“It’s all so quiet…and so peaceful until…you ring the bell. Bim bam. You shout and you yell”
Expectations of a quiet week due to the long drawn out nature of Gameweek 32 were misplaced with the Super League announcement causing anguish and outcry in the footballing community.
Luckily, I am pleased to say that The Great and The Good is set to continue in its current format although rumours have been circulating that the “big six” are pushing for a breakaway, Neale Rigg is reportedly knocking up a website, Mark has allegedly bought some new crayons to design a logo and Az is wondering whether he qualifies based on his coefficient ranking.
For those of you just catching up, 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
An ocean of green this week with only Ville Ronka failing to get an uptick in his ranking, his double Everton defence is yet to pay off, but he does have his free hit and bench boost in hand.
Mark re-takes top spot, with the standard double up on Spurs, twin Chelsea backline but also the unsung hero of Sanchez who provided him with a playing keeper, unlike some of the others and a welcome nine points.
Yet, beware Magnus! He has outscored both Mark and Fabio by 66 points over the last five weeks, he was the top man again as played the Vardy trump card this week.
TRANSFERS
This is a summary of the transfers for this week :
Az – None
Fabio Borges – None
Joe Lepper – None
FPL General – Iheanacho (Calvert-Lewin)
Lateriser – Cavani, Maddison (Aguero, Lookman)
Magnus Carlsen – Son (Bale)
Mark Sutherns – Son (Sterling)
Matthew Jones – Iheanacho (Bamford)
Neale Rigg – Lingard (Sterling)
Sean Tobin – None
Tom Freeman – Iheanacho, Maddison (Calvert-Lewin, Gundogan)
Ville Ronka – Iheanacho, Lingard (Calvert-Lewin, Gundogan)
*transfers out are in brackets
The managers were hungry for Iheanacho and he was the most popular transfer with Tom taking a minus four to bring him in along with Maddison, Son was the other key move with all them doubling up on the Spurs attack and Lateriser took his 20th hit of the season for Cavani who looks to be managing his fitness levels.
TEMPLATE
The template for The Great and The Good is as follows with number in brackets showing how many teams in which they appear:-
Mendy/Forster (8)
Alexander-Arnold (7), Rudiger (6), Alonso (5), Coady/Veltman (4)
Son (12), Salah (9), Bruno Fernandes (9), Jota (9), Lingard (7)
Kane (12), Iheanacho (11), Davis/Watkins (3)
Jesse Lingard dances his way into the template squad with Raphinha making way, it’s perhaps more difficult to explain why he’s not in all the teams having scored 45 points in the last four games.
Son joined Kane on The Great and The Good essential list going into the double Gameweek and he didn’t disappoint, now comes the tricky part in benching him in the blank before the delicious Sheffield United fixture in Gameweek 34.
Surprisingly, Iheanacho does not make all the teams despite his extraordinary form, his xG sits at 4 over the last six weeks, just below Harry Kane, yet Magnus has still not taken the plunge.
THE GREAT AND THE GOOD NETWORK
It’s getting to the end of the season and as always, I am scouting for new member of The Great and The Good so time to check in on the broader network to see how they are performing this year.
The Great and The Good network this time round are the Scouts David Munday, Seb Wassell and Geoff Dance, the Pro Pundits (LTFPL Andy, Sam Bonfield, Zophar, FPL Hints, Luke Williams, Darren Wiles, Simon March, Holly Shand) and Jay Egersdorff from the Hall of Fame.
Andy has had a superb season, hitting the heights of the top 500 and currently has the edge over Mark Sutherns sitting at 2,247, plus with a double Leicester strike force of Vardy and Iheanacho he looks likely to have a strong finish.
Geoff Dance has an impressive captaincy record, better than any of the current The Great and The Good, with 528 points, all of his armband choices have averaged double-digit returns for him except for Jota who caused the only kerfuffle for this Canuck.
Long term readers will recall David Munday was the former King of the Captains back in the 2018/19 campaign but this year he sits on 398, some 130 points behind Geoff.
Luke continues his high risk/high reward style with 27 hits and counting this year, but when it works it works and I believe he is available for after-dinner speaking events to tell of the time he triple captained Gareth Bale.
What is more remarkable is Sam Bonfield who has only taken one minus four, back in Gameweek 3, by my rough calculations she has burnt a transfer twice this season, is she Ville Ronka in disguise? I certainly have not seen them in the same place at the same time. This certainly has not impacted her team value as she is cash rich on 106.3.
There only a small amount chips left across this group, Sam has her bench boost and Andy, Seb and David have their free hit, they looked poised to pounce on future fixture rearrangements.
They will have to go some way to match Zophar’s free hit who scored 58 points above the average in Gameweek 29, this is one of the contributing factors that sees him on track for his 8th top 10k finish – definitely on next season’s watchlist.
Andy has taken a brave strategy this year when it comes to chips, his Wildcard in Gameweek 18 closely followed by a Bench Boost the next week saw a massive score of 141 and propelled him into the top 5,000, which he has never left.
Unfortunately, I do have to talk about Simon March’s failed Bench Boost in Gameweek 26, the former winner of FPL and fine article writer showed that it truly can happen to the best of us as he hit 13 points below the average despite fielding fifteen.
Do let me know your thoughts on whether I should look to include any of these managers in next year’s The Great and The Good?
CONCLUSION
The dust has settled after a chaotic week, but a word of caution the blank ahead is the calm before the storm as it looks as though further doubles and blanks lie ahead in Gameweeks 35/36, certainly according to the FPL Saviour Ben Crellin.
So, my advice would be to stock up on your transfers and ready your spreadsheets as we may soon find ourselves contemplating the best picks from the “beach teams” Southampton, Palace, Villa and Everton
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
