Learning from the Great and the Good 20/21 – Gameweek 7

“Your mission, FPL Manager, should you choose to accept it, is to get a green arrow. As always, should you or any of your squad be benched, The Great and The Good will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This article will self-destruct in ten seconds. Good luck”

This season has seemed to be mission impossible with compromised assets, mysterious benchings, unpredictable results and just plain bad luck leading to tumbling ranks for many an FPL manager.

Gameweek 6 had seen many of us burned with red arrows galore with our squads infiltrated by blanks, this meant going into the weekend only one of The Great and The Good was sitting in the top 150,000, so what was the fallout from Gameweek 7?

The Great and The Good are the Scouts Neale Rigg and Joe Lepper, Pro Pundits (Mark Sutherns, Az, Lateriser, Fabio Borges and Tom Freeman ), FPL “celebrities”, FPL General,  Magnus Carlsen and finally from the Hall of Fame we have Ville Ronka, Matthew Jones and Sean Tobin

OVERALL PERFORMANCE

Fabio explodes back into top spot with 75pts this week, with agent Grealish the main catalyst although all three of his strikers in Calvert-Lewin, Werner and Mitrovic contributed.

Further interrogation of his team shows he has stayed loyal to a 433 throughout the season, has a double Liverpool defence and has yet to take a hit which proves there is more than one way to crack this season’s FPL code.

Az scored in the seventies and there is little now between the duelling agents of the FBI (Federal Blackbox of Introspection) Mark and Az with just double O seven points separating them.

The Salah captainers were the winners this week but there were some bold gambles with Magnus, FPL General going Son and Lateriser placing the armband on rogue operative Sterling, who was unfortunate not to detonate after a fine performance against Sheffield United.

Joe and Tom had Gameweeks to forget and so have been marked as classified buried deep in the archives.

WEEKLY TRANSFERS

This is a summary of the transfers for this week :

Az – Kane, Chilwell (Alexander-Arnold, Werner)

Fabio Borges – Chilwell (Digne)

Joe Lepper – Son, Bamford (Jimenez, Barnes)

FPL General – None

Lateriser – Kane, Ayling, Chilwell (Alexander-Arnold, Semedo, Jimenez)

Magnus Carlsen – Bowen (Rodriguez)

Mark Sutherns – None

Matthew Jones – None

Neale Rigg – None

Sean Tobin – Bamford, Rashford (Jimenez, Podence)

Tom Freeman – Rashford (Rodriguez)

Ville Ronka – Chilwell (Digne)

*transfers out are in brackets

Operation Terminate TAA appears to be picking up speed with Az and Lateriser joining a growing number to move on the “essential” Liverpool wingback, let’s hope there is no unpleasant blowback from this manoeuvre.

One player who emerged from his deep cover as a sleeper agent was Podence who finally repaid the faith that several had shown in him, sadly this was the week Sean had decided to move him on and therefore missed out on his eight points.

Fears continue to grow that Joe is a double agent with suspicions that he has defected as a maverick, this week he casually took a minus four to bring in Son and Bamford only for Harvey Barnes to punish him for his subterfuge as he left his squad.

TEMPLATE 

The template for The Great and The Good is as follows with the number in brackets showing how many teams in which they appear:-

Steer (7), Martinez (6)

Alexander-Arnold (7), Mitchell (7), Robertson (6), Ayling (6), Lamptey/Walker-Peters/Chilwell (5)

Salah (12), Son (11), Grealish (6), Soucek (5), Podence (5)

Kane (10), Calvert-Lewin (9), Werner/Mitrovic/Bamford/Brewster (3)

The template continues to be difficult to decipher with the fifth defender spot still up for grabs as Chilwell sneaks into the running.

It’s a similar story up front with a Cold War for the final striker spot but nobody seems to have spotted the clandestine moves of Callum Wilson and this spymaster wonders whether he will start to become indispensable.

BENCH STRENGTH

There were a few acts of managerial espionage this week with some mysterious disappearances, most notably Saiss, Maupay, Ryan and Pulisic which again raised the need for a wide network of agents.

The data below shows the number of auto subs deployed by The Great and The Good plus the number of points left on the bench:-

Lamptey aided a few this weekend with his clandestine appearance helping Az and Sean neutralize the MIA Maupay and Saiss respectively.

Neale, Lateriser and Mark have asked their assets to come in from the cold the most often with 4 auto subs whilst Fabio could be considered fortunate that the only time he has called on the reserves was in Gameweek 4 when his secret mole Bissouma handed him 9 points.

Ville Ronka will be wondering if he has sent the wrong spies into the field as he has left the most points on the bench so far this season.

Bench strength has been a hot topic this season with injury concerns across the teams due to the hectic schedule and the spectre of the pandemic meaning players could miss out at a moment’s notice, therefore keeping a fine pine is probably a useful tactic this campaign.

CONCLUSION 

I sense we have reached a tipping point in the season where big changes need to be made such as finally abandoning the beloved double agents of Robertson and Alexander-Arnold and accept we now exist in a new normal where budget at the back is the sensible move.

TAA seems the most likely to be moved on and when I sought guidance from FPL Raptor, he suggested that there may be psychology at play for our reluctance to move Alexander-Arnold on with cognitive bias such as rosy retrospective impacting our decision-making.

Are we putting more value on his past glories rather than reflect on the fact he is currently the 31st ranked scoring defender? Is it time to look forward and accept the present rather than dwell on his favourable past? Let’s see which of The Great and The Good dispense of his services this week.

Anyway, that’s all from me for now and remember don’t have nightmares.

For those affected by any of the topics raised in the above article then you can find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Greyhead19