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 Pundits 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.
“Things that go bump in the night”
FPL delivered its own horror show this weekend with screams of terror as early team news ruled out our season default captain Erling Haaland (£12.2m), plus Phil Foden’s (£8.5m) benching gave us pumpkin to talk about before the lights went out completely as the website went down.
Due to the FPL power cut, many a manager was left wondering whether that Bukayo Saka (£8.0m) transfer had gone through, although his injury means there is an extra jump scare for those who did get him, and for those who failed Pep stuck the knife in by bringing on Foden for his one-point cameo.
The rest of Saturday saw ominous blanks galore – Ivan Toney (£7.4m) gave us his own yellow peril, Wilfried Zaha‘s (£7.6m) owners continued living their own personal hell and the only ones manically laughing were those that had Callum Wilson (£7.4m) in their team.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
It was witch-ful thinking to expect anything but a blood-red arrow in Gameweek 14 with all but brave Pras and Tom Freeman suffering that fate.
Tom had his 6-6-6 backline to thank for his gruesome green with Kieran Trippier (£5.8m) delivering an extra trick-and-treat with another double-figure haul.
Pras was the brave hero this weekend doing a deal with the value devil himself Haaland by selling him for Gabriel Jesus (£8.0m), which gave him a hallow-green.
The other action of note was Magnus Carlsen’s decision to captain Son Heung-min (£11.7m) for the third time in four weeks. He has ghosted him on every occasion providing only 14 captaincy points in total during that time.
TRANSFERS
Everyone fell under the spell of Saka this week as they signed him up in droves only for his early withdrawal to leave them spooked about his chances of playing before the World Cup.
Suvansh took another hit, his fourth of the campaign so far with the Arsenal man and also Marcus Rashford (£6.6m), who proved a fang-tastic transfer.
The full list of moves are below:
- Az – None
- LTFPL Andy – Saka (Foden)
- Ben Crellin – None
- Fabio Borges – None
- Finn Sollie – Saka (Bowen)
- FPL Harry – Saka (Andreas)
- Joe Lepper – Saka (Foden)
- Geoff Dance – Foden (Barnes)
- FPL General – Saka (Zaha)
- Magnus Carlsen – None
- Mark Sutherns – Foden (Bowen)
- FPL Matthew – Zaha (Bowen)
- Neale Rigg – None
- Pras – Jesus (Haaland)
- Suvansh – Saka, Rashford (Foden, Bowen)
- Tom Freeman – Saka (Foden)
- Tom Stephenson – None
- Zophar – Saka (Foden)
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:
Pope (11), Ward (11)
Trippier (18), Cancelo (14), Guehi (9), Williams (7), Doherty (6)
Martinelli (17), Salah (16), Zaha (16), Andreas (15), Foden (11)
Mitrovic (18), Haaland (17), Solanke (7)
The template continues in its zombie-like state, Saka must be wondering howl he didn’t make the cut and just misses out, with 10 owning him going into the Nottingham Forest game.
TOP TEAMS
Time now to pick at the bones of which Premier League teams have garnered the most investment from The Great and The Good, with a comparison to the start of the season (Gameweek 3) to see how fortunes have changed:
No surprise to see Manchester City still the dominant force and seen as top of the Halloween treat list, only five off a triple-up in every single Great and Good squad.
Arsenal and Fulham players continue to play a strong part in deciding the colour of the managers’ arrow, but it’s the rise of Newcastle United and Crystal Palace that most catches the eye, with their scary on-field performances prompting The Great and The Good to get out their fantasy cheque book.
On the other side of that equation, we see Liverpool players becoming less popular due to their ghoulish form, whilst Potter’s rotation is the stuff of nightmares and means not one of the managers wishes to gamble on Chelsea players.
CONCLUSION
It’s been hard to creep it real this week with so many red arrows and many of us not wanting to do anything too frightening with the restriction of the upcoming World Cup in just a couple of weeks.
However, let’s try and end this haunting tale on a happy ending. Looking at the ranks, there is only 54 points between 1 million and 100,000 overall. So, you may yet evade FPL boogeyman and have a good finish to the season.
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
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