Learning from the Great and the Good 19/20 – Gameweek 32

“You spin me right round, baby. Right round like a record, baby. Right round round round”

FPL Managers were left spinning again this week as it proved to be a week long rollercoaster ride with a guard of dishonour for Liverpool, Bruno Fernandes proving to be a marathon man and those who captained a certain Arsenal forward screaming Aubameyangadingdong!

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

David was top of the charts again this week with 89 and he has returned from the lockdown as the man on form with an average of 96 over the last three weeks, it could have been even higher this week had he not left the captaincy on Rashford.

This Gameweek he was helped by the usual suspects of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Kevin De Bruyne and Bruno Fernandes but also by Allan Saint-Maximin. I poked a little fun at his choice of the Newcastle midfielder, but he now averages 9.25 points per games in the last four weeks.

A separate Scoutcast competition appears to be forming amongst The Great and The Good with now only ten points separating Joe, David and Az. Will Joe’s experience win out?

Sean has also come back from the break refreshed with three green arrows since the return of FPL and he looks to be eyeing up Neale’s top spot having gained 630,000 places in the last twelve weeks. What will also give Neale cause for concern is that Sean has his wildcard and bench boost still to play.

His captain’s choices have improved during this run and he now sits at the top of this FPL metric with 440 captain points, averaging at 22 points per GW since the resumption of the Premier League.

Speaking of which, there was armband Armageddon this week with no clear majority on who to go with, Ville Ronka went with Mo Salah again, a few were disappointed that the mailman Raul Jiménez didn’t deliver, and Joe would be the happiest with his Aubameyang pick.

WILDCARD

Some will have noticed that Mark played his wildcard this Gameweek with many of his fans drooling over his decision to take out the expensive City lads and remain without Mo, this gives him a strong fifteen all capable of double-digit hauls, apart from maybe Martinez.

He has no player over 10 million which has allowed him five flying wing-backs in defence, a triple up United attack plus Christian Pulisic, Ismaila Sarr and Heung-Min Son who all have something to play for and are likely to have at least one bumper week before the end of the season.

The risk is that he misses out on any Pep roulette wins and he will have to hope that Salah’s golden boot chase doesn’t gather momentum, but he certainly has the strength in depth to see him through any rotation in the last few weeks.

The full ins and outs are below:-

IN – Martinez, Fabianski, Van Aanholt, Aurier, Sarr, Pulisic, Fernandes, Martial, Jimenez, Rashford

OUT – Pope, Henderson, Lundstram, Stevens, Sterling, Mahrez, Grealish, Mount, Jesus, Pukki

TRANSFERS

This is a summary of the transfers for this week :

Andy – Nketiah (Ings)

Az – No transfers

David – No transfers

Joe – Aurier, Pulisic (Grealish, O’Connell)

Jules – No transfers

FPL General – Aurier, Martial (Barnes, Robertson)

Geoff – Sarr (Barnes)

Matthew Jones – No transfers

Neale – No transfers

Sean Tobin – Pulisic (Sarr)

Ville Ronka – No transfers

*transfers out are in brackets

Half of the managers decided to roll their transfers this week and Andy probably wished he had done the same as he sold Danny Ings for Edward Nketiah, this meant nobody owned the Southampton striker for his brace. Andy now does have a 4.2 war chest in the bank so will be interesting to see where he splashes the cash as he looks to move up the rankings.

Unusually, Joe was the hitman this time round taking a minus four for Pulisic and Serge Aurier, whilst Geoff and Sean disagreed on whether having Sarr in their squads was a good thing.

TEMPLATE

The template for The Great and The Good looks like this:-

Pope (7) Button (4)

Alexander-Arnold (12) Doherty (9) Aurier (5) Boly (4) Lascelles (4)

Fernandes (12) De Bruyne (9) Salah (8) Son (4) Sarr (4)

Jimenez (12) Calvert-Lewin (10) Rashford (7)

*brackets show number of teams they appear in

The template stabilized this week with Aurier being the only addition and Fernandes and Jiménez now joining Alexander-Arnold in all The Great and The Good squads.

DIFFERENTIALS 

We are coming to the stage of the season where many of us are trying to climb a few extra places in our mini-league so a good chance to identify a few differentials, although Tom Freeman is the must-follow for advice in this category.

Looking across The Great and The Good squads both Pulisic (7.2% ownership) and Willy Boly (3.6%) are in the template but still have limited attention from the masses so must be worth picking up.

Phil Foden is still criminally under-owned at 2.4% and is a good punt for those who are looking to gamble or even bench boost before the end of the season, I will be intrigued to see if any of The Great and The Good decide to take the leap.

Alonso is another one to watch at 3.7% ownership and just sits in Mark’s squad, he is the top defender for shots inside the box at 9 over last six weeks but his laid-back approach to tracking back may put his position under threat.

It’s the Hammers I tip to start appearing in our squads with a nice fixture list and Antonio and Bowen at 0.8% and 0.1% ownership respectively. Antonio is top for big chances overall in the last 6 weeks.

CONCLUSION

Thanks again for reading along as we follow the adventures of The Great and The Good, just wanted to use this opportunity to encourage everyone to dive into some of the other great stuff being produced by the Community writers.

The write-ups by Meltens and ReindeerHotDog are invaluable for those with Scandinavian fantasy tastes plus there have been some great pieces from Pep Pig, Virg and Top Marx over the last month.

My point is please support these amateur writers, very amateur in my case, and have a go yourself at submitting an article, they are great fun to write and the different insights help add some extra flavour to the FPL Community.

Finally, speaking of community I wanted to say a massive thanks to Boris Bodega and his minions for running the Pundits Playoff Tournament – it has been immense, and I know all the teams participating have loved it all.

My team A Whole Lawro B*ll*cks are in deadly scrap for 8th spot and a chance to compete in the playoffs, the run-up to our grudge match with the Hamsters was particularly intense with motivational videos being circulated amongst our team, unfortunately I can’t share due to the graphic nature. Thanks again Boris and team!

Anyway, that’s all from me for now and remember don’t have nightmares.

For those affected by any of the topics raised in the above article or you want to watch me rip off FPL Partridge with some FPL video parodies then you can find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Greyhead19

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/GeoffreyDance
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
https://twitter.com/julesbreach