Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead analyses the transfers and strategies of some well-known Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers to see how they did in Gameweek 8.
The Great and The Good this season are the FPL Godfather Mark Sutherns, the BlackBox pair of Az and Andy North, Scouts FPL General, Tom Freeman and Joe Lepper, the FPL Wire duo of Pras and Zophar, the defending The Great and The Good champion Huss E, FPL celebrities FPL Harry and LTFPL Andy, Hall of Famers Fabio Borges, Thomas Brønsby, Ben Crellin, Elevenify and Tom Dollimore, last year’s mini-league winner Andrew McKinnon and invitational champ Ben McCrum.
“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good”
Well, that was fun. The weather was wild and seemed to blow away quite a few of the popular picks this week, with Joao Pedro (£7.9m) the big absentee.
Bruno Fernandes (£11.7m) was then benched for being rude about Michael Carrick’s tactics, Pascal Groß (£6.2m) kept on scoring, but this time in the wrong net, and Cole Palmer (£9.8m) did turn up but then delivered a minus-point red card. Feel sorry for those poor beggars who captained him…
The build-up to the weekend was all about the midfield crisis worthy of an emergency board meeting. Bukayo Saka (£9.5m), Antoine Semenyo (£8.2m) and Dominik Szoboszlai (£6.7m) all injured, leaving managers with three holes to fill and plenty of head-scratching over who deserved the keys to the midfield. Only Marcus Tavernier (£6.4m) proved a worthy replacement.
Elsewhere, the squads were starting to look remarkably familiar. The Great and The Good were beginning to resemble a giant game of FPL copy and paste, with different managers apparently sharing the same spreadsheet.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
Oh no! The UK government were right about stockpiling ahead of a potential apocalypse. It’s here: Andy North is top of The Great and The Good.
His 51 points saw him rise to the summit this week. He owns Ezri Konsa (£4.7m), which helped, and had a bit of luck as his captaincy pick of Joao Pedro defaulted to Erling Haaland (£15.7m). However, it was Tarik Muharemovic (£5.1m) who nudged him above LTFPL Andy and Joe Lepper.
Yet he was not the star performer this week. That honour belongs to Thomas Brønsby, who scored an impressive 76 and gained a rank rise of 640,000 places.
He is a phenomenal manager, with four top 10k finishes in a row, and he is certainly not ‘template’, as his surge was driven by Harvey Barnes (£6.1m), Iliman Ndiaye (£5.8m) and a triple Arsenal defence, which includes Gabriel Magalhaes (£7.9m) and Konsa.
In fact, that forgotten man Gabriel was the main reason we also saw Fabio Borges and Mark Sutherns have good weeks, the latter only just bringing him in this Gameweek. Will this spark a rise in ownership as we look to spend our Saka money?
TRANSFERS
The midfield injury crisis meant all of The Great and The Good dipped into the transfer market. Bukayo’s departure party was well attended and Szoboszlai was the other one handed his P45. The favoured option was Bryan Mbeumo (£7.9m), which makes you wonder whether any of them have watched Manchester United play recently.
Let’s wallow in the misery first of FPL Harry and his legion of Harry Bots who went from Saka to Palmer and funded this by dropping Hall for Bobby Thomas (£4.0m), who left the field at 59 minutes and 21 seconds – for those asking why his clean sheet points didn’t appear from their benches.
Tom Freeman also didn’t have the best of times as he chose this moment to bring in Joao Pedro. He faces a week like many of us, wondering how “injured” he actually is.
However, there was a moment of magic in these bleak times as Mark Sutherns used the funds from the Saka sale and brought in Gabriel.
TEMPLATE
Mbeumo and Morgan Gibbs-White (£7.9m) in for Szoboszlai and Saka is the ‘too long didn’t read’ version this week.
I suspect we may see a bit more Aston Villa, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool in the coming weeks and maybe more investment in defence in the likes of Gabriel as the funds are freed up from the midfield.
FOLLOWING THE FIXTURES
Following the fixture ticker has proved less dependable than normal this year, with the promoted teams doing better than expected. Home advantage does not appear as strong, and xG is not always being converted into goals – looking at you, Nottingham Forest, as an extreme example.
So, this week, I have looked at the Premier League team ownership across The Great and The Good squads to see how that compares against the upcoming fixture ticker, to see whether fixtures are being used as a guide.
Well, it appears the managers are happy to ignore the fixtures for now, as ownership in Chelsea, Arsenal, Brighton and Hove Albion and Manchester City remains high despite the mixed run of games ahead. Maybe it’s just because they are good teams.
Is the use of fixtures no longer of value? Well, probably not, although it seems to carry less weight. However, I do expect investment in Aston Villa to rise – Johan Manzambi (£6.0m) is the only representative so far – and also a little more Leeds United, Everton and Bournemouth, with the likes of Muharemovic, Tavernier and James Tarkowski (£6.2m) becoming popular.
CONCLUSION
A stormy week for most, but after a time of template-heavy teams, I do see opportunity ahead, with the funds from the midfield injury crisis and a turn in fixtures giving those brave enough the chance to be a little differential in their picks.
Anyway, that’s all from me for now and remember, don’t have nightmares.
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