Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead returns for the 2022/23 season 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 season are the BlackBox pair of Mark Sutherns and Az, Scouts Joe Lepper, Tom Freeman, Neale Rigg, Geoff Dance, Pro Pundits Pras, Zophar and FPL Harry, FPL “celebrities” Magnus Carlsen, FPL General, LTFPL Andy, Ben Crellin, from the Hall of Fame, Fabio Borges, FPL Matthew, Finn Sollie and Tom Stephenson and of course last year’s mini-league winner and overall no.2 Suvansh.
“It’s not me, it’s you, it’s definitely you”
A messy break-up for most before the World Cup shenanigans, with plenty of reds to see us leave FPL on bad terms – it made Cristiano Ronaldo’s relationship with United look amicable.
The lead-up to the Gameweek had us all working out contingency plans and more flow charts for if and when the FPL servers left us stranded following Pep latest teamsheet.
However, this week the City manager and the technology played by the rules – unfortunately some of our favoured picks did not, with Erling Haaland (£12.2m), Mohamed Salah (£12.8m), Gabriel Jesus (£8.0m) and Kevin De Bruyne (£12.6m) all playing blankety blank. Who says my cultural references aren’t current?
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
Az was king of the castle with a score of 60. Harry Kane (£11.6m) provided the double digits, the real Phil Foden (£8.3m) showed up and there was solid defensive performance from unsung heroes Ben White (£4.7m) and Timothy Castagne (£4.7m), who have been proving canny picks over the last few weeks.
This puts the BlackBox host back into the top one million for only the second time this season and moves him into the lofty position of 14th in this made-up mini league.
The shift to having three heavy hitters – aka the “threemium” – in his team back in Gameweek 12 has seen him almost half his rank, and this approach has seen even more success for the other adopter Ben Crellin, who sits atop the table and is the only one in the top 5,000.
Ben showed a degree of courage going into the weekend, deciding to avoid the move back to Haaland, and he must have been delighted as the Norwegian meat shield failed to spark and was overshadowed by Ivan Toney (£7.4m).
In truth, it’s been a torrid few weeks for many and The Great and The Good have not been exempt, with an average decline of 72,000 places across this set of managers in the last four weeks.
TRANSFERS
- Az – Salah (De Bruyne)
- LTFPL Andy – Jesus (Alvarez)
- Ben Crellin – Gabriel (Mings)
- Fabio Borges – Ramsdale (Raya)
- Finn Sollie – Greenwood, Robertson (Guehl, Mitrovic)
- FPL Harry – Perisic (Doherty)
- Joe Lepper – Darwin (Mitrovic)
- Geoff Dance – Martial (Mitrovic)
- FPL General – Jesus (Mitrovic)
- Magnus Carlsen – Martial, Salah (Son, Mitrovic)
- Mark Sutherns – Darwin (Wilson)
- FPL Matthew – Martial (Mitrovic)
- Neale Rigg – Perisic (Dunk)
- Pras – White, Haaland (Doherty, Mitrovic)
- Suvansh – Stones (Emerson)
- Tom Freeman – Foden (Bowen)
- Tom Stephenson – Darwin (Wilson)
- Zophar – Darwin (Mitrovic)
It was lucky punt week with all the managers spinning the roulette wheel before the World Cup reset. Zophar, Tom Stephenson, Joe Lepper and Mark Sutherns were the winners with Darwin Nunez (£9.0m) the pick of the bunch.
We should give credit to Tom Freeman, who seems to know how Pep’s brain works when it comes to Foden, as he managed to avoid two of his blanks in Gameweek 14 and 15 before bringing him back in just time for his spectacular goal this weekend.
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:
Pope (11), Ward (11)
Trippier (18), Cancelo (14), Guehl (8), Williams (7), Alexander-Arnold (5)
Martinelli (17), Andreas (15), Salah (15), Zaha (13), Saka (9)
Haaland (17), Darwin (7), Solanke (7)
A tremor in the final template before we all fiddle with our teams, with Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.2m) and Darwin Nunez coming in for Matt Doherty (£4.6m) and Aleksander Mitrovic (£6.8m).
SEASON STATS
Let’s do a half-term prizegiving by looking at the key season stats to this point:
Finn Sollie is recognized for his contribution to captaincy, just pipping Az, with 260 points over the first half of the season. His super simple approach of either going Haaland or Mohamed Salah (£12.8m) and knowing which one is best each week has paid dividend.
FPL Harry is cash king on £104.1m: it will be intriguing to see whether this pays off when it comes to later in the season and what he can and can’t afford in the Christmas overhaul. Either way, the festive drinks are on him.
Suvansh and Az are the most aggressive wheeler dealers in the transfer market, both with four hits so far. Someone needs to wake up Ben Crellin and surprisingly Magnus, who have yet to take a minus four.
CONCLUSION
There you go, time to rest and recuperate before we return to action in December. For those who are playing World Cup Fantasy, feel free to find me on Twitter where I’ll be running a mini-Great and Good for those wanting to take part – once I understand the rules and what the heck a Power Captain is.
For those taking a break completely then rest, recharge and I guess, bizarrely, I should wish you Merry Christmas. See you all soon!
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
