Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead analyses the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) Gameweek 13 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 and Tom Freeman, Scoutcasters Seb Wassell and Andy North, Pro Pundits FPL General, Pras, Zophar, and FPL Harry, FPL “celebrities” LTFPL Andy and Ben Crellin, FPL champion FPL Gunz, Hall of Famers Fabio Borges, Finn Sollie, Jan Kepski and Jon Ballantyne and last year’s mini-league winner Marko Miseric.
“Start your engines and may the best manager win”
The green flag is waved to start a high-octane race of Gameweeks, with eight deadlines over 35 days. This comes after an international break which brought us its own form of flags, with Jarrod Bowen (£7.7m) and Kaoru Mitoma (£6.5m) waving those of a white variety.
There was of course some late drama on Saturday morning, with the thrilling “will he, won’t he play” Julian Alvarez (£7.1m) psychodrama playing out. The real winners were the ones who pressed the snooze button before the deadline as the Argentine ace eventually played and secured… two points.
The Gameweek itself brought us even more injuries with Eberechi Eze (£6.2m) and Allison (£5.6m) the latest names to join the FPL A&E waiting list, which no doubt will increase the levels of Bryan Mbeumo (£7.0m) fever and make others consider the cut-price Caoimhin Kelleher (£3.9m).
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
Well, well, well. Analytic FC darling and one of the best managers around, the limelight-shunning Jan Kepski, rose effortlessly to the top this week.
A double Arsenal defence provided the foundation for his green arrow into the top 50,000 but it was his Morgan Gibbs-White (£5.7m) pick that deserves the applause. His fixtures aren’t bad, either, for those looking for a Mbeumo alternative.
It’s worth noting that Jan actually benched the Brentford lad, such was his confidence in the Nottingham Forest midfielder. However, he is not completely infallible as his lead could’ve been extended even further if he had not shifted out Diogo Dalot (£5.0m).
This meant that Mark Sutherns was knocked off top spot. To make matters worse, he even lost the claim to be the richest of the FPL managers as Joe overtook him in the team value stakes to become the first to reach £104m.
The biggest green this week goes to Marko Miseric, who won last year’s qualifier league. He rose by almost 500,000 places this time out and deserves kudos for his transfer in of Mohammed Kudus (£6.6m), who is still criminally under-owned at 2.6% despite two double-digit hauls in the last three games.
In other news, Fabio Borges got a bit of luck with his George Baldock (£3.9m) auto-sub, as his late assist earned the FPL GOAT some welcomed points. There were also some interesting formations in play with Finn Sollie on a 5-3-2 and Seb Wassell on a 5-4-1.
Talking of Seb, he finally broke his streak of five Gameweeks of leaving double figures on his bench. This is despite Darwin Nunez (£7.6m) being confined to the pine; all he managed to do was have a pop at Pep.
TRANSFERS
This section should be entitled ‘Transferring with Regret’ as so many of the moves backfired.
The best (or worst) of the bunch was Andy North, who was not so flash with his transfer out of Anthony Gordon (£5.9m) for Eberechi Eze, who now needs to be replaced due to injury. He is not alone in cursing the Crystal Palace talisman’s ankle as both Fabio and General brought him in this week.
Elsewhere, poor old Tom Freeman must have felt pleased with himself in the early purchase of Reece James (£5.4m) as he looked to get ahead of the curve. The infamous FPL troll found a new way to punish us with a red card against Newcastle.
Then there was Ben Crellin who took out Gibbs-White – eek!
- Jan Kępski: Cash > Saliba, Dalot > Guéhi
- Mark Sutherns: Cash > Aït-Nouri
- Joe Lepper: Cash > Gabriel
- Seb Wassell: No Transfers
- FPL General: Bowen > Eze
- Finn Sollie: No Transfers
- Zophar: No Transfers
- Ben Crellin: Gibbs-White > Palmer, Cash > Saliba
- Andy LTFPL: Mitoma > Mbeumo
- Harry Daniels: Mitoma > Mbeumo
- Andy North: Gordon > Eze
- Jon Ballantyne: No Transfers
- Fábio Borges: Mitoma > Eze
- Marko Miseric: Mitoma > Kudus
- Pras: Mitoma > Mbeumo, Nketiah > Wood
- Tom Freeman: Cash > James
- Az: Cash > Guéhi
- FPL Gunz: Foden > Kudus, Watkins > Darwin
TEMPLATE
A look at the template now for The Great and The Good with the pretty graphic below:
Not much has changed for now with Marc Guehl (£4.7m) drifting in for Charlie Taylor (£4.0m) – exciting stuff!
However, I sense a disturbance in the template with Son Heung-min‘s (£9.7m) place under threat, as some debate whether his money could be spent elsewhere with Manchester City and West Ham United up next. A tricky one indeed as his hat-trick of disallowed goals against Aston Villa suggests that he could haul at any time.
CAPTAIN’S CORNER
A look now at the latest captain data, provided by Mini-League Mate:
No surprise to see a certain goal-scoring cyborg top of the pile. I would advise that Erling Haaland (£14.0m) takes out a restraining order on FPL General, who seems obsessed with sticking the armband on him this season: 12 out of his 13 captaincy picks have gone the way of the Norway international.
It’s interesting to note that when Salah has managed to attract the attention of The Great and The Good, his average points tally has been better.
FPL Gunz has shown the biggest balls of steel with his captain choice but even that has only been five different picks, so perhaps not that outlandish. Az has also tried to be different with Ollie Watkins (£8.5m) and James Maddison (£7.9m) being his standalone, if not that successful, picks. It’s clearly not a season to be maverick.
In terms of overall captain points, our leader Jan Kepski leads the way thanks to a Carlton Morris (£5.3m) differential Double Gameweek 7 pick.
Ben Crellin is struggling at the other end on 184 points, which is 48 less than Jan has managed. This shows how key the captaincy pick is; if he had mirrored Jan’s selections, he would comfortably be in the top 100,000.
CONCLUSION
There are some itchy trigger fingers this week as Mbeumo and double Arsenal defence appear to be on top of everyone’s shopping list. With their prices rising, I suspect some will gamble ahead of the European fixtures.
Practising caution may be prudent: if this weekend has taught us anything is that this season is bringing us more injuries. It’s also worth mentioning that before we rush into kneejerk spending on the latest “must haves”, remember that those cut-price bargains like Gibbs-White can be just as profitable.
As always, if you want to dig further into the data then do have a read of the Mini-League Mate dossier. Under ‘Join an existing league’, enter your name and email together with league code MLM0001. It’s all free!
Anyway, that’s all from me for now and remember: don’t have FPL nightmares.
For those affected by any of the topics raised in the above article then you can find me here on Twitter.
