“Didn’t I know how it would go? If I knew from the start why am I falling apart? Wasn’t it good? Wasn’t it fine? Isn’t it madness. FPL won’t be mine? But in the end FPL needs a little bit more than me. It took time to understand. I know FPL so well”
Turns out we didn’t know FPL so well as this Gameweek brought even more ingenious ways to punish The Great and The Good, particularly those Kevin De Bruyne sellers.
The Gameweek was at least good or fine for those patient managers who had held onto Salah and the City midfielder, elsewhere Chelsea struggled against a depleted Bournemouth and Vardy for once didn’t score thanks to our old friend VAR.
Meanwhile, in a tenuously linked Chess related topic there was one FPL player who was getting all the headlines as Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen hit the number one spot, the decision to captain Mo Salah proving another master stroke.
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
The Grandmasters of FPL, Matthew Jones and FPL General, were the highest scorers this week with 77 points, their composure rewarded for keeping faith in De Bruyne, Zaha and a Liverpool defence that kept its second clean sheet in a row.
Meanwhile, Mark continues to struggle and his Rook-ie error of not owning Vardy has meant a fall of over 600,000 places in the rankings since Gameweek 12 and he now sits outside the top 1 million.
No need to study the board too closely to know that the Leicester legend was the obvious armband move this week and all but you-know-who captained him, Mark went with Abraham this time but again lost out in this exchange.
Az gained the headlines with a triple captain gambit as he sacrificed his chip on the Foxes frontman, but whilst rewards were not as great as he may have hoped his maverick approach has paid off in the last seven weeks as he has gained 1.5 million places.
TRANSFERS
This is a summary of the transfers for this week:
Andy – Rashford (Jimenez)
Az – No transfers
David – No transfers
FPL General – No transfers
Joe – No transfers
Jules Breach – No transfers
Geoff – Abraham, Kelly (Kane, Tomori)
Mark – Targett (Robertson)
Matthew Jones – No transfers
Neale – No transfers
Sean Tobin – Kelly, Rashford (Tomori, Jimenez)
Ville Ronka – No transfers
*transfers out are in brackets
The majority of The Great and The Good tried a Sicilian defence in terms of transfer strategy with eight rolling their transfer ready for the blank Liverpool Gameweek 18, they look ready to spend big with an average of 1.1 million in the bank.
Elsewhere, Geoff and Sean Tobin took hits to refresh their front line with Martin Kelly the common enabler, but Sean may already regret taking out Jimenez for Rashford, as will Andy, with the United forward struggling against a “Big Dunc” inspired Everton.
Mark continues to tinker with his defence, he made his eighth defensive transfer, nine if you include goalkeepers, moving out Robertson although I suspect this may have been fuelled by the last minute team news coming from Twitter’s FPL_Rockstar (other good team news leak twitter accounts are available).
TEMPLATE
The template for The Great and The Good looks like this :-
Pope (8) Button (5)
Lundstram (12) TAA (11) Soyuncu (7) Rico (6) Kelly (6)
Mane (12) KDB (8) Alli (7) Cantwell (5) Pulisic (5)
Vardy (11) Abraham (8) Ings/Rashford(5)
* brackets show number of teams they appear in
Some tweaks to the pieces on the template board this week with the pawns Tomori and Kelly being exchanged plus we saw Jimenez taken for Rashford, despite the Wolves striker looking a good bet for the captaincy this week.
EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT MAGNUS CARLSEN
With the mixed performance of The Great and The Good this season I already have the talent scouts out for the next campaign and one name that has caught my attention is the World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen who hit the no.1 spot over the weekend.
So, where has it all gone right for Magnus? Well in a season where getting the captaincy decision right has eluded most of us mere mortals, he has averaged 18.4 per week and to make matters worse he has never put the armband on Vardy! To put this in context the highest average amongst The Great and The Good is Jules Breach with 14.4. Magnus’ choice of Salah this Gameweek made Saturday a Knight to remember as he climbed to the top of the rankings.
When looking back at his season there have been some obvious highlights, he started strong in Gameweek 1, as did most of us, but followed up with a fantastic Gameweek 2 with a score of 74 versus an average of 41 thanks to his decision to captain De Bruyne who he held from the start.
The Man City midfielder was also involved in his climb into the top 500 when the Chess chief benefited from a De Bruyne vice-captain when Sterling no showed in Gameweek 6.
In fact, his bench has played a key role in his success as he has called on it nine times this year with an average of 6.2 coming off the pine. In recent weeks, he has had Dendoncker’s 11 points off the bench in Gameweek 15 and Kelly’s 8 points last time round.
He also not been afraid to take risks, in his Gameweek 13 wildcard he went without any City and doubled down on Mane/Salah, their hauls in Gameweek 15 and 16 help lift him into the top 10.
To give us hope, his transfers have not always been successful in the short term with only 18 points gained from immediate moves up to Gameweek 16, compared to Sean Tobin who leads this metric for the current squad with 96.
Perhaps interesting to note for the more trigger happy hitters amongst The Great and The Good is that he is yet to take a minus four so far this season, although I wonder whether he will flinch this week with a triple up on Liverpool in his existing fifteen.
Whatever happens in the coming weeks, this is a tremendous achievement and I am sure we all wish him well in the second half of the season.
CONCLUSION
This week felt like FPL was in a holding pattern ready for the big moves of Gameweek 18, last week’s article suggested now was a good time to sacrifice City and Liverpool pieces for United and Spurs assets but was that too rash with Salah and De Bruyne proving their worth?
Will any of The Great and The Good gambit on moving out Mane and Alexander-Arnold or could this lead to transfer checkmate when they return to the board? The moves next week plus the armband choice look pivotal in determining who will be the King or Queen of The Great and The Good this year.
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/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/GeoffreyDance
4 years, 4 months ago1st?