Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead returns for the 2022/23 season with his series of articles analysing the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) transfers and strategies of some noted Fantasy managers, from serial top 10k finishers to well-known faces.
The Great and The Good this season are the BlackBox pair of Mark Sutherns and Az, Scouts Joe Lepper, Tom Freeman, Neale Rigg, Geoff Dance, Pro Pundts Pras, Zophar and FPL Harry, FPL “celebrities” Magnus Carlsen, FPL General, LTFPL Andy, Ben Crellin, from the Hall of Fame, Fabio Borges, FPL Matthew, Finn Sollie and Tom Stephenson and of course last year’s mini-league winner and overall no.2 Suvansh.
“Viewers of a nervous disposition may wish to look away now”
Brutal! In a true video nasty, a couple of the members of The Great and The Good, both non-Haaland owners, decided it was a good idea to do the Match of the Day challenge and watch their Gameweek 4 unfold with thousands watching them.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
Aside the sadistic pleasure of watching Mark and Az go through this emotional torture, others were punished this week as well, especially Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.5m) sellers.
The majority of us suffered some form of pain as the popular armband selection Mohamed Salah (£13.0m) managed to avoid any returns in the 9-0 thrashing of Bournemouth.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
Fabio Borges continues to glide gracefully up the ranks to just outside the top 100,000: he maintains top position amongst The Great and The Good with the highest score of the week, 83 points. He even decided to burn his transfer this week, proving that doing nothing appears to be the best tactic right now.
Erling Haaland, Trent and Luis Diaz (£8.0m) were all present and correct plus his goalkeeping pick of Robert Sanchez (£4.6m) is proving a masterful move, Brighton have only conceded one goal in the last four Gameweeks and have a lofty position in the fixture ticker.
Also, it’s worth highlighting Suvansh, who proved you can be non-Salah and be successful: he scored 78 points with Raheem Sterling (£9.9m), a useful differential.
WILDCARD
There were two early Wildcards this week, with Mr Sutherns’ overhaul the most publicized and scrutinized.
Mark Sutherns
His squad depth is strong, almost superhuman, with rotation on the horizon and he looks to prefer the safety this provides knowing that there will be a few benched points along the way.
As for his picks, he has offloaded Joao Cancelo (£7.0m), Bukayo Saka (£8.0m) and out-of-form Son Heung-Min (£12.0m), preferring the shiny new toys of Ivan Toney (£7.0m), Rodrigo (£6.5m) and Aleksandar Mitrovic (£6.7m), who scored again this week and who I suspect soon will become essential.
He has gambled on Ivan Perisic (£5.5m) and his potential reduced minutes: the Spurs defender/wandering wingback could have had an assist to add to his clean sheet if Harry Kane (£11.5) had not faced penalty stopper extraordinaire Dean Henderson (£4.5m) this Sunday. I wonder whether, watching from City Ground stadium, Mr Sutherns cheered or cursed this second spot-kick save of the season from the Forest keeper.
Mark was slightly unlucky to sell Haaland and Diaz on a week that they outscored Kevin De Bruyne (£12.0m) and Salah but remember a Wildcard can’t be judged just on a week, even if it’s televised.
Full moves are below:-
- IN – Raya, Iversen, Perisic, Rodrigo, De Bruyne, Salah, Jesus, Mitrovic
- OUT – Ward, Ramsdale, Cancelo, Saka, Diaz, Son, Haaland, Archer
Geoff Dance
The Canadian Kingpin was the other one to move early. He has abandoned the double City defence, which certainly seems to have been impacted by injury, and is the first manager to revert to 3-4-3 – the once go-to formation of The Great and The Good.
He has also gone for squad depth: Sanchez is a wise move and Kieran Trippier (£5.1m) has shown consistency and looks good value with fixtures improving after Gameweek 5, but I am still trying to work out whether Marcus Rashford (£6.3m) is a move of head or heart for the United-supporting Canuck.
- IN – Sanchez, Perisic, Trippier, Saliba, Rodrigo, Rashford, Toney
- OUT – Iversen, Dias, Cucurella, Cancelo, Bailey, Kulusevski, Archer
TRANSFERS
- Az – None
- LTFPL Andy – None
- Ben Crellin – None
- Fabio Borges – None
- Finn Sollie – Sanchez (Iversen)
- FPL Harry – None
- Joe Lepper – None
- Geoff Dance – Wildcard
- FPL General – Rodrigo, Saliba, Ederson (Iverson, Mount, Williams)
- Magnus Carlsen – None
- Mark Sutherns – Wildcard
- FPL Matthew – None
- Neale Rigg – Stansfield (Archer)
- Pras – None
- Suvansh – Dunk (Williams)
- Tom Freeman – Dunk (Williams)
- Tom Stephenson – Murphy (Bailey)
- Zophar – None
Thank goodness for FPL General, whose minus four saved us from a series of beige transfers, Neale’s switch from Cameron Archer (£4.5m) to Jay Stansfield (£4.5m) a particular lowlight.
General took a hit to bring in the on-form William Saliba (£4.6m), Rodrigo (£6.5m) will do better when not up against the stingy Brighton defence and Ederson (£5.5m) has to be seen as upgrade on the failed double £4.0m keeper experiment.
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:-
- Ward (16), Ramsdale (7)
- Alexander-Arnold (18), James (18), Cancelo (16), Cucurella (8), Perisic (5)
- Martinelli (18), Andreas (18), Salah (17), Luis Diaz (8), Reed (8)
- Jesus (18), Haaland (16), Archer (10)
With Mark finally relenting on Mo, that means it’s only Suvansh who doesn’t own him, Gabriel Jesus (£8.2m) joins the 100% gang while faith in Joao Cancelo (£7.0m) falters as he falls out of that exclusive list.
SEASON STATS
A quick look at the season stats gives Az at least something to be cheerful about as he tops the captaincy points. Suvansh has been the most aggressive with five transfers and a minus eight while Finn Sollie and Mark have been the money chasers with the highest team value of £101.3m.
CONCLUSION
We seem to be approaching a fork in the road with the choice of doing nothing, burning your transfer or instead throwing caution to the wind, playing your Wildcard and trying to break the cycle.
The conservative optimal branch of our FPL community appears to be winning the day so far, but surely a maverick will step up to take on the system. My only word of advice is to make sure it’s not televised.
Anyway, that’s all from me for 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.
