Learning from The Great and The Good: Gameweek 13

“Winter is coming. We know what’s coming with it”

Winter is well and truly upon us and brought a bleak gameweek for many of the FPL community.

With the fixtures starting to come thick and fast plus the much heralded GW15 fixture swing on its way, how have The Great and The Good reacted?

The international break brought injuries, niggles, sniffles, and flags galore. Fortunately many of them had as much credibility as a Ross Barkley bandwagon so there were few team sheet surprises.

So who are The Great and The Good? They are Jay Egersdorff, Ville Ronka, The Scout-casters (Joe, Andy, Az, David, Granville, and Mark), Eliteserien’s expert Niemi, and the last man standing Torres Magic.

OVERALL PERFORMANCE 

So if you are on The Great and The Good you may want to look away now… it was a very challenging week for them all with only two of them making it above the average GW score of 50.

At the top of the tree were Mark and Niemi who both had Trent Alexander-Arnold to thank for their green arrow. Andy in particular must be kicking himself for leaving him on his bench.

They also had key differentials in Sterling and Sigurdsson across these teams that made the difference. Both Niemi and Mark are now in their highest positions of the season with both comfortably in the top 20,000.

At the other end it was everybody else: Joe struggled the most and ended up with 31 after his hit. He dropped 55,000 places and had to go through a painful Monday night as Gudmundsson was ruled out and Hart failed to deliver. It’s the hope that kills you.

The biggest red arrows belonged to Jay and Az who each dropped 93,000 places and sit outside the top 250k. Only their Liverpool assets provided any comfort with Mané continuing to cover Salah’s absence from Jay’s team. Food for thought for the others?

Ville Ronka GW 43 pts Total 860 pts (rank 4219)

Mark GW 60 pts Total 842 pts (rank 12683)

TorresMagic GW 33 pts Total 841 pts (rank 12864)

Andy GW 41 pts Total 840 pts (rank 13886)

Niemi GW 59 pts Total 835 pts (rank 17722)

David GW 43 pts Total 811 pts (rank 51692)

Joe GW 35 pts Total 789 pts (rank 115736)

Granville GW 45 pts Total 783 pts (rank 140208)

Jay Egersdorff GW 35 pts Total 763 pts (rank 257275)

Az GW 40 pts Total 761 pts (rank 273826)

*GW points in the table above are before hits are taken into account.

TRANSFERS AND HITS

This is a summary of the rest of transfers for this week:

Andy – Martial, Keane (Mendy, Ward)

Az –  Martial, Digne (Mendy, Obiang)

David – Jiménez, Digne, Richarlison (Mendy, Success, Shaqiri)

Granville – TAA (Mendy)

Jay – Martial, Doherty (Shaqiri, Mendy)

Joe – Jiménez, Digne (Ings, Mendy)

Mark – Patricio (Hennessey)

Niemi – No transfer

Torres Magic – No transfer

Ville Ronka – No transfer

*transfers out are in brackets

So with the news that Mendy’s other knee had gone wonky it was no surprise the Frenchman was the most popular transfer out. A variety of options were discussed and whilst Laporte seemed a community favourite, Digne proved The Great and The Good’s defender of choice.

The International Break also prompted lots of discussion around the over-performing, or in form, Martial; Andy, Az, and Jay saw enough to bring him into their squads – unfortunately he underperformed.

Plenty of hits this week too with Andy, Az, and even cautious Joe taking the 4 point reduction. Mark was less trigger happy this week but has still taken the most hits (7) this season.

Headlines belong to “king of the captains” David who took a double hit to bring in the popular transfers of Richarlison, Jiménez and Digne. This didn’t pay off immediately, as he slumped to 35 points after hits and fell outside the top 50k.

TEMPLATE

After those transfers the template now looks like this:

Fabianski, Hamer/Ryan/Patricio

Wan-Bissaka, Robertson, Doherty, Alonso, Alexander-Arnold

Salah, Hazard, Richarlison, Fraser, Hojbjerg

Aguero, Arnautovic, Jiménez

Small changes to the template with managers assessing their options before the fixture turn.

Mendy limped out with TAA being the replacement. His double digit haul may tempt others to double down on this double-barreled defender.

Patricio returned to add to the mixture of goalkeeping options, whilst Doherty finally gave Hazard a bit of company joining the ten out of ten club, proving himself as essential to The Great and The Good.

TEAM INVESTMENT AND VALUE 

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

Goalkeeper –  4.5

Defender – 5.1

Midfielder – 8.3

Forward – 7.6

ITB – 0.9

Despite the transfer hits taken only minor changes to the budget spread with a slight increase in midfield allocation. The bank war chest average remains high which suggests many of them have big moves planned going into GW15.

The international break saw a fluctuation in team value with Ville Ronka and Torres Magic now leading this metric at 104.2. Granville and Mark are also in the 104 million club. Value is as of GW 13 deadline.

FORMATION AND BENCH

3-4-3 remains the weapon of choice having been deployed 52% of the time by these managers although Ville Ronka still has yet to set out his team this way so far. 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 continue to grow in popularity as 3-5-2 wanes with the defence still proving a source of value.

Only Joe and Granville had to look to the bench this week with Gudmundsson out and despite the high hopes Bennett and Arnie failed to deliver. Granville can still hold his head high having averaged 6 points per substitute when looking to the bench.

CAPTAIN AND DIFFERENTIALS 

To continue the theme of the season there was a split decision between Salah and Aguero this week, with the Argentinian just edging it, but disappointing this week. These two sit at 47% for Salah and 41% for Aguero as the top captain picks this season.

Az was the only one to go maverick with Richarlison, if you can describe picking the captains poll winner in that way, but the Brazilian didn’t deliver.

The main news this week was David continuing his Mystic Meg type qualities again picking the right man to carry the armband. He has still yet to pick a blank this season. Who will he pick in GW 14? The world awaits…

In terms of differentials, Niemi’s pick of Siggy paid off again and his steady returns may tempt others to follow. The big news is that Mark is still the only one to hold Sterling and reaped the benefits again but surely this has to change.

CONCLUSION 

So after a week to forget the moves in the run up to GW14 and GW15 could be season defining. With the majority holding money in the bank who will they go for?

Most have held three big budget players all season but have the popular picks of Salah, Hazard and Aguero had their day with Kane and Sterling waiting in the wings?

Perhaps one of them will challenge the existing price point structure and look at the upper end of the mid price options (Alli, Eriksen, Sané, and Silva).

Who will be the greatest of The Great and The Good over the festive period?

That’s all from me for now and remember don’t have nightmares.