Top 5 Career Hall of Fame -Gameweek 24 Review

The red arrows were out in force for in Gameweek 24 for our elite quintet, who all opted to ignore  Sergio Aguero, who scored a hat trick against Newcastle.

Emerging with the least damage are Mark Sutherns (aka Mark) and Career Hall of Fame number one Peter Kouwenberg (aka My Pretty Pony). Mark’s new signing Leicester’s Jamie Vardy contributed a welcome nine points to his total of 54, while Peter is once again grateful for the same tally from Manchester United’s Phil Jones. Peter’s total of 53 is enough to elevate him out of the wooden spoon position going into Gameweek 25.

Taking over possession of this unwanted item of cutlery is Graeme Sumner (aka Gregor). Swansea’s surprise victory over Liverpool meant Reds fan Graeme was dealt the double blow of seeing this team lose and his Fantasy captain, Mohamed Salah, fail. The Egyptian blanked for the first time since Gameweek 17 as Graeme mustered a meagre 35 points. He slips to 379,698 overall.

Live Hall of Fame leader Jay Egersdorff dropped to 686 in the overall standings following a Gameweek score of 47. His charges failed to fire with only two assists and a single goal between them. He now has red flags to two of his West Ham players – Marko Arnautovic and Arthur Masuaku – to contend with.

Interestingly Jay mentioned in his preview video for Gameweek 25 that he is unlikely to transfer out Masuaku despite his six match ban. He reasoned that there are other transfers that will make more points, as he again espouses the notion that managers should focus on high value players for greater points returns – could we be about to witness Kanexit part 2?

Completing the picture in our top five is Matthew Jones (aka Numb). A weekly score of 46 saw the Welshman drop to 38,747 overall. He successfully used the funds he had in the bank to upgrade Newcastle’s Chancel Mbemba to Chelsea’s Marcos Alonso, as he shifts funds into defence following the sale of Tottenham’s Dele Alli in Gameweek 23.

This article focuses on the moves and strategies employed by the five elite managers who grace the upper echelons of this site’s Career Hall of Fame. Between them these managers have achieved nine top 1,000 finishes in the past three seasons and have ended up in the top 10,000 a whopping 37 times over the course of their FPL careers.

To help out I have also deployed Fusen’s FPL Statistico tool to gain an extra insight into their thinking.

POINTS & RANK

The graph below shows the ranks of the top five managers over the season so far. The vertical scale is from rank 1 to 3m. The distance between the ranks corresponds to the number of points separating them. For instance there are 263pts between rank 1 and rank 100k but only 114pts between 100k and 1m. The graph gives an idea of how difficult it is to move up the ranks as you near the summit.

CAPTAIN

So far this season nine different players have been handed the armband by our Top Five.

Kane is the most popular having been chosen 51% of the time followed by Manchester United’s Romelu Lukaku on 18%. Lukaku hasn’t been chosen as captain since Graeme picked him in Gameweek 13. However his impressive early season form means he has proven a more reliable captain choice than the erratic Kane – the Belgian averages a 14.2 point return compared to Kane’s 11.9 points.

In the graphic below I’ve displayed this information for the five most popular captain picks.

Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah, Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling and Chelsea’s Eden Hazard complete the most popular captain picks. Salah has been chosen 11% of the time and averages 16.9 points as captain, Sterling has been chosen 6% of the time and Hazard 5%. Hazard averages 14.8 points, while Sterling averages an impressive 24.9 points.

TRANSFERS

TRANSFER SUCCESS – GAMEWEEK 24

TRANSFER SUCCESS – SEASON SO FAR

Caveats to this table:

• It doesn’t reflect that Transfers aren’t made with only one fixture in mind
• It doesn’t reflect when Patience in an underperforming player finally pays off
• Points from newly transferred in players left on the bench are included.
• Players transferred in and captained have their points counted double.

The table makes odd reading this season. Not only are the Top Five doing much worse when it comes to immediate transfer points but wooden spoon holder Graeme leads the way.

Graeme has successfully gained 77 points after factoring in the cost of his hits, a full 60 points better than Jay. Yet Graeme’s total is well below last season’s average for the Top Five, which in Gameweek 24 stood at a mighty 179 points. The average for this season is only 27 points.

It is exactly a year on from Peter’s excellent 42 point haul as he transferred in and captained then Everton player Romelu Lukaku for his four goal return against a hapless Bournemouth. It was a move which saw Peter enter the top 10,000 for the first time in 2016/17. He has been much less successful with his transfers this season.

Is it fair to compare Peter’s purchase of Lukaku last season to his oversight of Aguero this season? Last season he was ahead of the curve and anticipating which players were about to do well, this season is a rather different story.

Although it seems unfair to single out Peter as he is clearly not the worst performer. That honour goes to Matthew, who at nearly two thirds of the way through the season has yet to turn a profit on his immediate transfer points.

JAY’S COMPETITION

Last week I singled out a few players that I thought presented Jay with his stiffest competition for the actual FPL crown. They are all faired rather better than Jay in Gameweek 24, who dropped from 399th place to 686th.

David Isaac moved up slightly to 101st overall and is 34 points ahead of Jay. Matt Kearney (aka Bøwstring the Carp) is now 84 points ahead of Jay after making Aguero his captain. Matt’s up to ninth overall.

Current Live Hall of Fame number two Grant Barclay (aka Jake Donahue) has overtaken Jay in the FPL standings and is now six points ahead of him. While Ville Ronka, currently third in the Live HoF, remains 35 points behind Jay in FPL.

TEMPLATE – Gameweek 24

Players in Bold are in three teams or more

Speroni, AN Other

Alonso, Christensen, Ogbonna, Otamendi, Dunk

Salah, Sterling, Lingard, Arnautovic, Son

Kane, Firmino, Quaner / Calvert-Lewin

PLAYERS – Gameweek 24

AVERAGE COST PER PLAYER

*based on GW1 prices

Goalkeeper – £4.4m

Defender – £5.2m

Midfielder – £7.7m

Forward – £8.6m

In The Bank (ITB) – £1.0

FORMATION

The most popular formation this week was 3-5-2, it is the second most frequently chosen over the course of season on 28%. 3-4-3 is the most frequently used FPL set-up and has been chosen 48% of the time.

Jay began with a 3-5-2 formation as well, however, the absence of Tottenham’s Christian Eriksen saw his formation switch to 4-4-2. The Dane was replaced by Burnley’s Ben Mee.

GAMEWEEK 24 – FORECAST

According to Granville on this week’s Scoutcast Mark is considering captain Kane, and possibly double up on Leicester players with the purchase of Riyad Mahrez.  It remains to be seen whether he will go through with either of these given the lure of Salah as arguably a better armband candidate against Huddersfield, and speculation that the Foxes’ playmaker is wanted by Manchester City.

Marko Arnautovic is now owned by all of our Top Five, and most will no doubt be looking to move him on.

Jay presented a few options in his preview video for Gameweek 25.  Stoke’s Xherdan Shaqiri was the first name he mentioned as a possible replacement. He thinks new manager Paul Lambert sees the Swiss international as the best player in the team and will look to bring the best out of him. Teammate Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting presents a slightly cheaper alternative at £5.4.

Another option Jay highlighted was Leicester player Marc Albrighton. Clearly Leicester’s form and decent run of fixtures – with Manchester City and Arsenal their only top six opponents until the last week of the season – is proving alluring for our Elite managers.