Christmas Number Ones – FFS Mini-Leagues & Community Competitions Gameweek 18

Who are this year’s Christmas number ones?

Welcome to our Gameweek 18 round-up of the Fantasy Football Scout mini-leagues and community competitions. 

Head-to-Head Leagues

Craig Johnson (aka Bouncebackability) is the first of our festive chart toppers, he maintained his six-point lead with a narrow one-point victory over Matthew Jones (aka Numb).

Their transfers proved crucial with Craig bringing in Jack Grealish for Mason Mount for a five-point gain, while Matthew swapped Sadio Mane for Son Heung-Min for an improbable one-point loss. 

Matthew is somewhat unfortunate to find himself in 18th position in League 1 – he has a better rank than three of the top five.

One of those he surpasses in FPL is Aleksander Våge Nilsen (aka AleksanderVN). The Norwegian held onto second spot with a 47-46 victory over last week’s highest-scoring manager Ryan Gallagher.

This time both transfers and captain pick proved costly for the loser. Expecting a Spurs win, Ryan handed Son the armband and replaced Tomori with Rico.

A yellow card and an 89th minute goal for Burnley meant Rico mustered a disappointing one point, while Tomori returned to the Chelsea starting XI and collected an unlikely fourth clean sheet of the season. 

Glynn Sherwood and Emerson Ciccarello were League 1’s highest-scoring managers with 57 points. Both recorded wins to move onto 27 points in the Head-to-Head league. Rank difference separates the pair in 10th and 11th places respectively. 

After 18 Gameweeks Vladimir Stojiljkovic’s amazing winning run finally came to an end. He played his Free Hit chip but still lost 47-44 to Shiv Khanna in Division 77 of League 8. Nonetheless his 51 points out of 54 is the best tally by any manager across all 300 divisions. 

At 375th overall Sanjith Lohidakshan has the best rank of any participating manager. Sanjith emerged triumphant from his top-of-the-table clash with Lucas Wong to lead Division 39 of League 7.

And a special one-off festive mention for Fantasy Football Scout Member Lee Murphy (aka CroatianHammer) whose victory takes him up to second in Division 102 of League 8. Well done to him.

A fixtures table will be published in the Scout’s Guide to Gameweek 19 ahead of the deadline. However, if you would like to find out who you are playing next before then, follow this link. Use your browser’s find in page function (Ctrl+F) to locate managers. All this information and more is contained in the main Head-to-Head page.

Fantasy Football Scout Mini-Leagues

Congratulations to Theodor Eek-Bakke who is number one at Christmas in our Fantasy Football Scout mini-league.

Theodor has risen to 12th overall and has a nine-point lead over Mark May (aka Frankiem) in second. Mark is 27th overall and is the highest-ranked manager still in the FFS Members Cup. 

This is Theodor’s first FPL season and he is now number two in Norway, three points behind Magnus Carlsen.

There are currently 43,851 people participating in the Fantasy Football Scout mini-league, to join them enter code ooyz44 in your Leagues’ section on the FPL site. 

And congratulations to Martin Dixon who is the festive hit in our FFS Members mini-league. Martin regains the lead after a previous stint at the top between Gameweeks 11 and 14. 

He is up to 751st overall and has a three-point advantage over Nathan Woolaston in second. Last week’s leader Gautam Vaswani slips from first to fourth, five points behind Martin.

The code to join the FFS Members League can be found on the Members page. 

Fantasy Football Scout Cups

64 teams enter both round five of the FFS Cup and round four of the Members Cup.

Meet the Manager guest Phil Ampleford (aka Philman) had a lucky victory in the FFS Cup after scoring just 34 points. Thankfully his opponent in round four, Mccormibar, managed just 22 points.

G-Whizz, the only member of the Scout team to make it into round four, is safely through to round five after defeating Endhoo$ 53-37. However the highest-ranked manager, Yemop, bowed out of the competition, beaten 45-53 by NielsvanDelft.

In the FFS Members Cup third round, Scout team members TorresMagic and Paul won 54-52 and 59-55 against 2Goals1Cup and Raindragon respectively. Although there was one casualty as Rotations Alter Ego tumbled out 36-58 at the hands of Circusmonkey.

Mark May (aka Frankiem), mentioned above for occupying second spot in the FFS mini-league, won 66-41 against PepRoulette. Mark is the highest-ranked manager in the competition.

Round four brings an interesting match-up as Albany City takes on TorresMagic. It was Albany City who defeated G-Whizz on superior ranking in round one after they tied on 65 points. Can he topple a second moderator?

Neale reviewed the FFS Cups here.

Community Mini-Leagues and Competitions

In TorresMagic’s Last Man Standing the safety score for Gameweek 18 was 33 points, which saw 156 managers eliminated. The threshold for elimination remains at 9% for Gameweek 19.

3,692 managers have departed the competition so far with 1,297 left to battle it out for the coveted title of Last Man Standing. There will be further opportunities to enter before Gameweek 22, however you must pass all previous safety scores to qualify.

Aside from bragging rights, the winner will receive a free Fantasy Football Scout Membership for the 2020/21 season.

The Keane Fifteen notched up another win in the Pundit’s Play-Off Community Tournament this time over Brazil Nuts. A defeat for Unbelievable Jeff FC means they have extended their advantage to 20.5 points. They are odds-on favourites to be top of the pile heading into 2020 as well. 

Newcastle-fan Neale Rigg (aka SkontoRigga) will be enjoying his turkey tomorrow sitting proudly at the summit of the FFS Mods & Cons mini-league. He holds a 16-point lead over Everton-fan Chris James (aka Elfozzie 42). 

While both managers own Danny Ings, it’s notable that neither owns a player from the club they support. Chris, where’s Calvert-Lewin?

Martin Dixon adds RedLightning’s Top 10k Any Season mini-league to his collection of Christmas number ones. He extends his lead to three points over second-placed Rok Krasna.

In addition to being first in the FFS Members mini-league, Martin is second in France. While Rok is second in Slovenia.

Managers with a top 10,000 finish may join RedLightning’s Top 10k Any Season mini-league using the code m0tq9y.

After two impressive second places Rok Krasna does one better in PDM‘s Top 1k ANY season mini-league and takes the Christmas number one. He has a 12-point lead over Joao Pires Correia. Joao has two top 1,000 finishes including a career-best 10th in 2013/14.

Managers with a top 1,000 finish may join PDM’s Top 1k ANY season mini-league using the code eejnyz.

Congratulations to festive-chart-topper Dan Bennett who regains the lead in Chaballer’s Top 1,000 HoF League. Dan last led the mini-league in Gameweek 10 and has six top 5,000 finishes, his best being 917th in 2014/15.

Last week’s leader denial EASTOP is level points with Dan but falls to second because he’s made more transfers – 19 to Dan’s 16.

Dan is 205th in the Career Hall of Fame while Denial is 188th. Managers in the top 1,000 of the Career HoF may enter the league using the code beeps2.

Having led the FPL Champions League since Gameweek 7 Ben Crabtree is finally toppled by Pro Pundit Simon March. But quite frankly after his brilliant article and the dedication he will show to FPL over Christmas, Simon is fully deserving of the number one spot. Well done Simon.

But commiserations to Ben who, unlike Chris James, showed dedication to his club by transferring in two Toffees for Gameweek 18. Yerry Mina rewarding him with a clean sheet. 

Sam Bonfield (aka Sam FPLFamily) is the highest-ranked Pro Pundit at Christmas, extending her lead over Tom Freeman (aka avfc82) to 27 points. She is now just 210 places outside the top 10,000.

Meanwhile World chess champion Magnus Carlsen suffered a disappointing Gameweek, dropping from third to tenth. Just to prove he was human he picked Son as his captain.

Join a new mini-league for 2020?

Track your progress in the new year by joining RedLightning’s January to May League. Scoring will start in Gameweek 21. So far 250 managers have singed up, to join them the league code you need is aafkpq.

Submissions

If you are running a community competition and would like the latest scores included in future Round-ups, please email us a summary of the current leaders and a link to your league, spreadsheet or head-to-head competition to geoff@fantasyfootballscout.co.uk

Thank you to RedLightning for his contribution to this article. And from both of us a Happy Christmas and may all your arrows be green ones!