Career Hall of Fame number four Matthew Jones (aka Numb), was the highest scorer in Gameweek 29 with 58 points. His decision to hold onto Tottenham’s Heung-Min Son, a rotation threatened player who managed only 10 minutes of action in Gameweek 28, paid dividends as the South Korean international scored both goals in Spurs’s 2-0 win over Huddersfield. He’s proved to be among the most patient of this elite group so far this season, also keeping hold of Roberto Firmino early on in the campaign when many managers were ditching him.

Matthew moves up to 41,961 overall and overtakes Mark Sutherns (aka Mark) for the first time this season. Matthew’s rise is all the more impressive given that he was ranked close to three million in the early part of the season and was the Top Five wooden spoon holder until Gameweek 15.

That dubious honour now falls to career Hall of Fame number one Peter Kouwenberg (aka My Pretty Pony), who has retaken possession of this unwanted kitchen utensil from career HoF number two Graeme Sumner (aka Gregor).

Peter’s season continues to flatter to deceive; a score of 104 in Gameweek 27 has not been built on, and a meagre 43 points this week sees him slip back to 371,158 place in the overall standings. His decision to buy Tottenham’s Christian Eriksen two Gameweeks ago is yet to pay off – last season’s Midas touch in the transfer market hasn’t been as evident this year. However, with Spurs travelling to Bournemouth in Gameweek 30 – only Watford and Crystal Palace have conceded more goals at home – there’s still hope for Eriksen, and Peter’s FPL fortunes.

Mark only managed a point more than Peter in Gameweek 29, his total of 43 saw him slip to 46,264 in the FPL standings. Players such as Stoke’s Xherdan Shaqiri and Chelsea’s Eden Hazard, who have been doing well for him recently, both blanked. Meanwhile, his early swoop for Everton’s Theo Walcott, who plays in Gameweek 31, has come at a cost. The former Gunners winner failed to convert any of this three chances away to Burnley and also blanked in Gameweek 28, when Mark first brought him in. 

Graeme secured his fourth green arrow in a row, albeit another small one. A score of 52 was enough to climb a modest 2,000 places to 350,413. Clean sheets from his defenders, Manchester City’s Nicolas Otamendi and Liverpool’s Andrew Robertson, were the only real contributions of note aside from a goal scored by his captain, Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah, against Newcastle.

Current Live Hall of Fame leader Jay Egersdorff continues on his own out in the lead, like Graeme he also managed 52 points in Gameweek 29 but in Jay’s case this wasn’t enough for a small ranking boost. His sixth red arrow in a row means he drops to 2,279 overall. Without doubt Jay has lost momentum. Recent transfers, such as picking Stoke’s Joe Allen instead of teammate Shaqiri in Gameweek 25, have seen him miss out on crucial points.

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 260pts between rank 1 and rank 100k but only 131pts between 100k and 1m. The graph gives an idea of how difficult it is to move up the ranks as you near the summit.

Looking at the graph it’s interesting that the biggest gains were made from Gameweeks 6 to 16. Logic would normally tell us that the more information you have the better decisions you make, therefore you might expect Gameweeks 17 to 29 to have seen the biggest improvements. That ranks have either decreased or slowed their rate of improvement over the latter period, perhaps tells us something about how tricky this season has been.

CAPTAIN

In the end, the armband decision between Kane and Salah was much of a muchness – only three points difference. The real question is – will we ever be able to trust Mark again when he tells us his captain choice?

After seemingly learning from his mistake to switch the armband at the last minute from Salah to Kane in Gameweek 28 – and assuring us on last week’s Scoutcast that this week he would definitely captain the Egyptian for only the second time this season – he changed his mind again.

In his preamble to Gameweek 29, Mark used the ‘floor and ceiling’ theory to hint at a possible armband switch.

Captaining Salah feels like we guarantee a high floor. Our minimum score is raised, and we protect our rank, ensuring that any drop should be minor.

Yet a Kane mega haul feels just around the corner – his ceiling is higher than Salah’s. For a striker who was so deadly last season – exceeding his Expect Goals total by 10 – there will surely come a week when he gets his mega haul.

Perhaps Mark simply lives in fear of missing out on big hauls, as he told us in his Gameweek 20 preamble:

I like to think of myself as a “maverick” Fantasy manager, but in reality, I’m just a scaredy cat. I live in dread of the big haul players.

Having backed Kane with the armband 18 times this season will Mark’s pursuit of a Kane mega haul ever be rewarded? Or are we witnessing a perfect example of gambler’s fallacy?

For all the flak he received, Mark wasn’t alone in his last minute change of heart from Salah to Kane. Peter was another who in midweek seemed set on making Liverpool’s scoring sensation his captain, as he revealed on the Fantasy Football Surgery podcast, only to eventually succumb to the lure of a Kane haul. Great minds think alike?

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

Kane is the most popular having been chosen 46% of the time followed by Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah on 18%. However it is the Egyptian who has proven a more reliable captain choice than the erratic Englishman – his 18.3 point return compares favourably to Kane’s 11.8 points.

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

Manchester United’s Romelu Lukaku, Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling and Chelsea’s Eden Hazard complete the most popular captain picks. Lukaku has been chosen 15% of the time and averages 14.2 points as captain, Sterling has been chosen 6% of the time and Hazard 5%. Hazard averages 14.5 points, while Sterling averages an impressive 24.9 points.

TRANSFERS

TRANSFER SUCCESS – GAMEWEEK 29

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.

Remarkably, as we enter Gameweek 30, Matthew is on minus 11 immediate transfer points after hits. Jay’s transfer market prowess also took a hit, after he transferred out  Lewis Dunk and missed the Brighton defender’s first goal of he season.

It’s not quite true to say that if Matthew had made no transfers all season that he would be in a better position, but if he’d made the majority of his transfers a week or two later he may well be better off. This suggests that this patient manager could have benefitted from being even more relaxed in the transfer market. 

Does this prove that immediate transfer points aren’t that important? It’s not as if Matthew or Jay (17 immediate transfer points after hits) are having poor seasons. Why are managers so bad at timing their transfers this year?

COMPARING LAST SEASON TO THIS SEASON

Comparing last season’s Top Five to this season’s Top Five reveals some interesting trends.

Managers are scoring more points but have significantly worse ranks than last season.

The average total points for this season is 52 points up. Yet the higher points total has not translated into better ranks, in fact the average rank is three times worse than it was at the same stage last year (162,415 vs 46,735).

Bearing in mind the ranking graph earlier in the article, which showed that the ranks for our Top Five have been fairly stagnant since Gameweek 17, and it really is an odd season.

These elite managers are faced with the strange sensation of their team scoring well but not making significant progress up the leaderboard. With a number of players scoring points, managers appear to be finding it difficult to identify the right players to sell. In recent weeks players such as Manchester United’s Jesse Lingard, City’s Nicolas Otamendi, or Tottenham’s Heung-Min Son, have all scored well after being sold.

Sometimes it even defies logic. For instance Arsenal were seen as a difficult fixture for Brighton – before the game the Seagulls hadn’t beaten a team in the Premier League’s top six. Not only that but Lewis Dunk, a player with four own-goals so far this season, wasn’t thought of as a likely source of points. Yet Brighton win and Dunk scores.

The average points gained from immediate transfers after hits last season was 175, compared to 26 this season. The difference is huge from nearly the same number of transfers – 36 this year vs 39 last. Why is this?

Are a lot of players are scoring well this year – including those just sold – meaning that the transfer points gain is lower as a result? Are the players we bring in not performing in the fixtures we expect them to?

FPL & LIVE HOF BATTLES

In recent articles I singled out a few players that I thought presented Jay with his stiffest competition for the actual FPL crown. As it stands Jay’s form since his season high of 48th overall in Gameweek 16 means he is unlikely to make up the 150 point gap to first place. Nine red arrows in the eleven gameweeks is not the form of champions.

One manager who is in with a realistic chance of claiming the title is Matt Kearney (aka Bøwstring the Carp). However, disappointing returns from Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero and Everton’s Theo Walcott in Gameweek 29 mean Matt slipped slightly from sixth to 10th place overall. The gap to overall leader Bharat Dhody, increased to 38 points.

For those interested to hear about Matt’s stellar season so far, this evening he will be joining Andy (aka andy85wsm) on a live stream from 9:30pm GMT. There’s also an interview I conducted with Matt you can read on FFScout.

David Isaac, who like Matt has one top 1,000 finish in the last three seasons, enjoyed a decent Gameweek. David had Son to thank for his brace against the Terriers, which helped him move up to 93rd overall with a score of 64 points. 

Jay’s closest rivals in the Live Hall of Fame both managed to end their recent runs of red arrows in Gameweek 29. Current Live Hall of Fame number two Grant Barclay (aka Jake Donahue), another manager to own Son, bounced back up to 1,419 overall matching David’s score of 64. While former Hall of Fame number one Ville Ronka moved up to 2,900 with a score of 63.

Ville, who does not own Son, had a couple of decent differentials in the shape of Swansea’s Jordan Ayew and Leicester’s Riyad Mahrez. Ville is now only six points behind Jay in FPL.

To add to the stats provided by Ragabolly in his excellent article published yesterday, according to Premier Fantasy Tools in the top 5,000 FPL managers there are only 1,608 (32%) with all their chips intact. Meaning their second Wildcard, Bench Boost, Free Hit and Triple Captain chips are all still at their disposal.

Therefore a significant number of managers in Top 5,000 – nearly 68% – have already played one of their chips. A staggering 2,823 managers (56%) have played their second Wildcard; 1,930 managers (39%) have played their Free Hit; 1,639 managers (33%) have played their Triple Captain chip; and 984 managers (20%) have played their Bench Boost.

A number of these managers will have played more than one chip, for instance 1,024 managers (21%) have played both their 2nd Wildcard and Free Hit chip; and 845 managers (17%) have played their Free Hit and Triple Captain chips.

To summarise, there remain big opportunities for managers who have saved their chips to make significant inroads up the overall rankings by using their chips effectively.

TEMPLATE – Gameweek 29

Players in Bold are in 3 teams or more

Speroni, AN Other

Alonso, Ogbonna, Van Dijk, Mee, Chilwell

Salah, Sterling, Shaqiri, Walcott, Lingard

Kane, Firmino, Wilson

PLAYERS – Gameweek 29

AVERAGE COST PER PLAYER

*based on GW1 prices

Goalkeeper – £4.4m

Defender – £5.2m

Midfielder – £7.7m

Forward – £9.1m

In The Bank (ITB) – £0.5

FORMATION

Raheem Sterling’s absence from the Manchester City teamsheet on Sunday caused formation changes for four of our managers.

Bournemouth’s Callum Wilson came in for both Peter and Matthew, altering their original formations from 4-4-2 and 3-5-2 respectively. Whereas for Graeme, Chelsea’s Marcos Alonso emerged from his bench to alter his original 3-5-2 formation.

In Jay’s side Sterling was replaced by Crystal Palace’s James McArthur, who, if he could have connected with Sørloth’s cross towards the end of Palace’s encounter with Manchester United, may have had more than just his two appearance points. Jay’s formation also switched from 3-5-2.

Over the season 3-4-3 is the most frequently used FPL set-up and has been chosen 48% of the time, with 3-5-2 second on 28%.

GAMEWEEK 31 PLAYERS

Currently Matthew is in the best position to get 11 players out in Gameweek 31 without taking a hit. What’s even more impressive is that Matthew has managed to keep players such as Son, a player without a game in Gameweek 31, while effectively building towards the blank gameweek, for instance buying Shaqiri in Gameweek 25.

Despite scoring the most points out of our Elite Quintet in the five Gameweeks since Gameweek 25, Matthew questioned this week whether he had chosen the correct strategy. By planning for the blank Gameweek early, and deciding to save his Free Hit chip, has he missed out on points by ignoring some players without a game in 31?

Mark revealed on last night’s Scoutcast that he will be bringing in Liverpool’s Roberto Firmino to join teammates Salah and Mané in his side ahead of Gameweek 31. Although this is not a move he is going to make this week, with Liverpool away to Manchester United. This week he will be bringing in Huddersfield defender Christopher Schindler for Toffees defender Jonjoe Kenny, who has dropped to the Everton bench after the return to fitness of Seamus Coleman.

Mark also defended the potential of Everton’s Theo Walcott to deliver over the next two gameweeks, while highlighting emerging Gameweek 31 players such as Bournemouth’s Josh King, and Crystal Palace’s Christian Benteke; two players who could do well in their respective fixtures vs West Brom and Huddersfield that week.