The Great and The Good: TopMarx Extra Time Special

“After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

So as it was the international break I was wondering what I could possibly write about to break up the tedium when I stumbled across a mysterious figure know as Top Marx (legendary FPL article writer). He beckoned me over and in a Matrix type moment showed me the Hall of Frame spreadsheet. Shielding my eyes from the shining data and analysis I could barely see him when he said I could have limited access for one of The Great and The Good articles.

Overall Performance

The graph above shows the ranks of the The Great and The Good over the first 8 weeks. The vertical scale is from rank 1 to 1m. The distance between the ranks corresponds to the number of points separating them. For instance there are 136pts between rank 1 and rank 100k and 70pts between 100k and 1m. The graph gives an idea of how difficult it is to move up the ranks as you near the summit. This level of difficulty will increase as we move throughout the season so maybe now is the time to gamble rather than wait until later in the season. As you would expect the majority of the managers have improved their position during the first 8 weeks as more data has become available. Logic would therefore suggest that this should continue but with most of them having good starts and the gap from the top 10k to top spot (currently 94pts) growing every week this will prove considerably more challenging.  Mark has had the most dramatic improvement with huge gains thanks to a large part due to the Hazard captaincy in week 5. Jay has a poor start and although making steady progress is currently 189pts from the no.1 ranked manager. Although he shouldn’t worry too much as Matthew Jones (current live HOF no.1) had an even worse start last season but almost managed a top 10,000 finish.

Transfer success

The table below gives us a view of the transfer success of The Great and The Good based on the data provided via FPL Statistico. This doesn’t reflect that transfers aren’t made with only one fixture in mind and when patience in an underperforming player finally pays off.  It does make interesting reading for our The Great and The Good. Jay has an awful record in his transfers to date and Az has also fared poorly as well. The most effective of the managers has been Andy but Ronka and Mark also have good records so far this season. Mark’s more aggressive moves have been righting his poor decisions at the start of the season, he had Jota and Sanchez (remember them) in his GW1 team.

Captain Picks

So far this season only 5 different players have been handed the armband by our managers. Salah is the most popular having been chosen 45% of the time, followed by Aguero on 41%. Interestingly, they are fairly equal in terms of returns Salah averaging a 16.1 point return when chosen as captain compared to Ageruo’s 16.8 points. If you can’t see Kane’s segment then don’t worry your eyes don’t need testing it was just he failed so spectacularly to deliver (although clearly the writer has got over this).  Perhaps they should look to consider Hazard as a set and forget option, he has only been captained 3 times by The Great and The Good but has delivered each time with 40 points for Mark and 28 points for Ville/David last week. Although I sense that the Aguero/Salah combo will be the default setting over the next run of fixtures.

The Great and The Good vs The Hall of Fame

Finally, we get to the question on everyone’s lips… who are the better group: The Great and The Good or the Hall of Fame? In order to compare the two groups I have taken the best Career Hall of Fame managers not already signed up by The Great and The Good (so Ville Ronka and Jay).  Therefore, The Hall of Fame line up looks intimidatingly like this: Grant Barclay, Matthew Jones, Marlen Rattiner, Owen Walker, Richard Clarke, Paul Gee, Lester Cheng, Kenneth Tang, Rick Beamish, and Bruce Savage. The table below shows the total points and position for each group of managers and the winner is……. The Great and The Good!

They achieve an average points tally of 526.7 and an average rank of 107,646 whilst the Hall of Fame can only manage 126,103 and 519.9 points. In this shock result The Great and The Good are helped by the particular impressive performances of Ville Ronka, Andy, and Torres Magic who are all in the top 20k whilst the Hall of Fame can only manage one with Rattiner at 18k. When having a casual glance at the transfer strategy, the Hall of Fame are clearly biding their time with only 50% of them having used their wildcards. Only Niemi from The Great and The Good had not used his before GW8 amongst that group. However, interestingly the Hall of Fame have made more transfers this season (7.5) versus the The Great and The Good’s 6.8. It will be interesting to see if The Great and The Good remain triumphant by the end of the season.

So what have learnt from this exercise? Well for me, it is even the best can have a bad start so don’t panic, the mountain definitely gets steeper as you reach the peak, an active manager is a good manager and of course The Great and The Good are the Greatest! Back to normal service next week and remember don’t have nightmares.

Top Marx’s Post-Match Interview

“The dressing room has recovered well after losing star player Ville in a controversial move to The Great and The Good, and it’s fantastic to see Marlen stepping up and taking on a more active role. Already he’s showing greater structural flexibility this season compared to his appearance in the Top Five two seasons ago. That year he stuck with a 3-4-3 formation for 30 of the 38 gameweeks. An unwillingness to adapt to a 3-5-2 formation caused him to stagnate – after Gameweek 1 he was in the top 100k but he ended 32,340 overall without making an appearance in the top 10,000.

The importance of deploying a five-man midfield in the 2016/17 season was a crucial part of Jay’s success as he moved up to third in the Career Hall of Fame. He noted that “attacking teams such as Arsenal and Liverpool have been using midfielders – Sanchez and Firmino – as out of position strikers. This means you are essentially playing 3-3-4.”

This year it is Marlen adapting to players offering exceptional value. Recruiting Ings in Gameweek 3 for Bournemouth’s King, helped generate funds for the transfer of Peltier to Alonso. In Gameweek 5 an injury to Palace’s Zaha saw Marlen play a back five of Alonso, Liverpool’s Robertson, City’s Mendy, and Palace duo van Aanholt and Wan-Bissaka.

Evidence of structural flexibility continued with his Gameweek 6 wildcard. An injury to Mendy saw Marlen take advantage of the promise (and incredible value) shown by Wolves players. Former Norwich defender Ryan Bennett together with the out of position Doherty, playing more as winger than a right back, joined £4.0m budget sensation Wan-Bissaka in defence as funds were redistributed throughout the squad. Marlen also questioned the value offered by Salah and, with the fixtures stiffening for Liverpool, the Egyptian made way for Hazard.

A further money saving move of Robertson to teammate Alexander-Arnold meant Marlen had enough funds to upgrade Mkhitaryan to Sterling. Last season’s second highest points scorer has largely gone under the radar; his 5.4% ownership could perhaps be explained by his increase in price and a fear of rotation under manager Guardiola. Nonetheless Gameweek 6 proved a shrewd time to buy the England man as he delivered a goal, two assists, and three bonus points in his next two matches.

Marlen has been bold, brave, and exciting so far this season. Yet he’s also been very sensible – he’s looked at which players are delivering value, he’s looked at fixtures, and he’s shifted formation to take advantage of opportunities. Having played his wildcard, the question is will he now be forced to adopt a more patient approach?

He could fairly easily fit Salah back into his side with only two transfers, but I’m wondering what he will do if Mendy, Alonso, and Robertson all start firing again? Currently there isn’t an obvious bench player amongst his front 8 and, should a number of premium defenders show form, it may be that we see another re-structuring. Obviously this is harder to achieve without a wildcard.

One final transfer of Marlen’s that stood out for me was that of Ings to Jiménez. A seemingly innocuous transfer that I find fascinating. Ings is a player that was highlighted last month by Kenneth Tang: “it will be essential to tap into these players asap, not for building TV, but making your whole team “value for money” as soon as possible.”

Jiménez arguably falls into the same category. In Gameweek 6, when Marlen was on his wildcard, Ings was unable to play against his parent club Liverpool. With matches against Wolves and Chelsea to follow it’s understandable that Jiménez was the preferred option of the two. But if they both offer value for money, why not keep both?

The answer is Mitrovic. Here’s what is so exciting about this season – there is so much value on offer! Marlen made the decision on his wildcard that both Mitrovic and Jiménez offered more value than Ings. That doesn’t necessarily mean Kenneth Tang was wrong, just that he plays the game a different way.

Will this season favour the bold or the patient manager?

Kenneth and new Live Hall of Fame number one Matthew Jones (aka Numb) are both exponents of the patient approach. Matthew admitted in his ‘Meet the Manager’ interview that he may not use his wildcard until Christmas! While Kenneth confesses the “early years [of FPL], only one wildcard was given, which suits my planning appetite even more”.

I’m delighted to have managers with such contrasting approaches in my team and I’m quietly confident that we will be able to catch and overtake The Great and The Good!”