“Dizzy! I’m so dizzy, my head is spinning. Like a whirlpool, it never ends. And it’s you, FPL, making it spin. You’re making me dizzy!”
FPL Managers were left dizzy at the quick turnaround between Gameweek 14 and 15 with quick decisions to be made whilst being alert to team news, injuries and potential benchings.
Tammy Abraham’s hip was the talk of the community, but then came Martial’s latest excuse not to play in the cold before the drama of a Salah side-line.
How would The Great and The Good respond? Well mainly by holding their nerve, changing goalkeepers and missing out on a Mason Mount goal but more of that later.
As a reminder The Great and The Good are a handpicked group of FPL celebrities (?), FF Scouts or Pro Pundits 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
We have a new leader as Neale Rigg takes top spot from Jules Breach with the highest score of 72 points, all this and he only played with 10 men due to four no shows!
Neale’s success was built on his formidable strike force with Abraham, Ings and Vardy all scoring, this was a victory for patience as he kept faith with Tammy plus Mason Mount. Although, he may want to do some bench housekeeping with only Saka and Hanley to call upon when Martial called in sick and Tomori didn’t make the team sheet.
Az and Mark are embroiled in a basement dogfight with only one point separating the two, they were the biggest risers this week moving up 150,000 plus places. They both have Maddison’s late goal to thank plus Mark’s early purchase of Rashford looks to have been a shrewd move as I am sure his popularity will grow over the coming weeks.
In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes and a Vardy captain this Gameweek such was the clamour for the Foxes “form and fixtures” frontman.
One man stood alone in refusing to take the easy path as Mark went with Sterling, he has now handed him the armband seven times this season averaging only 8.1 points, is his patience or stubbornness going to pay off soon?
TRANSFERS
This is a summary of the transfers for this week :
Andy – Lundstram, Pulisic (Mount, Maguire)
Az – Lundstram (Rico)
David – No transfers
FPL General – Zaha (Mount)
Joe – No transfers
Jules Breach – No transfers
Geoff – Henderson (Pope)
Mark – Henderson (Roberto)
Matthew Jones – Zaha (Mount)
Neale – Guita (Pope)
Sean Tobin – Zaha, Pulisic (Mount, Martial)
Ville Ronka – Soyuncu (Digne)
*transfers out are in brackets
Goalkeepers galore this week as Geoff, Mark and Neale made changes to their shot stoppers, elsewhere Zaha seemed to be the talk of FPL Twitter with FPL General, Matthew Jones and Sean Tobin taking the bait of those lovely fixtures.
Hallelujah! The good Lord Lundstram finally made his way into Az and Andy’s squads with much fanfare this week, with Andy even taking a hit to bring him and Pulisic into his team.
Mount was a popular casualty of the growing number of midfield gems available but punished his sellers with a goal and the lingering doubt that Pulisic may be next to feel the fickle finger of the Lampard Lottery.
TEMPLATE
The template for The Great and The Good looks like this :-
Pope (8) Button (5)
Lundstram (12) TAA (11) Tomori (8) Soyuncu (7) Rico (6)
Mane (12) KDB (8) Martial (5) Cantwell (5) Dendoncker/Mount/Maddison/Pulisic (4)
Vardy (11) Jimenez (6) Ings/Abraham (4)
* brackets show number of teams they appear in
Lord Lundstram joins the mighty Mane in the 100% club with all The Great and The Good signing up the swashbuckling blade. It’s probably blasphemy to say his current form is questionable with only eight points in the last four weeks and interesting to note he is no longer the top scoring defender with Pereira now taking that honour, who is nowhere to be seen in the template.
Elsewhere, the midfield is a mess with way too many options to consider and little in the way of consensus with Maddison, Pulisic, Mount, Dendoncker, Martial and Cantwell all in the running to join the regular names of Mane and De Bruyne.
I suspect “MIA” Martial will soon lose his place and next could be Pulisic who certainly has the stats behind him as the top midfielder for shots (16) and shots in the box (13) in the last four weeks but needs to start delivering points with the likes of Alli, Son and Zaha likely newcomers.
BENCH PRESS
This Gameweek brought us a fair share of rotation and many were left cursing or celebrating when the team sheets were announced with the auto subs having their impact on our rankings, there were eight substitutes just amongst The Great and The Good managers this week.
Therefore, I have had a look at influence that the power of the bench has had on The Great and The Good’s season so far and again Neale leads this metric with 43 points coming off the magic plank so far with an average of 5.4 per auto sub.
Most recently he had Ings come off the reserve list to provide a goal in Gameweek 14 (although there may be claims of bench tomfoolery in that one) but earlier in the season he benefited from Lundstram’s 12 points in Gameweek 6 and Lamela’s 8 points in Gameweek 5.
Yet, for every success there is a note of caution as the danger of leaving valuable points off the field is real as Jules has found out with 60 points left behind over the last four weeks, with Maupay and Van Dijk being the most recent examples, have her benching decisions cost her top spot?
CONCLUSION
A quick turnaround this week and no chance for FPL managers to rest on their laurels before another Gameweek approaches with shadow of rotation looming large, Liverpool and Chelsea assets look particularly under threat.
The best approach seems to be to take extra time on our benches over the busy schedule, a strong squad of 15 seems a must as does the bench order decision in order to capitalize on those Dendoncker double digit scores and those magic Rico bonus points.
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/SkontoRigga
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
