“You got to know when to hold’em. Know when to fold’em”

Following last week’s article, I continue to track the moves and groves of some of the FPL experts/celebrities/prominent users in an attempt to improve my own performance. I have chosen 10 and I apologise for those I have missed or indeed chosen. To recap..

Mark – pretty obvious, he is the acceptable face of FPL

Jay Egersdorff – No. 1 FPLer and serial vloger

Ville Ronka – The man/myth  of the FPL world but clearly very very good

The Scoutcasters – Jonty (the duke of dullards), Andy (lets talk FPL),  Az (Lord of the wingbacks) , Granville and new boy David

Torres Magic – King of the last man standing

Niemi – He is guiding me through my first Eliteserien and made me love Erik Tonne

So now I have introduced my ones to watch. This is what I have learnt so far:

Overall Performance

This week came down to Aguero and whether you captained him or even had him in your team (Mark).

TorresMagic continued to lead the way with 90 points this week and maintained his early position in the top 20k. There were also some impressive green arrows for AZ and Granville.

With a touch of poetic justice, Wan-Bissaka came off Ronka’s bench again this week although this time to lose him a couple of points due to his sending off. Meanwhile, Andy and Mark dropped down the rankings due in some part to the Aguero factor but also down to the absence of Sanchez. Whether that means the end for the Chilean in these teams remains to be seen.

Mark was the only one of The Great and the Good to fall below the average total of 60 this week and also fell out of the overall 1 million. An early Wildcard looks to be the plan – does he have some more magic beans up his sleeve?

TorresMagic GW 90 pts Total 188 pts (rank 18037)

Ville Ronka GW 75 pts Total 172 pts (rank 91352)

Az GW 96 pts Total 172 pts (rank 91352)

Jonty GW 81 pts Total 170 pts (rank 106861)

David GW 80 pts Total 166 pts (rank 144575)

Niemi GW 81 pts Total 165 pts (rank 155779)

Granville GW 91 pts Total 163 pts (rank 179271)

Jay Egersdorff GW 81 pts Total 158 pts (rank 249690)

Andy GW 71 pts Total 154 pts (rank 320265)

Mark GW 58 pts Total 130 pts (rank 1109788)

Team Selection 

The template remains unchanged and looks like this:

Foster, Fab

Mendy, Wan-Bissaka, Robertson, Peltier, Tomkins

Salah, Jota, Richarlison, Mane, Stephens

Aguero, King, Kamara

Salah, Mendy and W-B are in all of the teams and I expect they will remain safe as we see the first transfers being made. However, we may have seen the last of Jota and King; it will be interesting to see which of our great and good show the most patience with these current underperformers.

In terms of team coverage it is not surprising to see Liverpool and City assets dominating with The Great and Good doubling and in some cases tripling up from both clubs. In fact, overall these clubs account for 32% of the players amongst these FPL teams. What is possibly more surprising is that 12% of the players come from the newly promoted teams who we often advised to avoid. Much of this may be down to the hype around Wolves assets (yet to be delivered on) and the lure of the 4.0 Peltier option.

Team Investment and Formation

Average Cost of Player looks like this across the teams based on week 1 prices.

Goalkeeper – 4.5

Defender – 5.0

Midfielder – 8.4

Forward – 7.9

ITB – 0.3

It was interesting to see TM and Ronka did not utilise their full budget in their first round picks. This would seem to go against one of the assumed golden rules but now provides them with some flexibility to jump on the early bandwagons (TM actually had 2m ITB).

Most of the managers kept to last weeks formation apart from Mark who switched to a 343 and brought Mendy and Arnie off the bench to replace Jota and Tomkins. Let’s see if this flexibility in approach is a blessing or a benching headache curse as the season progresses, or if he changes strategy.

A number of the managers (Niemi, Ronka, David and TM) brought in Peltier off the sidelines and must have been disappointed when the Cardiff man failed to make the teamsheet, particularly as the premiership newboys went on to keep a clean sheet. It was particularly bad news for Ronka and Niemi as they then watched on as W-B came off the bench and delivered a red card.

Captain and Differentials

This was always going to be Aguero vs Salah and so it proved with 4 of The Great and The Good going for the Man City man and the rest playing safe with Salah. I would guess much of this was down to the Guardian speculation at the end of the week. Perhaps already this shows us the managers more likely to take a calculated risk (Az, Granville, TM and David) against the more cautious managers. No prizes for guessing that Jonty and Ronka played it safe.

There was mixed success in terms of the differentials held by each manager. I would guess there was a fist pump or two from Az when Maddison scored and he will pleased to be one of the first onboard that particular bandwagon. Granville’s choice of Lucas Moura also paid off as the Spurs man scored a fine goal.

Transfers and Hits

As expected, it was a week for managers to hold their nerve and keep faith with their initial selections. I am sure we will see a number of changes in the line ups as we go into week 3 with maybe even a hit or two taken, or a Wildcard.

Against previous form Ville Ronka was the first to suffer from a case of the knee jerks with a couple of changes made and hit taken over the weekend. TM has also followed suit so looks like bandwagon chasing is order of the day. Az has also made an early move.

Anyway that’s all for now and don’t have nightmares.