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FFS Mini-Leagues & Community Competitions Gameweek 11

Welcome to the latest round-up of the Fantasy Football Scout mini-leagues and community competitions, covering Gameweek 11 in FPL, Gameweek 27 in Fantasy Eliteserien, and the final Gameweek in Fantasy Allsvenskan.

Congratulations to Daniel Sebestyen and Jan Inge Nordby who finished second and third overall in Fantasy Allsvenskan. And very well done to Henrik Mäkitalo who held on for a top-ten spot as the Swedish football season drew to a close. More on their achievements later in the article.

Head-to-Head Leagues

A narrow 1-point win for Craig Johnson (aka Bouncebackability) takes him clear at the top of the FFS Head-to-Head leagues.

A goal for Çaglar Söyüncü wasn’t quite enough for Harry Vernon to turn the tie in his favour as League 1-leader Craig held on. A 12-point haul from Sadio Mané and a clean sheet from Mat Ryan proving the difference.


Level on points with Craig last week, Owen Walker (aka Zan Scott Talent) fell to a comprehensive 84 to 51 defeat to fellow Aussie B.J. McNair, League 1’s highest-scoring manager in Gameweek 11.

Ben, a member of the FPL Experts Panel and frequent Twitter poster, has six top-10,000 finishes. Half of his impressive Gameweek total comes from defenders Lundstram,  Söyüncü, and Alexander-Arnold; and is boosted by two 12-point returns from Mané and Abraham.

Moving ahead of Owen on rank-difference are Simon Vazquez and callum croal. Callum has only been defeated once this season – the fewest losses in League 1 – but has dropped six points from three draws. 


After eleven Gameweeks just four of the 5,983 managers in the Head-to-Head Leagues maintain 100% winning records.

Pavle Ziman has a perfect 33 points out of 33 in League 6 Division 5 following a 68 to 51 victory. While in League 8 unblemished starts belong to Ammar Mirza in Division 26, Vladimir Stojiljkovic in Division 77 and Adam Hardwidge in Division 110.

At 212th overall, Dan Bowen has the best rank of any manager in the Head-to-Head leagues. 

As with previous top-ranked managers Thomas Saelen in Gameweek 8 and David Hurley last week, Dan is not leading his division. He trails both Wayne Woods and Amismaly Sb in Division 8 of League 7 despite being over 110 FPL points ahead of them. 

The good news for Dan is that both Thomas and David have since moved to the top of their divisions.

Thomas is now two points clear in Division 102 in League 8 after second-placed Lee Murphy (aka CroatianHammer) drew 74-74 with third-placed Satyam Kumar. While David leads Division 60 of League 7 on rank difference after Brain Doyle lost a high-scoring match 86-75 to Harrison Valter.

A fixtures table will be published in the Scout’s Guide to Gameweek 12 later this week. However, if you would like to find out who you are playing next before then, follow this link. Use your browser’s find in page function (Ctrl+F) to locate managers. All this information and more is contained in the main Head-to-Head page.

And over the international break Mark Reynolds (aka MIR), creator of the Head-to-Head Leagues, will share his thoughts on the season so far.

Fantasy Football Scout Mini-Leagues

Mohammad Hafiz Emran retakes the lead in our Fantasy Football Scout mini-league after successfully swapping Chelsea players with Mount departing for Pulisic.

Last week’s leader Mark May drops to seventh. Although he’s just seven points behind Mohammad in a tightly-packed tussle at the top: 10 points separate the leading ten managers.

There are currently 43,651 people participating in the Fantasy Football Scout mini-league, to join them enter code ooyz44 in your Leagues’ section on the FPL site

In second spot for the last two Gameweeks, Martin Dixon hits the top of our FFS Members mini-league as previous leader Luke Macbeth drops to fifth. 

Martin made two free transfers with Mendy and Jiménez joining in place of Digne and Pukki. However it was his Gameweek 10 move of Söyüncü for Otamendi that brought him the biggest return. In total Martin gained 44 points from his three defenders in Gameweek 11.

Martin is in his seventh FPL season and has two previous top-6,000 finishes.

The code to join the FFS Members League can be found on the Members page

Community Mini-Leagues and Competitions

In TorresMagic’s Last Man Standing the safety score for Gameweek 11 was 50 points, which saw 194 managers eliminated. The threshold for elimination remains at 7% for Gameweek 12.

2,436 managers have departed the competition so far with 2,467 left to battle it out for the coveted title of Last Man Standing.

It is still possible to join them: entries will be accepted over the international break – use the code bcvy39 in your Leagues’ section on the FPL site. However you must pass all the previous safety scores to qualify. There will be further opportunities to join up until Gameweek 22.

Aside from bragging rights, the winner will receive a free Fantasy Football Scout Membership for the 2020/21 season.

In the Pundit’s Play-Off Community Tournament WhenTheOWENgetsTough move to the top of the leaderboard after MatchWeek 3. They are one of only two teams to remain undefeated in the competition along with The Keane Fifteen

B Bodega: Holly’s Hamster will bring us a full review of MatchWeek 3 later this week, no doubt he’s delighted that his side picked up their first win of the season. 

Neale Rigg (aka SkontoRigga) now leads the FFS Mods & Cons mini-league outright despite a captaincy failure with Sterling. Andy Goddard (aka Andy G) drops to fourth despite a captaincy success with Vardy. Captain points aren’t everything!

Nonetheless Neale has done enough in recent weeks to earn the nickname “Mystic Rigg”: he correctly anticipated returns for Ben Chilwell and Harvey Barnes after pointing out a weakness in Southampton’s right flank before Leicester’s 9-0 win, and ahead of Gameweek 11 he highlighted an aerial vulnerability in Aston Villa’s defence that he felt Sadio Mane could exploit. Right again.

Elsewhere, Steve Horan (aka FPL Fairy) is second – a position he held earlier in the season – despite also captaining Sterling. While Scoutcaster Luke Williams (aka D1sable) made the bold move of taking a 12-point hit in order to Triple Captain Sterling. Painful. 

Although there was an element of good fortune for Luke as new-signing Cancelo played no part in Manchester City’s win over Southampton, meaning Lundstram emerged from his bench. His 21 points helped ease the pain of the Triple Captain fail, giving Luke a Gameweek score of 80 and a 312k rank jump from 1,416k to 1,104k.

After dropping to sixth last week, Mark Taylor has bounced back to regain the lead from John Holmes in RedLightning’s Top 10k Any Season mini-league.

Mark took a 4-point hit and captained Aguero for an impressive Gameweek score of 97. However he also benefited from Pep’s unpredictable team selection gaining Soyuncu’s 14 points from his bench as Mahrez missed out.

Mark is now back in the overall top thousand in 391st position. It continues to be a really exciting and close contest between Mark and John in this mini-league.

Managers with a top 10k finish may join the league using the code m0tq9y.

FFS Pro Pundit Tom Freeman is the new leader of Chaballer’s Top 1,000 HoF League as Ómar Olgeirsson moves back into second place.

Tom, who has an incredible five top 1,000 finishes in ten seasons of playing FPL, moved into first place despite picking up only 7 points from this four midfielders. 

In common with many people this Gameweek it was his defenders who scored heavily. In addition to Lundstram and Alexander-Arnold, Tom had Martín Montoya – owned by less than 1% of FPL managers – to thank as the Brighton full-back contributed 12 points to his score.

Tom is ninth in the Career Hall of Fame with Ómar in 486th place. Managers in the top 1,000 of the Career HoF may enter the league using the code beeps2.

An excellent Gameweek score of 72 from 2016/17 FPL winner Ben Crabtree saw him increase his lead to 39 points at the top of the exclusive FPL Champions League. And it could have been even better for Ben who sold Maddison for Martial ahead of the Gameweek deadline.

2017/18 champion Yusuf Sheikh reclaimed second place from FFS ProPundit and 2014/15 FPL winner Simon March. If Ben was feeling sore about selling Maddison, imagine how Yusuf felt leaving 21-point defender Lundstram on his bench. Ouch!

Eliteserien and Allsvenskan

Svein Johansen’s lead is reduced to a single point at the top of the FFS Eliteserien mini-league with Gameweek-22 leader Thomas Wickstrøm hot on his heels.

There are very few differences between the two teams, and in Round 27 a welcome 10 points from Zlatko Tripić gave Thomas the edge over Svein.

Svein is in 18th place overall, 62 points behind Håvard Gustad in the battle to be crowned Fantasy Eliteserien champion. Håvard has led for ten of the last eleven Gameweeks. And with three rounds to go has an 11-point advantage over Trond Bildøy in second.

Daniel Sebestyen won the FFS Allsvenskan mini-league and finished an impressive second overall, having briefly led two Gameweeks ago. Jan Inge Nordby pushed him all the way closing to within three points. Jan ended the season second in the FFS mini-league and third overall.

And well done to both Henrik Mäkitalo and Simon Eriksson, who came third and fourth in the FFS mini-league. Henrik also claimed a place in the top ten overall, finishing in eighth, while Simon narrowly missed out – dropping from 10th to 14th on the final day.

Tobias Wahlström is crowned Fantasy Allsvenskan champion as Daniel’s challenge finally petered out despite a valiant effort to usurp Tobias on the final day.

Using his two free transfers, Daniel brought in Johan Dahlin for Peter Abrahamsson – a four point gain – and Arnor Ingvi Traustason for Sead Haksabanovic – no net gain as both players returned eight points. In the end it wasn’t quite enough and Tobias won by nine points.

Huge thanks to Meltens for his insights and enthusiasm throughout the year, the final word belongs to him:

Great representation for the FFS league overall with OR2, 3, 8, 14 all part of the league. Hope to see us build upon this season and have an even bigger community ahead of next season! Big props to everyone who’s contributed throughout the year and huge congratulations from me to Daniel, Jan, Henrik and Simon who should feel very proud of their achievements!

Submissions

If you are running a community competition and would like the latest scores included in future Round-ups, please email us a summary of the current leaders and a link to your league, spreadsheet or head-to-head competition to geoff@fantasyfootballscout.co.uk

Thank you to RedLightning, TorresMagic, Meltens, and TallestJohn for their contributions to this article.

TopMarx Fan of Fantasy Football and Monty Python. "Archimedes out to Socrates, Socrates back to Archimedes, Archimedes out to Heraclitus, he beats Hegel. Heraclitus a little flick, here he comes on the far post, Socrates is there, Socrates heads it in! Socrates has scored! The Greeks are going mad, the Greeks are going mad! Socrates scores, got a beautiful cross from Archimedes. The Germans are disputing it. Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside. Follow them on Twitter

24 Comments Post a Comment
  1. mir
    • 14 Years
    4 years, 4 months ago

    Cheers TopMarx for the H2H write up. Yes, I'm aiming to write a full report on all 8 leagues next week.

    1. Yank Revolution
      • 12 Years
      4 years, 4 months ago

      I've had the worst luck in League 3/Division 3....so many close losses and Im stuck in last.

    2. TopMarx
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • Has Moderation Rights
      • 11 Years
      4 years, 4 months ago

      Looking forward to it 🙂

  2. CroatianHammer
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 8 Years
    4 years, 4 months ago

    A hefty push is required... I thought I had the 10-1 in the bag but Vardy not getting that 1BP cost me.

    My team is more or less set for the coming weekend. I'm confident. A strong group of hardy footballers. A rag tag bunch. An A-Team if you will...

    1. TopMarx
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • Has Moderation Rights
      • 11 Years
      4 years, 4 months ago

      Nonetheless a great start with only that one defeat. Good luck this week

  3. Boris Bodega
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 8 Years
    4 years, 4 months ago

    Thanks as always for the mention TopMarx, much appreciated

    1. Sreeraj (TKF 15)
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • 8 Years
      4 years, 4 months ago

      waiting for your article! Great job on the live tracking and Main pundits sheet

  4. RedLightning
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • Has Moderation Rights
    • 13 Years
    4 years, 4 months ago

    After having another look at the leadership changes in the Fantasy Football Scout and FFS Members mini-leagues, I see that both of the previous leaders actually lost their leads because, unlike most of their rivals, they both left Lord Lundstram on the bench.

    Big red arrows for most managers who failed to profit from Lundstram's points!

    1. RedLightning
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • Has Moderation Rights
      • 13 Years
      4 years, 4 months ago

      And Andy Goddard also lost the joint lead in Mods & Cons as a result of not even owning Lundstram.

    2. TopMarx
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • Has Moderation Rights
      • 11 Years
      4 years, 4 months ago

      Should Lundstram be a permanent starter?... I always planned to bench him for Spurs away but not so sure now.

      1. RedLightning
        • Fantasy Football Scout Member
        • Has Moderation Rights
        • 13 Years
        4 years, 4 months ago

        See below.

  5. RedLightning
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • Has Moderation Rights
    • 13 Years
    4 years, 4 months ago

    Sheffield have only conceded 3 goals in their last 7 Premier League matches, and that includes matches against Liverpool (to whom they only lost 0-1) and Arsenal (whom they beat 1-0).
    During that period, besides keeping 4 clean sheets, Lundstram also scored 2 goals and 1 assist and was awarded 6 bonus points.
    He rarely scores less than 2 points, often more, and sometimes a lot more.
    Meanwhile, Spurs have only kept one clean sheet all season and lost without scoring against both Newcastle and Brighton.

    Lundstram is currently a permanent starter for me, though this may change if his form deteriorates so much that there are 3 other players classified as defenders who are in better form.

    1. jtreble
      • 7 Years
      4 years, 4 months ago

      +1. It’s an incredible system Wilder has developed.

    2. TopMarx
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • Has Moderation Rights
      • 11 Years
      4 years, 4 months ago

      Good reasons. What do you make of the stat that Sheffield United have conceded 16 big chances in away matches this season? (only West Ham have conceded more)

      1. RedLightning
        • Fantasy Football Scout Member
        • Has Moderation Rights
        • 13 Years
        4 years, 4 months ago

        After a reasonable number of matches have been played, I prefer to look at goals actually conceded rather than at big chances conceded.
        Perhaps SHU are just far better than average at defending against big chances. They may have defenders who are better at challenging the attackers, giving them less time for their shots, and also better at blocking or saving their shots.

        What are the exact criteria for chances being big ones anyway?
        Are they just any chances which, based on the opinion of an observer, are estimated in retrospect to have presented a high chance of a goal being scored?
        Or are they any chances with an xG of more than some particular percentage (50%?, 40%?), the xG being the chance determined in advance of a goal being scored from that position by an average attacker against an average defence with an average goalkeeper?

        The following is an interesting article that I have just discovered:
        business-analytic.co.uk/blog/assessing-expected-goals-models-part-2-anatomy-of-a-big-chance/

        It says "As there is no formal definition of a Big Chance, and the designation of an attempt as a Big Chance is at the discretion of the Opta match coders, there has been some speculation that the indicator might be contaminated with outcome bias; in other words, match coders are more likely to tag a shot as a Big Chance after they have seen the goal attempt succeed. This would certainly explain its power to predict goals, and rescue the xG model, which after all cannot be expected to outperform an indicator whose value is partly determined by the thing it is trying to predict."

        Based on small samples, Big Chances have been found to correlate more closely than xG with the numbers of goals actually conceded. But with bigger samples, are they any better than goals actually conceded in matches already played for predicting the numbers of goals to be conceded by a team in their future matches? If the Goals Conceded by a team differ from what the Big Chances theory predicts, and this continues over an increasing number of matches, then I prefer to believe the number of goals actually conceded is a better predictor for that team than the Big Chances theory.

        SHU conceded 5 goals in their first 4 matches, while they were still getting used to playing in the Premier League, but since then they have only conceded 2 goals in their next 4 home matches (0-1, 0-1, 1-0, 3-0) and only 1 in their next 3 aways (2-0, 1-0, 1-1).
        This suggests to me that their defence is an excellent one, that it is getting better, and that it is just as effective in away matches as it is at home.

        Of course, their future matches could well prove me wrong, in which case I may have to revise my opinion - it may be that my scepticism over the importance of underlying expected stats compared with bottom-line actual outcomes is one of the reasons for my FPL history being less impressive than I would like it to be - but until that happens I will continue to believe that SHU's defence is extremely impressive in both home and away matches.

        1. TopMarx
          • Fantasy Football Scout Member
          • Has Moderation Rights
          • 11 Years
          4 years, 4 months ago

          Hi RL,

          According to this:
          https://www.optasports.com/news/opta-s-event-definitions/

          "Big Chances
          A situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score, usually in a one on one scenario or from very close range when the ball has a clear path to goal and there is low to moderate pressure on the shooter. Penalties are always considered big chances."

          So essentially when the last defender has been beaten. The fact SHU haven't conceded more is down to Henderson. To quote from Neale's article:

          "Henderson is the only first-choice goalkeeper whose save percentage is over 80% and his expected goals prevented (xGP) total of +4.80 is also a league-high"

          So basically will Henderson continue to keep out so many shots?

          1. TopMarx
            • Fantasy Football Scout Member
            • Has Moderation Rights
            • 11 Years
            4 years, 4 months ago

            *so many high-quality chances

          2. RedLightning
            • Fantasy Football Scout Member
            • Has Moderation Rights
            • 13 Years
            4 years, 4 months ago

            Thanks, TopM.
            So perhaps I ought to consider benching Lundstram against United in GW13 when Henderson won't be playing!
            As with Lundstram and the Sheffield defence as a whole, I will continue to believe that Henderson will keep up his save percentage or something close to it until he stops doing so.
            (I expect to be recruiting Henderson to my team in GW14 or soon after, as Pope has been rather disappointing)

  6. Ginkapo FPL
    • 12 Years
    4 years, 4 months ago

    Last man standing isnt open to new recruits fyi

    1. TopMarx
      • Fantasy Football Scout Member
      • Has Moderation Rights
      • 11 Years
      4 years, 4 months ago

      Updated the article, thanks for pointing it out.

  7. Ibra
    • 5 Years
    4 years, 4 months ago

    Who should I captain?

    A) Sterling
    B) Mane
    C) Vardy
    D) Abraham

  8. Wet Knee Houston
    • 10 Years
    4 years, 4 months ago

    LOL. I'm last (20th) in my H2H league (L8 D111), despite having the 4th best overall rank :))

  9. Baps hunter
    • Fantasy Football Scout Member
    • 6 Years
    4 years, 4 months ago

    LOL! Mr Average leads league 8 division 169... In division 164 he seems to be 5th. In my division 10th. How is he doing elsewhere?

    Scores have been updated.

  10. Zladan
    • 6 Years
    4 years, 4 months ago

    League 6 Division 2, I am top with 30 points from a possible 36. Nice.