Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead analyses the transfers and strategies of some well-known Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers.
This season’s names 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.
“You get a century, you get century and you get a century. Everyone gets century”
* Not everyone got a century
The final hurdle before the much-hyped, bountiful land of Double Gameweek 37. This weekend felt like a bit of a non-event with most either rolling or planning their moves based on their Bench Boost next week.
Yet, FPL doesn’t work like that. The goal-scoring terminator Norwegian born in Yorkshire scored his biggest brace of the season meaning some huge scores, ee bye gum lad!
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
The biggest green arrow this week (64,000) belonged to Az who despite not captaining Erling Haaland (£14.2m) managed a score just one shy of the century. He had Bukayo Saka (£9.0m) and Andrew Robertson (£6.5m) to thank for his move up the ranks – if nothing else it proved there is scope to be a little different in our approaches.
The highest score came from centurion Seb Wassell on 116. In fact, 14 of the 18 managers in The Great and The Good hit triple digits this week. Those who had Josko Gvardiol (£5.1m) and a keeper that wasn’t Ederson (£5.5m) tended to do slightly better.
In other news, Marko Miseric, who won last year’s feeder league is in hot form right now with four green arrows in a row moving him from 429,000 to inside the top 100,000 in that time – this has coincided with the arrival of Kai Havertz (£7.5m) in his team.
There was a little bench jam at the top of the table with Ben Crellin benefitting from Richarlison‘s (£6.8m) goal and assist after the Bruno Fernandes (£8.5m) no-show. I suspect many will move for the Brazilian striker despite Spurs’ form with the double up next and Sheffield United on the final day.
Elsewhere, we have three managers battling to be in the exclusive top 10,000 with Zophar, Jan Kepski and Mark Sutherns all dancing around the borderline. They all have their Bench Boosts in hand, but I suspect that with 85% of the top 10,000 still to play that chip, any advantage will be marginal.
THE GREAT AND THE GOOD TRANSFERS
Just a few transfers this week, with many holding their cards ready for Gameweek 37. Zophar was certainly the most successful with Gvardiol and Nicolas Jackson (£7.0m) coming in just at the right time for his brace. Meanwhile, Andy North picked the wrong City defender to bring in.
- Zophar: Gusto > Gvardiol; Solanke > Jackson
- Mark Sutherns: Schar > Gvardiol
- Andy North: Schar > Walker
- Seb Wassell: van Dijk > Gvardiol
- FPL General: Gusto > White
- Jon Ballantyne: Schar > White
- Az: Sarabia > Gordon
- FPL Gunz: Schar > Alexander-Arnold; Son > De Bruyne
THE GREAT AND THE GOOD TEMPLATE
The defensive injury crisis meant there was a slight adjustment in the backline of The Great and The Good template, with the highest-scoring defender this season, Ben White (£6.1m), coming in alongside Gvardiol. Fabian Schar (£5.6m) and Diogo Dalot (£5.2m) have dropped out.
THE NEXT GENERATION
A look forward now to who might be joining this made-up mini-league next season. Remember the winner of the open to all feeder league “The Next Great and Good” will be part of this group in 2024/25.
Leading the way is Natasha Kainth, say hello if you are out there, who smashed it again this week with 123 points and now sits 14th overall. She must have a nosebleed as her highest previous rank was 25,200 back in 21/22.
However, she does not have her Bench Boost chip unlike second place Geraint Owen, who is doing it for the Welsh brethren and sits 27th overall. Will this chip allow him to close the gap of nine points to Natasha?
Also in the chasing pack, we have the current Belgian number one Jeremy Calloud, US-based Divine Precious who has finished in the top 10,000 in the last two seasons, Christian Larisch 39th in the Hall of Fame, Harrison Packer who has a top 300 finish in his record books and the exceptional talents of FPL Trini and FPL Beery who will be well known to those who venture into FPL Twitter X land.
Good luck to all of you!
CONCLUSION
Right, heads down we are almost there with only two weeks to go. This is the time to speed up with the drama of the double ahead plus the pure madness that is Gameweek 38 when anything can and usually does happen.
As always if you want to dig further into the data then do have a read of the Mini-League Mate dossier. Click here https://www.minileaguemate.com/membership and 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, 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 on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Greyhead19
