Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead analyses the transfers and strategies of some well-known Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers in his series of The Great and the Good articles.
This season’s names are the BlackBox pair of Mark Sutherns and Az, Scouts Joe Lepper, Tom Freeman and Andy North, Pro Pundits FPL General, Pras, Zophar, FPL Harry and Lateriser, FPL ‘celebrities’ Ben Crellin, Luke Williams and FPL Fran, Hall of Famers Fabio Borges, Jan Kepski, Markku Olaja and Seb Wassell, plus last year’s qualifying mini-league winner Geraint Owen.
“When you relinquish the desire to control your future, you can have more happiness.”
Let’s get Wild! Yes, that is the sound of millions of FPL managers pressing the button, sharing their drafts, asking A or B and losing sleep over the best £4.5m defenders.
Yet Ben Crellin missed the Gameweek 6 Wildcard memo by going early with a squad selection that raised more than a few eyebrows. More of that later.
In the run-up to Gameweek 5, there was a horrible feeling of uncertainty lingering – with the words of Eddie Howe and Fabian Hürzeler providing zero comfort – as we worried over whether their star strikers would turn up. Sadly, both Alexander Isak (£8.3m) and Joao Pedro (£5.6m) made the pitch.
Then, Slot decided to talk in riddles about Diogo Jota (£7.5m). I think we all knew after “he has done really well” that the Liverpool attacker was bound to be dropped.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
The star of the show this week was Geraint Owen, whose Gameweek 4 Wildcard gamble of Nicolas Jackson (£7.7m) paid off. Furthermore, he reaped the benefits of a double Liverpool defence and Morgan Rogers (£5.2m) finally justifying his popularity. This gave Geraint a 1.9 million green arrow!
FPL Harry stays top and benefitted from some bench jam when Emile Smith-Rowe (£5.8m) came on for Jota, as the Fulham midfielder did similar for Az – that’s now the second weekend in a row. Maybe Az should just start him?
The captaincy was dominated by Team Mo, with only Fabio Borges keeping faith in Erling Haaland (£15.3m) and Ben going with Son Heung-min (£10.0m). Both ended up being a better choice.
BEN CRELLIN’S WILDCARD
Ben Crellin put the Wild in Wildcard by playing his chip earlier than the Gameweek 6 herd and – incredibly – proceeding without either Haaland, Mohamed Salah (£12.8m) or Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.1m).
Whilst everyone was worrying about having enough Liverpool players, he ignored them all by going big on a Spurs triple-up. He has Son, Pedro Porro (£5.6m) and Dominic Solanke (£7.5m).
The lack of both Mo and Erling allows plenty of squad depth but it meant that Bukayo Saka (£10.1m) and Gabriel‘s (£6.0m) points remained on his bench.
Going heavy in midfield, there’s Cole Palmer (£10.6m) and Bruno Fernandes (£8.3m) – even managing a little Jamie Vardy (£5.7m) party that proved to be a disappointing affair.
Overall, this is either a work of genius or madness, so let’s see how the FPL Gods judge him.
TRANSFERS
This week’s headline has to be the witnessing of our first 2024/25 hit, as Luke Williams took a minus four to bring in Salah and Kaoru Mitoma (£6.7m). In other big news, Seb Wassell actually remembered that he had some transfers, finally making his first trades of this campaign.
Moves mainly concentrated on the forward line because of the Isak and Rodrigo Muniz (£6.0m) doubts.
It tended to be a split decision on whether to go for Vardy or Dominic Calvert-Lewin (£6.0m) but the other Dominic, Solanke, worked out well for Jan Kepski and FPL General.
THE GREAT AND THE GOOD TEMPLATE
This template remains unmoved but expect the Wildcard tsunami to wipe out at least Jota, Isak and Dean Henderson (£4.5m). Although the Palace keeper had the decency to give a nine-point return before his departure.
WHAT IF?
This game can be cruel but I want to pile on the agony by bringing out the ‘What If?’ machine. It calculates what would have happened if you had left your Gameweek 1 team alone, making no transfers or captaincy changes.
FPL Fran, Geraint, Joe and Tom should be feeling pleased that their moves have actually helped their team, whilst Seb and Jan should probably look away from the screen.
The ‘What If?’ score is also a good way of judging who had the best opening line-up, suggesting that FPL Harry and Andy North certainly got their pre-season calls right.
CONCLUSION
In a Wildcard week for many, my advice is to work upwards from Bryan Mbeumo (£7.1m). For those not overhauling, you can just sit smugly – however, I’d still buy Mbeumo.
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.
12 days, 12 hours agoI'd forgotten how exciting it is to press the wildcard button