This midweek analysis takes a look at how the top five in our Career Hall of Fame have set themselves up for the current Double Gameweek 37 and how they have performed during the first set of fixtures, covering Friday to Sunday’s matches.
It has been a poor start so far, with plenty of red arrows for this elite quintet. Jay, Matthew and Mark have all used their Triple Captain chip on Tottenham’s Harry Kane, no doubt with memories of his Gameweek 37 haul last season uppermost in their thoughts. A blank so far for the Spurs striker, but it could have been worse had Tottenham ‘keeper Hugo Lloris no leapt to Kane’s rescue to prevent him scoring an own goal against basement dwellers West Brom on Saturday.
Graeme Sumner (aka Gregor) is highest scorer after the weekend with 42 points, however, he took an eight point hit meaning he slips slightly to 132,059 overall. Graeme had a great start to the Gameweek with unexpected returns from Brighton pair Lewis Dunk and Pascal Groß, but a single point from Liverpool’s PFA player of the year, Mohamed Salah, was definitely below expectations.
Graeme is the only manager in our Top Five to captain Manchester City’s Gabriel Jesus. He will be hoping for a better performance from the Brazilian against Brighton, who are safe from the threat of relegation following their victory over Manchester United.
Matthew Jones (aka Numb) added City pair Jesus and Sterling to his side ahead of Gameweek 37. The duo are now owned by each member of our Top Five. But Matthew was the only manager brave enough to sell Salah. Intriguingly he kept Leicester City’s underperforming Riyad Mahrez, but, with £1.8m in the bank, he is in a position to upgrade the former PFA player of the year to the Egyptian star for his side’s home encounter with Brighton.
Matthew is 14 points outside of the top 10,000 as it stands, currently ranked 14,889 overall. Dropping out of the top 10,000 is career Hall of Fame number five Mark Sutherns (aka Mark). Mark slips to 11,997 after managing only 27 points in the first round of fixtures. The only return of any note so far has come from West Ham’s Marko Arnautovic, who managed an assist against Leicester City.
Mark has taken an 8 point hit as part of medium-sized ‘mini Wildcard’; making four transfers in total. Out went Leicester duo Mahrez and Jamie Vardy, along with Southampton’s Charlie Austin and Chelsea’s Marcos Alonso. In came Jesus and Sterling, and Swansea City duo Alfie Mawson and Jordan Ayew. Given his Gameweek ranking fall he may regret his recent Pre-amble article, in which he pondered whether a top 10,000 finish was ambitious enough given the advent of chips into the game.
One manager who can only dream of top 10,000 this season is Career Hall of Fame number one Peter Kouwenberg (aka My Pretty Pony). A 31 point return and an eight point hit sees Peter drop to 248,296 overall. Peter, who has used all his chips, has captained Raheem Sterling, who blanked against Huddersfield in the first match of the Gameweek, after returning three double digit hauls in a row, This rather sums up Peter’s luck this season.
Peter is now 53 points outside the top 100k, and needs something of a miracle to stave off his first six-digit finish. Sterling’s name appearing on the City team sheet tonight would be a good start.
Finally Live Hall of Fame leader Jay Egersdorff is trundling over the finish line. An assist from Southampton’s Cédric Soares the main contribution to his 28 points this gameweek. Jay is down to 2,001 overall.
Along with Matthew and Mark, he will be hoping Kane puts his goalscoring boots on against a Newcastle side who could not have been any worse in the first half against Watford. Will Spurs exact revenge for their heavy end of season defeat two years ago?
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 for this article I have also deployed Fusen’s FPL Statistico tool to gain an extra insight into their thinking.
POINTS & RANK
| Manager | Peter | Graeme | Jay | Matthew | Mark |
| GW points | 31 | 42 | 28 | 36 | 27 |
| Total points | 2,051 | 2,089 | 2,246 | 2,184 | 2,192 |
| FPL rank | 248,296 | 132,059 | 2,001 | 14,889 | 11,997 |
| FPL ID | 36298 | 345 | 175574 | 97282 | 370 |
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 292pts 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.
| Rank | 1 | 10 | 100 | 1,000 | 10,000 | 100k | 1m | 2m | 3m |
| Points Difference to First | 0 | 31 | 76 | 133 | 198 | 292 | 467 | 579 | 698 |
CAPTAIN
| Manager | Peter | Graeme | Jay | Matthew | Mark | Ave. (c) points | As % of score |
| GW (c) Points | 6 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 18 |
TRANSFERS – GAMEWEEK 37
| Manager | Peter | Graeme | Jay | Matthew | Mark |
| Players In | Jesus, Arnautovic, Vertonghen | Jesus, Sterling, Tadic | Jesus, Sterling | Jesus, Sterling, Vertonghen | Jesus, Sterling, Jordan Ayew, Mawson |
| Players Out | Vardy, Willian, Alonso | Lukaku, Willian, Albrighton | Lukaku, Son | Lukaku, Salah, Christensen | Vardy, Austin, Mahrez, Alonso |
| Points Hits | 8 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 8 |
TEMPLATE
Players in Bold are in three teams or more
De Gea, Ryan
Lowton, Tarkowski, Morgan, Dunk, Mawson
Sterling, Salah, Willian, Arnautovic, Kenedy
Kane, Jesus, Barnes
AVERAGE COST PER PLAYER
*based on GW32 wildcard prices (except for Salah!)
Goalkeeper – £5.2m
Defender – £4.8m
Midfielder – £7.2m
Forward – £9.8m
In The Bank (ITB) – £0.6m
PLAYERS
| Players in 5 Teams | Kane, Jesus, Sterling, Lowton, De Gea |
| Players in 4 Teams | Salah, Tarkowski, Morgan, Ryan |
Players in Bold are Magic Beans – Attacking players £6m and under
| Manager | Players in 3 Teams | Players in 2 Teams | Players in 1 Team |
| Peter | Barnes, Arnautovic | Kenedy, Vertonghen | Son, Alexander-Arnold |
| Graeme | Barnes, Arnautovic | Dunk | Tadic, Groß, Alonso |
| Jay | Barnes, Willian | Kenedy, Mawson | Alli, Cedric, Long |
| Matthew | Willian | Dunk, Vertonghen | Vardy, Mahrez, Matic, Gudmundsson, McCarthy |
| Mark | Willian, Arnautovic | Mawson | J Ayew, Lingard, Smalling, Maguire |
FPL & LIVE HOF BATTLES
At the top, overall leader Bharat Dhody increased his lead to eight points ahead of new number two Faisal Idris. As Redlightning pointed out, Faisal moved up from 12th after an inspired captain choice – Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. He was the only top 100 ranked FPL manager to hand the Gabon striker the armband.
Faisal had to try something different if he was going to stand any chance of reaching first place, and by handing the armband to Aubameyang he has done just that. He will be hoping Arsenal can improve on their dreadful away form in 2018 – no wins or even a draw so far – if he is to spring a huge surprise and claim the FPL crown. The Gunners travel to Leicester for their final Gameweek 37 match, before visiting Huddersfield in the season finale.
Bharat made four transfers taking a 12 point hit going into Gameweek 37, however this isn’t as crazy as it sounds given that he is playing his Bench Boost chip and there were doubts surrounding a number of his players; Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho revealed that he has dropped Eric Bailly because he is not going to World Cup; there’s an injury to Leicester City’s Ben Chigwell; and Antonio Conte hasn’t been starting Chelsea duo Willian and Andreas Christensen.
In came Raheem Sterling and three cheap centre-backs with goal scoring potential; Swansea’s Mike van der Hoorn, Southampton’s Jan Bednarek, and Arsenal’s Calum Chambers.
Bharat’s main concern will be that his two closest rivals – Rizwan Chaudhry and Paul Gee, who both triple captained Jesus. After watching his captain, Harry Kane blank against West Brom on Saturday, he was no doubt be thanking his lucky stars that Jesus did the same against Huddersfield on Sunday.
Despite that unproductive performance from Jesus, Paul has moved 10 points behind Bharat thanks to unexpected returns from Brighton pair Lewis Dunk and Pascal Groß in the Friday evening kick off against Manchester United. Paul enjoyed another slice of good fortune with Jan Vertonghen managing a clean sheet against West Brom, after being taken off before his side conceded late on. He will be hoping the ankle knock that forced him off isn’t too serious – Vertonghen seemed to be walking freely when he attended the boxing at the O2 arena on Saturday evening.
Rizwan’s main differential as he looks to bridge the 17 point gap to first place, is Chelsea’s Eden Hazard. Despite a good performance against Liverpool, Hazard did not manage any attacking returns. However the result means Chelsea are still in with a shout of Champions League football, therefore we should see a motivated Hazard in Wednesday evening’s encounter with Huddersfield, a match in which both sides need the points.
In the semi-finals of the FPL cup, Nick Smith has a 26-21 lead over Maksym Malinovskyi. Nick has Triple Captained Harry Kane, while Maksym will be hoping his differentials – Jesus and Swansea’s Jordan Ayew – can turn the tie in his favour.
In the other semi-final Jonathan Chubb leads Djole Isa by 34 points to 21. Jonathan has captained Sterling with Djole plumping for Kane. Oddly, Djole has opted against using his Triple Captain chip, perhaps thinking that if he can get through his semi-final he would have an advantage in the final. If so, that plan may well backfire unless his differentials such as Manchester United’s Paul Pogba and Manchester City’s Leroy Sané, can lead him to an unlikely victory.
In our Live Hall of Fame a standout headline of Gameweek 37 has been a very rare eight point hit for the famously parsimonious Ville Ronka. The former Hall of Fame number one ousted Hazard, Dunk and Barnes from his side for Sterling, Jordan Ayew, and Chelsea’s César Azpilicueta. Mixed results so far for the enigmatic Finn. Interestingly, for worried Hazard owners, he kept teammate Willian.
