Our Live Hall of Fame ranks Fantasy Premier League managers by performances past and present.
The list not only highlights which Fantasy bosses have been enjoying an excellent 2019/20 campaign but also rewards those who can back this up with admirable finishes in seasons gone by.
These managers are, then, the cream of the crop in FPL.
Earlier in the week, we brought you news of a refresh to our Live Hall of Fame and you can read details of the revised standings here.
In this article, we’ll look at how the top ten in this ranking system are currently set up ahead of a possible Premier League resumption in June.
Before we start, here is a reminder of which FPL managers currently make up the elite list.
Chip Usage
All ten of our featured managers used their Triple Captain chip in Gameweek 24 to great success, with Mohamed Salah (£12.7m) handed the armband by each and every one of them.
All bar Ian Herbert and Hassan Yousri have three chips remaining for the mooted run-in.
Ian and Hassan each deployed a chip in what turned out to be a ten-game Gameweek 29, with the scheduled midweek Manchester City v Arsenal fixture called off.
Four of our managers waited until the last possible moment to deploy their first Wildcards and a further three held onto it until after the second international break, which perhaps highlights one of the upsides of patience in FPL.
Tom Freeman was outside of the top one million after Gameweek 4 and Emil Gustafsson was stuck at around the 600k mark in Gameweek 11, so they could have been forgiven for pulling the trigger earlier than they did.
Just to prove that there’s more than one way to skin a cat, however, Marlen Rattiner activated his Wildcard as early as Gameweek 3.
Transfer Activity: GW31-36
Four of our top ten Live Hall of Fame managers have made five changes to their squads during the downtime (we are looking at Gameweek 31 onwards for the purposes of this study, given that some Gameweek 30 transfers would have been made before the announcement that the season was to be suspended).
Hassan has made four alterations, with all of his transfers used to ditch players he had initially brought in on a Wildcard in Gameweek 29.
Fábio Borges is the only one of this elite group who hasn’t made a single change since a ball was last kicked.
A full breakdown of the transfers is below:
INS
OUTS
Squads as of Gameweek 36
Goalkeepers
Nine of our top ten Live Hall of Fame managers have a budget, non-playing goalkeeper on their bench, with David Button (£3.9m) owned by five of them.
All of these managers still have their second Wildcard intact, of course, so can rectify that situation easily enough before they deploy their Bench Boost (eight of the nine who own goalkeeping bench fodder still have this chip in hand).
The one manager in our top ten who has used his second Wildcard, Hassan, has both Dean Henderson (£5.3m) and Ben Foster (£4.9m) in his squad, so is already in a good position to Bench Boost should the opportunity arise.
Defenders
Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.8m) is owned by all ten of our managers, with four of them doubling up on the Liverpool defence in the shape of Andrew Robertson (£7.0m).
Matt Doherty (£6.3m), interestingly, is the second most-owned defender among our elite bunch, having hit a rich vein of form (40 points in five Gameweeks) shortly before the suspension of play.
Wolves and Liverpool, of course, were two of just eight teams who were scheduled to have a fixture in Blank Gameweek 31, so that will have had some bearing on the make-up of these squads.
Charlie Taylor (£4.3m), Jamaal Lascelles (£4.3m) and Jack Stephens (£4.4m) are three semi-popular budget options among this group, while Harry Maguire (£5.3m) has been recruited by three of our top ten Live Hall of Fame managers – Manchester United’s fairly favourable run-in perhaps accounting for that – during the lockdown.
Midfielders
Salah is an ever-present in the squads we are studying, while Kevin De Bruyne (£10.6m) and Bruno Fernandes (£8.6m) each feature in seven of them.
Sadio Mane (£12.5m) sits in two of the three teams that De Bruyne fails to appear in, with the midfield soaking up a decent chunk of our managers’ budgets.
Harvey Barnes (£6.4m) has a 50% ownership figure among our leading FPL bosses, meanwhile.
All except Ian own at least one midfielder priced at £5.0m or below.
Forwards
Dominic Calvert-Lewin (£6.5m) has been signed by five of our featured managers since coronavirus brought football to a halt and is now the second-most-owned forward behind Raul Jimenez (£8.1m).
Emil is the only manager in the Hall of Fame top ten not to currently own the Mexican, who many had drafted in ahead of Blank Gameweek 31.
Danny Ings (£7.1m) himself had been a part of nine of these squads as of Gameweek 29 but has since lost five of his owners.
Stephen Harrap is the only manager to own a forward who costs less than £6.0m, namely Mason Greenwood (£4.3m).
A 3-4-3, then, looks to be the preferred choice of formation for many of our elite FPL bosses at present – although we do have a bit of time remaining for the managers in question to make further alterations before football resumes.
Miscellany
Manager | Current OR | Squad Value | Hits Taken in 2019/20 | Most Captained* (no. of times in GW1-29) |
Stephen Harrap | 4,594 | £102.5m | -32 | Salah (14) |
Darren Wiles | 224 | £105.5m | -8 | Salah (18) |
Fábio Borges | 8,536 | £103.0m | -12 | Salah (12) |
Ian Herbert | 591 | £107.0m | -16 | Salah (11) |
Sean Tobin | 83,322 | £104.6m | -28 | Salah (11) |
Hassan Yousri | 2,417 | £105.0m | -40 | Salah (9) |
Marlen Rattiner | 37,178 | £105.4m | -28 | Salah (10) |
Alistair Hughes | 662 | £103.8m | -16 | Salah (9) |
Emil Gustafsson | 5,156 | £105.2m | -8 | Salah (11) |
Tom Freeman | 26,292 | £103.0m | -16 | Salah (11) |
With squad values ranging from £102.5m to £107.0m and significant variation in the number of hits taken, it’s reassuring to see that different strategies can simultaneously pay off, from the aggressive, value-chasing approach to the more patient blueprint.
Darren Wiles, perhaps unsurprisingly given his lofty position, has had the most success with the armband, gaining 454 points from his captaincy picks.
He was also the most consistent in terms of nominating a captain, picking Salah for 18 of the 29 Gameweeks in which there were matches.
*with thanks to FPL Statistico for the captaincy figures
3 years, 11 months ago
Imagine being sat at 11th in HoF and missing out on all this lovely attention 🙂