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.
“Benchety Benched”
Benched. A word that strikes fear in any FPL manager’s heart.
It also drives many of us to search dark parts of the internet for team leaks on Saturday mornings, whilst moaning about the Wi-Fi connection at our local garden centre, home furnishings outlet, local cafe or kids party venue.
Gameweek 7 was one where we’d confuse onlookers by swearing “Diaz!” a little too loudly under our breaths just before 11:00am, whilst jabbing desperately at the FPL transfers button on the phone.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
Green, nothing but green as all of The Great and The Good moved up this week’s Fantasy charts.
The FPL Swingometer swayed further for Bukayo Saka‘s (£10.1m) captainers, all 448,000 of them, including Ben Crellin and Jan Kepski. The latter gained 1.6 million places and Ben entered the top million for the first time this campaign.
Although it’s probably best not to mention captaincy around Mark Sutherns – this week he cursed Erling Haaland (£15.4m). Our FPL Godfather has gained just 68 points from his armband selections, that’s 94 less than Crellin’s 162.
In other news, FPL Harry and Pras continue to battle it out for top spot, Seb Wassell may need a loan as his team value is only £99.7m and FPL Fran took only our second collective hit of the season. However, this unfortunately involved selling Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.1m) for a loss.
TRANSFERS
Geraint Owen was the top trader, choosing exactly the right moment to bring in Saka and Dominic Solanke (£7.6m) for Mohamed Salah (£12.7m) and Joao Pedro (£5.5m).
The group’s most sold player was Luis Diaz (£8.1m) but to varying degrees of success. Mark and Andy North went on the ‘bandwagon waiting to happen’ Phil Foden (£9.2m), whilst Az and FPL Harry went with the cheaper options of Tyler Dibling (£4.6m) and Stephy Mavididi (£5.3m) respectively.
Purchasing the Leicester City midfielder gives Harry £2.7m in the bank and it may get a little cold in his squad next time when we next catch up.
THE GREAT AND THE GOOD TEMPLATE
A little shudder took place in the template, as the uncertainty of starts means Diaz has left the squad to be replaced by Cole Palmer (£10.8m).
Elsewhere, Lateriser still doesn’t own Saka.
BEWARE THE ALGORITHM
With so much talk of algorithms this season, I thought it’d be interesting to compare these competitors’ scores against those of the mighty Rate My Team (RMT) points predictor, showing who would’ve been top had luck, human nature and VAR decisions not interfered in the FPL Matrix.
According to the mighty algorithm, FPL General should be top, although his 421 points would place him outside of the top two million. Harry is actually overachieving by 70 points and Markku is probably the unluckiest, as he is down 11 points on what the mighty machine had projected.
CONCLUSION
A brutal start for many, with the first seven Gameweeks proving to be a real challenge. It still doesn’t feel like anyone has truly worked out a way to adapt to this season’s new transfer rules and pricing, with every week springing a new narrative to the fore.
One thing for certain is that this is one of the swingiest campaigns for a number of years because there have been huge red and green arrows so far. This should provide optimism that gains can be made, yet also caution that we should be ready to be resilient once the reds do start to fall.
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.
Enjoy the break!
