Sunday’s avalanche of goals provided a thrilling conclusion to the 2017/18 campaign and gives us time to reveal the winners of our Fantasy Football Scout leagues.
Fantasy Football Scout League
Paul Gee claims top spot in our main league in Fantasy Premier League (FPL) and also came nail-bitingly close to winning the overall title, finishing in second spot, just eight points behind winner Yusuf Sheikh.
Paul’s strong Gameweek 38 score of 72 points proved enough to snatch the summit in the main league from Bharat Dhody, who scored 48 points and had held the overall lead in FPL for 17 weeks.
Paul did not take any hits ahead of the season finale and instead transferred in and captained Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah for benched Spurs midfielder Dele Alli.
Spurs’ Harry Kane, West Ham’s Marko Arnautovic and Leicester City’s Jamie Vardy all provided double-digit points hauls to add to his impressive season finale display.
Ultimately, Burnley’s failure to keep a clean sheet at Turf Moor against Bournemouth robbed Paul of top spot and the FPL crown. He was ranked top with 16 minutes to go on Sunday.
With three further top 5,000 finishes across his previous eight seasons, Paul’s campaign is no fluke.
It’s also worth noting that, over the course of 2017/18, Paul has proved to be a patient manager in the transfer market, taking just 10 hits.
We will have an interview with Paul later this week.
Runner-up Bharat endured a disappointing conclusion to the campaign, with nine of his 15-man squad either failing to earn any pitch time or only making a cameo.
Although he took a hit to bring in Crystal Palace stopper Wayne Hennessey and Salah – captaining the latter for a 24-point net return – this involved moving out Leicester’s Riyad Mahrez, who earned his highest tally of the season (13 points).
Faisal Idris ends the season in third spot in our main league and had a relatively disappointing season finale following his Gameweek 37 heroics – when he was the only top 100 manager to captain that round’s top scorer Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
Transferring in Crystal Palace’s Wilfried Zaha and West Ham keeper Adrian for Manchester United’s Jesse Lingard and Leicester’s Kasper Schmeichel netted Faisal nine extra points, but it proved too little too late in his push for the league and overall title.
Nebojsa Velijovic’s 77-point return, achieved despite bringing in and captaining Liverpool’s Roberto Firmino in exchange for Vardy, sees him end the campaign in fourth spot in the league and seventh place overall.
Taking fifth spot is Prakhar Patel, who captained Kane for a 24-point return to help him accrue a final day score of 68 points.
Thanks to our successful quintet, the Fantasy Football Scout league finished top of the FPL League of Leagues.
Fantasy Football Scout Members League
Paul Gee also ends the season in first place in our Members league, with a commanding 51-point lead over second placed Tom Foster.
Tom, who finishes in 48th spot overall, made a trio of transfers ahead of Gameweek 38 with all three of his recruits, Arnautovic, Aaron Ramsey and Aubameyang, delivering attacking returns to take his final day score to 79 points. However, Vardy, with his 13 points, was among those to depart.
Anders Lium secured third spot and 52nd place in the overall rankings with a Gameweek 38 score of 84. This was thanks, in part, to Newcastle pair Ayoze Perez and DeAndre Yedlin’s combined score of 19 points coming off his bench, after Spurs’ Jan Vertonghen and Swansea’s Kyle Naughton failed to make an appearance.
Simon Rutherford (aka Heroes and Villains) caps off a stellar campaign with fourth spot in the Members league but will be slightly disappointed with a 55-point final day return, which saw him fall from 26th to 58th in the overall standings. His acquisition of Liverpool pair Salah and Firmino for a hit was cancelled out as Kane, who scored twice, and Manchester City midfielder Ilkay Gundogan made way.
In fifth sits Ryan Lysaght, who benefitted from a nine-point return from Swansea’s penalty-saving keeper Lukasz Fabianski. Ryan’s 67-point haul was swelled by Leicester pair Mahrez and Vardy, who together served up 26 points.
Sky Sports Fantasy Football
Congratulations to Jason Barlow, who ends 2017/18 at the top of our Sky Sports league and the overall standings, with a score of 3,402 points.
He finished the final day in style with a 36-point haul from captain Salah, as well as double-digit returns from Arnautovic and Kane.
Second place Pascal Evans also benefitted from the same players and captaincy, as well as 19 points from Liverpool defensive duo Virgil Van Dijk and Loris Karius, but it was not enough to overtake Jason and saw him finish on 3,385 points and as runner up overall.
Mick Barker’s 3,346-point final total, which also saw him captain Salah, sees him finish in third.
Fourth spot is taken by Robert Watson-Lang, who gained 14 points from Mahrez, to add to Salah’s captaincy points and returns from Karius and Kane. He finishes the season on 3,346 points.
Jack Palmer secures fifth spot just behind on 3,345 points, with strong returns from Kane, Arnautovic and his captain Salah.
Similar to FPL, Fantasy Football Scout were ranked first for the League of Leagues.
We’ll be rolling out an interview with Sky Sports winner Jason later in the week as he talks over that successful season.
