Learning from The Great and The Good: Gameweek 31

“I’m a survivor, I’m gonna make it. I will survive, keep on survivin’.”

Survival was the name of the game for this week with the blank leading to multiple hits, low scores and some managers considering unusual options such as a West Ham double defence.

The majority of The Great and The Good seem set on the FH32 strategy so their picks also had to consider the overlooked blank of GW33. The triple captain chip was also being considered by many with the choice of Salah and Mane against a struggling Fulham.

We also had our weekly dose of injury speculation and an unhealthy obsession with training photos pictures as managers fretted over Mane, Fraser, Arnie to name a few.

So, who are The Great and The Good? They are Jay Egersdorff, Ville Ronka, The Scout-casters (Joe, Andy, Az, David, Granville and Mark), Eliteserien’s expert Niemi and the last man standing Torres Magic.

OVERALL PERFORMANCE

It was a challenging game week for many with much faith being put in Bournemouth, Chelsea and of course Mo Salah to deliver big returns.

We saw a sea of red arrows for The Great and The Good with only David and Granville managing to make any progress. It is perhaps telling that these two managers minimized the risk this week, only taking the one hit whilst others went as far as -12 to get a decent side out.

Granville was the top scorer with 47 points thanks to his Mane captaincy and Rondón who now appears to have free kicks in his locker. This was a big swing for the original FPL maverick as at the other end of the spectrum we saw Torres Magic and Mark on 16 and 20 after hits.

Jay was another to take a 12-point hit and had the biggest drop this week falling 60,000 places to take him outside the top 500,000.

TRANSFERS AND HITS

This is a summary of the transfers for this week:

Andy – Maddison, Wilson, Maguire (Puncheon, Aguero, Schlinder)

Az – Luiz, Hazard, Wilson (Shaw, Sterling, Jiménez)

David – Hazard, Fraser, Luiz (Son, Pogba, Doherty)

Granville – Rice, Wilson, Hazard (Bennett, Aguero, Son)

Jay – Luiz, Fraser, Mané, Wilson, Boruc (Doherty, Sterling, Son, Kamara, Button)

Joe – Wilson, Hazard, Azpilicueta (Aguero, Wan-Bissaka, Pogba)

Mark – Wilson, Van Dijk, Brooks, Vardy (Rashford, Bednarek, Sterling, Jiménez)

Niemi – Wilson, Vardy, Hazard, H.Barnes (Rashford, Aguero, Pogba, Kennedy)

Torres Magic – Hazard, Fraser, Wilson (Sterling, Son, Jiménez)

Ville Ronka – Luiz, Maddison (Son, Bednarek)

*transfers out are in brackets

Hits galore this week with everyone looking to maximize coverage across the wafer-thin fixture list.

Over the season Ville Ronka has been the most cautious only taking 3 hits all season but even he decided to take the minus four which proved a smart move with Maddison being one of the highest scorers in the game week.

Andy was the other manager to benefit from the Leicester playmaker but his net score from his overall eight-point hit was unfortunately zero. This was not helped by Maguire’s early bath leading to a minus two.

Little surprise to see Mark and Jay topping the hit parade with a dirty dozen hit, in fact Mr Egersdorff made five transfers in a dramatic attempt to gain ground. Captain Hindsight would suggest he should only have made one of those five and limited himself to bringing in the free scoring Mane for Sterling.

TEMPLATE

After those transfers the template now looks like this:

Fabianski, Patricio/Boruc/Guaita/Hamer

Wan-Bissaka, Robertson, Doherty, Periera, Luiz

Anderson, Salah, Pogba, Hazard, Mané

Jiménez, Barnes, Wilson

The bleak landscape of GW31 clearly had big impact on the template with changes across all positions.

We said goodbye to Button, TAA, Son and Aguero and waved hello to Boruc, Luiz, Hazard and Wilson. Unfortunately, the template was malfunctioning this week with none of the newbies delivering returns.

TEAM INVESTMENT AND VALUE 

Average Cost of Player looks like this across the teams based on week 1 prices.

Goalkeeper – 4.4

Defender – 5.0

Midfielder – 8.9

Forward – 6.5

ITB – 2.6

The unique conditions of the blank led to a shift towards the defence with many hopeful of clean sheet returns. The popular move was for David Luiz but unfortunately the Chelsea rear-guard let many a manager down this week.

The rise of the funds ITB is more a reflection of the unfashionable players being considered during such a sparse game week.

Team value is now seems to be considered less important as we come to the end of the season and in total these managers have lost 6.4 million over the last four game weeks. David who has taken a more cautious approach this year lost 1.2 m just this week with Pogba and Doherty, his prized assets, being liquidated.

FORMATION AND BENCH 

Formation was just an afterthought with most struggling to get a team out for the weekend but for those keeping count 3-4-3 was the preferred option with five out of ten managers choosing the default option.

There was no bench to speak of this week, but I am sad to report bench wizardry was again evident with Andy the biggest culprit with four coming off the magic plank. Clearly, all the hits, misses, automatic substitutions had such an impact on the FPL record keepers that it crashed the much-loved live rank site.

CAPTAIN AND DIFFERENTIALS 

I think enough time has passed that I can mention Mo who again caused angst, frustration for the majority who trusted him with the armband. I can only feel for those that triple captained Salah they must have been rocking back and forth, gibbering to themselves by the end of the Fulham match.

Fortunately, none of The Great and The Good played their triple captain but all but one put the armband on the Egyptian miss-man. Granville was the only one who sensibly backed the in form Mané. Salah remains the most popular captain over the season at 43% but I would imagine his appeal will drop after another disappointing performance.

CONCLUSION 

After plenty of planning and preparation for this blank the results were disappointing but GW32 brings a great opportunity to reverse those fortunes.

Free hits and Wildcards are in hand for all for The Great and The Good, so this will be a critical international break as they weigh up their options for what could be a key week in determining what they will hope to be a bootylicious final ranking.

Anyway, that’s all from me for now and remember don’t have nightmares.