FFS Mini-Leagues & Community Competitions Gameweeks 29 & 30

Football is the most important of the unimportant things in life.

– Arrigo Sacchi

A warm welcome to the Gameweek 29 and Gameweek 30 round-up of the Fantasy Football Scout mini-leagues and community competitions. 

Virus Stops Play

Following yesterday’s announcement this will be the last round-up article for a while.

During the recess, Fantasy Football Scout has taken the decision to temporarily unsync its Head-to-Head and Cup competitions from the FPL Gameweeks. Rotation’s Alter Ego explained the potential implications going forward.

At this point the original Gameweek deadlines still apply in FPL.

There were slight rank changes in Gameweek 30 because it is still possible to make transfers. As usual, hits reduce your points total and for those level on points, the number of transfers made is used as a tiebreaker – the fewer transfers the better.

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley, an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain for promis’d joy!

– Robert Burns, To a Mouse.

Gameweek 29 came to an abrupt end with the postponement of the Man City v Arsenal match. Painful news for those who played a Wildcard or Free Hit chip, and those who took a hit to bring in players from the affected teams.

Head-to-Head Leagues

Craig Johnson (aka Bouncebackability) maintained his seven-point lead at the summit of League 1 as the top four all lost. 

Craig was beaten 60-52 by Ryan Gallagher, while Simon Vazquez, Ignazio La Rosa and Aleksander Våge Nilsen (aka AleksanderVN) all suffered fairly comprehensive defeats to their Gameweek 29 opponents.

Simon’s 38-57 reverse at the hands of callum croal (aka Jambo17) sees last season’s FFS Members Cup runner-up jump from fifth to second. He’s level with Simon on points but ahead because of his better overall rank.

The bottom ten teams in each division will be relegated at the end of the season.

Only rank difference is keeping Harry Vernon (aka Horse) out of the drop zone. The Portsmouth fan’s first defeat in four matches allowed Glynn Sherwood to draw level with him on 45 points. 

Meanwhile a first win in four for B.J. McNair (aka Ben McNair) moves the FPL Expert up to 14th, six points behind Harry and Glynn. 

The Gameweek’s highest-points scorer was Matthew Jones (aka Numb) with an impressive total of 82. The eight-time top 10,000 manager and 2015/16 FFS Cup finalist is currently 16th in the top division, eight points from safety.

Misfortune

Of the 5,983 taking part in the Head-to-Head Leagues there are now 18 in the top 1,000 and 156 in the top 10,000.

Most are doing very well in their divisions but not all. Sigurd …, for instance, has been exceedingly unfortunate: ranked 4,993rd the elliptically-named manager remained on a paltry 30 points after contriving to lose again in Gameweek 29. 

He has the fewest Head-to-Head points out of those in the current top 10,000 and is 17th in Division 19 of League 7. The Norwegian needs to overturn a 15-point deficit to avoid relegation.

Moving up to 16th place in League 5 Division 2 is Jonah Sinclair (aka FantasyFootballSprout) with a much-needed victory. At 4,192nd in the overall standings, Jonah is one of the most underperforming managers in the mano-a-mano competition. 

His unlucky four-digit-rank comrades include Barry McCarthy and Kyle O’Shaughnessy in League 7. They are both 15th with 37 points in their respective Divisions: 40 and 3. And Robert Wyld is yet to break the 40-point barrier in Division 44 of League 7 despite occupying a spot in the upper echelons of FPL. 

Leading Performers

Abdullah Tamin was defeated by Christophe Da Silva in the last round of fixtures, so Niall Devlin rejoined him as the highest-scoring manager in our Head-to-Head Leagues. The pair have 75 points out of a possible 87. Both are in League 8, Abdullah leads Division 1 and Niall Division 143.

The best-ranked manager in the competition, Damjan Rupnik (aka rdamjan) of Division 5 League 6, now has company in the top 100. Andrew Georgiou of Division 43 League 7 has moved up to 64th.

Damjan is 53rd overall and leads his division by eight points while Andrew is second in his, six behind leader Saif Rashid.

Fantasy Football Scout Mini-Leagues

The Fantasy Football Scout mini-league continues to sit proudly atop the Best Leagues in FPL as it has done since Gameweek 20. Our lead has been extended to just under 12 points. 

Leagues are ranked using an average score of the top five teams, so congratulations (and thanks) to the top five managers in the mini-league Chris McGowan, Mark May, Christopher Berchoux, Keith Stulberg and Bill Wilkins. All five feature in the top 50 overall. 

Keith and Bill replace Magnum Dong Carlsen and Dima Burlaka in the mini-league top five.

Mark (aka Frankiem) has cut the gap on Chris McGowan (aka Queens of the South Age) from 62 to 30 points. Chris revealed in his interview last month that he is “not influenced by the template team” and he demonstrated that ahead of Gameweek 29 by signing and captaining Raheem Sterling. Sterling’s ownership amongst the top 10,000 managers is less than 1%.

Even though Chris scored a below-average 45 points in the shorter-than-expected Gameweek he remains the world number one. The Atletico Madrid fan is nine points clear at the top of the overall leaderboard with all his chips intact.

There are currently 44,080 people participating in the Fantasy Football Scout mini-league, to join them enter code ooyz44 in your Leagues’ section on the FPL site.

The highest-ranked manager in the Head-to-Head leagues, Damjan Rupnik, leads our Members mini-league by three points. Behind him, Stephen Diamond and Adam Warner (aka Bury94) swapped places in eighth and second.

Aided by his Bench Boost, Stephen notched an impressive 100 points in Gameweek 29 while Adam, like Chris McGowan, could only muster 45. Nathan Woollaston was unmoved in third. 

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

Fantasy Football Scout Cup

However there was better news for Adam in the FFS Cup. He joined fellow high-flying Member Damjan in making it safely through to the second round.

Unhappily Head-to-Head leader Craig had a briefer stay in the competition, he bowed out along with six former winners. Indeed, the only ex-champs through to the next round are Joe, Wild Rover and cup-holder Philman.

Pro Pundit Andy (aka Andy85wsm) sailed through with a comfortable 67-41 win, but editor David (aka DavidMunday815) was not so fortunate, crashing out 47-58. From the Mods & Cons only Gregor and myself are into the hat for the next round as RedLightning lost by 50 points to 62.

The lowest winning score in round one was 37 points. Inter McShambles and spurs can count themselves very lucky to progress in the tournament with such meagre totals.

Meanwhile the unluckiest manager was Johnnymorrocco, the highest-scoring loser across all 256 ties. His excellent tally of 76 was not enough to beat Back to back ballacks, the victor by six points.

Community Mini-Leagues and Competitions

In TorresMagic’s Last Man Standing the safety score in Gameweek 29 was 46 points, this saw a total of 77 managers eliminated. 

4,827 managers have exited the competition so far with 279 left to battle it out for the coveted title of Last Man Standing. 

In a recent post, TorresMagic announced that we could see the threshold for elimination increase to 50% in the next round. Hits taken over the postponed Gameweeks will count once the competition resumes.

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 The Keane Fifteen enjoyed another emphatic 15-0 win, this time over Holly’s Hamsters. They are 12 points clear at the top of the overall leaderboard. 

The leading eight teams will feature in the end-of-season play-off, which was scheduled to start in Gameweek 33. Boris Bodega provided us with an update on how the tournament might proceed in his recent review article. 

A Whole Lawro B*llocks moved into the play-off places but with just 8.5 points separating eighth from tenth, and 15 points up for grabs each week, it promises to be quite a tussle for the final qualifying spot.

Long-time leader Neale Rigg (aka SkontoRigga) extended his lead to 22 points over Fantasy League maestro Gareth Butler (aka Clouseau) in the FFS Mods & Cons mini-league. Neale is now 5,634th overall.

The highest-scoring manager in Gameweek 29 was Mark Reynolds (aka MIR) with 94 points. The creator of the Head-to-Head leagues leapt up the ranks after successfully playing his Bench Boost chip. Mark gained 26 points from his reserves in spite of a Kevin De Bruyne no-show.

He is now third in the Mods & Cons and 28,896th overall.

An excellent 84 points took Rok Krasna up to first in RedLightning’s Top 10k Any Season mini-league (league code m0tq9y). Rok, who led in Gameweek 21, captained Mohamed Salah and gained further double-digit returns from Harvey Barnes, Sadio Mané and Vicente Guaita. He rises to 105th overall. 

Previous leader, David Nataf, trails by 13 points. However he remains on course for a third top-thousand finish in four seasons despite slipping to 216th overall. Rok and David are also the top two in PDM‘s Top 1k ANY season mini-league (league code eejnyz).

He’s enjoyed a good run but Svein Roald L Usken’s (aka Firminoooo) stint at the top has come to an end. Denial EASTOP becomes the new number one in Chaballer’s Top 1,000 HoF League (league code beeps2).

Denial was in fact the last manager to lead the mini-league before Svein’s run began in Gameweek 22. At 587 overall, the Irishman is aiming for his eighth top 10,000 finish. He is 189th in the Career Hall of Fame.

Champions and Pro Pundits

2012/13 winner Matthew Martyniak continues to chip away at Pundit Simon March in the exclusive FPL Champions League. Simon nonetheless enjoys a healthy 48-point cushion, but that’s been whittled down from a 97-point ‘bouncy castle’ as recently as Gameweek 24. 

Matthew had no Manchester City or Arsenal players in his Gameweek 29 team, unlike Simon who captained Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and fielded De Bruyne.

Lateriser12 is just outside the top thousand and is our highest ranked Pro Pundit. In the last fixture-filled Gameweek he notched 73 points less a four-point hit, with double-figure contributions from Barnes, Mané and Alex McCarthy.

In the most recent update he has a 32-point advantage over the next-highest Pro Pundit Sam Bonfield (aka Sam FPLFamily).

World chess champion Magnus Carlsen is up to 17th overall, thanks in part to that 19-point haul from Barnes. Although he will be disappointed that his two new signings both blanked: Aubameyang and Sterling joined for a hit at the expense of Mané and Calvert-Lewin.

If he’d left his team unchanged from Gameweek 28 he would have been 26 points better off and moved up to fourth overall.

2020 Mini-Leagues

433 teams have signed-up so far to RedLightning’s January to May League, which started scoring in Gameweek 21. The league will continue until the end of the football season, whenever that may be.

This season’s FFS Members Cup winner, Danny Mallon (aka Pep Pig), reclaimed first spot from Qian Hao Ong and is now nine points ahead. Danny has risen from 386k in Gameweek 20 to 5,723rd now. Qian Hao Ong suffered terrible luck on his Wildcard, scoring just 34 points in Gameweek 29.

The league will remain open for any others who wish to track their progress in the second half of the season, the code you need is aafkpq.

The Last Ten mini-league started scoring in Gameweek 29, intended to cover the last ten Gameweeks of the season. The early leader is Jonathan Higgins with 94 points. He captained Salah and had double-digit returns from Barnes, Mane, McCarthy and Vardy.

Two hundred and thirty two teams, including last season’s winner Ted Maw (aka Rotation’s Alter Ego), have entered so far. The code you need to join is p4unsq.

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 for his contribution to this article.