“It’s the circle of life. And it moves us all. Through despair and hope.”
It’s the circle of Fantasy Premier League (FPL) life that for every green arrow, there is a red arrow, but this season does not appear to be playing by the rules as it was another week of high scores for The Great and The Good.
It was not all rainbows and unicorns as many suffered their first captain blank with the majority disappointed that Mohamed Salah’s (£12.6m) goal was ruled offside against Burnley, was it the curse of the early kick off that struck again?
Elsewhere, Pep did what Pep does when it comes to team selection, the Hammers put on a show and we saw the Romelu Lukaku (£11.5m) locomotive pull out of the station with Mark Sutherns at the wheel.
The Great and The Good this year are the Scouts Joe Lepper, Neale Rigg, Geoff Dance, and Tom Freeman, FPL Wire’s Zophar, from the Hall of Fame Fabio Borges, FPLMatthew, Yavuz Kabuk and Tom Stephenson, Blackbox’s Az and Mark Sutherns, FPL “celebrities” LTFPL Andy, Magnus Carlsen and FPL General plus last year’s mini league winner Les Caldwell
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
The Lion King this week was Tom Stephenson who roared into the top 10,000 with 88 points. No surprises he has the West Ham double up on Michail Antonio (£7.7m) and Said Benrahma (£6.2m) plus he is the only one not to have taken the Ivan Toney (£6.5m) path.
Neale Rigg continues his good start and sits inside the top 70,000 with the Hammers helping him along, although I imagine he’ll be looking at moving on Lucas Digne (£5.5m) this week.
Tom Freeman had the smallest of the green arrows but is still only 34 points off top spot, plus he is the only one to own Son Heung-min (£10.0m), so he’ll be hoping that any injury speculation is unfounded as the Spurs midfielder has Watford up next who looked leaky against Brighton.
TRANSFERS
Erm… to put it mildly it was a slow news week with everyone playing an FPL version of musical statutes.
The only one to hear a song was newcomer Les Caldwell who acted decisively to move out Harvey Barnes (£7.0m) and replace him with Benrahma. This proved an excellent move and will give encouragement to those looking to make early transfers.
TEMPLATE
The template for The Great and The Good is as follows with number in brackets showing how many teams in which they appear:
Sanchez (14), Steele (8)
Alexander-Arnold (15), Tsimikas (14), Shaw (13), Ayling (9), Veltman (8)
Salah (15), Fernandes (15), Raphinha (7), Gilmour (6), Barnes/Greenwood/Benrahma/Brownhill (5)
Antonio (15), Toney (14), Ings (11)
The template remains rock solid with the only crack appearing in midfield with indecision on the fifth spot.
Barnes is now joined by Mason Greenwood (£7.6m) and Benrahma in the discussion along with Josh Brownhill (£4.5m) for those looking to save the pennies.
BACKING THE RIGHT TEAM
One method of gaining a little success is to double or triple down on a team either with good fixtures or pedigree. So, I was interested to see which teams The Great and The Good has focused their attention on at the start of the season.
The table below gives the number of players from the Premier League squads. Bear in mind the maximum number would be 45 (15 teams in The Great and The Good x maximum of 3 players).
Every member of The Great and The Good has tripled up on Liverpool with only Fabio backing Diogo Jota (£7.6m) as the third Red in the team with the remaining group doubling on defence with Kostas Tsimikas (£4.2m). This should change over the coming weeks with Andrew Robertson (£7.0m) back on the bench against Burnley.
Manchester United are second on the list as result of the popularity of Bruno Fernandes (£12.1m) and Luke Shaw (£5.5m) whilst the appearance of Brighton and Aston Villa near the top is no doubt fuelled by their initial fixtures.
There was a surprising lack of faith in Everton players with only two included despite being top of the fixture ticker at the start of the season. Yavuz’s decision to go with Dominic Calvert-Lewin (£8.1m) looks particularly shrewd.
With the upcoming set of matches for Leeds we can expect an influx of Patrick Bamford (£8.0m) and Raphinha (£6.5m) transfers in but watch out on the latter as he may miss out on Gameweek 4 due to international duty.
What will be interesting is whether the appeal of Wolves players will pick up as they top the ticker. No investment so far but the eye test against Spurs suggests they could be worthy of a flutter in the coming weeks if Adama Traore (£6.0) or Raul Jimenez (£7.5m) gets their shooting boots on. Worth noting Traore is second only to Antonio for shots this season with 10 over the two games.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The template has withstood the first two weeks but now comes the first fork in the road with the majority holding two free transfers and almost too much choice when it comes to potential targets.
Do we target Spurs with a good set of short-term fixtures, is Calvert-Lewin now essential with Benitez basing his game plan around him or should we jump on the Lukaku train before it disappears into the distance?
Before we go rushing in, remember that there are mid-week Cup games ahead plus we should get some clarity soon on the international break quarantine restrictions.
Finally, hakuna matata, as in don’t get too worked up about the decisions to be made in the next few days, as you can be sure there will be more twists we have not yet seen in this circle of FPL life.
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