Learning from the Great and the Good 19/20 – Gameweek 27

“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”

The Great and The Good went nuclear this week, and not just because of fpldoodles1 artwork, as two of them decided to press the big red button with FPL General using his Wildcard and Andy boosting his bench, the results were explosive for at least one of them.

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

Andy takes the headlines this week with a fantastic score of 99 points after a well-played Bench Boost with the Southampton and Burnley clean sheets plus the heroics of Dwight McNeill giving him 33 points from his playing substitutes.

This saw him gain 587,000 places in a week and he deserves full credit in seeing something in McNeill that not many did, let’s hope he continues to climb.

Andy’s strong performance sees him come off bottom spot which now belongs to Jules Breach, remember she led The Great and The Good back in Gameweek 14, but since then has sunk 528,000 places.

Mark’s has the second highest score of 72 and with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang blanking this week, no doubt a shock to the 100,000 managers who have transferred him this week, I wonder whether this will be the time for him to finally bring Jamie Vardy into his squad to continue his surge?

It was a good week all round with green arrows galore, the average rank of The Great and The Good now sits at 204,000, the highest it has been all season and there are now five of them in the top 100,000.

WILDCARD

FPL General pulled the cord on his Wildcard taking an unconventional approach as he goes back to the future, or at least the start of the season, by going big at the back.

Out go the 4.0 starting price marvels of Martin Kelly, Diego Rico and John Lundstram replaced by the likes of Matt Doherty, Ricardo Pereira and the returning Andy Robertson to make it a Liverpool double D.

Vardy makes way, which he may live to regret as Norwich seem to have hit self-destruction mode ahead of his visit in Gameweek 28, although this does allow him the strength of squad needed for his suspected Bench Boost in Gameweek 29.

He sensibly kept Dominic Calvert-Lewin giving him a formidable front three of the Everton frontman alongside Danny Ings and Jimenez. He also has a strong midfield five with Harvey Barnes and Adama Traore the new names keeping company with the template of Kevin De Bruyne, Mo Salah and Jack Grealish.

The Wildcard appears a gamble firmly based on some fine looking fixtures in Gameweek 29 and ignoring the doubles later in the season, FPL General will be hoping to repeat the success of Andy this week.

The full moves are below:

IN – Pope, McCarthy, Robertson, Pereira, Doherty, Stephens, Barnes, Traore, Jimenez

OUT – Ryan, Button, Kelly, Rico, Lundstram, Soyuncu, Son, Romeu, Vardy

TRANSFERS

This is a summary of the transfers for this week:

Andy – Fernandes (Son)
Az – Robertson, Jimenez (Firmino, Digne)
David – Saiss (Rico)
Joe – Fernandes (Son)
Jules Breach – Jorginho, Ings (Gross, Calvert-Lewin)
Geoff – No transfers
Mark – Van Dijk, Traore (Son, Lundstram)
Matthew Jones – Jimenez, Saiss (Vardy, Holgate)
Neale – Boly (Lundstram)
Sean Tobin – Jimenez, Boly (Kelly, Aubameyang)
Ville Ronka – Mane (De Bruyne)
*transfers out are in brackets

Mark is continuing his aggressive strategy of taking hits to make up ground, that’s six hit in the last eight weeks, but unfortunately Traore may prove to be fool’s gold if he continues to see so much of the pine.

Jules Breach took a minus four to take out Pascal Gross after only bringing him in a week earlier and she can’t seem to cut a break as Calvert-Lewin left her squad but proved fixture-proof as he scored again against Arsenal.

A wolf pack has descended upon The Great and The Good with Jimenez, Willy Boly, Traore and Romain Saiss popular picks, the latter appears to be a bargain and no surprise that the Welsh Alpha Matthew Jones has joined David and Mark in seeing value in the Moroccan.

Son Heung-min was a popular casualty and Andy plus Joe seem to have the best of the replacements in Bruno Fernandes who’s price will no doubt skyrocket with United supporters, plus some non-United fans, around the world scrambling to bring him into their squads.

TEMPLATE

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

McCarthy (7) Button/Henderson (4)
TAA (11) Boly (6) Stephens (5) Lundstram (4) Robertson (4)
Salah (12) De Bruyne (9) Grealish (9) Martial (5) Traore (5)
Ings (12) Jimenez (8) Vardy (6)
* brackets show number of teams they appear in

The template has solidified after a couple of weeks of flux with the cheap enablers of Kelly and Rico saying a fond farewell and Robertson appearing in the arrivals lounge.

Son hardly had time to make himself comfortable before taking sick leave with Traore the popular replacement, let’s hope that the Wolves switch to 3-5-2 doesn’t mean his time in the squad is short lived.

Jimenez’s popularity and kind looking fixture list means Roberto Firmino and Calvert-Lewin are no longer in the mix despite sitting at 2nd and 3rd in terms of shots in the box over the four weeks with 15 apiece.

BUDGET SPREADS

With FPL General’s shift of funds to his back line I have taken the chance to catch up on the latest investment spreads across The Great and The Good to see if this is a trend after so many of them abandoned the big at the back strategy in the early part of the season. The figure below gives the average cost per player based on Gameweek 1 prices:

GK – 4.4
DF – 5.1
MD – 8.1
FW – 7.2

FPL General has definitely gone big at the back averaging 6.1 million per defender which makes him the largest back line spender.

There does appear to be an overall trend amongst The Great and The Good to reinvest in defence with investment at over 5 million per player for the first time since Gameweek 15 although this is a long way away from the 5.6 million average back during the opening weekend of the season.

Matthew Jones has taken a different approach sticking his funds into his midfield with an average of 9 million, this is balanced by a bargain bucket strike force of Jimenez, Ings and Greenwood at just 6 million per forward.

CONCLUSION

Chips! Chips! Glorious chips! This unpredictable season has seen many veer away from convention and no more so than in the chip strategies deployed in the second half of the season. Gone are the days of waiting for the doubles with many looking to steal an early march while line ups are at least somewhat stable.

Already we have seen three Wildcards played by The Great and The Good and now the first of the Bench Boosts with a second from FPL General looking to be only a couple of weeks away. Which strategy will win out and who will be next to launch?

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

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/GeoffreyDance
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