Learning from the Great and the Good 19/20 – Gameweek 10

“It’s Halloween, everyone’s entitled to one good scare”

A good scare? A good score would be better after a start to the season that has been a horror movie for many, would gameweek 10 prove to be a nightmare on FPL street for The Great and The Good ?

There were certainly spooky goings on with hair-raising benchings, paranormal De Bruyne non-goals and the mysterious disappearance of the entire Southampton defence.

The lead up to the weekend was all about City and the agonising decision over who to place the armband on as we embarked on another scary round of Pep trick or treat.

Yet coming out of the fixtures it was all about the Vardy Halloween party which saw Perez come back from the FPL dead and the Saints have their own freaky Friday experience.

As a reminder The Great and The Good are a handpicked 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, Geoff and Neale), FPL “celebrities” (Az, LTFPL Andy, FPL General and Jules Breach) and finally from the Hall of Fame we have Ville Ronka, Matthew Jones and Sean Tobin.

OVERALL PERFORMANCE 

“Be afraid, be very afraid” Jules Breach as Neale is coming to get you at the top of The Great and The Good table, he is now only four points behind.

The table below shows current performance:-

Andy was the top scorer this week with 66 points and a 200,000-rank rise thanks to his Sterling captain pick, Yarmolenko doing bits and the canny purchase of Maupay.

The biggest rank rise went to Mark in game week 10 who went up 245,000 places thanks to his newly recruited double City defence and a reward for his patience from Martial who now looks an interesting prospect with those fixtures coming up.

For the more squeamish, you may want to look away now with Az, Sean Tobin and David all getting blood red arrows of 375,000 plus. Az must feel like taking a chainsaw to his team as Aubameyang, Wilson and Hudson-Odoi let him down plus he was a victim of the De Bruyne ghost goal.

I see dead people, sorry I mean captain points but equally unexpected nevertheless, but there were still a few that will suffer a sleepless night from their armband choice. City dominated the picks with most going for Sterling and De Bruyne. David and Sean Tobin were brave enough to go Aguero, but his cameo appearance left them screaming.

Neale, Jules Breach, Ville Ronka and Az went with De Bruyne and must have been celebrating when he scored only for the “malevolent evil spirits that only exist to cause pain and commit evil for their own amusement”, otherwise known as the goal accreditation panel to snatch those fantasy points away from them.

TRANSFERS AND HITS

This is a summary of the transfers for this week :

Andy – Maupay, De Bruyne (Son, Pukki)

Az – Hudson-Odoi, De Bruyne (Mount, Mahrez)

David – Rico (Burn)

FPL General – Maupay (Pukki)

Joe – Jimenez, Dendoncker (Cantwell, Pukki)

Jules Breach – Maupay (Pukki)

Geoff – No transfers

Mark – Cancelo, Mendy (Digne, Otamendi)

Matthew Jones – No transfers

Neale – Maupay (Wood)

Sean Tobin – Yarmolenko (McGinn)

Ville Ronka – David Silva (McGinn)

*transfers out are in brackets

“We all go a little mad sometimes” and many were left questioning Mark’s decision to bring in Mendy and Cancelo this week, but it proved a wise call with immediate returns.

Az proved to be the transfer psycho taking a hit to bring in De Bruyne and Hudson-Odoi, sadly he will be haunted by his choice of Chelsea midfielder as it was Pulisic who stole the show with a hat-trick against Burnley.

Here’s Maupay! The Brighton front man made his way into several the squads this week and was the most popular move as the majority made their excuses and got their coats at the ever diminishing Pukki party.

TEMPLATE 

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

Pope (11) Button (7)

TAA (11) Lundstram (10) Otamendi (7) Tomori (8) Söyüncü/Rico (5)

Mount (11) Sterling (10) KDB (10) Salah (9)Cantwell (5)

Abraham (11) Pukki (5) Greenwood (5)

* brackets show number of teams they appear in

The template continues its zombie like state with no major changes aside from Rico joining the battle for the fifth defender spot. I suspect that Otamendi and Pukki are the walking dead in this group and will be the next in line to meet the template reaper.

BASE POINTS

There have been lots of scares and bumps in the night for The Great and The Good this season with many pointing to captain choice as being the critical factor in their demise. So, I have decided to carry out a post-mortem on their performance to date and assess their base point score, which exclude captain doubling/trebling. You can see below the results:-

The headline is that Neale would top the table but for Jules’s captain picking skills as her armband choice have earned her a 13 points advantage over her top of the table stalker. David should consider seeing a witch doctor as the former voodoo captain priest now has the lowest number of captain points for the season with only 50 scored over the first ten weeks.

CONCLUSION

“Tasty, tasty beautiful fear” of bad game weeks and captain fails seems to have taken grip of the FPL community with many seeming happy to hide under their beds and hope the bogeyman goes away.

Yet, is now the time to act and confront our personal ghosts and take a few gambles? Mendy, Alonso, Willian, Chilwell, Pulisic, Gross or even Perez are names that could prove to be more than a stab in the dark. Let’s see what The Great and The Good are made of?

Anyway, that’s all from me for now and remember don’t have Halloween 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/SkontoRigga

https://twitter.com/FFScout_Geoff

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