Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead analyses the transfers and strategies of some well-known Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers. 

‘The Great and The Good’ this season are the FPL Godfather Mark Sutherns, the BlackBox pair of Az and Andy North, Scouts FPL General, Joe and Tom, the FPL Wire trio of Pras, Lateriser and Zophar, FPL celebrities FPL Harry, Martin Baker, Pingreen, FPL Frasier and Luke Williams, Hall of Famers Ben Crellin, Fabio Borges and Tom Dollimore, and last year’s mini-league winner Huss E.

“Maybe you should just push the button”

Gameweek 13 was unlucky for some – well, those that didn’t play the Free Hit chip – as we had our first big swing weekend. Messrs Foden and Thiago gave their owners the biggest push.

The Free Hit hype was overwhelming but there were a few brave souls who went with the Triple Captain option and were then forced to roll out the “good process, bad outcome” quote.

In amongst all this, Fabio Borges and Ben Crellin watched on with no chips in play, our rookie leader Huss E played his Wildcard, and FPL General finally got that differential captaincy pick adrenaline rush.

OVERALL PERFORMANCE

It was green all round with an average rank gain of over 500,000 amongst The Great and The Good, the majority of whom deployed chips.

If you believe the noise, the Free Hitters dominated this week. However, if you look at the scores above, you can see there was only a slight edge amongst The Great and The Good. The Free Hitters averaged 64, with the rest averaging 58.

So, not all Free Hits were the same. Tom Dollimore played it the best with a massive 81 points, crucially tripling up on the Aston Villa defence (thanks to Mohamed Salah’s (£14.1m) benching). He also had Igor Thiago (£6.7m) and Phil Foden (£8.1m) and kept faith in Bruno Fernandes (£8.9m).

Compare this with Mark Sutherns, who scored 49 points. He was less fortunate with his auto-sub with Jarrod Bowen (£7.6m) coming in for Salah. He also gambled on the wrong City midfielders in Rayan Cherki (£6.4m) and Jeremy Doku (£6.6m), and had misplaced faith in Morgan Gibbs-White (£7.3m)

WILDCARD

The relative unknown Huss E, making himself very well-known this season as he leads the way, finally played his Wildcard. He stuck with his tactics of tripling up on teams, going large on Man City and Brentford..

Foden, Nico O’Reilly (£5.1m) and Haaland were the Citizens, while the Bees were represented by Nathan Collins (£4.9m), Kevin Schade (£7.0m) and the increasingly essential Igor Thiago.

It’s perhaps surprising to see just the one Arsenal player, Jurrien Timber (£6.4m), although he did pick the right time to bring in Bruno Fernandes. Will he captain him next week?

TRANSFERS

Transfer of the week goes to FPL General, who sold Antoine Semenyo (£7.8m) for Foden and, as mentioned, promptly captained him.

Elsewhere, limited activity, although the Thiago bandwagon is rumbling.

TEMPLATE

A Free Hit-distorted template this week, although I suspect Thiago and Foden may be popular when we get back to business as usual.

Dubravka (72.2%), Martinez (33.3%)
O’Reilly (72.2%), van Dijk (50%), Cash (50%), Collins (44.4%), Munoz (33.3%)
Foden (66.7%), Schade (61.1%), Salah (61.1%), Rogers (50%), Fernandes (44.4%)
Haaland (94.4%), Thiago (88.9%), Guiu (61.1%)

SEASON STATS

A rapid-fire glance at the season stats shows us that Pras and Pingreen are the ones to follow for captaincy picks. FPL General continues to suffer from the self-imposed no Haaland scores, although he did at least cash in this weekend on young Phil.

We’re seeing far fewer hits than in previous seasons, with the bountiful supply of chips and transfers making them of less use. Tom Freeman and Az have remained the most carefree.

As for team value, followers of these articles will not be surprised to see Mark Sutherns has amassed the largest bank account of £103.8m.

CONCLUSION

So, there’s little more than 24 hours for the Free Hitters to bask in their collective glory before we are back at it. The festive schedule now starts to warm up and will hopefully cause a little chaos for the casuals; I have not reminded Colin from Accounts that there is a midweek deadline…

There will no doubt be more random benchings and rotation, so fill up those FPL squad stockings as we may need them if we are to truly use chaos as a ladder.

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 or BlueSky.

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