Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead analyses 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 and Tom Freeman, Scoutcasters Seb Wasell and Andy North, Pro Pundits FPL General, Pras, Zophar, and FPL Harry, FPL “celebrities”, LTFPL Andy and Ben Crellin, FPL Champion FPL Gunz, from the Hall of Fame, Fabio Borges, Finn Sollie, Jan Kepski and Jon Ballantyne and last year’s mini-league winner Marko Miseric.
“Do you want chips with that?”
All this talk of chips was enough to make this FPL manager hungry as everyone seemed to have an opinion on the best strategy to deal with the blanks and doubles ahead.
Personally, I like my chips with mayonnaise, but I may have missed the point.
The off-field drama during the weekend was all about leaks, with Kyle Walker (£5.5m) and Kevin De Bruyne (£10.8m) benching causing much debate. Some liked the leak, some didn’t, some wanted them all at once whilst others preferred them drip-fed.
Either way, they appear to be staying, so I suggest we all just cancel our social engagements an hour before deadline if we are to keep up. That or just accept defeat and quietly curse the Wi-Fi connection at your local shopping centre when Walker to Gabriel Magalhaes (£5.1m) doesn’t go through. I am over it though!
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
Jan Kepski continues his quest for yet another top 1,000 finish with a strong showing of 92 this week and a green arrow of 14,000, which puts him just outside the top 10,000 and in second place in our made-up mini-league.
It was his heavy Arsenal contingent that blew away his rivals with the double trouble of William Saliba (£5.6m) and Gabriel joined by the hauling Bukayo Saka (£9.0m) and he–who–must–never–be–benched, Cole Palmer (£5.9m).
Keeping him off top spot was Ben Crellin, who is on a remarkable run with nine green arrows in the last 10 weeks seeing him move from 312,000 to just outside a triple-digit rank.
Elsewhere, Pras and Seb competed for the most benched points prize. The latter left 29 points on the pine, Pras a meagre 22!
At least captaincy was easy this week with the Erling Haaland (£14.4m), sleep-and-repeat autopilot back in town. FPL Gunz took another path, as he frequently does, going with Darwin Nunez (£7.6m).
TRANSFERS
As predicted in our new marvellous The Great and The Good show on the Fantasy Football Scout YouTube channel, there were plenty of hits.
FPL Harry went all in and took a minus eight, bringing in four doublers for Gameweek 25. It brought him some immediate returns as both Diogo Jota (£8.3m) and Darwin scored.
In fact, it was the Liverpool likely lads who were the most popular transfers, with two-thirds of them bringing at least one of them in. Dominic Solanke (£6.9m) was the sacrificial lamb.
Meanwhile, the majority did some Norwegian housekeeping and brought in Haaland to get him back to 100% ownership.
Finally, Fabio Borges shocked us all by ignoring the Anfield hype. He instead banked on Ross Barkley (£5.0m) to give him long-term returns on his investment.
- Ben Crellin: Eze > Jota, Dubravka > A.Becker
- Seb Wassell: Watkins > Haaland, Walker > Doughty
- Jan Kępski: Guéhi > Doughty
- Mark Sutherns: Gordon > Jota, Solanke > Haaland
- Zophar: De Bruyne > Jota
- Andy LTFPL: Solanke > Darwin, Gordon > Jota, Porro > Doughty
- FPL Harry: Dubravka > Kaminski, Porro > Doughty, Eze > Jota, Solanke > Darwin
- Pras: Porro > Virgil, Solanke > Darwin
- Andy North: Solanke > Darwin
- FPL General: Watkins > Darwin, Bowen > Jota
- Fabio Borges: Eze > Barkley
- Joe Lepper: Solanke > Darwin, Porro > Virgil
- Jon Ballantyne: Tsimikas > Doughty
- Finn Sollie: Watkins > Darwin, Gordon > Jota
- Tom Freeman: Solanke > Haaland, Ødegaard > Barkley
- Marko Miseric: Solanke > Darwin
- Az: Pedro > Haaland, Porro > Doughty
- FPL Gunz: Martinelli > Jota, Guéhi > Alexander-Arnold, Watkins > Haaland
TEMPLATE
The squad shifted this week towards Double Gameweek 25 with Darwin, Jota and a first-time appearance for Alfie Doughty (£4.6m). Solanke, the indestructible Anthony Gordon (£6.1m) and Kieran Trippier (£6.8m) made way.
See the pretty picture below…
MAN vs MACHINE
A quick look now at how the scores of The Great and The Good compare against that of the mighty Rate My Team (RMT) point predictor to show who would’ve been top were it not for that damn variance, Pep Roulette and the FPL Illuminati WhatsApp chats.
Mark can take some comfort that he would be top, was it left to the project points machine.
Dare I say that Ben Crellin is benefitting from a little variance with 147 points more than that predicted by RMT, whilst Az is the unluckiest.
CONCLUSION
Our approach over the next couple of days will tell us a lot about how we play the game. Some will double down on the double and look to have plenty of Liverpool, City and a sprinkling of Luton players, whilst others will take a more cautious approach wary of hits needed in Blank Gameweek 26.
There is no right or wrong way and many will celebrate big greens or suffer big reds this weekend but as always, remember we will not truly be able to judge our success until that final weekend.
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.
