Learning from ‘The Great and The Good’ FPL managers ahead of Gameweek 38

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.

“There’s some people on the pitch… they think it’s all over….”

It’s not quite over yet but there were certainly plenty of crowds on the pitch in midweek. Nottingham Forest celebrated reaching the play-off finals, inspiring Mark Sutherns to take his first-ever selfie with Djed Spence, while we also saw relief from Everton fans as they ensured survival for another season.

There was a general feeling of fatigue amongst the FPL faithful with many preparing their beach clothes for the upcoming break, which was no doubt accelerated by some phenomenal swings of fortunes over the last two Gameweeks.

Free Hits and Bench Boosts were flaunted across the community, and indeed The Great and The Good, with high expectations of green arrows for those chips, yet it was the 50/50 captaincy calls between Kevin De Bruyne (£12.1m) and Mohamed Salah (£13.1m) in Gameweek 36 and Danny Ings (£7.7m) and Richarlison (£7.6m) in Gameweek 37 which truly decided many of our fates.

OVERALL PERFORMANCE

Fabio, star turn in my recent Q&A (please do give it a read as he really is a lovely chap), showed his class by leaping past Az with an 81-point gain over Gameweeks 36 and 37 to take top spot.

Yet, he was not the highest scoring manager over the two weeks: that honour goes to Magnus Carlsen with a combined score of 250 points, all without an aid of a chip. His hot streak of captaincy picks continued, and he now has an impressive 752 armband points for the season.

It’s worth mentioning that Tom Freeman was only a point behind, thanks to a storming Gameweek 36 score of 177, more than halving his overall rank and gaining 153,000 places in that time. He looks determined to avoid being bottom of The Great and The Good.

The chips were flying with Andy top scoring this week, Free Hitting his way to 115, with James Maddison (£6.9m) and Jamie Vardy (£10.3m) both proving cunning picks. Geoff Dance also had a blinder in Gameweek 36 with his chip seeing him reach 149 points.

Bench Boosts were deployed in force in Gameweek 36 as seven of them decided to play the pine. For most it was successful but FPL Matthew and Magnus had the best returns as they gained 46 points off the substitute’s bench.

TRANSFERS

This is a summary of the transfers for this week:

Az

• GW36 – Richalison, Gordon (Adams, Barnes)
• GW37 – Maddison, Ings, Son, Pickford (Kulusevski, Hwang, Salah, Ramsdale)

LTFPL Andy

• GW36 – Ederson, Nketiah (Sa, Wood)
• GW37 – Free Hit

Fabio Borges

• GW36 – Laporte, Nketiah (Broja, White)
• GW37 – Free Hit

Joe Lepper

• GW36 – Nketiah, Cancelo (Werner, White)
• GW37 – De Bruyne, Richarlison (Salah, Watkins)

Geoff Dance

• GW36 – Free Hit
• GW37 – Vardy, De Bruyne (Ronaldo, Fernandes)

FPL General

• GW36 – Gordon, Alonso (Schar, Ward-Prowse)
• GW37 – Free Hit

Les Caldwell

• GW36 – Mykolenko (Lamptey)
• GW37 – Son, Vardy (Salah, Kane)

Magnus Carlsen

• GW36 – Richalison, Maddison, De Bruyne (Pukki, Fernandes, Jota)
• GW37 – Son, Holgate (Havertz, Robertson)

Mark Sutherns

• GW36 – Richalison, Gordon, Dias , Pickford (Broja, Robertson, Foster, Podence)
• GW37 – Zaha, Digne (Kulusevski, Dias)

FPL Matthew

• GW36 – Richalison, Dias (Dennis, Robertson)
• GW37 – Free Hit

Neale Rigg

• GW36 – Pedro, Dias (Laporte, Mateta)
• GW37 – Free Hit

Tom Freeman

• GW36 – Rodrigo, Odegaard, De Bruyne (Rodriguez, Sterling, Havertz)
• GW37 – Free Hit

Tom Stephenson

• GW36 – Nketiah, Odegaard, Ederson (Weghorst, Kulusevski, Sa)
• GW37 – Free Hit

Yavuz Kabuk

• GW36 – Richalison, Jesus, Dias, Diaz (Broja, Podence, Robertson, Foster)
• GW37 – Free Hit

Zophar

• GW36 – Foden (Coutinho)
• GW37 – Free Hit

The BlackBoxers were feeling cavalier over the last couple of weeks. Az took a -12 hit this week, which was saved by Maddison going mad for it, and Mark took the same triple hit gamble in Gameweek 36 but sadly the Everton trio failed to spark and his choice of Ruben Dias (£6.2m), who went off injured, highlights his rotten luck this season.

Fabio was the most effective in the transfer market with Eddie Nketiah (£5.7m) and Aymeric Laporte (£6.0m) providing exceptional value in Gameweek 36, Joe got it right over both weeks with Nketiah and Richarlison proving deadly, and Les Caldwell continues to highlight a good eye for the transfer with Vitalii Mykolenko (£4.9m) last week followed by Vardy this one.

TEMPLATE

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

• Pickford (11), Schmeichel (6)
• Mykolenko (11), Cash (10), Digne (9), Andersen (7), Tsimikas (6)
• Son (15), De Bruyne (10), Zaha (10), Maddison (9), Coutinho (5)
• Richarlison (13), Kane (9), Ings (8)

A Free Hit-impacted template this week with possibly more Villa defenders than you would expect to see, with only Kasper Schmeichel (£5.0m), Son Heung-min (£11.2m) and Harry Kane (£12.5m) surviving from the last time we looked at the squad back in Gameweek 35.

WHAT IF?

Some brutal red arrows over the last couple of weeks have left many to question, “what if?” So I thought it worthwhile to bring out the What If Machine, something that shows your score if you had made no changes over the whole season and just left well alone.

Whichever way you cut it, Fabio has demonstrated that whilst there may be some luck involved, FPL is still a game of skill as through his transfers and captains he has gained 695 points, the highest of all The Great and The Good.

Zophar, Magnus and Tom Stephenson have also showed their ability to improve their team and Az has only just pipped Mark again on this metric.

CONCLUSION

The final curtain is ready to close, but there is still one last hurrah as we prepare ourselves for the final week of the season. Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City and Spurs all have some lovely fixtures to finish the campaign, while the word ‘motivation’ will be bandied around a lot in the run-up. Perhaps we should all just go with our gut as we are deep into stoppage time, and we might just yet score that late winner.

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