Singapore-based manager Ricky Mansukh was the winner of the 2018/19 Fantasy Premier League Cup.
The competition is a curious sideshow to the main event in FPL and arguably trickier to win, in that it relies a lot on the luck of the draw (as well as consistent performances) and less on medium-to-long-term strategies – one poor Gameweek or freakishly high score from an opponent and that’s that.
With the tournament starting in Gameweek 17 and initially comprising of
4,194,304 Fantasy managers, many of us will depart the FPL Cup long before we reach the final weeks of the season and greet the exit with a shrug of the shoulders.
Very few (if any) of us set out the season to win the thing, instead concentrating on our mini-leagues or overall ranks.
Even last year’s winner, Nick Smith, said he didn’t particularly pay attention to the cup “until the last 64 or 32”.
To reach the latter stages of the tournament and get that close to winning the FPL Cup must be a tantalising prospect, though, and a distraction from the bread-and-butter of the Fantasy Premier League game – perhaps a conflicting one if mini-leagues or a top 100k/10k/1k finish are also objectives.
This year’s finalists had some pedigree, with each finishing not far off the top 1,000.
Ricky, indeed, had previously registered an excellent overall rank of 911th in 2012/13.
His team, FC Rickochet, saw off Mithun Majithia’s Meefs Majic 78-60 in this year’s showdown.
The two finalists shared several players for their end-of-season clash.
Both players captained Sergio Aguero and banked 15-point returns fromTrent Alexander-Arnold and Sadio Mane.
The two managers also brought in Jamie Vardy ahead of the stalemate at the King Power.
Ricky’s victory owed a debt to ten-point hauls from both Nathan Redmond and Wilfried Zaha.
The two managers each had to defeat 21 managers to get to the Gameweek 38 final, with Ricky progressing on seven occasions with a winning margin of fewer than five points.
Mithun had fewer close shaves but did qualify in Gameweek 34 by virtue of goals scored, having drawn his round-of-16 tie.
A very well done to both managers.
4 years, 11 months ago
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