Learning from the Great and the Good 20/21 – Gameweek 11

“Life goin’ nowhere, somebody help me

Somebody help me, yeah (ah, ah, ah)

Life goin’ nowhere, somebody help me, yeah. I’m stayin’ alive”

Staying alive was the name of the game in the build-up to Gameweek 11 with the cancellation of Villa vs Newcastle causing us to ponder whether to take a hit in order to field a full team.

The Pep mind games continued as his team sheet made fools of anyone trying to predict the Spaniard motives despite one of the more verbose news conferences on Friday night, where he revealed that “players who score goals are going to have more chances to play”. Thanks Pep.

As the weekend progressed there was Saturday Night Fever with many sharing large ranking jumps, causing angst amongst the more sensitive of the community, however these arrows soon turned less green or even red as Son, Kane and Salah made our heavy hitter decision making even more difficult.

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

Tom Freeman will be singing falsetto as he hit the high notes this week, after a couple of red arrows he came back with this week’s top score of 89 benefiting along with Sean Tobin from the Spurs double up of Kane and Son.

Joe should be dancing as he was this week’s biggest climber with a move up of 682,000 places, his hit to bring in Salah now means he has too much heaven with Bruno, De Bruyne and Kane forming a formidable foursome.

Elsewhere, living in a world of fools was unlucky Az who was the lowest scorer with 47 after hits, he is now just ten points ahead of Joe, this is first red in five weeks so a bit of minus four meddling in midfield will easily rectify this blip.

His Blackbox colleague Mark continues his fine run with fifth green arrow in a row and climb of 1.7 million places in that time but will he now do the heavy hitter Hokey Cokey?

WEEKLY TRANSFERS

This is a summary of the transfers for this week:

Az – Mahrez, James (Grealish, Semedo)

Fabio Borges – Bamford (Watkins)

Joe Lepper – Salah, McCarthy (Martinez, Sterling)

FPL General – Bamford, De Bruyne (Kane, Grealish)

Lateriser – Jesus (Calvert-Lewin)

Magnus Carlsen – Mahrez (Rashford)

Mark Sutherns – Walker (Digne)

Matthew Jones – De Bruyne, Dias (Son, Robertson)

Neale Rigg – None

Sean Tobin – Jota (Grealish)

Tom Freeman – Mahrez (Rashford)

Ville Ronka – Bamford, De Bruyne (Son, Jimenez)

*transfers out are in brackets

Getting in City players was the order of the day with De Bruyne, Dias, Walker and Mahrez on the shopping list but Magnus and Az’s decision to captain the Algerian ace proved to be a tragedy.

Az took a minus four but more surprisingly so did Joe and Matthew Jones, the latter would have been disappointed that his transfers out of Son and Robertson danced their way to more points on Sunday.

Pep, you win again, as his decision to bench Walker frustrated Mark’s canny transfer as one of the more secure defensive starters proved to be insecure.

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 (6), Martinez/McCarthy (5)

Chilwell (9), Ayling (6), Mitchell/Lamptey/Dias/Walker-Peters (5)

De Bruyne (9), Bruno Fernandes (9), Grealish (7), Jota (7), Son (5)

Calvert-Lewin (10), Bamford (8), Kane/Vardy (4)

Plenty of jive talking but not much movement in the template with Dias the only new addition, what is going to be intriguing is how many of them try to fit in Salah this week with the Fulham game up next, he currently only sits in three teams, Joe, Matthew and Magnus the ones to hold the Egyptian ace.

BUDGET SPREAD

Plenty to get our teeth into when it comes to the balance of our squads, with many of us looking to invest in a power five midfield.

Looking at The Great and The Good squads we see the following budget distribution (average price per player):

GK – £4.4m

DEF – £5.0m

MID – £7.9m

FWD – £7.4m

ITB – £1.4m

Since the start of the season we have seen a drop in the defensive spend, dropping from 5.4 to 5.0, with the absence of Alexander-Arnold from these squads a major factor, although Fabio continues to see the value at the back with 27 million spent on his defensive line.

I expect to see the average spend on the centre of the park to rise this week as Salah comes into many of the squads, Ville doesn’t own the Liverpool maestro but still tops the lot with an average of 9.6 per midfielder.

Meanwhile, Tom will have to ask how deep is his love for strikers as he will surely have to sacrifice Vardy or Kane if he is to bring in Mo.

CONCLUSION

The Great and The Good continue to tackle the challenges of creating the perfect harmony in their squads with so many of the heavy hitters performing regardless of fixtures.

Whilst many of us will spend the week working out how to get Salah, I want to get a message to you that to be top of the pops you shouldn’t neglect other key decisions.

Your choice of mid-priced striker Bamford, Watkins or Wilson, picking between Jota or Grealish and which defence to trust City, Chelsea or Tottenham will be just as crucial and could lead you to be considered the king (or queen) of the FPL disco.

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 or simply want to follow along with an unnerving Xmas FPL countdown then you can find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Greyhead19