Learning from ‘The Great and The Good’ FPL managers – Gameweek 3

Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead continues with his series of articles analysing the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) transfers and strategies of some noted Fantasy managers, from serial top 10k finishers to well-known faces.

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.

“Let the wild rumpus start!”

The FPL season has truly begun after two weeks of template inspired good scores, as the wild things of Romelu Lukaku (£11.5m), Harry Kane (£12.3m) and Cristiano Ronaldo (£12.5m) are stirring even the most cautious of manager into action.

With every passing day leading up to Gameweek 3, more big hitters arrived on the scene and like a roomful of kindergarteners on some sugar high, the FPL community charged around trying to find ways to fit them all into their squads.

Mark was the first to go with his well-documented Lukaku move to try and get an edge over the remaining members of The Great and The Good, and had to wait until Saturday evening as part of the Match of the Day challenge to find out his fate. It was ghoulish but great Googlebox viewing.

OVERALL PERFORMANCE

Tom Stephenson continues to eat up the competition and is still leader of The Great and The Good wild things, despite a red arrow, with a respectable 63 points thanks to a Michail Antonio (£7.9m) armband and the ever-consistent Mason Greenwood (£7.7m), who has now scored three more FPL points than Bruno Fernandes (£12.1m) over the season.

Yet, it was the other Tom, Deputy Freeman, who had the monster score this week with his patience in double United defence plus a Son Heung-Min (£10.1m) captaincy taking him to 72 points and a green arrow of over 250,000 places.

He has been less template than most this season, setting up with a 4-4-2 and owning three big hitters since the start with Son in his opening squad. He now has two free transfers and I wonder whether Bruno Fernandes will survive the international break?

Speaking of the Portuguese playmaker, he appears to be the cause of a disagreement between Fabio Borges and Magnus Carlsen. The Grandmaster came out on Twitter to announce the demise of Bruno but Fabio, along with Geoff Dance, went the other way and captained him this weekend.

Unfortunately, for the Hall of Fame number one this means he sits in the unusual position of bottom of this mini-league just below the Blackbox likely lads of Mark and Az.

Joe had his second green arrow in a row and sits comfortably in third place at 142,000. He was another one to captain Son, but has acted decisively to play his Wildcard – I wonder who else will follow his lead?

TRANSFERS

This is a summary of the transfers for this week:

• Az – Benrahma, Livramento (White, Barnes)
• LTFPL Andy – Bamford, Bissouma, Raphinha (Perica, Mahrez, Gundogan)
• Fabio Borges – Benrahma (Jota)
• Joe Lepper – Son, Benrahma (Salah, Barnes)
• Geoff Dance – Benrahma, Regulion (White, Barnes)
• FPL General – Calvert- Lewin, Benrahma (Grealish, Toney)
• Les Caldwell – Coufal (White)
• Magnus Carlsen – Son, Benrahma (Fernandes, Mahrez)
• Mark Sutherns – Mbeumo, Lukaku, Sarr (Torres, Mahrez, Toney)
• FPL Matthew – Dennis, Benrahma (Toney, Brownhill)
• Neale Rigg – Duffy (Tsimikas)
• Tom Freeman – Ayling (Tsimikas)
• Tom Stephenson – Coufal, Raphinha (Barnes, Veltman)
• Yavuz Kabuk – Dennis, Benrahma, Livramento (Toney, Brownhill, Veltman)
• Zophar – Obafemi, Benrahma (Toney, Gilmour)

*transfers out are in brackets

After last week’s lull there was a frenzy of transfers this week.

Mark made the marquee signing of Lukaku for a hit, and as we all know, then had to sit through a Ferran Torres (£7.1m) brace during the watch along.

Another manager to take a hit was Andy. He suffered a similar fate with IIkay Gundogan (£7.3m) finally scoring on his departure from the squad, and it was intriguing to see him double down on Leeds United. Patrick Bamford (£7.9m) paid off this week and with a sea of good fixtures ahead I am sure he and Raphinha (£6.5m) will help him sail up the rankings.

Magnus and Joe took a proactive approach both snapping up Son and placing the captaincy on him, and the relief was palpable when his free-kick beat the flaying arms of Daniel Bachmann (£4.5m).

A move that may go under the radar is the transfer in of Emmanuel Dennis (£5.2m), who was brought in by both FPL Matthew and Yavuz, in the latter case for a hit. He has had eight shots, seven in the box, over the opening three games and could be a useful enabler if trying to afford budget-busting signings elsewhere.

TEMPLATE

The template for The Great and The Good is as follows with the number in brackets showing how many teams in which they appear:

The template is shifting slowly with Harvey Barnes (£6.9m) the high-profile departure replaced by Said Benrahma (£6.4m), who is the first bandwagon of the season, gaining nine new owners from The Great and The Good this week.

Antonio and Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.5m) are now the only essentials with 100% ownership, as Magnus ditched Bruno and Joe moved out Mohamed Salah (£12.5m), but I suspect he may return in the Scoutcaster’s overhaul.

TEMPLATE BASHING

There has been a fair degree of template bashing this year with the FPL community’s popular picks having one of the strongest starts to the season that I can ever remember.

I thought it worth poking The Great and The Good squads to see how template they are by using Live FPL, built by Ragabolly, which along with live rank updates, provides a comparison of your squad against the template. You can read how this is calculated here.

You can see below how the squads compare against the template, bearing in the mind the usual guidance is a 50-70% match to allow for a balance of ownership and differential.

Supporting the claim that this has been the year of the template is that Tom Stephenson, FPL Matthew and Zophar all have ratings in the nineties, classed as “very template”, and make up three of the top five managers so far.

Tom Freeman and Magnus are our resident mavericks classed as “moderately differential” with the lowest rating amongst the group.

I would suspect there will need to be more template busting over the coming weeks if any of them are going to catch Tom Stephenson. Ferran Torres anyone? Maybe, not for you Mark.

FINAL THOUGHTS

We’ve had a week of shocks and surprises, now it’s time to gather our thoughts and learn something from the rumpus.

Maybe it’s ok to embrace your wild thing, act out against the norm or the template and use your own power of imagination.

The number of options available has never been so great, be creative, the template has been sent to bed without any dinner, so let’s make sure we take advantage and bring in a few differentials to help us climb those ranks.

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

For those effected by any of the topics raised in the above article then you can find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Greyhead19.