are in 3 teams or more

De Gea, Ryan

Lowton, Tarkowski, Morgan, Alonso, Dunk

Salah, Willian, Mahrez, Son, Kenedy

Kane, Lukaku, Vardy / Barnes

AVERAGE COST PER PLAYER

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

Goalkeeper – £5.2m

Defender – £4.9m

Midfielder – £7.3m

Forward – £9.7m

In The Bank (ITB) – £1.0m

PLAYERS

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

FORMATION

Automatic substitutions did not alter the formations this week. Over the season 3-4-3 is the most frequently used FPL set-up and has been chosen 46% of the time, with 3-5-2 second on 28%.

FPL & LIVE HOF BATTLES

Since a season high of 48th overall in Gameweek 16, Jay has slipped back to 142 points behind first place.

At the top, overall leader Bharat Dhody’s lead was reduced to five points ahead of Rizwan Chaudhry. Bharat braved a Scoutcast appearance this week, and he will be hoping he can avoid the dreaded “Scoutcast Curse” when managers slip down the rankings after appearing – a fate suffered most recently by Matt Kearney (aka Bøwstring the Carp). Matt is now down to 88th overall after being 23rd when he appeared on the Scoutcast ahead of Gameweek 34.

Nonetheless Bharat seemed confident and happy ahead of the final two gameweeks of the season. He has his Bench Boost chip to play and would seem certain to take a few hits ahead of Gameweek 37 given that Manchester United’s Eric Bailly is unlikely to feature and there’s an injury to Leicester City’s Ben Chilwell.

On the Scoutcast he was interested in hearing the team’s opinion on Raheem Sterling, suggesting that the England man will likely feature in his side.

In contrast Rizwan already owns Sterling, and has the potentially more powerful Triple Captain chip still available. The Dubai based manager, who is yet to make a transfer ahead of this evening’s deadline, looks set to go into the Double Gameweek with an exciting front three of Kane, Jesus, and Vardy.

It promises to be a nail biting final two gameweeks with the winner seeming certain to come from either India or Dubai this year.

This week also sees the semi-finals of the FPL cup. In the first match-up Nick Smith (OR 8,228) takes on Maksym Malinovskyi (OR 68,904). Nick has his Triple Captain chip available, a potential advantage as Maksym has used all his chips.

In the other semi-final Djole Isa (OR 687) takes on Welshman Jonathan Chubb (OR 3,276). Like Nick, Serbian Djole still has his Triple Captain chip.

Jay’s closest rival in the Live Hall of Fame Grant Barclay (aka Jake Donahue), made it three green arrows in a row with a gameweek score of 54 and no hits. He’s currently 21 points ahead of Jay and ranked 615th overall.

Mark holds onto fourth place in the Live Hall of Fame, with third spot taken by Richard Clarke. Despite only getting 36 points for the gameweek, Richard remains the highest ranked manager in the Live Hall of Fame top 10, at 126 overall.

Matthew’s red arrow this week sees him slip to eighth place in the Live Hall of Fame, one place ahead of former Hall of Fame number one Ville Ronka.

Pushing up the Live HoF this week are Lester Cheng, currently 5,620 overall, and Kenneth Tang. Kenneth is ranked 534th overall, should he achieve another top 1,000 finish it would be the sixth of his career. In case you are wondering, I haven’t missed out a zero – I do mean sixth top 1,000 finish not top 10,000.