Learning from the Great and the Good 20/21 – Gameweek 9

“Relax don’t do it

When you want to go to it

Relax don’t do it

When you want come”

Maybe we should have listened to Frankie, as the ongoing Salah COVID test saga led many a manager to a premature ejection from their fantasy squads.

Liverpool’s attacking performance against Leicester and Mo’s early return to training is causing much overexcitement ahead of the match against a very open Brighton defence.

In truth, it was a tough international break for several us as the flags kept coming prompting some of us to push the Wildcard button ahead of swing in the fixtures.

So, which of The Great and The Good showed restraint and which of them let Mo go as part of an early withdrawal?

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 extends his lead at the top and goes back into the top 30,000 with 88 points this week, he was one to keep Robertson and Son plus his new signings of Digne and Bruno paid off.

The biggest green went to Mark with move of 530,000 places and maybe big at the back is, well, back as 30 points came from his defence. However , he still has attachment issues when it comes to the original magic bean of Alexander-Arnold who remains in his squad despite a long-term absence seemingly on the cards.

The captaincy choice this week stirred up controversy with Bruno the most popular choice and whilst United laboured against West Brom, the Portuguese’s retaken penalty led to a double-digit score and a degree of salt in the wounds for those who looked elsewhere.

Amongst those were Lateriser with a differential pick of Werner, whilst Matthew Jones surprised some with his armband choice of Grealish and Tom, Sean just picked the wrong United man as Rashford failed to perform.

WEEKLY TRANSFERS

This is a summary of the transfers for this week :

Az – Fernandes (Salah)

Fabio Borges – Fernandes, Digne, Watkins (Salah, Alexander-Arnold, Mitrovic)

Joe Lepper – Fernandes (Salah)

FPL General – Fernandes (Salah)

Lateriser – Grealish, De Bruyne (Foden, Salah)

Magnus Carlsen – Fernandes, Martial (Kane, Son)

Mark Sutherns – Fernandes, De Bruyne (Son, Salah)

Matthew Jones – Calvert-Lewin (Mitrovic)

Neale Rigg – Fernandes, Chilwell (Salah, Alexander-Arnold

Sean Tobin – Grealish, De Bruyne (Salah, Foden)

Tom Freeman – De Bruyne, Cancelo (Salah, Alexander-Arnold)

Ville Ronka – Fernandes (Salah)

*transfers out are in brackets

Priority this week was moving out the unavailable Liverpool players as Alexander-Arnold and Salah were top for the chop, Bruno and De Bruyne were the favoured Mo replacements.

Fabio took his first hit of the season with Watkins, Bruno and Digne coming into the team, he looks to be standing firm with 4-3-3 set up and with 4.4 million in the bank will be interested to see how he spends his windfall, will we see a City player enter his squad?

Elsewhere, Matthew and Magnus stayed loyal to Salah, even including him in their starting elevens, clearly not trusting any of the speculation. It was also intriguing to note that Magnus tripled up on United, with grumpy Martial joining his squad this week.

TEMPLATE

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

Steer (7), Martinez (6)

Chilwell (10), Mitchell (6), Ayling (6), Lamptey (5), Walker-Peters(5)

Grealish (10), Son (9), Bruno Fernandes (8), Soucek (5), De Bruyne (4)

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

As you would expect, there was a shift in the template with Salah/Alexander-Arnold moving out and Bruno, De Bruyne moving in. What fate awaits our Spurs double act with the popular choices of Kane and Son facing a stiff set of fixtures ahead?

Worth noting that no one has Vardy in their squads, he is second only to Bamford in terms of xG over the last six and has a very obliging Fulham defence up next.

DOUBLE DIGIT HAULS

The explosive returns have been more difficult to predict than usual with the usual heavy hitters of De Bruyne, Mane and Sterling only having one return over ten points this season.

Son has been the hero of the haul with five double digit performances followed closely by Bruno with four, but how well have The Great and The Good done in identifying these bumper returns?

The table below shows the results so far:-

Neale, FPL General and Fabio lead the way with 17 and Magnus would have joined them had he not missed out on Kilman’s 12 points in Gameweek 5.

I am confident that Lateriser will not remain at the bottom of this metric for long as his ability to spot a rank-boosting haul is well documented, he looks locked and loaded with a double up on Sterling and De Bruyne for next week so fingers crossed it leads to an eruption of points.

CONCLUSION

Going back to the wise words of Frankie it looks as though two FPL tribes will go to war this week as the battle lines appear to be drawn between the opposing supporters of form versus fixtures.

The form fans will look to cling onto Kane, Son but meanwhile the fixture list devotees will shift their attention to De Bruyne, Sterling or even Aguero. Yet maybe that man Salah with have the final laugh.

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 then you can find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Greyhead19