Learning from the Great and the Good 19/20 – Gameweek 12

“I get knocked down, but I get up again. You are never gonna keep me down”

The Great and Good have been knocked down this season but got back up again this week with a stellar performance, there were green arrows galore and an average rank rise of well over 200,000.

Lots of tubthumping going into the weekend surrounding the big game between City and Liverpool with healthy debate around the future of their premium FPL assets as the fixtures and possibly the form swing in the direction of Merseyside.

Elsewhere, I imagine there was a whiskey drink, a vodka drink, a lager drink and a then a cider drink on Saturday night in Leicester with a certain party in full flow and all The Great and The Good wanted to be invited.

As a reminder The Great and The Good are a handpicked group of FPL celebrities (?), FF Scouts or Pro Pundits 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

Jules remains top but now only by two points as Neale is closing in on her fast with a mammoth 85 points this week to give him his highest weekly score and overall rank for the season.

He captained Vardy but also had Martial, Salah and Abraham plus his gamble to bench Lundstram paid off as Soyuncu and Tomori added valuable points.

However, the biggest riser this week was Az who went up a whopping 745,000 places and now sits at the 1.2 million mark – is this the start of the comeback? He joins Ville Ronka as the only two who hold Aubameyang, will this gamble pay off with those two dream fixtures to come?

Dare I mention Mark’s name? For those who are interested he was the lowest scorer this week with 57 points and his decision to go without Leicester on his wildcard appears to be back firing in the short term.

All of The Great and The Good were singing songs that remind them of the best times as they all had captain success this week, Ville Ronka will feel the most hard done by as he was the only manager to go with Abraham. Mark and Geoff were the other ones not to join the Vardy party and went with Martial and he rewarded them with a double digit return.

TRANSFERS

This is a summary of the transfers for this week:

Andy – Vardy, Jimenez, Dendoncker (Sterling, Maupay, Greenwood)
Az – Mane (Sterling)
David – Vardy, Jota, Martial (Pukki, Hayden, Aguero)
FPL General – Vardy, Jimenez, Tielmans (Salah, Maupay, Greenwood)
Joe – Vardy, Tielmans (Connolly, Sterling)
Jules Breach – Vardy, Abraham (Aubameyang, Greenwood)
Geoff – Martial (De Bruyne)
Mark – Williams (Cancelo)
Matthew Jones – No transfers
Neale – Vardy, Martial ( Pukki, De Bruyne)
Sean Tobin – Martial, Vardy (Yarmolenko, Aguero)
Ville Ronka – Martial, Mane (Sterling, David Silva)
*transfers out are in brackets

Lots of activity this week with twenty two transfers in total and four of them taking hits, with only Matthew Jones showing a saint like patience and not making any moves, he had arrived at the Vardy party well in advance.

Taking a more aggressive approach was Andy who took a well-publicized minus eight to VAJazzle up his front line and it paid off with his move for Vardy and Jimenez being a catalyst for his 337,000 place rise this week.

Vardy was obviously the most popular move with seven of them bringing in the Foxes’ frontman but a number of them also brought in Martial to immediate effect. Is the injury prone Tony now a reliable source of points? United performance certainly compares well when he plays versus when he doesn’t both in terms of shots in the box (56 vs 36) and xG (14.29 vs 6.1) – full credit to The Fantasy Freak for his insight here.

Some of the big City names were sacrificed this week with Sterling moved out by Andy, Az, Joe and Ville Ronka whilst David, Sean Tobin finally bid a fond farewell to Aguero. Overall, this means that Liverpool, Chelsea and Leicester have a stronger representation than City across The Great and The Good squads.

Mark continues to transfer in unusual choices of defender with Brandon Williams being the back line bargain this week, United’s defence will need to improve with only two clean sheets all season for him to be anything more than a cheap paperweight.

TEMPLATE

The template for The Great and The Good looks like this :-
Pope (10) Button (5)
TAA (11) Lundstram (10) Tomori (8) Rico (7) Soyuncu (5)
Mount (10) KDB (8) Salah (7) Sterling (6) Martial (6)
Abraham (12) Vardy (10) Jimenez (3)
* brackets show number of teams they appear in

The template took a turn this week with a significant change in the strike force as it was bye bye Pukki and Greenwood and hello Vardy and Jimenez.

Martial also enters the fray with Cantwell moving out in midfield whilst Abraham is now owned by 100% of all of the managers, surprising not to see Lord Lundstram in that category but Andy and Az still resist.

FORMATION

A look at the formations adopted by The Great and The Good tells us the story of the season so far with investment at the back meaning 4-4-2 was the most popular early in the campaign with 45% deployment in game week four. Now that we hit week twelve our old friend 3-4-3 now leads the way with 38% as more mid-price attacking options have become available thanks to the good form of Chelsea and Leicester.

Joe and Geoff have been the biggest proponents of 3-4-3, being more traditional types, deploying it ten times each whilst Jules’ decision to use 3-5-2 eight times is a sign of why she has been successful concentrating her focus on midfield with the likes of Mount, Maddison, McGinn joining Salah and De Bruyne as key reasons for her table topping returns.

CONCLUSION

The power of three is prevalent in the FPL discussion with many wondering whether to triple up on Liverpool attack or defence with City assets the fall guys in order to afford the likes of Salah, Mane, Robertson and TAA.

Others are considering a Leicester triple to capitalize on the flying Foxes but again what combination of Vardy, Maddison, Tielemans, Soyuncu or Pereira? Interesting to note that those who have already gone down that route, Jules and Joe sit at or near the top of the table.

Mark seems to be taking a different path and has tripled down on United but have any of them considered a gamble on Wolves? The power of three is definitely an area to ponder over the international break for The Great and The Good as this approach could be a key differential leading to more leaps up the leader board.

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/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