Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead returns for 2024/25 with his series of The Great and the Good articles, analysing the transfers and strategies of some well-known Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers.
The Great and The Good this season are the BlackBox pair of Mark Sutherns and Az, Scouts Joe Lepper and Tom Freeman, Scoutcaster Andy North, Pro Pundits FPL General, Pras, Zophar, FPL Harry and Lateriser, FPL ‘celebrities’ Ben Crellin, Luke Williams and FPL Fran, from the Hall of Fame, Fabio Borges, Jan Kepski, Markku Olaja and Seb Wassell, plus of course, last year’s mini-league winner Geraint Owen.
“Boom, boom, shake the room! Tick, tick, boom!”
An explosive weekend of FPL with the Erling Haaland (£15.1m) hat-trick, Son Heung-min (£10.0m) brace and Cole Palmer (£10.5m) masterclass making us forget why we were fretting about £4.0m/£4.5m defenders dropping in price the week before.
Some of the brave put the Triple Captain chip on the Norwegian and scored well above average, whilst others enjoyed the sadistic pleasure of watching poor old Mark endure another BlackBox Match of the Day challenge without him – yet maybe he had the last laugh by the end of Sunday?
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
Despite being Haaland-less Mark Sutherns scored an impressive 93 points and is now top dog amongst The Great and The Good, proving there is more than one way to play this game.
Whilst everyone was looking to Norway for inspiration, his picks of Son, Emile Smith-Rowe (£5.6m), David Raya (£5.5m) and a Mohamed Salah (£12.5m) captaincy made it an enjoyable weekend despite he who must not be named.
Bigger fans of Erling included FPL General, FPL Fran and Luke Williams who rolled the dice on the Triple Captain chip during a single Gameweek, gasp! The fact that even more cautious managers like the General played it shows how few Double Gameweeks these lot are expecting.
In all this talk of Haaland or Salah, only one of The Great and The Good had been bold enough to go with both and that was this week’s top scorer Pras on 95. He has used his remaining budget well, tripling up on Liverpool with Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.0m) and Diogo Jota (£7.6m), whilst joining Mark as a Smith-Rowe owner and keeping faith with Anthony Gordon (£7.5m).
TRANSFERS
A slightly busier transfer market in Gameweek 2 than usual, with Mark and Fran keeping an eye on team value through their sale of Jarell Quansah (£4.4m) and an eye on the potential of Rico Lewis (£4.5m).
The most popular sale was Dominic Solanke (£7.5m), with Rodrigo Muniz (£6.1m) the template replacement.
TEMPLATE
Good news – the pretty template picture is back! The squad below represents the most popular picks amongst these managers.
With those transfers, Solanke bids a fond farewell to the template with Joao Pedro (£5.5m) the next most popular striker. Quansah also moves out with Antonee Robinson (£4.6m) providing an assist on his debut.
TARGET TEAMS
At the start of any season, we see certain teams targeted either because of fixtures or their own perceived strength.
The following table breaks down this mini-league’s players team by team.
Also, in the third column, I have used the Season Ticker to rank teams by their Gameweek 3-7 fixtures. It gives us a sense of where investment may swing towards.
Liverpool dominates with 31 of their players in the various squads and that looks shrewd as they are near the top of the ticker for the next few weeks.
It does look, however, that we may soon see a swing towards Aston Villa and Chelsea assets. Cole Palmer and Ollie Watkins (£9.0m) anyone?
CONCLUSION
After the amuse-bouche of Gameweek 1, Gameweek 2 was the haul-heavy main course, so what will Gameweek 3 bring?
My spidey sense tells me it might be one to bring us crashing back down to earth so caution may be wise, although the FPL transfer market seems to have gone haywire with managers running around like hyper-active kids in a sweet shop, if the price rises and drops are anything to go by.
A week to decide whether to chase value or hold one’s nerve.
Anyway, that’s all from me for now, and remember don’t have FPL nightmares.
For those affected by any of the topics raised above, you can find me here on Twitter.
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