“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
I am pretty sure when Ferris Bueller uttered these immortal lines, he had in mind the FPL community and the need to enjoy life and appreciate our starting squads before making knee jerk changes in gameweek 2 of the 2019/20 season. Even if he didn’t the majority of The Great and The Good followed his advice and took the day off with no transfers being made.
Elsewhere in the build-up many of the FPL managers had wished they had not skipped class as the changes to the player price algorithm caused chaos with unexpected early rises for Martial, Ederson and others.
The gameweek started with us googling who Liverpool’s third choice keeper was before a full on Pukki party on Saturday; Sunday saw us ask whether Lundstram was the new Wan-Bissaka before Monday saw us Martialling our thoughts as to whether a wildcard was needed.
As a reminder The Great and The Good are a hand-picked group of FPL celebrities (?), FF Scouts or prominent managers who I will follow to see what we can learn as they navigate their way through the season. They are the Scouts (Mark, Joe, David, Geoff and Neale), FPL “celebrities” (Az, LTFPL Andy, FPL General and Jules Breach) and finally from the Hall of Fame we have Ville Ronka, Matthew Jones and Sean Tobin.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
Back to reality this week with a much lower average score of 41 which all The Great and The Good at least managed to equal.
Neale graduated with honours this gameweek with the highest score of 61 pts with KDB, Digne and Lundstram all with double digit scores. He could even afford to leave Lamela’s 12pts on the bench!
After two weeks Mark is just ahead of the rest, but Joe is just behind along with Sean Tobin, but they all still sit outside the 150,000 rank at this early stage.
Jules sits at 4th amongst The Great and The Good but has the enviable position of having Martial and KDB as others try to jump on those bandwagons.
At the other end of the table you have Geoff, FPL General and Matthew Jones who all sit above the 1 million mark at this very early stage. Geoff and FPL General were particularly unfortunate as they had the swashbuckling blade Lundstram first on their bench.
It also looks like FPL General and Mr Jones have been copying each other’s homework as they have 13 out of 15 of the same players in their squad, I expect that to change next week.
Whilst a good start is important a quick flashback to last year shows that the greatest of The Great and The Good last season Mark was right at bottom after GW1 at a rank of 539,000 before dropping out of the top 1 million up to GW4, so all is not lost!
When it came to captain choice this week the majority went with Mo but there was only one wise guy in Az who borrowed the Ferrari that is Sterling. He repaid his faith and scored a goal whilst Salah was outshone by his partner in crime Mane.
TRANSFERS AND HITS
“Bueller?… Bueller?… Bueller?”
TEMPLATE
The template for The Great and The Good hasn’t changed and looks like this: –
Pope (9) Button (7)
Digne (10) TAA (8) Lundstram (8) Robertson (7) Zinchenko (7)
Salah (12) Sterling (11) Dendonker (8) Perez (7) Moura (4)
Wilson (9) Greenwood (8) Jota (7)
* brackets show number of teams they appear in
I suspect we might see a bit more Pukki, KDB and bit less Liverpool defence in the template next week.
BUDGET SPREAD
Average Cost of Player looks like this across the teams based on week 1 prices: –
GK – 4.3m
DF – 5.6m
MF – 8.7m
FW – 6.6m
The first observation is that investment in the defence has increased from 4.9m at the end of last season to 5.6m with less spent up front. It will be interesting to see if this continues as confidence in the Liverpool defence falters.
Looking across The Great and The Good, Ville Ronka has been the one to embrace the big at the back philosophy averaging at 6m per player. The Finnish enigma has stacked his defence with double Liverpool, Laporte and Digne.
Meanwhile, Joe has been less willing to spend all his cash in his back line with only a 5.1m average. He has stuck to the 4.5m rotating pair of Lowton/Diop and can now, in the short term at least, add Lundstram as a third option.
Meanwhile, Neale has gone for the power five option in midfield with an average of 9.3m with KDB, Sterling, Salah, Perez and Lamela providing the firepower. He must feel pretty pleased with himself to be one of only two of The Great and The Good, along with Jules, to already have KDB in his ranks whilst others consider wildcards to bring in the creator supreme.
David has gone for the cheaper options in midfield with only an average of 8.1 with the likes of Robinson, Trossard and Dendoncker joining the essential Salah/Sterling combination.
He may have saved the pennies in the middle of the park but it’s upfront that David has open his purse strings with an average of 7.8. Joe joins him in this approach and overall appears to have the most balanced squad with players at each price point now allowing him greater flexibility as we enter the GW3 scramble.
CONCLUSION
So, a lack of activity in GW2 for The Great and The Good can only mean plenty of movement going into GW3 but who is priority? Kane, KDB, Son, Martial, Pukki? Who are the players to make way? Is it a fond farewell to Liverpool defender or two, Perez or some of the Bournemouth assets?
There are also some tough decisions to be made as to whether to act in a haste to avoid a price increase/drop or wait patiently to ensure all information is available before these crucial moves.
All I know is that there has never been so much choice and The Great and The Good will have to their wits about them to navigate the GW3 transfer storm. Will any of them press the big red button and wildcard?
Anyway, that’s all from me for now and remember don’t have nightmares.
For those effected by any of the topics raised in the above article they can find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Greyhead19
Likewise, if you want to keep up with the Tweets of The Great and The Good you can find them here
https://twitter.com/FFScout_Geoff
https://twitter.com/matthewpenycae
https://twitter.com/LetsTalk_FPL
https://twitter.com/DavidMunday815
https://twitter.com/ffscout_az
https://twitter.com/FFScout_Joe
https://twitter.com/FPLGeneral
4 years, 8 months agoGreat stuff Greyhead, thank you!
Think despite many have 2FT, we might see some WCs flying around as people try to join Jules with Martial and KDB. Would be interesting to see who they bring in though, might be some punts....