Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead returns for the 2023/24 season with his series of Great and The Good articles, analysing the transfers and strategies of some well-known Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers.
This season’s names are the BlackBox pair of Mark Sutherns and Az, Scouts Joe Lepper and Tom Freeman, Scoutcasters Seb Wassell and Andy North, Pro Pundits FPL General, Pras, Zophar and FPL Harry, FPL ‘celebrities’ LTFPL Andy and Ben Crellin, FPL champion FPL Gunz, Hall of Famers Fabio Borges, Finn Sollie, Jan Kepski and Jon Ballantyne, and last year’s mini-league winner Marko Miseric.
“Vice vice baby”
V is for victory, V is for vice and V is also for variance. I suspect those who didn’t have Mohamed Salah (£13.1m) or Son Heung-min (£9.5m) as their back-up captain pick will feel they had the rough edge of this weekend.
Yes, the goal-scoring cyborg named Erling finally showed that he is human by picking up a stress problem on his foot. Pep Guardiola was as vague as usual in his post-match words, leading some to suspect this is just another roll of ‘Pep Roulette’ and he will make the Crystal Palace game – stay tuned to his later press conference, as I sense this will be an FPL soap opera worth following.
Personally, I think Pep’s latest move is down to the fact that he’s being overshadowed by Roberto De Zerbi’s mad rotation routine. If anyone wants to try and predict Brighton and Hove Albion line-ups, then good luck to them.
In the midst of all this, Bournemouth players suddenly joined our Santa lists, Reece James (£5.4m) continues to collect casualty Clubcard points and there’s another sub-£4.0m goalkeeper on the market, in the form of Remi Matthews (£3.9m). If that’s your thing.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
Cometh the hour, cometh the Joe! In these chaotic times, the ‘steady Eddie’ of FPL aka Joe Lepper stepped up and bagged a festive green arrow, moving into the top 100k with a tally of 71 points.
Not only does he own Salah and Son but Joe was an early adopter of Pedro Porro (£5.4m) and manages to have the only Brighton midfielder immune to the bench – the ten points of Simon Adingra (£5.0m).
Saying that, pretty much all of The Great and The Good had seasonal soars up the ranks with greens aplenty. Only Seb Wassell suffered a Scrooge-like red due to his ill-fated decision to transfer out Salah to afford Erling Haaland (£14.0m).
He was not the only one without some reassuring Salah vice-captaincy to save his rank. In fact, Marko Miseric would’ve undoubtedly been a touch nervous upon hearing of Haaland’s absence, until Son delivered a brace on Sunday to help him climb up the ranks.
TRANSFERS
Again, there wasn’t a huge amount of success when it came to transfers this week. The ‘must-do’ move was replacing a hurt Bryan Mbeumo (£6.9m), with The Great and The Good split down the middle as to whether this should be Cole Palmer (£5.5m) or Anthony Gordon (£6.2m).
If more evidence was needed that this is a season where tinkering can be damaging, then just look at the bad luck of Mark Sutherns, Az and FPL Gunz. Between them, in came the triumvirate of Leon Bailey (£5.5m), Robert Sanchez (£4.7m) and Reece James – all of whom appear to have picked up injuries.
- Andy LTFPL – Mbeumo > Gordon, Guehi > Porro, Turner > Dubravka
- Andy North – Mbeumo > Gordon
- Az – Areola > Sanchez, Mbeumo > Palmer
- Ben Crellin – Mbeumo > Foden
- Fabio Borges – Mbeumo > Hwang
- Finn Sollie – Mbeumo > Palmer, Guehi > Porro
- FPL General – Mbeumo > Palmer
- FPL Gunz – Cash > James, Trossard > Palmer, Areola > Dubravka
- FPL Harry – Mbeumo > Gordon
- Jan Kepski – Mbeumo > Palmer
- Joe Lepper – Mbeumo > Palmer
- Jon Ballantyne – Mbeumo > Sterling, Turner > Dubravka
- Mark Sutherns – Mbeumo > Bailey
- Marko Miseric – Mbeumo > Palmer
- Pras – Mbeumo > Gordon
- Seb Wassell – Archer > Haaland, Salah > Douglas Luiz
- Tom Freeman – Mbeumo > Gordon
- Zophar – Mbeumo > Palmer
TEMPLATE
The template shifted a little this week but expect more seismic changes in the coming weeks, with AFCON no doubt playing havoc. This time it’s William Saliba (£5.5m) who joins our weekly defensive reshuffle, whilst Gordon is in for Mbeumo.
WILDCARD WONDERS
Now that the dust has settled on this lot’s Wildcards, I thought it might be fun to see how they have fared. I was going to wait until Fabio and FPL General pulled the trigger but they seem to be playing their own personal game of ‘chip chicken’.
Therefore, I’ve looked at the rank gains and trends of those who have indeed pressed the overhaul button. For example, it looks like the Gameweek 8 Wildcarders have stolen a march because the top seven percentage gains have come from this group.
The biggest leap belongs to Jan Kepski, moving from 1.8 million to 121k in the immediate five weeks. However, the Scout trio of Joe, Seb and Andy North all performed well. As for the FPL Blackbox duo of Az and Mark, they either played it too early or too late, although gains were still made.
CONCLUSION
This week showed that chaos brings opportunity for the more engaged managers and I sense that will continue over the coming weeks. Keeping an eye on the impact of AFCON, suspensions and potential rotations could see many fly high.
As always, if you want to dig further into the data, have a read of the Mini-League Mate dossier. Under ‘Join an existing league’, just enter your name and email address alongside the league code MLM0001. It’s all free!
Anyway, that’s all from me for now, but remember – don’t have FPL nightmares.
For those affected by any of the topics raised above, you can find me here on Twitter.
