FFScout Head-to-Head Leagues 2020/21 season review

The second season of the FFScout Head-to-Head Leagues is complete and to follow up on RedLightning’s Scout leagues summary, I will attempt to delve a little deeper into the nine Leagues and 416 Divisions that make up the Head-to-Head Leagues.

Like last year’s summary, I’ll mainly focus on the Division winners and promotion places as no one likes to know they have been relegated. Let’s start at the top of the pyramid and officially announce the Head-to-Head champion.

League 1 – 1 Division

Ville Tuominen is the 2020/21 FFScout Head-to-Head champion.

He amassed 72 points over the season but came out on top due to a better overall rank over Aleksander Våge Nilsen, who also scored 72 points. Ville’s overall rank was 42,650 compared to Aleksander’s 68,621.

So, congratulations to Ville but we must also commiserate Aleksander for just missing out. These two had an epic battle over the final few Gameweeks, Aleksander was leading by three points going to into Gameweek 38, but Ville had the better overall rank, which in the end proved crucial.

Ville had to secure the win and hope Aleksander lost, and at the same time hope he didn’t catch him in rank. This is exactly what happened, and Ville took home the title.

It’s worth noting that Ville gained promotion last year from League 2 when he took the final (fifth) promotion spot. Promotion one season and then overall champion the next, the stuff of dreams!

Cam Black took third and Milan Mihajlovic fourth, both finished five points behind Ville and Aleksander. The defending champion, Craig Johnson, backed up last year’s victory with a solid fifth and was only eight points behind Ville and Aleksander.

Tim Hill, Al Black, Richard Clarke, Simon Vazquez and David Meechan make up sixth – tenth and therefore remain in the top League for next season.

As RedLightning highlighted in the Scout leagues summary, Richard Clarke essentially had a Gameweek 38 relegation shoot out with David Arblaster. Richard came out on top which means David is relegated to League 2.

Richard had the best overall rank in League 1 and worth noting that he finished eighth last year too with the second best overall rank in 2019/20. Consistent!

League 2 – 2 Divisions

The two Divisions in League 2 were hotly contested.

After being relegated last year, Emerson Ciccarello bounces back at the first attempt, winning Division 1 by three points with a total of 75. Shaun McGrath, Dylan Penhallurick, Adam Ferguson and Jon Keates make up the top five and all gain promotion to League 1 next year.

It’s worth noting that Jon Keates was promoted last year from Division 3 and has therefore achieved back-to-back promotions. It’s also worth noting that four of these five obtained a top 10,000 overall rank and were the only four to do so in Division 1.

Dylan Penhallurick had the best overall rank across both Divisions in League 2.

Cak Juris wins Division 2 by a healthy nine points and secured a very impressive 1,632 overall rank.

He will be joined in League 1 next season by Martin Stubbs, @FPL Matthew, Justin Spiegel and Peter Tind. Peter taking the fifth and final promotion place from Simon Rothwell on a better overall rank.

I said I wouldn’t mention relegation but it’s worth looking at the bottom 10 of both Divisions as there are some well-known names who have succumbed to relegation.

League 3 – 4 Divisions

Chris Bristow (Division 1), Colm Doyle (Division 2), Mark Reynolds (Me! Division 3) and Stig Hermanse (Division 4) were the four League 3 Division winners.

The promotion places in all four Divisions were very tight, three of the fifth places came down to overall rank after finishing level on points. David Cousins was one of these fifth-placed managers but as he had the best overall rank across the four Divisions (2,446^th) he achieved promotion to League 2.

League 4 – 8 Divisions

There were several top 10,000 ranks in League 4 and a special mention must go to Matthew Karan who finished 179th overall. Strangely this rank was only good enough for third place in Division 1 as Harvey Gill took top spot, amassing 83 points from a possible 114. Both, of course, are promoted to League 3 next season.

Oliver Brown is also promoted as Division winner as he picked up 82 points in Division 4.

League 5 – 16 Divisions

Division 11 in League 5 caught my eye in that Nathan C obtained 83 points from the 38 matches to win the Division, but Lars Valdresbraten deserves a mention as his overall rank of 487 secured second spot and promotion.

Division 6 saw a tightly fought promotion race which unbelievably resulted in Matt Carvel missing out on promotion despite a rank of 71, yes 71st overall! Six teams finished above him in the Division.

Matt had the highest overall rank across all nine Leagues and 416 Divisions. For him not to get promotion is quite simply ridiculous but also the beauty of the Head-to-Head Leagues.

League 6 – 32 Divisions

Division 12 looks like one of the tightest across League 6. Evan Pryce won with 69 points but there were just five points separating fifth (last promotion place) and 11th (the first relegation spot) this Division could have been anyone’s. Ninth, 10th and 11th all had 58 points and similar overall ranks of circa 100K.

Just three Divisions had the winner collect 80+ points with Michael Green (Division 14), Przemyslaw Rutkowski (Division 20) and Dohwodese Ohwovoriole (Division 29) all scoring an impressive 81 points from the 114 available.

League 7 – 64 Divisions

Of the 64 Divisions in League 7, 18 winners won their Division by accumulating 80+ points. However, six of those managers gained 85+ points and there are Piotr Sagalara (Division 7) 85 points, Peter Taylor (Division 10) 86 Points, Chris Astin (Division 18) 88 points, Joseph Skelley (Division 26) 87 points, Uros Lorbek (Division 38) 85 points, and John H (Division 58) 85 points.

League 8 – 128 Divisions

Of the 128 Division in League 8, 19 managers won their Divisions by scoring 85+ points including nine who scored 90+, including Rafsan Swanpnil in Division 39 who scored the most Head-to-Head points across the whole League set up: 96 points out of 114 is essentially 32 wins and six defeats across the whole season. 

Those scoring 85+ points are:

Neil Fryer (Division 11) 87 points, Kenny McDowell (Division 25) 90 points, Rafsan Swanpnil (Division 39) 96 points, Jose Miguel De Le Roca Argueta (Division 42) 93 points, Alex Barnes (Division 64) 91 points, David Taylor (Division 68) 91 points, Pallavi Agarwal (Division 78) 85 points, Deb Rose (Division 82) 87 points, Isaac Boateng (Division 86) 90 points, Damien Porter (Division 90) 85 points, Gurbanmyrat Myradov (Division 94) 85 points, TreChanMi Synrem (Division 97) 90 points, Les Caldwell (Division 104) 90 points, Tomas Kulbak (Division 108) 87 points, Virman Man (Division 115) 85 points, Chiteke Kapepula (Division 116) 85 points, Tarek Kira (Division 121 ) 93 points, Mark Dawney (Division 122) 87 points, and George Hayes (Division 128) 85 points.

League 9 – 161 Divisions

Of the 161 Divisions 28 managers won their leagues by scoring 85 or more points. Of these 28 four scored 90+. A list of the full 28 are below:

Jeffrey Rohrs (Division 14) 86 points, David Ley (Division 22) 87 points, Steve Hutchinson (Division 31) 87 points, Chris James (Division 48) 88 points, Vipul Bhatia (Division 58) 85 points, James Turner (Division 63) 88 points, Meet Rajani (Division 64) 85 points, Chris Berg (Division 65) 85 points, Olve Engelsen (Division 67) 91 points, Aishik S (Division 70) 85 points, Mikael Brantingson (Division 75) 88 points, Jason Kiernan (Division 76) 89 points, Mozumder Tushar (Division 79) 89 points, Ross Allen (Division 85) 85 points, Adam Tinsley (Division 86) 85 points, Kerry Hodgson (Division 93) 85 points, Jose Goncalves (Division 106) 87 points, Josh Rudge (Division 107) 91 points, David Curnick (Division 114) 85 points, Mr Beresford (Division 130) 85 points, Konrad Knapik (Division 136) 88 points, Samuel Bowen (Division 137) 85 points, Glenn Matheson (Division 139) 87 points, Lynn Mercer (Division 141) 85 points, Ian Mercer (Division 145) 87 points, Chris Prosser (Division 152) 86 points, Matt Nwajel (Division 160) 90 points, James Taylor (Division 161) 91 points.

I should mention Josh Rudge from the list above as he scored 91 points but also finished with a very impressive overall rank of 608.

I hope you enjoyed the second season of the FFScout Head-to-Head Leagues, which grew substantially from last season’s tournament. League 9 was created to accommodate the additional players. We will of course be running these again for 2021/22 and I’m hopeful it will continue to grow and maybe top 10,000 entries! We had 5,983 entries in the first season and 8,320 in the one just completed.

I should add that there are ongoing discussions to make these Leagues work even better with a few tweaks to make it easier to view your league and Head-to-Head history. As always if you have any ideas or suggestions do leave a comment below. All feedback is welcome.

If the League structure continues to grow, I may be asking for one or two people within the Scout community to help with monthly updates, but I’ll write separately about that should it be required.

I again must thank Geoff, TopMarx and Mat Williams for the behind the scenes work and RedLightning for his weekly updates. Keep an eye out for an article on how to enter for next season but for now enjoy the Euro’s. I’m sure with a week to go I’ll get roped into playing the Euro fantasy game.

Cheers

Mark Reynolds (MIR), @sparkymir