Learning from the Great and the Good 19/20 – Gameweek 3

“To boldly go where no man has gone before.” 

FPL Gameweek 3, the final frontier. These are the voyages of The Great and The Good. It’s season long mission to explore strange new transfers, to seek out new hits and new wildcards.

This week promised to be the most dramatic so far with many managers holding 2 FTs, some ready to take hits and some even willing to take their squads to warp speed and wildcard.

The topic of whether to wildcard or not clearly split the community and tensions ran high but to quote Spock, “without freedom of choice there is no creativity”.

The weekend saw Pukki continue his enterprising ways, Haller prove to be a potential new recruit for our FPL star fleets and Aguero fire a couple of photon torpedoes.

As a reminder The Great and The Good are a hand picked group of FPL celebrities (?), FF Scouts or prominent managers who I will follow to see what we can learn as they navigate their way through the season. They are the Scouts (Mark, Joe, David, Geoffand Neale), FPL “celebrities” (Az, LTFPL Andy, FPL Generaland Jules Breach) and finally from the Hall of Fame we have Ville Ronka, Matthew Jones and Sean Tobin.

OVERALL PERFORMANCE 

The table below shows current performance/ranking: –

Mark continues to Klingon to top spot and moves up to 31,000, a rise of 128,000. He was the joint highest scorer this week on 66pts after hits along with Neale.

They both had Salah, Sterling and Pukki to thank for their strong performance but Martial also contributed along with De Bruyne for Neale and Wilson for Mark.

Worth noting whilst seven of them transferred out the Bournemouth forward, Mark has kept faith with Wilson who has yet to blank and has a good run of fixtures still to go.

Phasers were set to stun for Az this week as he looked to keep his 100% successful captain run going. Did he pick the next Kirk or was it Pike this gameweek?

Az, along with the majority, went Sterling and his captain’s log remains perfect as the City man netted another goal against the Cherries.

In fact, Jules Breach was the only one not to go with Raheem and picked Harry but must have screamed KAAANE! when the Spurs striker failed to deliver versus Newcastle.

WILDCARD

Warning: tenuous link on the starboard bow. William Shatner was of course the captain of the Enterprise and for many is the most famous Canadian in the world, but it was FPL’s most famous Canuck Geoff that led the wildcard voyage for The Great and The Good.

Geoff removed his cloaking device and has made the following changes: –

IN – Wan-Bissaka, Dunk, Soyuncu, De Bruyne, Martial, Mane, Cantwell, Pukki, Barnes, Rashford

OUT – TAA, Robertson, Zinchenko, Dendoncker, Salah, Fraser, Perez, Wilson, Jota, Greenwood

There were wholesale changes to his crew with 10 transfers made and perhaps the biggest move was to take out Mo Salah and rely on Mane cover – will this prove highly illogical?

He has gone heavy on United with a triple up of Wan-Bissaka, Rashford and Martial, the initial results were poor although the upcoming fixtures give them chance to live long and prosper.

His double Liverpool defence has been abandoned in favour of rotating 4.5s Dunk, Soyuncu and the additional cover of bargain Lundstrom.

This allows him a strong midfield quartet of KDB, Mane, Sterling and Martial plus he has the funds left to jump on the striker bandwagons of Pukki and Barnes.

Geoff is certainly giving “her all she’s got captain” in his wildcard and “canna give her no more” so let’s see if this early shake up pays off over the coming weeks.

TRANSFERS AND HITS

This is a summary of the transfers for this week:

Andy – Pukki, Mount, De Bruyne (Wilson, Moura, Perez)

Az – Pukki, Martial (Wilson, Perez)

David – Kane, Cantwell, Pukki (Vardy, Robinson, Wilson)

FPL General – Pukki, McGinn, De Bruyne (Wilson, Perez, Fraser)

Jules Breach – Trossard, Giroud (Tielmans, King)

Joe – Pukki, Martial (Wilson, Moura)

Mark – Martial, Pukki, Cantwell (Lamela, King, Perez)

Matthew Jones – Lundstram, De Bruyne (Fraser, Robertson)

Neale – Pukki, Andone, Martial (Wesley, King, Perez)

Sean Tobin – Pukki, Martial (Moura, Wilson)

Ville Ronka – Lundstram, Pukki, De Bruyne (VVD, Sigurdsson, Murray)

*transfers out are in brackets

Pukki continues to assimilate new owners and The Great and The Good were not immune as ten out of the twelve benefited from another double digit haul this week.

Sometimes a feeling is all we FPL managers have to go on and this led to half of them taking hits this week, perhaps most surprising was Ville Ronka’s early minus four which saw him capture Lundstram, Pukki and De Bruyne. Yet, you don’t have to be a Vulcan to recognize the logic of these moves.

David was the only one to engage Kane and join Jules as an owner but again was left disappointed and it may end up that the cheaper Cantwell may prove a more important purchase for him.

Elsewhere, Andy’s pick of Mount is one to catch the eye and could beam him up to success if Lampard continues to show faith in the young midfielder.

TEMPLATE 

The template for The Great and The Good looks like this: –

Pope (9) Button (7)

Digne (10) Lundstram (10) TAA (7) Zinchenko (6) Robertson/VVD (5)

Salah (11) Sterling (11) Dendonker (7) KDB (7) Martial (7)

Pukki (10) Greenwood (7) Jota (6)

* brackets show number of teams they appear in

“Change is the essential process of all existence.” The first changes to the template this week with Pukki coming in for Wilson upfront, whilst in midfield sees De Bruyne and Martial join with Perez and Moura making way.

DIFFERENTIALS

This week I have looked at the differentials currently owned by The Great and The Good to understand where no man or FPL manager has gone before. For this I have classed differentials as players owned by fewer than 10% as of time of writing.

The one that jumps out is the Barnes train himself who is only owned by Geoff, the in-form Burnley hitman is bang in form with good fixtures on the way. His % ownership was at 8.6% as I type, surely resistance is futile, and this will rise.

Another shocker is McGinn who has a good start to the season on 15 pts and is owned by Mark, FPL General and Jules but only 6.1% of all managers. Make it so for him to enter the template soon.

Other ones of note are Vardy who Joe is keeping faith with, Laporte owned by Ronka and of course Trossard, who sits in squad of the Brighton fan club of Joe, Az, Jules and the non-Seagull David.

Finally, Neale must be kicking himself a little at transferring out Wesley just as he helped himself to 9 points and yet is less than 2% owned. Curious indeed.

CONCLUSION 

“I’m an FPL manager, not a magician” Bones may have said if he played FPL and had to decide whether to abandon his pre-season big at the back plan to afford De Bruyne, Martial and the emerging strikers.

Would Spock put forward the argument that “insufficient facts always invite danger” and therefore believe it was too early to sell our Liverpool/Everton defensive doubles with fixtures still looking good?

Perhaps The Great and The Good should heed Jean-Luc Picard when he said, “There is a way out of every box, a solution to every puzzle; it’s just a matter of finding it.” Let’s see how they approach this latest conundrum.

Anyway, that’s all from me for now and remember don’t have nightmares.

For those effected by any of the topics raised in the above article they can find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Greyhead19

Likewise, if you want to keep up with the Tweets of The Great and The Good you can find them here

https://twitter.com/matthewpenycae

https://twitter.com/LetsTalk_FPL

https://twitter.com/DavidMunday815

https://twitter.com/ffscout_az

https://twitter.com/FFScout_Joe

https://twitter.com/FPLGeneral

https://twitter.com/julesbreach

https://twitter.com/SkontoRigga

and not forgetting the 2nd most famous Canadian in the world…

https://twitter.com/FFScout_Geoff