Now that we have a framework for classifying styles using our Colour Wheel, let’s see what we can learn from some top managers with varying styles.
Magnus Carlsen (Purple)
Is there any FPL manager out there who doesn’t love the world chess champion, Magnus Carlsen? We might find it sad that Magnus does not create FPL content, but there is a silver lining in that following him can teach us how to monitor a manager who does not tell us why he does what he does. We can still look for patterns in the kinds of transfers and captain picks he makes. Magnus disdains ownership and loves a differential captaincy. If he does bring in a new heavy hitter who is a popular captain choice, Magnus prefers to also add a teammate who can give him some gains not widely shared by other managers. Magnus loves playing fixture swings by capitalising on others’ reluctance to sell a heavily owned player during a bad run of fixtures. If Liverpool have a great run of fixtures while Manchester City have a bad one, for example, Magnus will be sure to double up on Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane at the expense of a Manchester City premium. In stock-market terminology, Magnus is never afraid to take a large “long” position in the club with the most near-term potential for points, even though it inevitably means taking a large “short” position (relative to other managers) in another popular club.
Still, the more conservative side of Magnus’s game must not be overlooked. Setting up a balanced squad spread across a variety of price points makes it easy for Magnus to use a large percentage of his transfers for high-upside moves, while minimising hits. When he uses two transfers, they are usually both meritorious moves in their own right, rather than one only being done to fund the other. He doesn’t settle for merely being slightly better than other managers at not wasting transfers; he strives to be the best in the world at it. Magnus also has an amazing talent for getting in the perfect £4.0 defender or £4.5 midfielder who can actually deliver significant points. He isn’t blinded by players’ price tags, regularly starting the likes of John Lundstram and Tino Livramento when other managers were benching them, and he’ll often bench a more expensive player with a tough fixture for a cheaper player.
Fábio Borges (Blue)
Fábio’s recent record is absolutely off the charts – five consecutive top 2,000 finishes and counting, and number one in the career Hall of Fame by some distance. Only a few other managers have even managed five consecutive top 10,000 finishes over the last five years, let alone what Fábio has achieved. Fábio trusts the stats a lot, which the majority of managers have a hard time doing. He has a knack for picking a good initial team that gets him up near the top early, resisting fads that aren’t supported by the numbers. He seems to strike just the right balance of being patient while not being stubborn, taking emotion out of the equation in a way that many others don’t deem possible or even desirable. He also follows the numbers, not the crowd, in picking captains – taking into account his special sauce of career xG delta.
Mark Sutherns (Orange)
Mark is known as an aggressive and often maverick FPL manager – a trend-setter, not a follower. For someone like me, who is often rather disinterested in the details of picking specific players and prefers to look at the big picture, Mark’s opinions on BlackBox can be the perfect complement. If Mark is touting a player that not many have noticed, it’s time to give that player a harder look. Mark is a long-term planner, and what’s more, he focuses on captaincy first so he is fully prepared when a great fixture rolls around. Mark was also proven right in 2020-21 when the prevailing early-season dogma was to spend all your funds on your starting XI and not “waste points” on your bench. This was an issue that divided Orange managers, with Mark going against probably the majority of managers in his camp. Mark always had three playable outfield players on his bench, helping him save his first wildcard until late without falling too far behind. Basically, Mark showed that your insurance policy when making early transfers should be your bench, not the ability to play an unplanned wildcard provoked by a self-induced crisis. By avoiding crises and trusting what he’s seen both on the pitch and in the stats, Mark can then play high-impact wildcards when others are simply wildcarding to the template.
Tom Freeman (Green)
Tom is remarkably patient and disciplined, as I could only wish to be. Judging from what he says in his Meet the Manager video, he seems to be naturally and almost effortlessly able to avoid impulsive transfers. He shows that there are always options you can go for if you don’t play the team value game as much as others. He researches promoted teams like no one else I know, and is quick to consider changing his mind on a player that the FPL hive mind is determined to dismiss, such as Patrick Bamford early in 2020-21. Tom shows you can be a maverick without taking lots of hits or going for crazy captain picks. Sometimes the maverick thing to do is simply to captain Salah when others have lost faith. In times when everyone else is rotating heavy hitters, Tom can often benefit from concentrating his transfers on capturing just the right budget differential instead.
Lateriser (Red)
Lateriser is another manager who is hard not to love, even if you don’t agree with every last one of his ideas. His articles justifying his Upside Chasing approach have shown his readers how to emulate his amazing moves, and inspired me to also write theoretical articles that aim to be largely timeless, and only a little bit timely. He’s also emphasised having a strong identity as a manager, which I find irresistible. Inspired by the great theorist that Lateriser is, I’ve developed a distinctive identity based primarily on being fanatical about not wasting transfers. Lateriser was chastened by the 2020-21 season, but he’s showing he was ready to come back strong in 2021-22, and take advantage of the fear of going against the template among average managers after the wild 2020-21 season.
Conclusion
I think this group of managers are a nice mix of styles, and I seek to learn different things from each of them. However, I’m not necessarily opposed to a beginner choosing a more homogeneous group of managers that suits a more narrowly defined approach. Among my five favourites, Lateriser and Magnus are very aggressive in picking a lot of differential heavy hitters, although Magnus incorporates elements of a Blue approach by usually taking a below-average number of hits. Mark is somewhat less aggressive, although he pursues increased team value the most aggressively of the group. Meanwhile, Fábio and Tom would generally be described as conservative, but likely not “dullards”. Fortunately, you can follow them all through Greyhead’s Learning from the Great and the Good articles, except for Lateriser who is still providing Pro Pundit content.
