“Now I’m the king of the swingers, the jungle V.I.P. I reached the top and had to stop and that’s what bothering me”
In the FPL Jungle you don’t win a thing if you don’t get that swing and The Great and The Good troop were not monkeying around this week with some seeing huge climbs up the ranks.
Gameweek 35+ brought plenty of howls, chatter, hoots and screams with the fantasy world proving to be a brutal wilderness as for every Antonio, Sterling and Solanke brace (?) there was a Salah captain blank or Soyuncu moment of madness.
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), Pro Pundits (Az, LTFPL Andy, FPL “celebrities” FPL General and Jules Breach) and finally, from the Hall of Fame, we have Ville Ronka, Matthew Jones and Sean Tobin.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
The top banana this week was Az with a score of 97 to beat his chest about with Sterling and Antonio seeing him leap 60,000 places.
He moves into fourth spot, equal on points with FPL General, and only forty points behind our leader Ville Ronka. Az outscored Ronka by 41 points this week so another Antonio haul, he still is only at 2.9% ownership, could see him go top.
You can take it as gibbon that Andy will also be pleased with this week’s work with the biggest swing of 158,000, he had Antonio but also Martial and Jesus from his tribe to thank for his high score.
The captain call made a monkey out of some of our managers this week as those who put the armband on Salah (Sean and Jules) suffering red arrows.
However, with 24 shots and 7 big chances in the last six weeks, I would suggest there is no lemur-gency to remove the Egyptian from our squads.
Most of the managers captained Fernandes whilst Mark went with Rashford, Matthew with Vardy but it was Az’s choice of Raheem that really went Ba-Boom!
TRANSFERS
This is a summary of the transfers for the Gameweek:
Andy – No transfers
Az – Vardy, Antonio (Jimenez, Son)
David – Iheanacho (Jimenez)
Joe – Vardy (Jimenez)
Jules – No transfers
FPL General – No transfers
Geoff – Iheanacho (Calvert-Lewin)
Mark – Vardy, Antonio (Jimenez, Son)
Matthew Jones – Vardy, Saiss (Doherty, Jimenez)
Neale – Greenwood, Mane (Son, Rashford)
Sean Tobin – Vardy (Jimenez)
Ville Ronka – Ayew (Nketiah)
*transfers out are in brackets
Gorilla warfare in the transfers this week, Mark and Az’s choice of Vardy and Antonio was well-timed, it moved Mark to his highest rank since Gameweek 5.
Unfortunately, Neale will be going ape at his decision to take a hit for Mane and Greenwood, this cost him 20 points as both Son and Rashford hit the net.
TEMPLATE
The template for The Great and The Good looks like this:-
Pope (7) Martinez (4)
Alexander-Arnold (11) Doherty (7) Aurier (7) Boly (4) Femenia (4)
Fernandes (12) De Bruyne (11) Pulisic (8) Martial (6) Salah (6)
Greenwood (8) Calvert-Lewin (7) Jiménez/Vardy (5)
* brackets show number of teams they appear in
The template is along simian lines to last week with only a minor change as Vardy jumps into the squad.
Will we see a similar monkey rush for Jesus this week with an Ake-less Bournemouth defence? Currently only Geoff and Andy own the City striker, he is second in shots inside the box over the last six weeks so looks to be the next one to explode.
TOP OF THE POPS
Looking back of the season which players have The Great and The Good seen as the Silverbacks leading their troops to success? The table below shows the players with the highest ownership over the last 34 weeks:-
No monkey business here as Alexander-Arnold has been ever-present in the squads of David, General, Matthew, Mark and Az. Only Jules has shown a lack of faith in the flying Liverpool wing-back as he has only appeared seven times for her this campaign.
You probably heard it on the ape vine before that Mark has never owned De Bruyne preferring instead Sterling who has played for him 23 times and been captained 11 of these occasions.
David and Geoff have been the best of pri-mates with Lundstram and the Lord has turned out of for them 28 times, the highest of any of the managers.
Interesting to note that not one of them has owned Willian all season but could this change going into the Norwich game?
CONCLUSION
In Kong-clusion this week has shown FPL at its dramatic best and how quickly you can become a jungle VIP with the right differential pick.
Gameweek 36+’s fixtures provide a further opportunity with Chelsea offering Giroud at 2.9% ownership, David Silva at 4.8% or even Armstrong at 0.7%, he has 35 points since the restart. Who will The Great and The Good go for and who will end up the true Chimpion?
Anyway, that’s all from me for now and remember don’t have monkey nightmares.
For those affected by any of the topics raised in the above article 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
3 years, 9 months ago
Cheers Greyhead!
DCL in the template team and no Sterling in the template team... surely that has to change soon!
Iheanacho brought by both Geoff and David (some collusion there methinks) seems rough now - interesting to see if that was a 1 week punt (ie out for Ings) or what.