Welcome to the Gameweek 25 round-up of the Fantasy Football Scout mini-leagues and community competitions.
Head-to-Head Leagues
Craig Johnson (aka Bouncebackability) maintained his six point advantage over Aleksander Våge Nilsen (aka AleksanderVN) at the summit of the Head-to-Head Leagues.
The top two secured victories over former Meet the Manager guest Richard Clarke and Jorgen Skjanes respectively.
Craig’s 68 points in Gameweek 25 takes him up to 11,858th overall.
Only Simon Vaquez managed a higher-points total in the showcase division with 69 however he stayed in fourth spot as the top five all won.
Simon beat Grant Barclay, who scored the lowest-points total this week. Defeat for Grant means he is just one place above the relegation zone in tenth.
Hot on his heels are B.J. McNair (aka Ben McNair) and Harry Vernon (aka Horse).
Heading into Gameweek 25 the pair shared the exact same rank and were separated by just three points in League 1. A narrow two-point win for Ben brings them level on 36 points.
Ben clinched victory with his decision to swap John Lundstram for team-mate Jack O’Connell. Lundstram made only a second-half appearance as a sub, and a clean sheet for Sheffield United ensured the move netted him a winning six points.
Leading Performers
Vladimir Stojiljkovic, Abdullah Tamin, and Niall Devlin, all of League 8, remain the joint highest-scoring managers across all 300 divisions. The trio have amassed an impressive 66 points out of a possible 75.
Abdullah and Vladimir both had narrow one-point victories in Division 1 and Division 77 respectively, but Niall had an easier win by 69-43 in his match in Division 143.
Damjan Rupnik has the best rank out of the 5,983 managers taking part in the Head-to-Head Leagues. An excellent 70 points took him up to 155th in the overall standings. He replaces Brian Evans, who slips to 159th overall.
Damjan leads Division 5 of League 6 by six points, however a defeat for Brian means he drops to fourth in Division 19 of the same league. He’s nine points behind leader Bernd Meyer.
A fixtures table will be published in the Scout’s Guide to Gameweek 26 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
For the sixth successive Gameweek the Fantasy Football Scout mini-league sits proudly atop the Best Leagues in FPL, comfortably ahead of the second-best mini-league.
Leagues are ranked using an average score of the top five teams, so congratulations and thanks to the top five managers in the mini-league Chris McGowan, Magnum Dong Carlsen, Mark May, Assem Hamed and Leonard Liew.
The top three of Chris (aka Queens of the South Age), Magnum, and Mark (aka Frankiem) are all ranked in the top ten overall.
Assem and Leonard replaced Edward Ridout and Christopher Berchoux in our top five.
Leonard had Robert Snodgrass to thank for this score of 80 points, while Assem used his Wildcard to include a premium front three of Aguero, Firmino and Aubameyang. Firmino produced three assists for an 11-point return in Gameweek 25.
Overall-leader, and the leader of our mini-league, Chris, wisely benched John Lundstram on his way to 65 points. He saved a transfer this week and his team-name “WhatsMorataWithLund?” would suggest he might be wondering what to do with the Fantasy Lord. Will the Sheffield United star be replaced in his squad?
Yet to deploy his Triple Captain chip, Chris increased his overall lead to 17 points and he has a 36-point cushion over second-placed Magnum in our mini-league.
There are currently 44,017 people participating in the Fantasy Football Scout mini-league, to join them enter code ooyz44 in your Leagues’ section on the FPL site.
Damjan Rupnik, the highest-ranked manager in our Head-to-Head leagues, is the new number one in our Members mini-league. This is Damjan’s seventh FPL season and he has had two previous top 10,000 finishes – 8,921st in 2015/16 and 6,532nd 2016/17.
He is 11 points ahead of former leader Svein Roald L Usken (aka Firminoooo). Svein, disappointingly, doesn’t own his eponymous hero. And his front line of Vardy, Jimenez, and Ings could only muster six points between them in the recent round of fixtures.
The code to join the Members League can be found on the Members page.
Fantasy Football Scout Cups
The finals of both the FFS Cup and Members Cup will take place in Gameweek 26.
In securing their places in the final of the FFS Cup, AMEY and Philman both played their Wildcards in their semi-final contests.
AMEY triumphed by 78 points to 69 against Mataatti and while seven-time top 10,000 manager Philman overcame stamfordbridge 72-64.
Earlier in the competition former Meet the Manager guest, Philman, twice scraped through with the lowest winning score. He did so with 34 points in round four and 48 points in round six.
In the Members Cup, a Wildcard was not enough to save maxp19907, who lost to community-writer Pep Pig by 73 points to 76.
In claiming victory, Pep Pig benched Lundstram and successfully transferred in Matt Ritchie for six points.
In the other semi-final Just-In-Cider won 64-53 against BeckerCallSaul. Both managers took four-point hits heading into their tie, although in the end a ten-point return from goalkeeper Dean Henderson helped deliver the win.
Neale previewed the two finals earlier today.
Community Mini-Leagues and Competitions
In TorresMagic’s Last Man Standing the safety score in Gameweek 25 was 53 points, this saw a total of 107 managers eliminated.
The threshold for elimination increases to 14% for Gameweek 26, a minimum of 92 managers will depart.
4,451 managers have exited the competition so far with 655 left to battle it out for the coveted title of Last Man Standing. Aside from bragging rights, the winner will receive a free Fantasy Football Scout Membership for the 2020/21 season.
The Keane Fifteen extended their lead over the “15” Musketeers to 16 points in the Pundit’s Play-Off Community Tournament with a 12-3 win over Blame it on Rio. Will they ever be caught?
Neale Rigg (aka SkontoRigga) is now just 17 points ahead in the FFS Mods & Cons mini-league as Fantasy League maestro Gareth Butler (aka Clouseau) closes in. Not a great week for Neale, who slipped out of the top 10,000.
David Nataf takes over at the top of RedLightning’s Top 10k Any Season mini-league and PDM‘s Top 1k ANY season mini-league.
After playing his second Wildcard for a Gameweek score of 80, he is up to 192nd overall, and has established an eight-point lead over previous number one Svein. This is David’s eighth season, and he has two top thousand finishes of 809th and 265th in the past three campaigns.
Managers with a top 10,000 finish may join RedLightning’s Top 10k Any Season mini-league using the code m0tq9y. And managers with a top 1,000 finish may join PDM’s Top 1k ANY season mini-league using the code eejnyz.
Despite losing the lead in three of our featured mini-leagues, Svein does still head Chaballer’s Top 1,000 HoF League by a comfortable 28-point margin. Ómar Olgeirsson is second.
Svein is 722nd in our Career Hall of Fame with Ómar in 485th. Managers in the top 1,000 of the Career HoF may enter the league using the code beeps2.
Champions and Pro Pundits
Pro Pundit Simon March enjoys a seemingly unassailable 87-point lead at the top of his own FPL Champions League.
In second, 2013/14 FPL winner Tom Fenley finds himself just a point in front of Matthew Martyniak, who triumphed in 2012/13. Liverpool-fan Matthew was the highest-scoring manager in the mini-league with 73 points, thanks to double-figure contributions from his captain Salah and Firmino.
Despite a 15-point haul from Yerry Mina, Ben Crabtree’s policy of not owning Liverpool players continues to hurt. The 2016/17 FPL winner drops to sixth.
Sam Bonfield (aka Sam FPLFamily) is now the highest ranked of our Pro Pundits after scoring an impressive 91 points. She moves into the top 1,000 for the first time this season.
At 836th overall she is 26 points ahead of Lateriser12, who took a four-point hit but could only score 43. Four of Sam’s team turned up trumps with double-digit returns: captain Salah (32), Snodgrass (18), Firmino (11) and Dean Henderson (10).
2020 Mini-League
414 teams have signed-up so far to RedLightning’s January to May League, which started scoring in Gameweek 21.
Straight in at number one is a new entry to the mini-league and it’s a name already mentioned, FFS Members Cup finalist Danny Mallon (aka Pep Pig).
Five successive green arrows have taken him from 386k in Gameweek 20 to his present rank of 7,739th overall. Over that period he’s scored 397 points and he tops the mini-league by 15.
This is Danny’s 11th season, his best previous finish was last year’s 53,991st.
Qian Hao Ong and Shirin Nizar (aka Chelsea Guy) are still second and third, but Lars Herman Lokkeberg slips from first to fourth.
The league will remain open for any others who wish to track their progress in the second half of the season, the 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 contributions to this article.
4 years, 2 months agoCheers TopMarx - What a season some of these managers are having, and what a second half Pep Pig is having!
FFS Members Cup finalist, top of the Jan to May league... building towards a great season there.